Video Games
I Remember: 1980
1980, unemployment is on the rise, reaching a postwar high of over 2,000,000 and the country slides into recession.
26 people are taken hostage after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy in South Kensington. After six days and the death of a hostage the SAS end the siege by storming the building, killing another hostage and all but one of the gunmen.
Philips and Sony launch the Compact Disc, although it is several years later before Audio CDs hit the stores and several years after that before the phrase "B side" is confined to history.
Nintendo Mini Classics - Your thumbs’ greatest nemesis is back!
Before Nintendo Wii’d all over the competition with its consoles, it was busy pioneering handheld gaming with the legendary Game & Watch series. Containing (very) pared down versions of arcade classics, these LCD rectangles were to the Eighties what the DS is to the Noughties, and no self-respecting gamer would dream of hitting the playground without one sandwiched between his conkers.
[ more... ]Wacky Races: Crash & Dash
Join Dick Dastardly and the gang in all the racing fun and madness, Wacky Races style! Wacky Races: Crash & Dash is an action racing game like no other with fun-filled environments crazy cars and all your favorite, hilarious characters from the original TV series.
[ more... ]Digital Retro: The Evolution and Design of the Personal Computer
It's easy these days to take the Internet, ludicrous processing power, massive hard disk capacities, cloud computing and mobile connectivity for granted. Back in 'the day' things were very different. Gordon Laing's well researched and elegantly designed homage to lots of different, lovely but defunct hardware from the era of "Home" as opposed to "Personal" Computers.
[ more... ]Invaders-Style Arcade Alarm Clock
Back in the 20th century we used to go to bed dreaming of blip-blopping aliens then wake up buzzing at the thought of hanging out down the arcade. Sadly we’ve all got jobs now (well, sort of) and the arcade as we knew it is no more.
[ more... ]Pac Man Cookie Cutters
Wakka-wakka-wakka-wakka... Ulp!
With its power pills, cherries and chomping, Pac-Man is essentially a game about eating. So it’s no surprise the design gurus over at Suck UK decided to base their first foray into cookware on this legendary video game.
Wake up '80s style, to authentic sounds of Pac Man
This officially licensed, tribute to an 80s icon diddly-woos you out of boboland via the evocative start-up tune from Pac-Man. It even emits a few seconds of spine-tingling wakka-wakka-ing. You’ll be transported back to the arcade the second you hear it. You might even start checking your ‘jama pockets for ten pees.
[ more... ]CCS64 - Commodore 64 Emulator
CCS64 is a shareware Commodore 64 emulator that plays Commodore 64 formatted games and music in windows, in an approximation of the original appearance, including interface.
[ more... ]MESS - Multi Emulator Super System
Wether your childhood home computer was a BBC Micro, Commodore 64/128, Dragon 64, Amiga, Atari, ZX Spectrum, ZX81 or your console of choice was SNES, Gameboy, MegaDrive or Epoch Game Pocket Computer (what do you mean never heard of it!?), MESS almost certainly has it emulated.
[ more... ]VICE - VersatIle Commodore Emulator
VICE is a freeware emulator for Commodore's 8-bit computers (released under the GNU General Public Licence) and runs on Win32, Mac OS X, Amiga, Unix, MS-DOS, OS/2, Acorn RISC OS, and BeOS.
[ more... ]Where to Find Commodore 64 Emulator Games
A list here....
[ more... ]Wii Virtual Console - Commodore 64 games
Some Commodore 64 games were available to download from the Wii Virtual Console from March 2008 the first two games being International Karate and Uridium (both games are available 500 Wii points each).
[ more... ]BBC News: Recreating the era of 8-bit computers
Chances are that you are reading this article on a computer screen. Most would agree that a modern 32 or 64 bit machine is a pretty complicated piece of equipment.
While it is easy to buy the parts of a modern PC - motherboard, graphics card and processor - the sheer complexity would defeat any attempt to build one starting with electronic components such as resistors, capacitors and chips.
[ more... ]BBC News: ZX81: Small black box of computing desire
The Sinclair ZX81 was small, black with only 1K of memory, but 30 years ago it helped to spark a generation of programming wizards.
Packing a heady 1KB of RAM, you would have needed many, many thousands of them to run Word or iTunes, but the ZX81 changed everything.
[ more... ]Cholo - Novella
Cholo was a classic game released initially for the BBC Micro, it had wireframe graphics where you take control of a robot drone, taking over other more powerful robots to complete tasks (similar to that of Paradroid). The back story was set out in a novella which was included in the game's packaging.
[ more... ]