Slashdot Mirror
History of Video Games Exhibit
Mandi Walls writes "Wired is running an article about an exhibit on the history of video games at Barbican in London. It's supposed to hit the US next year. They start at Space War! from 1962 and move forward from there."
have a cold FR0STY P1ST on me!
Email me and tell me what you think of widening!
Or I will type in 'Zippy' and drop 5 dudes behind their base!
THE (HOPEFULLY) GREAT SLASHDOT CROSSWORD PUZZLE!
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A fresh box of QUAKER GRITS [quakergrits.com]!
Your very own SLASHDOT CRUISER [slashdot.org]!
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It doesn't get much better than this, folks! Here's how to play:
Fill in the crossword completely. No incomplete (or incorrect) solutions will be considered.
Once you're sure you have the crossword completely figured out, submit it to slashdot_crossword at engineer.com [mailto]. If you indeed have the solution, one of the above four prizes are yours! The prizes are in limited supply (well, except for the VA stock certificates), so get those solutions in early!
The winners will be announced on 2002/04/28, to be praised in -1 crapfloods for all eternity (or at least until the crapflooders get bored and go back to posting gay Slashdot editor fanfics).
While we fully assert that this crossword is professional quality, there are of course some variations from the standard crossword form to make things more interesting for the Slashdot crowd. Some answers are used more than once. Digits (0-9) exist in some answers. Some clues are repeated with different answers. Many of the answers are acronyms or initialisms; if the answer that comes to mind doesn't fit, try thinking of common abbreviations for it. And, of course, the crossword indices are all in hexadecimal (this is Slashdot, after all!)
So, without further ado, here comes the crossword! Plain HTML is admittedly ugly and unpleasant to look at, so you may download and print a nice PDF version here [geocities.com]. Good luck!
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THE CLUES:
Across
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Down ...
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0D. Media cartel dedicated to protecting Britney Spears from dirty hackers.
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13. Game console that bankrupted its parent company because of hackers making free games for it.
16. The only Unix understandable by non-geeks.
18. (40 Down) likes his pages ____.
19. Do many eyes make all bugs shallow, or do too many cooks spoil the broth?
1C. Research? Linux? Software? Whatever!
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26. ESR's birthday present to RMS.
27. This primitive operating system denies any service to its users.
29. Unique index for a particular piece of babble.
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2F. This marketing guy troll sure is dumb!
33. This site is decidedly not Slashdot.
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35. Unfortunately, this famous online Nazi's treatment of the Censorware Project [sethf.com] wasn't just a game.
36. Two-letter country code for the 51st state.
37. A geek's computer is always __.
39. ____, Lover, Aesthete, Programmer. There is no contradiction.
3A. The XP makes it go faster!
3E. The world's worst operating system!
40. The only troll with a freaks list longer than JonKatz'.
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43. A top-flight IT consultant who somehow manages to find time in his busy schedule to post to Slashdot.
45. What comes after as(1) and before strip(1) in the C build process.
47. VA Software has the world's worst ___.
48. This Senate bill comes closer to passing every time you go to see Lord of the Rings again.
4A. Legalized child pornography.
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51. The Hellmouth should've eaten you here.
53. This rocker's battle against file-sharing networks won't end until he can Kill 'Em All.
5A. This desktop environment kicks KDE's ass!
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60. Preface for the 10% of Slashdot comments not prefaced with (3D Across).
63. Apple stole all their ideas from this research group.
64. Bye bye, miss USian ___, drove the Cruiser like some loser who starts posts with a *sigh*
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fin
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Some of you might be surprised to learn that this "karma" has no value whatsoever!!! When $lashdot goes under (and don't worry, it will) you won't be able to exchange that "karma" for Denny's coupons, anime DVDs, or anything worth a shit!!!
And don't think there's any spiritual value either! $lashdot "karma" won't help you break the cycle of reincarnation, it won't get you "high", and it won't even win you friends at Magic: The Gathering tournaments!
Fellow $lashdotter, you have been deceived!!! You will not achieve immortality by posting "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of this!" or "Linux is really good for the desktop!" The only way you'll ever be remembered when this decrepit weblog tumbles into nothingness is to post something really FUCKED UP!!! I can't stress this enough!!!
Don't waste your time chasing the "karma" cap! Don't whine about your stories not being published when you know that the news on this site is randomly chosen by monkeys!!!The only way you'll be remembered long after CmdrTaco returns to his old position as shift leader at Pizza Hut is by posting ABSOLUTE FREAKING MADNESS!!! Do it now!!! Do it often!!! And karma be damned!!!
Have you ever seen the back of a twenty-dollar bill...ON WEED?
Sadly I didn't have time to log in, so I must forfeit my FP to the almighty and ever-widening Klerck! Kudos, brother!
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
I was playing games back on the vacuum tube machines... graphics weren't quite as good... but once we got to punch cards things really got cool.
From the article:
> Fifty game stations. Zero quarters required. I'm there.
So basically, you get to jockey for position in order to catch a sideways glimpse over the shoulder of the guy who's been playing the game for the past two hours?
Screw it- just download MAME and enjoy in the comfort of your own home.
All your exhibit are belong to us.
The show is every player's dream. View more than 250 separate exhibits, including hard-to-find vintage titles. In a wonderful coup, organizers nabbed one of only 10 or so known working DEC PDP-1 minicomputers, which runs Steve Russell's legendary Space War! (1962), the first computer game ever. From there, you can move through old arcade favorites - Computer Space (1971), Pong (1972), Space Invaders (1978), and Pac-Man (1980) - and on to the Atari 2600 (1977) and Magnavox Odyssey (1972) consoles. Of course, the 21st-century Xbox, GameCube, and PS2 are represented, too.
There's more than hardware to lust after here. As curator Lucien King says, "Our broad aim is to explore the culture, history, and global context of the industry." The exhibition and accompanying book, Game On ($28, from Laurence King), deconstruct characters (like Lara Croft) along gender and age lines and examine their relationships with players. They also consider the various sociological contexts of releases from Japan, the US, and the rest of the world.
Game On offers case studies of specific titles (Pokémon and The Sims among them) that demystify just how games are made. It's not about a single creative genius working alone in some back room anymore. Games come from the collective imagination of large development teams. This idea, it turns out, parallels the evolution of the way we play games. What began as heroic individualism - solitary epics of self-expression - is increasingly about interaction among many participants.
The show also delves into the complex relationship between the gaming community and Hollywood. Comparing film posters, screenings, and playable versions of franchises like James Bond and Final Fantasy, it becomes clear that what makes a good game doesn't always make a good film and vice versa (think Tomb Raider).
Game On ultimately reminds us that games are part of a living culture. By making the works available to the public in an art gallery instead of a commercial environment, King hopes to invite a fresh, more critical appraisal. Who are they kidding? Fifty game stations. Zero quarters required. I'm there.
jESUS is a Monkey!!!
Some folks have asked me what I know about Jon Katz. It occurs to me that most folks have probably never heard the story, and of the ones who have heard of it, few would know or remember the details. So here's what I know about Jon Katz, plus a little history to put it in context. The dates could be off a bit. I also have a copy of Ben Baker's take on the whole deal, which goes into a lot more detail.
In 1985 I wrote a program called ARC. It became very popular with the operators of electronic bulletin boards, which was what the online world consisted of in those pre-Internet days. A big part of ARC's popularity was because we made the source code available. I know that seems strange these days, but back then a lot of software was distributed in source. Every company that made computers made a completely different computer. Different architectures, operating systems, languages, everything. Getting a program written for one computer to work on another was often a major undertaking.
Then sometime around 1987 or so Jon Katz came out with PKARC, which was basically my ARC program with the compression/decompression routines rewritten in assembler, which made it run a lot faster. I have to hand it to him, he had a real talent for assembly coding.
We approached him about licensing, but he rejected the idea. One thing led to another, and eventually we sued him. Fortunately his program was such a blatant copy of mine that we were able to win the lawsuit before we ran out of money. In a negotiated settlement he again rejected any suggestion of licensing and went for a cash-out settlement. He repaid us for most of our legal bills and promised to stop selling his program sometime in 1988.
Then he fiddled with the file format a bit, renamed it from PKARC to PKZIP, and kept right on selling it.
We sort of lost touch after that. We would have liked to have kept in touch, but we couldn't afford the legal bills. There wasn't a lot to sue for anyway. None of us was getting rich.
So now Jon Katz is dead. He drank himself to death, alone in a motel room, a bottle of booze in his hand and five empties in the room. One can only guess what drove him to such a tragic end, but it is a fitting demise for a man whose professional reputation is based entirely on a lie.
I can think of no more fitting epitath than the final clause of the original ARC copyright statement:
when case studies are being done on Pokémon for video game history and culture.
mailto:<?=implode("@", array("chris", implode(".", array("php", "net"))))?>
Are there really that few left? Kind of sad. Anyone know how many were originally manufactured?
--
slashdot.org
The "three day weekend Quakefest" exhibit with 10 computers connected with a rats nest of cables, all covered by a pile of aluminum cans and pizza boxes should be great. Wonder which 10 lucky geeks they will hunt down/dig up and preserve the bodily remains of for use in this exhibit?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Just the thought of seeing all the old gang, Defender, Galaga, et al. brings a nostalgic tear to my eye... remembering mastering Pong and Breakout. Atari, we hardly knew ye.... and no quarters necessary?? Man, we gotta get these guys over here...
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
I'd drop the e11 ($9.79) just to be able to play with a pdp-1 alone!
Something about running it virtually in memory space ( http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ ) is just not as appealing as being able to have the opportunity (for the first time in my young life fascinates me. (I am only 20 and did not have the ability to play with this growing up)
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves? -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
http://agents.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects / pacewar
According to the readme it's based on a print out of the original Spacewar! code. It uses an PDP-1 emulator written in Java. Source code is available.
I wonder if that chick would suck me off if I gave her my Slackware '96 CD set from Walnut Creek.
"Game On offers case studies of specific titles (Pokémon and The Sims among them) that demystify just how games are made. It's not about a single creative genius working alone in some back room anymore."
Anybody hear of John Carmack?
Some people don't like Pokemon (come on, it's a yellow sqwishy thing!) ID software is a small group of dedicated individuals that have produced consistently and I think the best games still come from a small core of elite hackers and people with great imaginations. So much for large development teams... It is the game design that matters, not the number of people (look at Romero's ideas of grandeur...)
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
I want 2D games back.
http://www.ogg-vorbis.com/ DEATH TO MP3. Superior audio quality, smaller file size, open and FREE
truffles are fragrant mushrooms which grow deep underground. they are fungi which do not see light until they are unearthed by pigs or dogs. the rarest of the kind, the pacific goatse truffle is only available here
The exhibition and accompanying book, Game On ($28, from Laurence King), deconstruct characters (like Lara Croft) along gender and age lines and examine their relationships with players.
Oh so it's a pr0n exhibit.
Stop Continental Drift! Reunite Gondwanaland!
it would be pretty cool to relive some of this stuff.
1. Take some "E"
2. Hug everybody
Here in the upper Midwest, we normally don't get huge cultural events like this.
Even if it happened to be in Minneapolis, I'd be a happy camper ...
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
I'm the rappin space goblin
and I'm here to say
I love fruity pebbles in a major way!
Liberate your mind in two clicks or less.
what about pong?! where the hell is pong!?
Check out RIT's new program. Video games are more than just a hobby today.
Once again, your Slashdot front-page summary:
Smart Cameras to Predict Crimes: Oxymoron
GPL's Strength: Oxymoron
Open Meta Tools Make It Big: Oxymoron
Salon On Computer Forensics: Oxymoron
Zope Bible: Oxymoron
Google vs. DMCA and Scientology: Redundant
Slashdot Subscription Update: Troll
Phil Zimmerman and PGP at CNN.com: Overrated
MS Pressuring NW Schools: Pay Up, Or Face Audit: Flamebait
And the current topic, History of Video Games Exhibit: Trollbait
I hope they have everything licensed. You never know when the DMCA will hit next.
This page too, crashes my mozilla when entering. Works with 0.9.6/windows 2000, but crashes 0.9.9/linux and RC1/linux...
It was the 1968 Spring Joing Computer Conference in Boston.
There was about a half million bucks worth of gear running the simplest possible spaceship game on a CRT.
And about a thousand people trying to crowd in to see it. All the other booths had boring stuff like glossy literature and programming manuals. And of course people in suits looking very unhappy because all everyone was interested in was space war.
The marketeers learned. Next year they had spiffy demos and babes to show them to you.
I once played a great game with punch cards. Unfortunately I only got the house built up to two levels.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
The only real video game is pong. The rest are just updates.
Oh wow, in the picture is that one of those old Frogger games? I had one of those and drove my folks crazy with it's insipid theme song many a weekend early morning. Thanks for the nostalgia! Plus, that initial picture on the homepage is a great group shot... I never thought I'd see those things all in one picture.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
All your video games are belong to us!
For those of you thank can't wait for this exhibit to come to your town....
I'm a lacto-ovo-pesco-carno-vegetarian
I was lucky enough to experience a similar exhibit in back in 1999: it was called Videotopia. Videotopia had its own Slashdot story a while back.
It was a room full of 1980's coin-op games - it was like being dropped back into an old-time arcade (except the air wasn't thick with cigarette smoke - times have changed.)
I got to play Computer Space and Pong, along with many other classics like Tempest and Asteroids.
Unfortunately, the tour schedule on the videotopia web site has no entries past 1999. There's still some interesting pictures of games to drool over, though.
- Tim
All though Spacewar often gets credit as the first video game in 1962, William Higinbotham an employee at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, NY had a working Pong-like game in 1958.
Designed from an analog computer hooked up to an oscilloscope, Brookhaven Lab was promptly besieged by players who waited on line for hours to get their chance to play.
Higinbotham never patented his device.
MAME is a great way to play many of the older games, there is something about playing the original in its intended form that is second to none. The cabinet art, the lighting. You can't get the full immersion of a game like "Disks of Tron" sitting in front of a desktop machine. Or how about playing "Gyrus" without that 360 degree spinning joystick. Or a game like "Track & Field" without mashing the hell out of those RUN buttons.
It's the little things that get lost in the digital age. Sure, I can download MP3's of the latest release, but something about seeing the album are and reading the liner notes makes it pale in comparison.
I went to VideoTopia in DC about 3 years back. Pretty cool, lots of games, including Space War. I was the only person in the place. No need to fight for position.
The Euros get all the cool exhibits, all we get is the some ancient pottery ever so often.
These are DOLLAR machines!
Videotopia is a similar US based exhibit that mostly focuses on arcade games. I got to see it twice back in '98 and '99 (it was in Washington DC and Baltimore, MD almost back to back). The schedule at the bottom of the page shows the Baltimore showing as the last one, which was 2 1/2 years ago. I hope it's still touring... I think it actually did a good job of showing the development process (or at least, how it used to be during the classic era in the early '80s) They had original design sketches for several games, a couple cabinets that had see-thru plexiglass sides so you could see the internals of the cabinets (ever wonder how the optical rotary steering wheel on an original Pole Position worked?) and more.
:)
I think one of the most interesting parts of the exhibit (besides the fact that there are so many games in one place to play) is the inclusion of informational stands telling you about what was going on in the world at that time, which often had some effect on the theme or elements of the game. You then can go to a kiosk and answer questions about the "history" behind the games and win free tokens! The ultimate learning tool!
If it comes to your area, don't pass it up. Also check out the site and read about some of the games that the exhibit showcases.
The show also delves into the complex relationship between the gaming community and Hollywood. Comparing film posters, screenings, and playable versions of franchises like James Bond and Final Fantasy, it becomes clear that what makes a good game doesn't always make a good film and vice versa (think Tomb Raider).
Well I guess that's true but I think a lot of that is just Hollywood being lazy and not putting any real effort into making a good videogame-based movie. Take Street Fighter for example. The Hollywood movie with Van Damme is beyond awful. But Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is actually reasonably well done, for what it is. The problem is that Hollywood just doesn't have respect for the gaming industry yet. They realize there's tons of money floating around but they don't recognize games as anything more than flashing lights and crazy sounds. I would argue that there SHOULD be a "complex relationship between the gaming community and Hollywood" but that's still hasn't happened yet. Ideally, a videogame-based movie would develop the characters to a degree that can't be done in a videogame. This, in turn, would make the game more interesting and complex than the original designers ever intended.
Just my two cents...
GMD
watch this
Virtua Tennis should be on there for best sports game of all time.
At the Museum Of Science And Industry in Tampa, Florida
1. Create an open source sound compression scheme
3. Profit!
My daughter is about to turn 13. Over the past few years I've taken her to just about every arcade within driving distance. She always had fun, except for the times when we went to arcades with a row of the old classics. My eyes would glaze over and I'd wander over them. One time I really embarrassed her when another 30-something dad and I got into a Pac Man grudge match (Poor fool, couldn't last past the 2nd key). One day she was endured the agony of watching the old man flip the score on a Star Trek (I used to own one until the 3rd monitor went out). I only was able to play it for 5 minutes after that because the vector monitor finally burned out as I was playing it, setting off one of the building's smoke detectors (If you've ever owned a vector game, you probably know what this is like).
Anyone know how much this'll be yet?
Video Game cheats, hints a
11 quid for adults (16+)
5 quid for under 16s
8 quid for students and dole-ites
16 may - 15 september
www.gameonweb.co.uk
andy
I wonder what happened to him?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)