15 May 2009
[distractions] MoonLander … perfect flash conversion of the classic arcade game … [via Sore Eyes]
22 January 2009
[games] Watching: YouTube – This guy is badass at Marble Madness. … (more…)
14 November 2004
[games] Spacewar – Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums — a profile of Spacewar (one of the first computer games) and the personalities behind it by Stewart Brand from Rolling Stone magazine in 1972 … ‘Spacewar as a parable is almost too pat. It was the illegitimate child of the marrying of computers and graphic displays. It was part of no one’s grand scheme. It served no grand theory. It was the enthusiasm of irresponsible youngsters. It was disreputably competitive (“You killed me, Tovar!”). It was an administrative headache. It was merely delightful. Yet Spacewar, if anyone cared to notice, was a flawless crystal ball of things to come in computer science and computer use…’ [via del.icio.us]
20 November 2003
[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.’
14 November 2003
[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.’
28 April 2003
[distraction] ZX Spectrum Game Top Trumps — for aging Brit retro-gamers…
8 April 2003
[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…’
30 October 2002
18 October 2002
[distraction] Candy Train — similar to that classic old game Pipe Dream, rotate the tracks and keep the train moving. … [via Diminished Responsibility]
9 October 2002
[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]
18 September 2002
[another distraction] Mecha Breakout — the classic arcade game in your web browser.
3 September 2002
[distraction] Flash Air Hockey — fast moving and I love the sound effects. [via Grayblog]
24 May 2002
14 January 2002
[distractions] Cutie Quake … ‘The Rules Are Simple: 1) Shoot Anything That Moves. 2) Don’t Get Shot.’ [via Grammarporn]
2 January 2002
28 June 2001
[distractions] Another really addictive game… BLiX. ‘Is BLiX just a pixel in someone else’s game?’
8 May 2001
[distraction] Excellent on-line gameboy emulator with a number of games… just like the real thing.
28 January 2001
[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…
23 January 2001
7 January 2001
[distractions] Retro-Remakes… old computer games classics like Manic Miner that run on modern computers. Hours of time-wasting basically…
30 October 2000
[arcade] Atari Classics — Shockwave coversions of Centipede, Missile Command, Super Breakout and Frogger….
19 October 2000
[history] Vaguely disturbing… Pictures of historical events done in the style of the Sims Computer game. [via Memepool]
19 July 2000
[games] ClassicGaming.com’s Games of the Week Index. Hours and hours of fun. My favourite? Probably Arkanoid or maybe Marble Madness.
21 June 2000
[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.
1 June 2000
[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.”
6 May 2000
[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!
3 April 2000
12 March 2000
Great two-part article/interview with John Romero on his upcoming game Daikatana [Part One] [Part Two]