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two words for ya: guardian legend. Half overhead adventure game, half top scrolling fighter-type. Without a doubt, my all-time favorite NES game. Give it a whirl. :)

Triv

Produced in the 80's, a joystick which was freestanding, see picture.

Apple is giving away Jaguars?

The PDP-1 was installed in the "kludge" room, which was the room next door to where the TX-0 was housed. The hackers wasted no time in converting over much of the TX-0 software to the PDP-1, and in fact they wasted no time in writing new programs.

One of the most interesting and innovative was actually done as a prank. Hacking a connection between the PDP-1 and the TX-0, they created a "chat" program of sorts. They then called in Professor John McCarthy (legendary artificial intelligence pioneer and creator of the Lisp programming language) and told him they had created a new chess playing game on the PDP-1. They then called in another professor, told him the same thing and sat him in front of the TX-0. The two proceeded to send chess moves back and forth to one another, each thinking the other was a chess program. That is, until McCarthy noticed the movements were coming in one letter at a time, and sometimes lagging in between each move. Noticing the wire, he followed it to the next room and the prank was up. However, this prank was to be the first networked computer game.

Custer's Revenge for the Atari 2600 was probably the first game that retailers would refuse to sell. Check it out here

There could very well be some crazy lifeform that lives on gas giants.

Sure there is! Didn't you ever play Star Control 2? The Slylandro!

A fertile M.U.L.E. - we could have used one of those on planet Irata. ... wonder if I can genetically engineer them to be born already outfitted for Smithore?

People are into video games but not into the complexity of modern games.

As for being a "gray" app, there are plenty of freely availabe ROMs at Classic Gaming[classicgaming.com].

MAME belongs on the CD.

The only drawback--like most OSS programs--is that it requires a scope of seemingly unrelated skills to get started.

M$ codes for morons. OS Developers code for their peers. Until "coding for morons" becomes the mantra of the movement, the CD will remain simply a demo and not a tool for revolution.

--Chris Uzal, Editor, Cyberista

Star Control Timewarp is open source and works on both Windows and Linux

Most of the things we take for granted now, like email, chat rooms, and MMORPGs, we were doing back in the mid-70s.

Enjoy!

Of course everyone knows that in order to energize the Drude electrons one must throw a crew member into the furnace.

Oh wait. That was the Druuge.

The Druuge Mauler has pitifully slow energy regeneration and when unable to shoot the ship is a sitting duck. To compensate for this weakness, the Druuge has a matter-to-energy converter that transforms crew members into instant bursts of power. Each time this special power is activated, one crew member is "tossed into the furnace."

Or, you could just get the original scortched earth.

I have the original scortched earth and it runs fine under 2K. Populus as well.

It had bitmapped graphics (well, sorta), sprites (well, sorta), and wonderful monochrome orange plasma screens. The beauty of using plasma screens was that once you told a plasma pixel to turn on, it wouldn't turn off again, so you didn't have to have video memory. And you got your game graphics from downloadable fonts, called charsets, so you just "printed" different characters next to each other to get an orc or a mage.

And all this from a computer system that was made to let non-computer-science instructors create lessons for their students (hah!).

You can find more history on PLATO here. Definitely follow the NEXT links at the bottom of the pages.

I tried looking at what PLATO has, um, evolved into, but www.plato.com just doesn't do games.

There is a bit of information out there about some things that started on PLATO that are now pretty much familiar to everyone. IMB/Lotus credit PLATO's "notes" as being an inspiration for Notes/Domino. There is a nice summary of innovations on the system including personal notes (email), multiplayer games, and most importantly "online community," by David Wooley. Brian Dear is also writing a book on PLATO people that also has some good history.

Learning about PLATO makes a nice history lesson for both online gaming fans as well as people working in online education.

It is not often I can sign a note as chris/mfl and an Orion Captain

So an alien's first look at earth's computing technology might end up being RCA's CDP1802 microprocessor, huh? Maybe instead of that record we should've included a CHIP-8 ROM, so they could've played a few games and learned where our culture was really headed...

Sure thing.

The original phrase came from a cheesy video game called "Zero Wing." I've never actually played it, and in fact hadn't even heard of it until the "All Your Base" thing became so popular. Gamespy has some good information on the "All Your Base" mistranslation and on the game itself.

I could see them adding keys to things like controllers, memory expansions, anything like that so you would have to buy microsoft approved game pads. Oh the horror of not being able to use a playstation adapter to use my dualshock(best freakin controller ever) on other systems.

Yeah, and? Welcome to the late 1980s, where Nintendo requires any game or peripheral sold to work with their Nintendo Entertainment System must be approved by Nintendo (okay, so they didn't have any way to prevent unauthorized games and periphs, but this is called "the advancement of technology over 15+ years"). In otherwords, big deal. It's old hat that game console manufacturers want to be able to control the peripherals and games made for their system, for a two-fold reason. Primarily, there's the licensing fees associated with getting authorized. This is good, because it gets money to the console maker, which means they have more money to work on the next version, and have an incentive to actually continue to support the console. (blah blah capitalism is bad blah blah blah socialism r00ls d00dnutz blah blah blah.) Second, it's a form of quality control. Okay, sure there are still bad games and peripherals that are released for consoles, but the quality of even the worst game or peripheral is astounding compared to the quality of a lot of games and such Back In The Day (tm) when Atari (will the real Atari please stand up? No, GT Interactive, sit back down, dammit) was still around and had no such approval system. (Check out ClassicGaming.com (a member of the Gamespy network) some time. I recall them doing at least one article on terrible old games.) I for one prefer that a console manufacturer require that they approve games and peripherals, so that I can be reasonably sure that at the very least, the game/periph will work with my console, even if it's not a great game or periph.

As far as using your Dual Shock on other systems (guh. Those controllers are two damned small and pointy to be comfortable. You must have tiny hands), wouldn't it stand to reason that if there were demand for such a thing (and apparently there is, though I can't fathom why), and Microsoft required that the peripheral transmit an authorized key to be allowed to work, then some entrepenuerial company would develop said adaptor (done) and get it approved by Microsoft so that they can transmit a valid key to the console. Contrary to popular opinion, Microsoft isn't vindictive. They wouldn't kill such a peripheral out of spite. In fact, if it helped them sell consoles and games, they'd authorize it immediately. It's called "good business".

Gamespy site with classic ROMs and emulators.

Some old DOS games.

More recent games at Kev's Classing Gaming.

I think the best you're going to get are Rogue-like games. I'd recommend ADOM. You might also try shockwave.com, they actually have some pretty interesting puzzle games.

If all else fails, there's always the Playstation Portable...

No, by God's sake!

The guy attached a Intellevision on the homemade 2600's audio-out to encode the sound, and used a Odissey2 as terminal console to type the MP3's tags.

8-)

No, by God's sake!

The guy attached a Intellevision on the homemade 2600's audio-out to encode the sound, and used a Odissey2 as terminal console to type the MP3's tags.

8-)

I use floppy drives to carry around small games like Scorched Earth, or Liero. And if I bore of that, I can always dismantle the disk and have little pieces to throw at people.

Don't be too depressed if the first home versions are somewhat crude... remember, you have to start somewhere...

The Telstar Ranger wasn't exactly Quake.

There is a java port of Raid on Bungeling Bay. I spent many hours playing this on the c64, one of my favorite c64 games. Also played Trolls and Tribulations. quite a bit. (When I was much younger, lol)

You really know its a small world, when your neighbors invent Myst. Video games has been part of my culture here in the Pacific Northwest, I have made many friends who are either directors of large game companies, owners, and some who are just hard core programers and gfx artists. Funny, most of my friends growing up are in the tech field, support, sys-admins, or programmers. Dont even get them started on the "Old Days" of computers, everything from vic-20s, tsr80s, apples2e/2gs converstations...

left, right, left, right, a, b, start

If this really catches on for marketing games, this guy has some hope of realizing his dream.

Soko

Augmented Reality: A New Way of Seeing

Unfortunately, it will be a while before the technology becomes inexpensive and readily available:

MEMS the Word

Of course, you could always take a Gameboy outside, you really need full sunlight or equivalent to play it.

When I was a kid, playing outside sucked, but then I did grow up very near the Urban Deathmaze which may have colored my thinking.... (Please note, Urban Deathmaze is meant with the utmost affection, I love New York! Heck, I remember when my Mom took me to the great electronic games expo there, they had Vectrex's!)

Besides, Video Tape is so much more dangerous than video games, there is this one tape making the rounds in Japan that will kill you seven days after you watch it...

You must be kidding. In fact, you just reminded me of a hilarious comic strip from the far side. I thought I'd share it with the group. Hell, with thinking like that, who needs to spend the thousands I'm spending on college, I could spend $40 on a video game!

Do you remember this one? It really got me going. I loved this game. Even my then
wife-to-be thought it was hoot. Check out Custer's Revenge.

Interestingly enough, the multiplayer portion has already been cloned and enhanced for Linux, Mac, and Windows:

Timewarp

SC2 fans, you should have fun with this one.

Now, on the GNOME 2 goodness (which is definitely more important than SC 2).

Gnome2, Mozilla 1.0, Neverwinter Nights..... Damn cold in hell, is amazon turning a profit?
Duke Nukem Forever and Doom 3 just need to come out, and as a nice touch it would be cool if Star Control 2 would be re-released for Linux, Mac, and windows.... oh wait it is, hell is damn cold.

Now time to watch my karma go down the drain, but at least this time I was *less* offtopic.

From nintendo.com:
Now, Samus is once again called to investigate Space Pirate activities on the unexplored Tallon IV. Her adventure begins as she enters a mysterious derelict spaceship.

The Metroid games have shown a lot of similarities in story line/plot elements to the Alien movies, as outlined nicely on this site. However the mentioning of a mysterious derelict spacecraft immediately brought to mind the abandoned ship which housed the eggs in the original Alien, which was even referred to as a derelict spacecraft in its sequel, Aliens.

Right... here. A bit bulkier than a GameBoy Advance, but imagine the looks you could get at next week's E3 convention!!!

Besides hacking up various Atari's, Ben has also made a portable PlayStation and SNES.
Pretty cool stuff!

Besides hacking up various Atari's, Ben has also made a portable PlayStation and SNES.
Pretty cool stuff!

Besides hacking up various Atari's, Ben has also made a portable PlayStation and SNES.
Pretty cool stuff!

Check out the Activision 10-in-1. The game's in this one...
Review (No River Raid mention)
Order at Spiegel's (First place I found to buy it...)

It's a bit deceptive to refer to it as a portable system considering you need to plug it into a TV to actually to use it. By using the word portable I thought something along the lines of Puma the portable Atari 2600 where a Sega Game Gear has been converted into a portable Atari 2600 complete with its own display.

There is a whole site dedicated to Atari 2600 portable conversion projects that has been discussed in this and repeated in this Slashdot article.

Maybe many of you never heard about this wonderfull console, I got some links here on my bookmarks so you all can have a look at it (and play it on emulators):

Neo Geo Temple

Some Roms

Emulation

In "Jagged Alliance 2", one of the quests is rescuing a woman from captivity and forced prostitution (and thus, presumably, rape since it's involuntary captivity). It's just implied as back story for the quest, but it's there.

JA2 would mostly be covered for the violence, 'tho -- making people's heads explode and all that.

Other than that, *shrug* there are probably pr0n games involving rape. Assuming that this article isn't simply a bizarre hoax, a twisted game called "Custer's Revenge".

b) Far as I can see he really didn't "make" anything, it's the same old boards, ports, controllers, etc, just superglued in a PC case.

now this deserves props, HE actually MADE something ORIGINAL, not just pop open his consoles and superglue them in a PC case!

I have a feeling TechTV is just trying to appeal to the geek crowd by passing this off as a "hack". Sorry but I don't buy it, it's just several consoles with the cases removed shoved in a PC case. That's not a hack or "work of art" as the arrogant Yoshi called it.

this guy to make it portable.

Can't say I still I have an Apple ][+ but I have my 1982 Apple //e still in my closet and pull it out every once and a while to play "Cytron Masters". I had an Apple ][ but sold it to buy the Apple //e. Even ran an AE BBS and a Catfur BBS on the Apple //e for a couple of years. I remember when we used to call that the "Golden Age" of Apple. :)

While I've often dreamed of an update to M.U.L.E. (or Archon), I question whether simply updating the graphics and adding new cutscenes can really enhance the excellent gameplay. M.U.L.E.'s gameplay was such that the random events every turn could throw off the balance of the game just enough to give any player the opportunity to take the lead within a couple turns (there were only 12 turns in the game, each representing a month). There's nothing quite like making the richest players pay over $200 per unit of food because they're starving. Besides that, it had arcade and strategic elements (try figuring out which plot of land you're going to grab at the beginning of each turn can be somewhat stressful) along with a certain 8-bit charm that probably won't translate very well to the modern PC.

I'll definitely grab the demo, but that's only if EA doesn't sue them out of existence first...

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

While I've often dreamed of an update to M.U.L.E. (or Archon), I question whether simply updating the graphics and adding new cutscenes can really enhance the excellent gameplay. M.U.L.E.'s gameplay was such that the random events every turn could throw off the balance of the game just enough to give any player the opportunity to take the lead within a couple turns (there were only 12 turns in the game, each representing a month). There's nothing quite like making the richest players pay over $200 per unit of food because they're starving. Besides that, it had arcade and strategic elements (try figuring out which plot of land you're going to grab at the beginning of each turn can be somewhat stressful) along with a certain 8-bit charm that probably won't translate very well to the modern PC.

I'll definitely grab the demo, but that's only if EA doesn't sue them out of existence first...

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

While I've often dreamed of an update to M.U.L.E. (or Archon), I question whether simply updating the graphics and adding new cutscenes can really enhance the excellent gameplay. M.U.L.E.'s gameplay was such that the random events every turn could throw off the balance of the game just enough to give any player the opportunity to take the lead within a couple turns (there were only 12 turns in the game, each representing a month). There's nothing quite like making the richest players pay over $200 per unit of food because they're starving. Besides that, it had arcade and strategic elements (try figuring out which plot of land you're going to grab at the beginning of each turn can be somewhat stressful) along with a certain 8-bit charm that probably won't translate very well to the modern PC.

I'll definitely grab the demo, but that's only if EA doesn't sue them out of existence first...

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

While I've often dreamed of an update to M.U.L.E. (or Archon), I question whether simply updating the graphics and adding new cutscenes can really enhance the excellent gameplay. M.U.L.E.'s gameplay was such that the random events every turn could throw off the balance of the game just enough to give any player the opportunity to take the lead within a couple turns (there were only 12 turns in the game, each representing a month). There's nothing quite like making the richest players pay over $200 per unit of food because they're starving. Besides that, it had arcade and strategic elements (try figuring out which plot of land you're going to grab at the beginning of each turn can be somewhat stressful) along with a certain 8-bit charm that probably won't translate very well to the modern PC.

I'll definitely grab the demo, but that's only if EA doesn't sue them out of existence first...

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi