With your host, Rob Remakes

Category: Links

Read: What Videogames Did To Haunting, Nate Schmidt (Unwinnable)

When they are talked about at all, haunted videogames are almost always retro and retroactive. Electric media was haunted from the beginning, so now that our most popular forms of communication and entertainment are electrical, why aren’t there more hauntings?

Nate Schmidt For Unwinnable

From this month’s Unwinnable mag, a lovely essay asking why it’s never new videogames that are haunted (Minecraft being an obvious exception) and also, a possible theory as to why.

There’s an extract up on the site, you’ll need either a sub or a copy of the mag to read the whole piece – something I heartily recommend as in all my (now many) years of subbing to Unwinnable, it’s never managed an issue I haven’t enjoyed yet.

I’ve long maintained that if the time comes where I need to cut down on subs (very possible given living in the UK at the mo is increasingly unaffordable for normal people who like things like warm houses and eating food to live) then Unwinnable and Fallen London will be the last to go. So far, nothing has changed my mind on that one, only reinforced my opinion.

Unwinnable | creating Cultural Criticism | Patreon
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Look at it! A.R.T.I. (Atari 7800)

Though I’d read about it first sometime last year, I’d completely forgotten about ARTI, a currently work in progress HERO rejig for the 7800, until a reminder popped up this week.

Absolutely in love with the brick work on the Egyptian stages. Gorgeous stuff! Just look at it!


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The Ecco The Dolphin Text Generator

Big Announcement!

The Ecco the Dolphin Text Generator is complete!

This is an Ecco the Dolphin Text Generator that creates animated gifs and static images using the ripple generating algorythm from Ecco 2 The Tides of Time

Features:

  • Theme Selection
  • Font Selection
  • Background Effect Distortions
  • Animated Characters
  • International Character Support
  • Russian Character Support
  • Hiragana and Katakana Support

Give it a whirl and feel free to give me some feedback!

https://eccothedolphin.io/ecco-text-generator

Hectortelloc’s Announcement post on mastodon

Sometimes you don’t know you need a thing until someone makes the thing. This is one of those things.

Link: The Ecco The Dolphin Text Generator


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Watch: Beyond The Scan lines on JetPak DX

I reckon it was all downhill for Ultimate after Jetpac. Not a reflection of how poor any subsequent games were (post-US Gold aside, they were far, far from it) but how fantastic Jetpac is. Alongside Pssst and Cookie, it oozed an arcade sensibility that would largely disappear as Ultimate’s games got larger and more ambitious and it remains my favourite out of all their games.

There’s been a nice handful of remakes and tributes over the years (there’s a couple on Switch even), Rare took a punt at a remake of their own in the early days of XBLA and that turned out pretty alright for the most part. It’s part of Rare Replay so it’s not been lost to time like plenty of other games from around that era, which means you can still give it a punt fairly easily if you haven’t already given it a shot.

Anyway. My preferred remake is the excellent Rocket Smash EX, for my money it gets pretty close to besting the original and Saul’s graphics are wonderful, making good use of the C64 to really shine the thing up. However, Super Jetpak DX for the Gameboy is pretty fine too and it’s this that one of the other Robs reviews in their latest Beyond The Scanlines video. The game’s naturally a bit more cramped than your normal Jetpac given it’s got to work on a handheld but for the most part it’s a sterling job and Rob provides a great introduction to it.


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The 50% Rule

A screenshot of No Man's Sky. A blue "squid" ship flies through the atmosphere. A planet hangs in the distance in a blue night sky. Orange and purple clouds ripple over an orange sea.

“I’ve seen so many fellow devs voice discontentment about being unable to do it as a hobby or pursue their actual passion (game dev) after exhausting their mental energy 40 hours a week, basically every week, to be able to afford the basics.

I’d argue the real problem isn’t learning to divide your time spent on your hobby but rather the impossibility of dividing your time in everything.”

Nat, the 50% RULE (COHOST)

For lots of reasons, this is a post I’ve needed to reread fairly often in recent weeks because I’ve got so much going on (still) that I need to go easier on myself when the most I can manage to do right now is lie down and watch a film in the down time.

(Incidentally, Cohost has been an absolute beacon of peace for me too. I forgot how much I missed longer form posts and braindumps, and more importantly not feeling the need to post at every interval. It is obviously very early Tumblr in vibe and you know what? That’s more than fine)


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New Rally X64

Absolutely love the look of this new homebrew conversion of New Rally X for the Commodore 64. The chonky C64 pixels and its distinctive palette are a really, really good fit for the game.

via Indie Retro News.

Indie Retro News: New Rally-X64 – An Arcade conversion of Rally X for the C64 gets its first release candidate
Jake79 with music by Merman and sound effects by NM156, has made available the first release candidate of their Arcade conversion of New Rally-X64
www.indieretronews.com


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SDI and A Tale Of Credits

Wading through some old Amiga mags at the moment and last night I ended up down one of my rabbit hole things, stumbled into this old piece (again) on why and how the Amiga version of SDI ended up with curiously defaced credits.

Picture, in your mind’s eye, 1987. A buoyant and flourishing games market on home computers such as the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, with Activision extremely interested in exploiting it…

What begins as a bit of a “well, this is odd” ends on a bunch of lovely recollections on how things ended up as they did.

I recall reading all this a while back but it’s worth another kick round all the same.


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Video Of The Week: Until I Die – Cookie

Video Of The Week is just any excuse really to link to a video or series that I’ve been enjoying. Chances are there won’t be one every week, mind.

It’s a bit of a silly conceit but I really do enjoy watching someone else play a videogame until they run out of energy/lives in it, just to see how long they can go. I’d totally be down for a festival of this similar to _______ Games Done Quick.

Namcos has been doing Until I Die for aaages now and built up quite the supply of old vids you can work through if you’re so inclined. Latest in that series is Ultimate’s Cookie.

A few minutes in Cookie is good going, I reckon. It’s one of those games that, depending on how luck falls, I find I can either play for ages or have a round over and done with in no time.

As you’ll see in the video, it’s very easy to get caught out by something you have absolutely no way of stopping or avoiding. Luckily, super arcadey and quick to restart means being back in the game really quickly to try again.

If you want to have a try yourself, a Spectrum emulator and a quick search on the internet will see you right seens as it was missing from Rare Replay.


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Gamebryo AI

It's a hairy ass minotaur from The Elder Scrolls Oblivion. It's in a forest because videogames.

…Gamebryo would sometimes get blamed for bugs that were, in reality, caused by Bethesda. “I’ve always found it hilarious when enraged fanboys online say ‘Gamebryo AI sucks, look at Morrowind’. There’s no such thing as Gamebryo AI”, Tim said, laughing.

David Lightbown retrospective on Gamebryo, Gamasutra

In “quotes that have stuck in the gamedev segment of my noggin” corner, this is a recent-ish one that always makes me smile.

There’s no such thing as Gamebryo AI


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Watch: Rob on Ludwig’s Lemon Lazers

Not me, one of the other Robs! To be honest, I mainly want you to know there’s a game called Ludwig’s Lemon Lazers.

I’d first heard of it from one of Yak’s rummages through Gamebase years ago and whilst it’s incredibly far from the best game ever, it’s totally up there with the best videogame names.

The box art for the game. Two was lemons with arms and legs look like they need a pee

Bonus! The cover artist went for “sad lemon needs toilet” as their theme. Love it.

As ever, Rob has a chill voyage of discovery as to what the game is. It can only ever be downhill from the glorious title but really, with a title that good, who cares?


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