[gaming] Inside the $100K+ forgery scandal that’s roiling PC game collecting … Fascinating forgery story within the world of retro computer game collecting. ‘When Racle made a disk image of his rare find for preservation purposes, that excitement quickly turned to disgust and distrust. With the help of an Apple II preservation expert going by the handle “4am,” Racle found that the disk he received contained a cracked version of the game, complete with a loading screen sporting the message “Presented by the Data Killer.” Needless to say, that message would not appear on an authentic 1981 version of the disk with its original copy protection intact. It does, however, appear on cracked copies of the game that have been floating around the Internet for years.’

[media] Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly … ‘So why might people be more open to experiencing the same thing over and over again? As options multiply, choosing gets harder. You can’t possibly evaluate everything, so you start relying on cues like “this movie has Tom Hanks in it” or “I liked Red Dead Redemption, so I’ll probably like Red Dead Redemption II,” which makes you less and less likely to pick something unfamiliar.’

[meme] An anniversary for great justice: Remembering “All Your Base” 20 years later … ‘This video’s 20th anniversary will likely make you feel old as dirt, but that doesn’t mean the video itself aged badly. There’s still something timeless about both the wackiness and innocence of so many early-Internet pioneers sending up a badly translated game.’

[gaming] Robot Odyssey: The hardest computer game of all time … a fun look back at a absurdly hard computer game for the Apple II … ‘By my teenage years I’d completed the first three levels, but my siblings and I hit a brick wall with the fourth level, which is to earlier levels like algebra is to arithmetic. (As Thomas Foote said, “I was stuck on this level for most of my college years.”) The fifth level was nothing more than a fabled dream…’

[funny] The 1982 Version of Guitar Hero … [via David McCandless]

[games] Pac-man’s Skull — a photo of what a real Pac-man’s skull might look like.

[speccy] Youtube: Watch Manic Miner loading on a ZX Spectrum — I spent a lot of time as a teenager waiting for games like this to load up – And now so can you! :) [via Complete Tosh]

[games] The View from the Top — the final confession of a recovering World of Warcraft junkie … ‘The worst though are the people you know have time commitments. People with families and significant others. I am not one to judge a person’s situation, but when a father/husband plays a video game all night long, seven days a week, after getting home from work, very involved instances that soak up hours and require concentration, it makes me queasy that I encouraged that. Others include the kids you know aren’t doing their homework and confide in you they are failing out of high school or college but don’t want to miss their chance at loot, the long-term girl/boyfriend who is skipping out on a date (or their anniversary – I’ve seen it) to play (and in some cases flirt constantly), the professional taking yet another day off from work to farm mats or grind their reputations up with in-game factions to get “valuable” quest rewards, etc… I’m not one to tell people how to spend their time, but it gets ridiculous when you take a step back.’ [via Waxy’s Links]

[zx] Your Sinclair Top 100 Spectrum Games — a list of the best ZX Spectrum Games.

[games] Pac-Man Guide — advice and games patterns for playing Pac-Man … ‘Pac-Man is the game which represents everything that’s good about gaming (any kind of gaming) and nothing that is bad. It’s easy to grasp but hard to master. Addictive and stuffed with pure unadulterated gameplay. Frustrating but always having you come back for more. Never boring and always tense, even for the best players. Always giving you the impression that you can master it but never quite letting you get there.’ [via Do You Feel Loved?]

[games] High Score Trailer — Quicktime Trailer for a documentary about a man attempting to break the High Score for Missile Command by playing it for two days non-stop…

[game] The Falling Sand Game — a massively time wasting Java game – this wikipedia article describes how you can play it.

[tv] Forensic criminology, the ZX Spectrum Way — how did the sound of the loading screen from Sabre Wulf get into CSI: Miami? … ‘Their expensive new XRF machine appears to be a Sinclair Spectrum making tape loading noises. But as if that’s not geeky enough… The combined forces of comp.sys.sinclair have identified the data in question as the loading screen to Sabre Wulf by Ultimate.’

[games] Edward Castronova on ‘The Average Gamer‘: ‘The average age is 30. For the most part it’s a lower-middle-class phenomenon. If you’re too poor you can’t afford the online access. And these games require absolute top end. But people who are very successful in the real world don’t have the leisure. You need a mix of a lot of time, fairly advanced literacy, enough money to get the equipment and then you have to be, sort of, not very invested in the real world. It’s pathetic in a way. So I think the typical player might be, for example, a parts manager at an office-supply store.’ [thanks Phil]

[games] It Plays Doom — site listing every gadget Doom has been ported to.

[games] Friday Afternoon Game: Snake Jump