#Computer games

[octokaotic]

Toontown Nostalgia posting

[videogamesskies]

Return of the Obra Dinn (PC) (2018)

[curiositypolling]

pls reblog for sample size etc

I make occasional useless polls :)

[arconinternet]

Frac (DOS, Simsalabim Software, 1990)

A Swedish 3D Tetris clone with unusually-shaped pieces. You can play it in your browser here. May run slowly in Firefox.

[canmom]

The game I've been working on for almost two years is now in open beta if you wanna try it out!!

Boom Boom Hamster Doom is a VR game about commanding teams of hamsters fighting across a completely destructible island. If you want an X-meets-Y description, it's much like Worms, but at tabletop scale. It's toyetic as hell - you lead them around on leashes with your little crab claw, and pull back like a catapult to aim missiles or boxing gloves, throw an airstrike like a paper plane, or fly them around in little jetpacks.

I've worked on pretty much every corner of this game - in particular, shading, animation, UI, gameplay and the procedural generation of the islands. And like, you know me, I want to tell you all about it. I'm writing a whole lot more diving into how just about every aspect of the game was built, from voxel meshing and networked physics to ocean rendering, bot AI, and obscure DOTS optimisation headaches... which will all be appearing right here. I'll keep you updated.

We'll be moving into full early-access soon, but you can already jump in the beta here, and play against other people or bots in the forest and ice biomes. You'll need to have a Quest 2 or Quest 3 headset - but if you have another headset, don't worry, we are planning on a Steam release down the line. I'll keep you posted.

All feedback is extremely welcome! I'm nervous/proud/excited for the game to finally see the light of day.

[kidcore-nostalgia]

'Logical Journey of the Zoombinis' PC game (1996)

[pixelskylines]

Full Contact (amiga) (1991)

[pluralzalpha]

I really think we lost something in game console design over the years. Maybe it's just the retro appeal after the fact, or secondhand nostalgia for parents' and cousins' machines I played with as a kid, but I love the look of the consoles in the 70s and 80s. Sure, some of them were ugly as sin, but some of them were gorgeous.

The Magnavox Odyssey, released 1972. The Odyssey series were true games centres, and came with games boards and accessories as combo boardgame/video games. This thing just looks futuristic, even fifty years later.

The Odyssey 300, one of its successors. Who says the 70s were all brown? This one came out in 1976, so we're still in preprogrammed consoles here.

The TV Tennis or Electrotennis, by Epoch Co. Released in Japan in 1975, the country's first home console. All these games were basically tennis games, like the classic:

Atari Home Pong Tele-Game. Simple, clean, means business.

The Color-TV Game Block Kuzushi. This was part of the first series of Nintendo consoles. This particular one was released in 1979 and played a Breakout-clone. Shigeru Miyamoto codesigned this one, two years before creating Donkey Kong.

The Fairchild Video Entertainment System or Channel F from 1975. I love the wood veneer finish. We should bring that back. Pure 70s. This was the first console to use game cartridges, and the first console with a pause control!

The Bally Astrocade. Also known by various other names, but "Astrocade" is unbeatable. Released in 1977, discontinued, then relaunched around '82. Very sophisticated for its time, with 28 "Videocades" available holding one or two games each.

The Atari 2600, AKA Atari VCS and Tele-Games Video Arcade. Released in 1977, and it looks like it. It looks like it's made of chocolate.

The Epoch Cassette Vision, a strange cart-based console from Japan in 1981. It played a bunch of arcade knockoffs but looked sleek and futuristic doing it.

The original Nintendo Game & Watch, playing Ball, released in 1980. Created by the legend Gunpei Yokoi, who also invented the D-Pad!

More to come I feel, these are just too beautiful.

[imstuckin1999]

90s & Y2k computer games

[machetelanding]

1998 teaser ad for Aliens Vs. Predator (PC)

[v-207]

[arconinternet]

The Castle (Classic Mac, Blue Line Studios, 1998)

You can download and run the CD-ROM adventure game, from the end of the era when CD-ROMs caused creativity to run rampant, by following these instructions:

Download the_castle_v110.zip from here or here. Unzip it.

Open this in-browser emulator and, when it's finished starting up, drag the .iso file found in the .zip onto it to insert the virtual CD-ROM.

Open Infinite HD and create a new folder in it. Drag THE CASTLE from the CD's folder into it, then scroll down the CD''s window and drag 'The castle DATA' into the same folder; it's a folder, and a big one, so be patient.

When that's finished, open THE CASTLE in the new folder.

TIP 1: Mouseover the Apple on the lower left, then click 'Settings' when it appears, then turn on Swap Control and Command Keys'. Then, Ctrl+Space will show and hide the menu bar in-game.

TIP 2: To keep a save file between sessions, quit the game, then drag it into Saved HD.

[canmom]

It appears that today is the day of ZA/UM successors.

To begin with, we have this article, which mentions three projects by former Disco Elysium devs...

Dark Math - a 20-person team, half of them formerly from the Disco Elysium team, working on a detective RPG called XXX NIGHTSHIFT

Longdue Games - has the "leads" of the cancelled Disco Elysium sequel, now working on an as-yet unnamed RPG with a "psychogeographic" mechanic - it's a bit vague, but they do have funding

Kurvitz and Rostov are rumoured to be working on an unannounced game at a studio called Red Info, backed by chinese company NetEase. if so, we don't know anything about it yet!

Alongside these, we have senior writer Argo Tuulik and a number of other ZA/UMites, who've announced a plan for a new studio called Summer Eternal with a whole-ass manifesto for their company structure...

Lots of radical zeal but they haven't even made the company yet, so unclear if this will get off the ground, but they're also planning on making an RPG of some sort.

I'm very tempted to end with something cynical like 'release/implode, place your bets' but honestly? I really hope they all work out, and we enter a new era of literary CRPGs in which there will be more opportunity to work on arty shit in games. I don't wanna be that doomer about it all.

So best of luck to all involved, let a thousand za/ums bloom... (look, the summer eternal guys twisted mao's 'half the sky' quote to be about 'creatives', just let me have this one ok)

[bananamiimii]

[little-love1023]

Neopets 💎✨