Slashdot Mirror

RotJ writes "Some crafty Germans have created an electromechanical conversion of the game Pong: "Pongmechanik is an absolutely physical game. The game is realized electromechanically, and essentially consists of four elements: A relay computer, the mechanical movement with collision detection, the display and the acoustic components." Talk about analog retro chic." saccade.com adds "This amazing device faithfully re-creates the classic original video game with pulleys, wires, motors and a (pre-chip, pre-transistor, pre-tube) relay based computer. They were partly inspired by Konrad Zuse, who created some of the first electromechanical and electronic computers."

Lee writes "According to Peek N' Poke, there's an official Commodore 64 30-in-1 'TV game' in development, according to current C64 rights-holders Tulip Computers, who has a Dutch-language news story about it on their site." The Tulip story mentions titles including "Classic Games series from Epyx, inclusief Summer Games, Winter Games, World Games en the seminal California Games", and it's notable that Tulip's partner and exclusive C64 licensor is Ironstone Partners, who also list as a "sister company" DC Studios, software developers of the Atari 10-in-1 TV game.

Thanks to PeekNPoke for its reviews of the best and worst of classic arcade game conversions on the Atari 2600. The piece looks at which early '80s conversions came off well, and notes Missile Command as one of the best ("Plays even better than the game it tries to emulate, and works very well with the standard joystick"), and Pac Man as less promising ("Usually voted as one of the worst arcade conversions on any system ever, and it is not hard to see why.") Which arcade conversions were you eagerly awaiting, only to find them ruined by classic hardware restrictions?

RyuuzakiTetsuya writes: "Boycott, the popular(or not so popular) Gameboy emulator has a version for the GameBoy Advance game system. You can get it here Now. What REALLY gets me is that the system isn't even released in the US and already it's emulated!"

Randy Scott writes "RealityMan, co-author of UltraHLE, is dropping out of the emulation scene. He states his reasons here. The rumor that UltraHLE would make a return in one form or another is confirmed by Foxy's Weekly Column, but this was before RealityMan's departure. I'm not sure what the state of UltraHLE is at this point... "

Leapfrog writes "I found an interesting and useful site called The Dot Eaters which gives a pretty thorough history of the electronic gaming industry. I found it very informative. " (yes, Hemos and I got to San Jose. Lost baggage. Lost Nate. 6 hours late. But alive)

Ed Bailey wrote in to say that the Linux-7K project to get Linux on the Psion has started Bearing Fruit Fict sent in a link to LinuxApps which recently got a recamp. Looks strangely familiar GVeloper wrote in to say that gdev has been revamped (to use Slash) as well as containing some comments about glide and glade possibly merging. Lincoln sent us a link to a CG short parody of the politics of sfx which will be of interest to Star Wars fans. my copy of xanim won't play it, but several people told me it's really excellent. freejack wrote in to say that the Star Tribune rated Slashdot in top sites for geek gossip mongers. Whatever that means. Shave sent in a link to Jerry Pournelle's web site a where he talks about Refund Day and Slashdot (and neither in particularly cheerful terms) And finally, for the gamers out there, mgix sent a link to a N64 Emulator that can do Zelda64. That game has been a staple in the Geekhouse for weeks now. Addictive.