The Best of Bit för Bit, Part 1

If you were a child of the 80s, there’s a fair chance that you watched a fair bit of television, as well played an equally healthy amount of video games. More than likely, both activities happened on the same TV set. But did the two pursuits ever intersect?

Those who grew up in the US may have been lucky enough to get Starcade, in which kids competed against each other via arcade games. And who could forget the hijinks of Captain N and his posse of misfit NES personalities every Saturday morning, via one’s local NBC affiliate.

But those who grew up in Sweden had some decidedly different: Bit för Bit aired in 1989 and only lasted one season, as well as just six episodes. But each one was jam packed with awesomeness. There’s actually not a whole lot written about the show online, so I’ll be mostly referring to the notes written by The One Million Boys, aka MEGABOYS, the party responsible for compiling all the episodes, and which were released for Datastorm 2011.

Each 30-minute episode was a mixture of entertainment and education, with the focus on video games naturally, though Bit för Bit is primarily known for being “the first, if not only, TV-show that brought the demoscene into the public eye on a frequent basis”. The other noteworthy part of Bit för Bit was its “teledataspelet” segments, which allowed viewers to play PC games via their telephone, with the keypad acting as the joystick.

I’ll be presenting my hand picked highlights from all six episodes, starting with the intro for episode one. Included is a few seconds from the very first segment, on the history of computers; most everything’s in Swedish, with some parts of the show working better than others, and a history lesson in which one can’t understand what anyone’s saying is a bit of a drag…

Here we have episode one’s demoscene showcase. You’ll find demos from The Link (#1), Alpha Flight, and Defjam/Spreadpoint. I should perhaps also mention Bit för Bit’s animated co-host, who goes by Orcon…

Time for our first taste of “teledataspelet”! The game being served up is BeeGee Air Rally, which I’m imaging is tricky enough to play with regular controls, let alone with a phone’s numeric pad.

Best part, easily, is knowing what buttons are being pressed, thanks to the accompanying tone (#2 is to go up, #4 & #6 are left & right respectively, plus #8 is to go down). Here we also meet Bit för Bit’s primary (human) host, Gila Bergqvist, who is described as being “slightly confused”…

Episode 1 ends with a computer animated short. In this case it’s an early Pixar film, Red’s Dream, which I’m not going to share for maybe obvious reasons; I don’t need Disney’s lawyers knocking on my door. Instead, lets skip ahead to episode 2’s demoscene showcase, featuring Fairlight/North Star, Red Sector, It (#1), and Rebels…

And here we have episode 2’s gaming segment, which again features BeeGee Air Rally. Folks seem to have a harder time playing this time as opposed to last…

That’s it for now. Next time we’ll be looking at episode 3 exclusively, which is chock full of demos, more games played on a telephone, a look at video game piracy circa 1989, and more!

Originally published at blog.attractmo.de.