[1/2] had some fun with some obscure video game history this morning
if you grew up playing Ultima, Crusader or Wing Commander, you might recognize the name.
recorded almost nowhere is the location of Origin Systems' building during its peak productive phase in the late 80s/early 90s. there was a single mention of a road in Shay Addams' The Official Book of Ultima which led to some cross-referencing in corporate databases
so here it is: a mapped drive to Origin's sleek 1980s office building, as it stands today just outside of Austin, TX.
(now for rent if you need 20,000 sq ft of work space!)
This is the latest addition to my VCS collection. The nice thing of collecting these is, that most of them are pretty cheap. I was surprised that some of the games came in a box. Especially the huge Star Raiders box, which contained another surprise. No need to complain for 16€. But I will cover that in a separate post.
De Nederlandse demogroep Ultra Force maakte grafische indrukwekkende demos zoals de Vector Demo van Arjan Brussee. Ze deden ook veel met nieuwe audiotech voor PC's. Ook maakten ze demos voor bedrijven zoals bijvoorbeeld Fuji. Check het nieuwe artikel:
Running a full text scan of my magazine index to find clippings to drop in. But if you know of any contemporary magazine coverage, forum threads, well-researched development histories, marketing materials, or other good resources (the kinds of thing that, on Wikipedia, would have to be linked in a reference), let's get them in!
Finally updated the #morguefilewiki from MediaWiki 1.35 to 1.39, the latest LTS release, complicated slightly by overwriting all the files in the first instance with the contents of an archive expanded with truncated filenames and breaking everything comprehensively.
Seems stable now — no obvious weirdness — but I'll keep an eye on it.
I didn't do much wiki work in 2023, admittedly; a little editing here, a little admin there. But I'm dusting off the wiki-page-a-week idea for 2024: pick a game, create a page (from template), dig up some stuff to upload.
I'll be starting next week (this week was all about the upgrade) and when I do, I'll be encouraging any potential contributor — whether experienced researcher/wiki editor or complete newbie — to join me in building out the wiki!
The Morgue File is a wiki built to hold research materials on game history, and getting started can be easy.
For instance, you could look on MobyGames to see which magazines reviewed the game, then find scans of those pages on the Archive and upload them to the wiki.
(Or if you don't want to tangle with editing, just send them to me to upload!)
An hour is all it takes to get a page started. Not aiming for comprehensiveness; it’s a first draft.
Starting in a few days, I'll pick a game each week and put out a call to action for additions to the page. If you know a good magazine article, interview, newspaper piece, YouTube retrospective, or old forum thread that covers that game, there's a place for it on the wiki!
How to deal with video games on floppy disks as research material?
I recently learned a thing or two about reading/writing #Amiga floppies on contemporary computers, and wrote about it for @chludens. Read the post on our research blog: https://chludens.hypotheses.org/893
Learning about the details was the easy part. Getting hold of all the necessary hardware was more complicated than I anticipated 💾 Once it worked, it felt like magic …
🕹️ Dive into the nostalgic world of 8-bit gaming! 🚀
Discover iconic titles that defined the golden age of computing. From #ZXSpectrum to #Commodore64 and beyond, "The 8-Bit Book: 1981 to 199x" takes you on an epic journey through gaming history. 🎮📚
Discover Jerry Lawson, the genius who transformed gaming, in this picture-book biography 🎮📚
From inventing swappable cartridges to founding the country's first African American-owned video game company, his journey reshaped the industry forever🕹️
I obtained a complete #Amiga 500 set today, including some common joysticks, a mouse, a Commodore 1084 monitor and dozens and dozens of pirated games 🖤
This acquisition is part of @chludens's efforts to research the early history of Swiss digital games. Of course, we need to play the games we study on their original hardware…
I might have cried a little, since I grew up with just about exactly this setup 🥲 I'm also looking forward to working myself through the enormous floppy disk haul 💾