A trip to France in the 1980s would have revealed a distinctly French approach to technology, with home computing trailblazing a unique path, separate from the UK or Germany, according to Hackaday.
One example of this is the Matra Hachette Alice 32, which was positioned as a competitor to the Sinclair Spectrum, but suffered heavily from a lack of software and limited distribution, unlike the Spectrum, Acorn and Commodore machines that dominated the UK market.
It ran on a Motorola 6803 processor and had an AZERTY keyboard, with some compatibility with its predecessor, the Matra Alice, including a version of its snake game “La Chenille Infernale”.
However, it was never popularly embraced and is largely forgotten, although there are still enthusiasts maintaining the platform at Alice32.free.fr.
