#videogame history

[easternmind]

Mirrors & Reflections in Videogames Current version - 209 entries (!) Full list here: http://shorturl.at/kovSY Full-sized picture: https://shorturl.at/ZNZHd Suggestions are still welcome. Thank you!

[smbhax]

Commodore 64 Games System, aka "C64GS"

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64_Games_System

"The Commodore 64 Games System (often abbreviated C64GS) is the cartridge-based home video game console version of the popular Commodore 64 home computer. It was released in December 1990 by Commodore into a booming console market dominated by Nintendo and Sega. It was only released in Europe and was a considerable commercial failure. The C64GS came bundled with a cartridge containing four games: Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O'Fun, International Soccer, Flimbo's Quest, and Klax."

"Out of the approximately 20,000 consoles produced,[2] only 2000 consoles were sold.[3]"

Image source: http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap66/thec64gs.html

"The C64GS was plagued with problems from the outset. Firstly, despite the wealth of software already available on cartridge for C64, the lack of a keyboard means that most cannot be used with the console. This means that much of the cartridge-based C64 software, while fundamentally compatible with the C64GS, was unplayable. The standard C64 version of Terminator 2: Judgment Day was designed for the console,[7] but was included on a cartridge that required the user to press a key in the initial menu to access the game, rendering it unplayable, despite the game itself being entirely playable with joystick only on a conventional C64."

"To partially compensate for the lack of a keyboard, the basic control system for the C64GS was a joystick supplied by Cheetah called the Annihilator. This joystick, while using the standard Atari 9-pin plug, offers two independent buttons, with the second button located on the base of the joystick. The joystick standard is fundamentally compatible with the ZX Spectrum's Kempston Interface and the Master System, but no other joystick on the market offered compatibility with the proprietary second-button function."

[caveguy22]

Japanese & Korean cover art for Ratchet and Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal

[zombiescantfly]

UNREAL IS 25!

Happy 25th birthday to Unreal, the other (and first) shooter from 1998 that dared to do something wildly different from what anyone had seen before! It's a beautiful game that managed to capture the same sort of atmosphere and tone we'd all later see in things like Metroid Prime - a massive frontrunner in immersive worldbuilding and environmental storytelling. It's a world dripping with detail and tangible history, with some of the best and most reactive AI enemies still ever seen in gaming, an arsenal of weapons that stood out among the standard that id had seemingly carved into stone, and a soundtrack that perfectly matches the alien world you spend the game exploring.

I'd tell you all to go buy it on GOG or Steam or even the Epic Game Store, given they're the guys who made it, but you can't! Epic delisted it from every digital storefront and refuses to acknowledge its existence!

I also wrote a somewhat rambly essay about it 5 years ago.

Maybe go listen to one of my favorite tracks from the OST

Or check out the insane amount of work that Krull0r is putting into a fan-made redux mod

And just remember, Epic doesn’t want your money! They don’t want you to pay for this game! They don’t give you an option to pay for this game! But you should still play it! Even if you don’t have it! You could still have it anyway! Epic doesn’t care!

[flojocabron]

E.T. wasn't the only one to blame. This game: Chase The Chuck Wagon, can also represent the over-saturatation and gaming glut that led to the videogame crash of 1983. It was a dog food mail-in promo. It was everything that could and did go wrong when our hobby started out as a fad. It's a good thing we learned our lesson and implemented quality control.......right?

[foone]

Ahh, shame. See, I like looking up these ads and seeing what game they were hiring for, since they never say in the ad. It's always fun to find out what game it was.

But this ad is from 1998, and their last published game was in 1996 or 1997. This game never came out, and the main developers for Graftgold left the gaming industry.

UK 1998

[arconinternet]

Cosmology of Kyoto (Windows & Classic Mac, SOFTEDGE, 1995)

Roger Ebert's favorite game, simulating life, afterlife and reincarnation in Japan's Heian period. You can download it here or here, or download it pre-configured to run on modern versions of Windows here.

[alethianightsong]

Bioshock: Why Individualism is a shitty philosophy to build society on

Bioshock 2: Why Collectivism is a shitty philosophy to build society on

Bioshock Infinite: Why American Exceptionalism is a shitty philosophy to build society on.

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned that a solo programmer create complex software

For example: Eric Barone.

Also known as "ConcernedApe", he is a developer, tester, designer, composer, and artist. Known for creating the game Stardew Valley (considered the best farm game, with over 20 million copies sold)

Eric developed the game entirely on his own. He dedicated 10 hours a day, almost daily (since 2012) for four and a half years. It was only in 2019 that he started getting help from another developer. So slowly, but it's perfectly possible to do big projects.

[easternmind]

International standards being what they are, the majority of consoles created in or imported to Japan, including those targeting uniquely domestic audiences, employ names or acronyms based on the English language. For the sixty odd years that Japan has been producing electromechanic and electronic game systems there is but a literal handful of systems named in the Japanese language that, I'd wager, even the most seasoned players know little or nothing about. Your curiosity may be rewarded if you continue reading.

1982 - Contrary to what you may have heard or read, Tomy was the first Japanese toy company to develop a computer. Styled after the Texas Instruments TI-99/4 and manufactured by Matsushita, the Pyūta was purposely designed to sit on toy store shelf space as hinted at by its name, a childish diminutive of the word Konpyūtā.

1983 - John Ross's Mini-Arcade project was sold world over under the sweet-sounding name Vectrex. The Japanese distributor, Bandai, was not so enamoured with it. Believing that a Japanese name would do better at retail, it was commercialized as Kōsoku-Sen - The Lightspeed Ship!

1988 - Bandai's history as a console maker is quite unlike any other. Terebikko is a VHS-based gaming system that uses the TV audio output to play sound via its phone receiver and quiz players with multiple response questions. The console produces a sound output that informs the player if the answer was correct or not. Tapes include animated films starring Mario, Anpanman and the characters from Dragon Ball, some even fetching quite the high price at auctions these days.

1990 - Sharp is seldom given due recognition for creating some of Nintendo's finest and durable consoles. The Sūpā Famikon Naizou Terebi SF1 TV perfectly mirrors the concept of their 1983 C1 NES TV, in spite of the technological leap. Its Japanese name describes its built-in console function. Nintendo fanboys would pounce on me were I to snub it.

1995 - Further proof of Bandai's unorthodox approach to console design is found in their unsuccessful Denshi Manga Juku - lit. Electronic Manga Tutor. The first ever stylus-based console - once again, contrary to what many may yet hold to be true - some of the games in its miniscule library allowed the player to design and animate characters or scenes; while others presented a blank canvas for the user to draw the game's protagonist.

1996 - A retail development kit, but a console all the same, Sony's Netto Yarōze was an ambitious project resulting in dozens of homebrewed independent titles. The name matches its vision: a network of creators coming together to realize their individual game design aspirations. Of all the systems in its restricted category, it was by far the most successful.

Unreleased - It's a beautiful fact that the first arcade game and globally successful console had a Japanese word stamped on them - Atari. Mirai, meaning Future, is a prototype found in the mid-1990s, about which nothing can be said authoritatively apart it from being a cartridge-based system. Given the more or less overt resemblances to the Atari XEGS, it is possible that it was designed by Ira Velinsky, in which case it could date from the late 1980s. Though not a made-in-Japan product, its borrowing of a Japanese word makes its presence in this list mandatory.

[tonyfinale]

love love love those vague and romantic ass ds2 flavor texts

[zombiescantfly]

It's Unreal's birthday yet again! And unfortunately, we have to celebrate in the face of Epic Games not just turning their back, but outright destroying their legacy. None of the games they've made, other than Fortnite, are available in any form on any digital storefront. Physical copies are of course rare. It's kind of disgusting to see a company that owes their existence to this game do what they've done.

Unreal is a wonderful, unique gem that was ahead of its time. Its awkward position between the straightforward run-n-guns of the mid 90s and the world-changing event known colloquially as Half-Life lends it a certain sense of being some kind of misplaced artifact. It's hard to describe, but if you've played it, I'm sure you get the same feeling.

It's a slow-paced, impossibly atmospheric exploration of a meticulously crafted world, interspersed with nail-biting, brutal combat against enemy AI that some would say never really had an equal. It's a living space, dropping you in the middle of somewhere that manages to feel that much more real than other games, despite its own name.

Though I'd hoped to have a little more to share myself, my little essay up above still reflects my feelings on the game, and I'd recommend you give it a read. The two videos below are also wonderful looks into the game, and you should really check them out too.

Unreal paved the way for a lot more than I think people give it credit for. If you can find a copy out there, somehow, I really and truly urge you to try it.

And of course, I absolutely have to prop up the heroic efforts of Krull0r, someone who's been working for years now to singlehandedly give Unreal a stunning modern redux, all still built off the original game. Progress might be slow, but it is consistent, and consistently great. Though it might still be some time before we see the full project, it's seriously shaping up to be an incredible thing.

Words About Games: Unreal (Epic Megagames, 1998)

Unreal Tournament 2004 is my favorite videogame ever.  It’s always a close match between it and the first Unreal Tournament, but 2k4 always manages to win out, if just barely.  However, I am of the firm, unyielding belief that UT2004, when played with both the ‘No Adrenaline’ and ‘UT Classic’ mutators, is far and away the best multiplayer fps experience anyone could ever ask for.  We’ll get into that a bit later, because it’s time for a bit of an explanation.

Unreal Tournament 2004 turns 15 this year, and I wanted to do something special to celebrate the release of a game I have such an unreasonably high appreciation for.  Up until the day of its official release 15 years ago, I’m going to be putting out one of my infrequent essays on the games in the series I have experience with, starting now with 1998’s Unreal.  I’ll warn you, this one gets a bit rambly, but if you reach the end and still want more, take a look at the cooperative non-coop playthrough I did with a friend, where we each played a singleplayer campaign while discussing our experiences and thoughts on all aspects of the game.

Keep reading

[usui-zero]

you need a puppets show ?!

[mysticdragon3md3]

[artbounddude]

Bonus:

Been getting into fighting games recently, Darkstalkers is one of them :)

[arconinternet]

Black Dahlia (Windows, Take-Two Interactive Software, 1998)

You can download it here, or download it pre-configured to run on modern versions of Windows here.

Solve the seemingly unsolvable in the game that came on eight CD-ROMs - the world record for a non-MMO game (Everquest 2 had ten).

Tip: if you solve the rune-gem puzzle pictured below before you need to, you'll render the game unwinnable. The version at the second link includes a workaround - type 'reset' on the puzzle's screen to reset it.