[retro-games] Masters of their Universe — extract from Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford about the creation of the computer game Elite … ‘In 1982, popularised science hadn’t yet risen above the horizon in Britain as a cultural phenomenon. No chaos theory as a universal reference point; not much evolutionary biology, since Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould were only then beginning to make their mark on public consciousness; no cosmology deployed à la Stephen Hawking as a modern replacement for religious truths. In particular, computing in its DIY phase didn’t resonate as it would later. You wouldn’t have found French literary theorists writing about cyberspace in 1982, any more than they’d have written about household plumbing. Computers weren’t glamorous. The result of all this was that what Braben and Bell achieved together while they were at Cambridge was, effectively, invisible.’

[games] Jeff Minter interview by B3ta … ‘Q: What imagery was rejected from the Attack of the Mutant Camels games? A: I drew the line at exposing my innocent young gamers to images of Margaret Thatcher. Hallucinogenic imagery and implied bestiality seemed mild by comparison.’

[distraction] ZX Spectrum Game Top Trumps — for aging Brit retro-gamers…

[retro-gaming] GP32 Review — interesting review of an open Gameboy Advance-ish Handheld called a Gamepark. ‘…what a lot of people want the GP32 for is EMULATORS because its ARM CPU can be set upto around 133 – 160MHZ (compare that with the GBA’s 14MHZ) its capable of running pretty much all the old classic consoles, even controversially the Gameboy, Gameboy color & Advance! Current emulators include SNES, Sega, NES, PC Engine, ZX Spectrum, Commodore, MSX, GBA etc etc. the older systems run perfectly including sound…’

[distraction] Atari Adventure — my favourite 2600 game gets a Flash Conversion. [via Metafilter]

[distraction] Candy Train — similar to that classic old game Pipe Dream, rotate the tracks and keep the train moving. … [via Diminished Responsibility]

[games] Solitary Confinement — The inside story behind Solitaire for Windows … ‘Generations of Windows software have come and gone, but Solitaire continues on. How much has Cherry earned for this staple of world computer culture? Nothing. Nothing upfront. No royalties. Zero. How ironic. The richest man in the world (or is he second-richest this week?) got that rich by collecting software royalties, but the actual creator of the most distributed, most used program of all gets none of those royalties passed along to him.’ [via Rodcorp]

[another distraction] Mecha Breakout — the classic arcade game in your web browser.

[distraction] Flash Air Hockey — fast moving and I love the sound effects. [via Grayblog]

[games] The Top 100 Video Game Engrish Of All Time … [via Lukelog]

[distractions] Cutie Quake … ‘The Rules Are Simple: 1) Shoot Anything That Moves. 2) Don’t Get Shot.’ [via Grammarporn]

[distraction] Fantastic 20th anniversary version of a classic arcade game — Pitfall … ‘Guide Pitfall Harry through a treacherous jungle maze. He must leap over obstacles and dodge deadly dangers while grabbing all the treasure he can reach!’ [via Fark]

[distractions] Another really addictive game… BLiX. ‘Is BLiX just a pixel in someone else’s game?’

[distraction] Excellent on-line gameboy emulator with a number of games… just like the real thing.

[classic gaming] Iain Lee interviews Matthew Smith [creator of Manic Miner and Jet-Set Willy] about his games and the many net rumours about him…

[distractions] The most time wasting, addictive game I’ve come across recently: Bejeweled. [via i:am:cal]

[distractions] Retro-Remakes… old computer games classics like Manic Miner that run on modern computers. Hours of time-wasting basically…

[arcade] Atari Classics — Shockwave coversions of Centipede, Missile Command, Super Breakout and Frogger….

[history] Vaguely disturbing… Pictures of historical events done in the style of the Sims Computer game. [via Memepool]

[games] ClassicGaming.com’s Games of the Week Index. Hours and hours of fun. My favourite? Probably Arkanoid or maybe Marble Madness.

[old games] I spent a lot of time playing these gentlemens computer games when I was younger: Jeff Minter and Matthew Smith. Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy were probably my favourite computer games as a child — they are now available for download in PC versions.

[games] John Carmack confirms that ID are working on Doom III. [via DoomWorld] “I discussed it with some of the other guys, and we decided that it was important enough to drag the company through an unpleasant fight over it. An ultimatum was issued to Kevin and Adrian(who control >50% of the company): We are working on DOOM for the next project unless you fire us. Obviously no fun for anyone involved, but the project direction was changed, new hires have been expedited, and the design work has begun.”

[games] Midway release many emulated arcade classics on to the net using shockwave.com [via Slashdot] I’ve been using Mame for years… but using Shockwave to emulate arcade games? Pretty impressive!

[doom] Terrific new ZDoom wad available for download: Hell Factory

Great two-part article/interview with John Romero on his upcoming game Daikatana [Part One] [Part Two]