ugvm03 magazine - Retro Special!

deKay writes "You might be interested in Issue 03 of "ugvm" written by the regulars of uk.games.video.misc magazine. Issue 03 is a 40-page Retro Special, and contains articles on the Fairchild Channel F console, the Supervision, and the Evolution of Text Adventures. There are also 17 pages of reviews of games, and loads more. ugvm is free, and can be downloaded in PDF format." Besides being an interesting subject matter, this is a cool way to write.

Comments

Nostalgia

[otisaardvark]

It's an obvious point to make but the games back in the day (text adventures etc) had such great gameplay that you could sit there for hours learning all the foibles tricks... people spent effort on making imaginative games which challenged your mind rather than your reflexes. Oh, for the good old days...

Old format to new format

[jeroenb]

I don't really understand why it's so cool to publish a magazine in PDF? Is this a regular treeware mag that they give away online for free? I didn't get that impression from the website (because of the lack of for instance a cover price on the cover inside the PDF.)

If you want to publish stuff for free and distribute it the easiest way (using the Internet) then great! But why use this oldskool format? Is anyone going to print this out using a colorprinter and then staple it together and read it? Not me. I use the Internet because I like the format this new digital medium makes possible.

So the mag looks great and I think it's an excellent idea to have a bunch of newsgroup regulars put together a mag, but can't they just put it on a website? Or if they want perhaps put it in XML. That way I can read it on my PDA, apply my personal stylesheets and use handy stuff like hyperlinks(wow!)

Regardless, they have a new regular reader anyway.

Text games? Some of us are still addicted

[OldMiner]

Any self-respecting geek probably knows full well, but worth taking any opportunity to plug the medium. MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) are still alive and well, and MUD Connector lists about 2,000 currently active (as in, running now, have been running within the last two months).

To those unaware (for shame!), MUDs (and variations such as MUCKs, MOOs, and MUSHes) are BBS-era text-based games, the precursors to MMORPGs such as Ultima Online, Everquest, Anarchy Online, and so on. There are some graphical (and freely available) MUDs out there, some listed on MUD Connector, but most are still text based. Generally, MUDs aren't completely original codebases, but derived from an open source basis, such as CircleMUD which just finally got out of 3.0 beta and released 3.1.

I administer a small MUD, passed down to me from two previous big egos, which has been up for somewhere around 1995, give or take a few months of server issues. Unfortunately, I'm too ashamed to post a link.

Fairchild!

[gpinzone]

WOW. That's a blast from the past indeed! The system had giant yellow cartridges and the games were pretty mediocre. I do remember one cool aspect about them were the joysticks. They were designed to not only go up, down, left, and right, but they could also be pulled up and down and be twisted left and right. The biggest problem with the fairchild controllers were that they didn't have a fire button and were not unpluggable from the unit! A later design of the controllers did include a fire button and joystick ports.

I'd love to get my hands on a working version of those controllers. Maybe they could be used for modern day 3D shooters, etc.

Game Programmers

[iamdrscience]

Apparently, there were only like 4 programmers for the Channel F's 26 games. I was talking with my brother about possibly programming for the 2600 and he challenged me to program for the Channel F. Not only would that be a problem because there is very little information about around for the Channel F, but also because at least 2 of the 4 guys that know (or knew) how to program the Channel F are not alive any more.

Re:Text games? Some of us are still addicted

[Tet]

Any self-respecting geek probably knows full well, but worth taking any opportunity to plug the medium. MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) are still alive and well

Not a MUD, but in terms of text based games, I still play Angband on a regular basis, just as I played Moria, Larn, Omega and Hack before it. And no, I don't use any of the new fangled graphic tiles that are available for it now. It was always a great game when it was text only, and I see no reason to change that. A large part of the appeal is the depth of the game. Modern games are too shallow, and too easy to complete. Angband is an immensely detailed and immersive game, and there's nothing in the modern era that compares. Diablo was a blatant ripoff of the game style, but had all of the depth and variety removed, and was *way* too easy.