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

Fast direct link to PDF file

[ekrout]

http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~ekrout/ugvm03lo.pdf

Re:Fast direct link to PDF file

[ekrout]

HTML: http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~ekrout/ugvm.htm

Like an early outlook virus?

[murphj]

From the article about text adventures, and Don Woods' attempt to contact Will Crowthers:

To do this, he sent an email to crowther@* - that is, an email to every known sitename on the Internet.

Think spammers and virus writers wish it were still this easy?

Upcoming Amiga + Retro show in Germany

[Mike Bouma]

For Retro fans interested in c64 technology and nostalgia, the upcoming Amiga Messe in Aachen may be of interest.

Next to Amiga products, Jeri Ellsworth will travel from the US to the show to launch a new c64 compatible clone, called the c-one.

The c-one is a MicroATX form factor board, with at its core a (65c816 processor running approximately at 20 MHz) the 65c816 is a 6502 compatible processor with a 24 bit address range extra instructions that access the full memory range are added to the 6502 core.

Another interesting product which will be sold at the Aachen fair is the new Catweasel MK3 PCI/Flipper board. This PCI board can be used with the c-one, AmigaOne boards, Pegasos boards, Classic Amigas and even ordinary PCs to read just about any disk format using ordinary mainstream diskdrives (including 880kb/1,76 MB Amiga disks and c64 disks!), connect digital c64/Amiga/Atari joysticks, connect Amiga keyboards or even add a real c64 SID soundchip'.

Here's a picture:
http://home.t-online.de/home/indcomp/bin/cwmk3.jpg

For more information about this Catweasel product look here.

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.

Re:Could

[diamondc]

pdf is not proprietary. Check this post out for more details. You don't need any Adobe program to read pdfs. Adobe does make Acrobat for Linux, but you can use xpdf to display pdfs.

Re:Nostalgia

[Poro]

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..

You are in a dark cavern. In the south there is a huge two headed troll blocking the exit. The troll says "It costs 10 gold coins to pass". Possible exits are north.

> give money to troll

I don't understand.

> give 10 coins to troll

I don't understand.

> give money to troll

I don't understand.

> pay troll

I don't understand.

> F**K!!! &/#/&#&""!!!!!!!!!!!

Troll attacks you. He hits you. You are dead. Game over.

Oh, the nostalgia...

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.