#Bionic Beaver

[postgamecontent]

The Unisys Icon: One Canadian Xennial's Memories of Ontario's Obscure Computer

One topic that often comes up in retro gaming circles is how aspects of gaming history not part of the American story don't get enough attention. I personally feel it's mostly up to the people to whom the stories belong to tell them. So I am going to follow my own advice today and tell the tale of a computer that statistically speaking almost no one has used, and some of that computer's software. I have to tell this story from memory, because this computer and its software functionally no longer exist. Practically no photographs of any of its games exist. We're relying on decades-old recall here, so… I'll do my best.

The Unisys ICON was a computer developed as an initiative by the Ontario Ministry of Education to create a standard for Ontario schools. It used an Intel 80186 CPU and its OS was an early version of a Unix-like system that eventually came to be known as QNX. Yes, the Blackberry one. Still in use, I believe. Each Unisys ICON came with its own monitor and a very robust keyboard with a trackball embedded in it. Computers ran in a network from a designated server machine. They were pretty expensive and the whole program was quite controversial, with many considering it a colossal waste of tax money. I mean, in hindsight… probably?

The first line of ICONs were introduced to schools in Ontario in 1984, and support for the platform continued until 1994. During that time, several models were created along with a fair bit of bespoke software. Most of it was meant to be educational, used for teaching programming to older kids and more general lessons to younger ones. I don't recall any pure games without any educational component, although some of them really danced on that line. When the ICON program was canceled in 1994, the Archives of Ontario declined to preserve the ICON and its software. They were all ordered to be destroyed, and just about all of them were.

Only a few fully working models are known to be in existence today, and some of the software was just straight-up lost forever. No emulators exist, and there is no way to play any ICON software unless you have access to one of those few remaining units. So yes, all my UK friends out there? I know you dislike it when Americans make jokes about your Spectrum and Amiga computers and games, but you can only joke about something if you've heard about it. No one jokes about the ICON. I mean, until they find out about its nickname, "The Bionic Beaver". That's easy pickins.

My elementary school in a small Northwestern Ontario town had about a hundred students total from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 6. It was such a small school, we didn't even have a Grade 5 class and teacher. They just divided the Grade 5 students by academic achievement and stuck the higher achievers in the Grade 6 class and the lower ones stayed in the Grade 4 class with slightly more difficult texts and homework. Anyway, it was a small school. It no longer exists. But in the 1980s, we had a couple of Apple II computers. They were pretty old by then, and the green and black monitors didn't impress kids who had tasted the Commodore 64, Tandy, or NES. But hey, we played Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, and Crosscountry Canada on them when we could.

I remember when we got our ICONs. It was a pretty big deal! Our school received four of them, with one designated as the server. They were put in a prime location in the hallway, between the fourth grade classroom and the school entrance. If a person was going to the auditorium, they'd have to pass by them. Not like those Apple IIs, tucked away in a less traveled part of the hallways. Our school was proud of those ICONs, and the student body was excited to use them. One of the fun things about visiting the junior high school was that it had a whole lab of ICONs, with different games. Pure decadence! Absolutely sick!

Anyway, the memories of Xennials from Ontario are by and large all that remains of these things now. Even the Wikipedia entry's list of software is missing games I know I played on there. So what can you do? I'm going to talk about some of the games I remember, and since literally no screenshots exist, I drew some pictures. Quickly, mind you. And from 35+ year old memories, no less. Sorry, it's all I've got.

(Not actual screenshots)

SpectICON: This was a paint program, and when our ICON computers were turned on this is what they defaulted to. When the program loaded up, it had a colorful picture of a tree in autumn in place. You could change the palette using the trackball, and if you rolled it with some power the colors of the tree would wildly alternate. My friend Peter dubbed this "Disco Tree". It could do some simple animation, mostly by morphing between two images. I used this to make an animation of a robot turning into a car, because I was ten years old in 1989 and Transformers was the thing.

Offshore Fishing: One of the more popular games in my school. You would move your boat to different locations on a map, after which it would switch to a side-view. You then used the trackball to maneuver your fishing net, trying to catch as much as you can. If a shark comes, it will break your net and you'll lose a lot of money. This was supposed to teach us about the fishing industry, I think?

Math Maze: Another popular one in my school. You would make your way through a maze, battling monsters and looking for treasures. You could pick a knight or a wizard, and your choice of weapon between a sword and a wand. Knight with wand was splendid. No effect on the gameplay, of course. When you met a monster or found a treasure, it was time to do MATH. The last boss of the dungeon would ask what weighed more, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold. We were very proud when we sorted out the answer to that one. The cut-out box at the side showing a close-up of the action had some interesting visuals, at least.

A Day in the Life Of: We didn't have this one at my school, but the junior high school had it and I played it there. A strange game where you played as a student, and you could just straight up cut school and go to the mall if you wanted to. The mall had some different spots to visit, including an arcade where you could play a minigames called Mutant Bunnies Attack or something. It was basically Activision's Kaboom, and since we had a trackball… well, this was a pretty good time. I don't remember the actual point of this one.

Crosscountry Canada & Lemonade Stand: You might know these games from other platforms. They were ported to the ICON and played pretty much the same way here as anywhere else. Both were old hat for us and didn't get much play as a result.

Greenhouse: A gardening game. You had to grow plants by setting a variety of conditions, including temperature, watering, and sunlight. Each plant had different needs, but if you could sort it out you would be rewarded by seeing them grow. I messed around with this one a bit, but it was on the junior high school computers so I didn't get to play it as much as I would have liked.

Robot R&D: Robots! This was a cool one. You would build a robot from different parts and materials. You could then put them through a variety of tests to see how they would react. You could immerse them in water, try to crush them, or just drop them from high places. For most kids, you had them at "build a robot".

There were lots of other games, but these were the ones I played and the ones I remember. I wish I could tell you about all of them, but this is the limit of my knowledge. Maybe someone else out there can remember other ones and talk about them? I hope that one day this off-beat, highly geographically and temporally localized computer is properly archived and its software is made accessible again. I would like to play Offshore Fishing at least one more time in my life. Thanks for reading!

Extra Note: I just remembered the darned things would say HELLO when you booted them up. A talking computer?!

[paularca]

Segunda vida para viejos equipos 32 y 64 bits

[ubuntutipps]

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver veröffentlicht: Jetzt herunterladen

Einblick: Laden Sie Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver herunter Die neueste Version von Ubuntu ist jetzt erhältlich. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver wurde zum öffentlichen Download bereitgestellt. „Bionic Beaver“ ist der Codename für Ubuntu 18.04. Diese Version von Ubuntu 18.04 LTS wird 5 Jahre lang unterstützt April 2023. In der neuesten Version von Ubuntu 18.04 LTS wurden zahlreiche Verbesserungen…

[hyperwave]

[debugpoint]

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[dggonzalez2015]

Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver. El gestor de archivos es en dos colores Si como yo no soportas el color blanco estarás de parabienes. La barra de menú del gestor de archivos de GNOME estará con un fondo gris en el tema por defecto de Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver

[just-another-dead-account]

a moment of silence for all of the shows that have been screwed over the years due to network shenanigans

we are all so tired...

[techomoro]

How to Install and Setup a React App on Ubuntu 18.04.1

How to Install and Setup a React App on Ubuntu 18.04.1

React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is maintained by Facebook and a community of individual developers and companies. React can be used as a base for the development of single-page or mobile applications.

It is a powerful library to deal with complex projects in an easy manner. React Native, one of the most lovable hybrid mobile application development frameworks is…

[tecrobust-blog]

[cjmoseley]

Bionic beaver, that threw me :D

Art by Sylvia Ritter

[sylviaritter]

Do you remember Bionic Beaver? :) Still busy building a better future. 💙 https://www.deviantart.com/sylviaritter/art/Bionic-Beaver-725915686

[aboutlinux]

Actualizar Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Server a Ubuntu 18.04 LTS - Beta

Actualizar Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Server a Ubuntu 18.04 LTS – Beta

He estado jugando con Ubuntu 18.04 LTS {Beta} recientemente.

En este artículo encontraran como probar el nuevo Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Beta a partir de una actualización de Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Solo recordar que la nueva versión está en Beta, y se suguiere que no se realice en entornos de producción, y que el propósito es testear como será la migración y la compatibilidad de los paquetes de sus servidores…

[nixcraft]

In this in-depth guide, new sysadmin/developers will learn about setting up SSH keys on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS server for secure login into the cloud server. 

[linuxscoop]

Bodhi Linux 5.0 - See What's New

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Bodhi Linux 5.0 promises to offer users a rock-solid, Enlightenment-based Moksha Desktop experience, improvements to the networking stack, and a fresh new look based on the popular Arc GTK Dark theme but colorized in Bodhi Green colors. also comes with a new default wallpaper, new login, and boot splash screen themes, as well as an AppPack version for those who want to have a complete application suite installed by default on their new Bodhi Linux installations.

[li-khrissteam]

Todo listo.