#bittelitt

[rustentidsmaskin]

Januar 1984: Attack of the Mutant Camels (Llamasoft)

I likhet med mange av spillene til Jeff Minter AKA Llamasoft (Sheep in Space, Hovver Bovver...), hadde dette spillet en høy WTF-faktor da det manifesterte i kjellerstuene våre via piratkopierte Turbo Tape-kassetter.

En karavane med gigantiske, ildkule-spyttende kameler som du og det sinnssykt blinkende romskipet ditt må skyte før de er ferdige med å marsjere taktfast fra venstre til høyre gjennom et minimalistisk landskap? Det slo oss som originalt, surrealistisk og bittelitt genialt.

Det er derfor litt skuffende å oppdage i ettertid at Attack of the Mutant Camels er bortimot en blåkopi av et Atari 2600-spill som het The Empire Strikes Back, bare med AT-ATene byttet ut med kameler.

Uansett: Attack of the Mutant Camels er et skytespill hvor mye av appellen ligger i at det er akkurat litt for frenetisk, og hvor man hele tiden balanserer på en knivsegg mellom kontroll og kollisjon. Jeff Minter var en ekspert på denne typen blodstrengt men finkalibrert gameplay, og skytespillene hans er blant 80-tallets absolutt aller fineste.

Utfordringene i spillet består av å skyte seks mutantkameler før de når fram til basen sin (dvs. høyre side av skjermen.) Denne oppgaven kompliseres av at kamelene har tjukke skall som må skytes hundrevis av ganger før du trenger gjennom, og av at de samme kamelene tar seg tid til å spytte (innimellom varmesøkende) ildkuler mot deg mens de marsjerer.

Romskipet til spilleren har et Defender-aktig momentum som trekker videre etter at man slipper joystick-bevegelsen, noe som bidrar til den supre følelsen av å NESTEN ha kontroll. Heldigvis er det mulig å slå av "kollisjon med kameler" på startskjermen, noe som gjør håndteringen mye mer tilgivende.

Grafikken var enkel selv da dette spillet kom ut, og minnet nesten mer om noe fra en Vic-20 (C64s forløper). Lydsporet er begrenset til noen illevarslende kameltramp.

I en fin og litt rørende detalj, løfter mutantkamelene hodet i et lydløst skrik mot et kaldt og ufølende univers når de er døende. Det er nesten så man får litt dårlig samvittighet, men menneskehetens framtid står på spill her, god dammit!

Hvis du rekker å skyte alle kamelene i tide, må du overleve et horisontalt scrollende hinderløp gjennom hyperspace før du slipper til på (forutsigbart nok) en ny karavane med kameler som marsjerer litt raskere og spytter litt flere og litt hissigere ildkuler

Jeff Minter hadde ikke troa på å fyre for kråkene, og Attack of the Mutant Camels eskalerer raskt. Allerede på tredje kamelbølge er det (ihvertfall for meg) tung tidsnød på å rekke å skyte alle kamelene før det er for sent.

Dette kan ikke sies å være en tidløs skytespill-klassiker på linje med f.eks. tidligere nevnte Blue Max, men det er god, sunn, frenetisk moro - og akkurat passe loco. Fortsatt artig, 41 år senere.

Commodore User, Januar 1984: "Excellent for camel/llama freaks and arcade action enthusiasts." 5/5

[knifeshoeoreofight]

bittelitt replied to your post “There’s this one post talking about how funny the concept of the...”

"imprisoned for sports crimes" ������ always cracks me up lmao

@bittelitt EXACTLY that phrase is so utterly funny to me 

[trilliath]

Hahahaha I can't even imagine playing vanilla... mods feel like such an essential part of the entire history of sims games. I didn’t even buy sims 4 until it’d been out long enough for the modders to really sink their teeth into it. I run 6.5 GB worth of modded and custom content for my sims 4 game right now (thought most of that is custom hair - those meshes and textures are the most complex and detailed!).

By now there are a lot of features in the base game that are more inclusive that didn’t used to come with the earlier games like more complex gender identity options and treating same sex marriage as marriage instead of the earlier iterations’ “joined couples” or whatever it was - though it’s always been groundbreaking in its representation that it wasn’t default hetero-only. I just like things a little further beyond that, and more to my adult tastes rather than sanitized for children as the base game needs to be, like mods allowing polyamory or risky-woohoo or teens to have sex, or more sophisticated background management of the NPCs and the ability to do things like change NPC outfits if I hate them lmao (https://deaderpoolmc.tumblr.com/main is the big kahuna of core mods that is the most essential mod I use), or get rid of the huge mosaic blur for nudity, or mpreg because why the hell not it’s all simulations. There’s wicked whims if you want to get real kinky and add custom sex animations to the game. Or add custom recipes and crops or activities like candle-making (icemunmun creates a lot of that content that I love), or mods allowing children to do activities that the base game prohibits like taking dogs for walks, or adding additional careers, or enabling work-from-home for existing careers. Adding further nuances to CAS sliders or custom replacement skins and genital addons to get rid of barbie-blank nude defaults, so on and so forth. http://modthesims.info is a great resource, as is thesimsresource. There’s lots of stuff available that’s like - just to disallow little quirks of the game that might annoy you like autonomously picking up books.

And of course there’s always the really straightforward stuff like custom design content for hair, clothes, and objects, etc. That’s probably the largest bulk of my mods folder, since I’ve never really liked a lot of the maxis standard clothing designs, or wanted more variety, and there’s some really talented hair designers out there (http://wildlyminiaturesandwich.blogspot.com/ springs to mind as one of my favorites for game-design-consistent content)

[fanforthefics]

bittelitt replied to your post “hurricanedancer: Anyone who has been to Amsterdam/surrounding...”

I don't know if this is helpful; I've never been there myself, but I know someone who goes fairly regularly, and he usually stays in The Hague and gets the train in to Amsterdam because hotel prices are that much cheaper out there :)

That’s a good tip! I always forget how close together everything is in Europe...

[8-bitdyke]

slowly filling my tumblr w less english content and more everything else

[zhenyabest]

bittelitt replied to your post “���������������������������� we are DELIGHTED to provide!!! please take a moment to...”

but if geno is the side piece, who is the main piece? ��

THAT’S THE GOSS! apparently nobody 👀 but there’s a definite hierarchy, and geno is eyeballin the role and rank of “kept, easy lay for the powerful crime man to have whenever he feels like it” which is below “cherished lover and maybe romantic partner of the powerful crime man” on the official mobster ladder of power and responsibility. so it’s a spiritual side piece, if not one in actuality 

[stupidsexyseguin]

spidersgeorg12 >>>> stupidsexyseguin

I mean, with responses like this i kinda had to. 

[magicalrocketships]

@bittelitt replied to your post “You know that moment where you’re off sick and you’ve made choices and...”

how did you even.. get there..??

I think I’d downloaded it ages ago. I actually think I’ve read it before. ANYWAY sometimes you’re off sick and you end up reading Finding Nemo coming of age romance fic and it’s really kind of lovely, and those are the life choices we make. 

What It Feels Like - the Finding Nemo fic you never asked for but definitely needed. 

[undead-potatoes]

Jeg glemmer alltid hvor fantastisk digg Kvikk Lunsj faktisk er, så når Påsken kommer så spiser jeg sånn 10 Kvikk Lunsj i løpet av en uke

Og når Påsken er over så glemmer jeg at den eksisterer for de neste 51 ukene fram til neste Påske igjen

[nomorelonelydays]

bittelitt replied to your post: Does a Sidgeno Bewitched AU exist

i don’t know but i need it

(yells into the interwebs) Sid doing magic by wriggling his nose!!! Let!! Me!! See!! Magical Sid!!! wriggling his nose!!!

[punmasterkentparson]

bittelitt replied to your post “Writing Jack/Tater is like… the emotional equivalent of taking a hot...”

will you be sharing because <333 )))

Oh, absolutely. :)

[knifeshoeoreofight]

Your regency au had me legit squealing out loud, I love it so much!!! 😍

Thank you so much! It really seemed to resonate with people, which was a lovely surprise? I’ll have to clean it up and put it on AO3 at some point ))))))

[trilliath]

is your tag for frederik andersen how it's pronounced in danish, because that is horribly accurate lmao

Got it in one. Any time I need to cheer up and laugh really really hard I just go listen to his name pronunciation on Elite Prospects

fhrdrk anhrsn

Like. If you close your teeth and then say his name without moving your jaw that’s pretty much how it sounds.

[airshipcity]

puffdenlilledragen replied to your post: my day so far:  -woke up at 5:46am from nightmares...

kolonial.no? D: en av dem har remapriser & remabrand varer det er ganske chill

:c jo men ok, her er hovedproblemet mitt med kolonial.no: 

[megan-renee]

Håvard got his extra summer vacation pay..thing...(?) and we have been splurging bittelitt (a little bit) .......like buying smoked mackerel that we never buy 💸🤪 and a bunch of sweets but TONIGHT☝️😌...... i’m going to ask if he wants to get a pizza from our favorite pizza place..... 😋💓🍕 it’s been foreva