Blog 2008

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Retro Gaming

Monday, February 25, 2008 at 11:47am

Last week I read an article about the 1984 BBC Micro classic game ‘Elite’. Now if during the 1980’s you happened to be on a different planet, Elite was the first 3D real-time combat and trading game produced. It was revolutionary in many aspects and is the granddaddy of all the 3D flying and shooting games available today.

After reading the article I remembered how much time I spent playing that game as a kid (around the age of 11!). The article also said that the very best conversion ever done was for the Acorn Archimedes. This was a spot of luck, since I happen to have a fully restored and working Acorn RISC PC600 (donated by my best mate Ricky), so I connected it up, downloaded ArcElite off the Internet and fired it up. Playing old games is really fun, but there is something special about playing the game on the machine it was designed for, makes you feel like you jumped through a time-warp.

Anyway, needless to say, it seems my skill at Elite (I got as far as ‘deadly’) has diminished over time; I spent an hour or so crashing into the Lave space station before finally remembering how to dock… The concept of games starting easy and then getting harder as you go along didn’t really exist when Elite was written.

My daughter (who is 11 right now) is enthralled by my arcade machines (see other blog entries) and also my converted Xbox which runs NES, SNES and Atari 2600 games. The fluid game play and straight forward playability of classics like Super Mario Brothers and the Kirby series can still take on the likes of the Xbox 360 without having to resort to HD graphics and blood by the bucket-load to be enjoyable.

So, before you waste 40 pounds, 500 kroner or 50 dollars on the next ‘like the one before but with better graphics’ game, check out the emulator scene and play Commando on the C64. Awesome :)

Or just pop over to my place and get whooped at Pacman!

Coffee and TV

Sunday, February 3, 2008 at 6:55pm

Seems such a long time since I last wrote anything here, so I thought I'd give it a shot and see if I could think of anything interesting to say as a go along (yes, I know, long shot at best...).

Well, its been an interesting few months, I built my own arcade machine, celebrated Christmas, went up north to Mora and then came back down again... Over the new year Ricky (my longest standing partner in crime) and myself attempted to drink everything drinkable and then blow everything else up (well fireworks at least)!

The new year has be quite turbulent with odd, new experiences on the work front, but really it's same old, same old. Actually some times it reminds me of a children's party, musical chairs and pass the parcel (you know, the game when the worst, snottiest kid always gets the penny whistle you didn't want in the first place).

My latest project has been to wage war against DRM. Just to listen to my music on my phone I had to spend hours of valuable time removing all the useless protection from my iTunes purchases... For the record I will *never* buy anything from apple ever again. Underneath the fashionable shiny plastic of their products lies software who's only purpose it to strip us of our rights. I never thought any company could be worse than Microsoft, but Apple has proved me wrong. All this because I decided to *pay* for the music rather than download it illegally... Ironic at best, idiotic at worse.

Anyways, in closing... In the picture are some interesting statistics for you.