Ep.16 r2 — Paperboy — 4 October 1986

Top of the singles chart was, uh, Madonna with True Blue.

It's the title track off her third album, and it's a proper throwback to those, uh, '50s girl group records, all doo-wop backing, uh, vocals.

Here's the start of it.

[singing]

Oh, that's so sunny, isn't it? It sounds like a, a milkshake bar in an American film.

I love that Madonna's doing a '50s pastiche at number one while the bedrooms of Britain are full of a game about suburban America.

Somebody at Elite must have had that on the radio while they were coding.

Now, the shops, uh, so we know what all this would've set you back.

Um, I've taken these from adverts in the mags and the Dixons leaflets from around then.

So, um, they're ballpark figures for autumn '86, and I've put each one through the official inflation figures so you get, uh, today's money as well.

The new Spectrum +2, the gray Amstrad-built one with the tape deck in the side, uh, had come out in September for £149, which is about four hundred and seventy, uh, today.

If you shopped about, the older, uh, Spectrum+ was going for about 110, so roughly 350 now.

The Amstrad CPC464 was still around 199 with a green screen.

That's about 630 in today's money or close to 300 with color, which is more like 950.

A Commodore 64 pack could cost you nearly 250 in Dixons, getting on for 800 quid now.

And Paperboy, um, on Spectrum tape was £7.95, about £25 today.

Seven ninety-five is the bit that makes me laugh, Lee, because for a lot of kids, that was a couple of weeks' wages from an actual paper round.

Imagine trudging round the estate in the rain every morning just to buy a game about trudging round the estate.

Uh, you'd want to be sure it was good first, so I'm guessing the reviews mattered.

Ha, that's grim, but you're not wrong.

Honestly, uh, I'd have been a lot slower than the lad on the screen.

I can believe that, Lee, because you still walk to the shop like you're being paid by the hour.

Um, at least nobody chased you down the road with a lawnmower, which is more than the lad in this game can say.