If you are of a certain age and owned a ZX Spectrum  you will remember well the playground taunts from your Commodore owning friends regarding colour clash, its rubber keyboard and feeble sound effects. Likewise if you owned a Commodore 64 you will remember the playground taunts regarding washed out colours, peeks and pokes and the relative lack of software in your local WH Smith.

If you do, then you will be interested to read Robert John Shepherd’s article over at MyReviewer.com where he tries to settle the argument once and for all. Intelligently, unlike back in the early 80′s…

OK, so not strictly retro game related, but we saw this computer gadget of yesteryear and we now long to run around with serial ports sticking out of the back of our trainers. How cool would it be to plug your trainers into an Commodore 64? Super cool, that’s how cool and we want some… not that we’d like to actually run in them.

Here’s the lowdown on the low-tech:

Released in 1985 by Puma, these shoes would act as an electronic pedometer that you could hook up to your Apple IIe or Commodore 64 computer and track your distance run and calories used. A bit like Nike + but not at all. Instead of the small wireless sensor that you get to put under your sole, you got a bloody great appendage stuck on the back of your Pumas which had the necessary control buttons and ports for connecting to your computer when you got back home. Looking at these gives me footache. Interestingly a sales programme manager for Nike was reported to have said that their market research at the time had ‘turned up no solid market for computerised shoes’. I think he may have been taking notes though.

More on this, including magazine articles and pictures of RS Computer shoes from their collection over at DigiBarn Computer Museum.

It might not seem like a lot of money to pay, but prior to WJ’s demise the game was pretty much worthless. Doubt if it would have had a single bid let alone 8 of them.

Worse still it looks like everyone is digging out their old Moonwalker games, I just saw the Amiga version with a starting price of £29.99 and a Commodore 64 version starting at £19.99. Sad but true.

Now I’m sure I’ve got a copy here somewhere…

The aforementioned software is called Breadbox64 and amongst other things it allows you to Tweet (obviously!), access your friends feed and access individual friends timelines. You can also run this using C64 emulation on your PC, but what’s the point in that?

If you fancy Twitter ‘retro style’ head on over to his website here. Now where’s the ZX Spectrum version?