We’ve added three new designs to the site this week, inspired by such superb retro gems as Sim City, Out Run and Pokémon.
Hope you like them!
RetroGT Blog
Lost: One voice, at Beeb@30
If found, please return via the good folks at this blog.
At one point today, around 30 people from my 500-odd strong twitter feed were in the main atrium at the ARM building in Cambridge, among the limited number gathered to celebrate the 30th birthday of the BBC Micro. Yours truly, and my husband, known online as Felicemaggie (under which name he has a twitter feed) were there as volunteer event crew members, and in my case, as an interested writerly type with an itch to document the day in detail.
Videogames, F1 and BBC Micros
This week in Wordchazer’s world has been quite a big one.
- Normality returns in the shape of the start of the Formula 1 season.
- The BBC Micro is almost 30, and the local jungle telegraph has been jangling all week with tales of who is going to attend and just how lavish the celebrations are expected to be.
- There is the usual media coverage of retro computer games, which suddenly appear to be cool these days.
- All is not cool at Game, however, as the High Street retailer struggles amid reports of a falling-out with EA.
Raspberry Pi, Atari for iOS and Young Rewired State
It seems the past and future of games and coding met head on today. So, whilst perusing Twitter (founded 2006) on the PurpleBerry (makers RIM founded around 1984) I was reading about the Raspberry Pi launch (today, 2012), the Young Rewired State initiative (first run in 2011 with 100 developers creating 40 projects at 14 centres around the UK) and Pong (Atari, 1972) on the iOS (Apple, 2007).
Handhelds through time
OK, so I hadn’t intended this, but when my husband told me about this piece, I knew exactly where it was going to be shown.
The BBC has produced a slideshow of handheld gaming consoles through the years.
From 1978 to 2012, this is your gaming time machine. Pac Man to PS Vita, diversions to keep your thumbs busy.
See, I said I was a VYB by definition: anything involving random Pac Man pics is fair game to me.
Enjoy…maybe next week some sensible soul will produce a slideshow of PCs through the years? In the centenary of Alan Turing, I can’t think of much retro that I would like better.
E.T. Go Home!
Howard Scott Warshaw is a man who knows what he likes, and being a high ranking systems engineer at Hewlett Packard is not it. Programming games for Atari, however, is. This is how he came to leave the former for the latter, and find himself tasked with writing the video game companion to Steven Spielberg’s ET: The Extra Terrestrial. For now, let’s just agree that it was a bit of a howler, and discuss why in a minute.
In an early meeting with Spielberg, Warshaw pitched the project as ‘the game that would make the movie famous.’ Spielberg’s reaction to this is unrecorded, but a brief examination of subsequent events tells its own story: in 1981, E.T. became the biggest grossing film of all time – bigger even than Star Wars – and in its first six weeks alone personally netted Spielberg $9 million. It’s a well loved and enduring classic, and perhaps the most charming representation of diverse individuals overcoming common adversity ever to grace the big screen.
Warshaw’s effort fared less well. Routinely cited as the worst game ever released, it was rated by Gamespy’s Classic Gaming as ‘…too horrible to describe.’ It effectively bankrupted Atari, and very nearly destroyed the entire gaming industry. It’s a lot to take in. Nonetheless, it’s time to grit our teeth, phone home, make our fingers light up like a Christmas tree, and see what all the fuss wasn’t about.
It started with a tweet
It started with a tweet.
My association with this website, I mean.
There I was at the Replay convention in Blackpool in November, rapidly running out of battery on my mobile (hereafter usually referred to as the PurpleBerry) when I read a tweet tagged with the appropriate hashtag ‘Writers, please get in touch. We need you to blog.’
Upon approaching the retroGT stall I realised that Gary and I had met before – and in fact kept running into each other at retro conventions and collectors’ festivals.
Due to my new job and a number of other outside influences, it has taken me until now to sign up and get blogging. But here I am now. And, as is traditional, I’ll start off by telling you a bit about myself.
My involvement with all things retrotech is entirely the fault of my husband. (He gets blamed for a lot of circumstances in my life but this one really was his fault.) Within a few weeks of meeting, he took me to Collectormania at Milton Keynes and later, to Braamt in the Netherlands for Outline 2004 demoparty. Sure, having been a fan of electronic music since I first heard it in the 70s, I had a feeling for the music which went along with the games already. I have many fond memories of hours spent playing Mini Munchman, Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and similar when I was in my early teens. But I didn’t know until I met my husband that there was a dedicated band of people who still met to play these games, designed and coded demos for the various platforms and generally enjoyed hanging out in darkened village halls at weekends, getting rather drunk and having a whale of a time whilst messing around with all this old tech. Neither did I know that there was a whole scene around that scene, consisting of buying, trading, swapping, restoring and displaying old kit as well as supplying suitably retro accessories to gamers.
Several parties and many more conventions later, I have gained myself a niche as the tweetqueen, keeping non-attendees up on goings on in 140 characters via my laptop or the PurpleBerry. I have been writing up my experiences and will post them here. I used to post them on Suite101.com but, after a re-evaluation of content earlier in the year, these articles are looking for a new home. May as well share them with like-minded types, I figured, so they’ll be rolling out to a computer near you soon. My husband and I, together with assorted friends, have a number of other con and party visits planned for the upcoming months, including Collectormania at Milton Keynes, maybe the London Film and Comic-Con, Sundown demoscene party in Budleigh Salterton in September (the cheesy chips at their local chippie are to die for!), most likely something involving our friends at the Retro Computer Museum in Leicestershire at Easter and with a bit of luck another visit to Replay later in the year.
I am particularly looking forward to Sundown, as I thoroughly enjoyed it when we went in 2010. It is truly a digital arts event these days, with coding taking place on both retro and modern machinery – and yours truly taking over the Twitter feed, of course.
I’m hoping to bring you coverage of developments relating to several computer museums in the Midlands and East of England area as well as reports from collectors’ conventions, retro exhibitions, parties and other gatherings of that ilk.
As far as my own gaming urges go, according to my colleague Jon, I am a ‘casual gamer’. I’m a Fishdom and Tetris gal, which are rated as casual games. But seeing as I’m on Level 330-something of Fishdom on the PC, I beg to differ about the ‘casualness’ of my gaming. I also have a Tetris game on my website as well as retro versions from previous machines. I tend towards match-3 games, other favourites being Bejeweled and Heroes of Hellas. I also play Solitaire/Klondike in all forms and enjoy the odd occasional hidden object game. I am a Vicious Yellow Bastard by definition and if I could just find what I did with my Mini Munchman I would reboot it and lose a few hours in happy bleeping bliss.
But in the meantime, I have more mundane things to do, such as getting on with work.
(At this, your blogger wanders off humming the Munchman music and going ‘blip’ at intervals thereafter.)
Official Nintendisco t-shirts!
Retro GT are very pleased to announce that we’ve teamed up with the dudes at Nintendisco to bring you their range of t-shirts, including an exclusive (and totally awesome) Mario inspired mushroom t-shirt.
If you’ve not yet heard of Nintendisco then you’re in for a treat: Nintendisco is a brand new retro gaming club night bringing classic gaming and new music together in a cool, alternative and friendly environment. Run by Dave Fade and Nicky Biscuit. Music, boozing, gaming and dancing all in one place.
Since their inception in 2010, Nintendisco have impressed audiences at gaming events and club venues all over London and some other lucky areas of the UK. You may have seen them at Eurogamer, Replay Expo, London Gaming Con or the 3Ds launch party – but inbetween gaming events you can find them putting on nights in East London, or touring up north. Check out their website for details of where to find them next.
Snake’s On A Phone!
Snake is to mobile phone gaming what Pac Man is to upright cabinets or Tetris is to consoles. If you’ve never heard of it, please leave now. If you’ve never played it, you’ve probably never had a phone. If you do have a phone and you’ve never played it – or any of its innumerable varients – you should hand it in to the authorities, because you simply don’t deserve it.
For something which seems to have been on old skool phones since the early sixteenth century, it’s surprising that it was only included as a standard installation in 1997, on the Nokia 6110. Players could even while away the last days of Britpop and the first days of Changing Rooms by playing against someone else via infra red connection, provided they stood so close together as to be effectively standing on each other, and didn’t move until the crippling pains from muscular cramp rendered them unconscious.
GamerDads charity Christmas song 2011
Be it Cliff Richard, a manufactured X-Factor cover song or Rage Against the Machine, it just isn’t Christmas until the coveted number one chart position is announced and we have a new Christmas hit to add to the list for all eternity.
This year, our money is on the GamerDads collaborative charity effort, ‘Leave the noobs’. Combining the vocal talents of members of the gaming community and delivering a message of peace for our time and goodwill to all noobs, this showstopper of a track is bound to catapult up the charts to the top slot in time for Christmas day.
Well, ok we’ll admit that this is probably a long shot, but still we were proud to be a part of it and do our bit for the gaming charity Special Effect. Go and check out the great work these guys do to help people with disabilities enjoy video games and maybe chuck them a bit of cash this Christmas.