@retrohistories@digipres.club
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retrohistories

@retrohistories@digipres.club

Old videogames, cross stitch, and other nerdy pursuits. Occasionally makes short documentaries about stories from videogame history. Somehow they've had a million views?!

"Sound[s] bored and enthused at the same time" — YouTube commenter Hoodii

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

retrohistories, to random
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

The Guardian: How to tell if you damaged your eyes during the solar eclipse

(turn off reader mode for this one)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/08/solar-eclipse-eye-damage-test

retrohistories, to crossstitch
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

Fresh off the frame, this adaptation of an old illustration of a Eurasian Jay is finally done.

Designing this pattern and then stitching it was an enlightening exercise: I felt every bit of confetti colour, every backstitch over densely packed threads, every straight line I had to punch through the middle of an X to reach. Wasn't all fun!

You can't learn everything about making a high-quality pattern online; you have to figure some of the finer points out through trial and error.

The source image for the pattern, from the 1883 book ‘Familiar Wild Birds’ by W. Swaysland. Illustration by Eliza Turck.

damianogerli, to random
@damianogerli@mastodon.social avatar

Interesting to note how the first person Russian adventure game Trans-Siberian Legends has a quite specific DLC called "Beautiful Girls" that seems to serve no purpose other than... uh, add "beautiful" women to the game?

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

@damianogerli would somebody please teach that poor woman how to lie on a bed

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

New generator time! I got distracted and finally added Winners Don't Use Drugs.

This screen was never a font-based thing that I know of, so I made a font out of the letters we have, drew the rest, and made it kinda fonty.

https://deathgenerator.com/#wdud

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

@foone

retrohistories, to random
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

RIP Citra, collateral damage in the Yuzu settlement and the only viable emulator for an entire commercially delisted platform.

It won’t cease to exist, but it’s seen its last update, and it’s going to be a lot harder to find genuine builds from now on.

There’s no moral defence for Nintendo for this shit.

MossRC, to random

Two year old watching a non-violent Tomb Raider fan level playthrough I found on YouTube:

"Lara should not stand on the table. We need to wash Lara's hands cuz Lara's hands are brown."

A few seconds later, "Lara is looking for the bathroom to wash her hands. There's the bathroom, Lara! Go! Dad, why is Lara not going to the bathroom to wash her hands."

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

@MossRC I’d watch this Let’s Play.

damianogerli, to random
@damianogerli@mastodon.social avatar

When the Wind Blows is Jimmy Murakami's 1986 cartoon about an old couple trying to carry on in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Incredibly heartbreaking.
It is mostly remembered today for the theme song by David Bowie and its soundtrack by Roger Waters, Genesis and Squeeze.

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

@damianogerli renting this on VHS for ten-year-old me is an act my parents still feel somewhat guilty about.

OutofPrintArchive, to random
@OutofPrintArchive@mstdn.games avatar

Little update.

Still not feeling well at all.
Been really rough the past couple of days with a lot of pain, but also a lot of sleeping or trying to sleep, even during the daytime.
Yesterday was the worst. Woke up incredibly sick to my stomach and the nausea lasted till the evening.

Feeling a little better today, but still incredibly off, so I'll probably be asleep again in a couple hours.

I really can't wait for all of this to be over already.

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

@OutofPrintArchive Hope you're through the worst of it and are better soon.

misty, to random
@misty@digipres.club avatar

Important note: this is the official crab gauge. Please keep a copy for your records.

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

@misty POLITE NOTICE: This is NOT a crayfish gauge. Please stop using the crab gauge to measure crayfish. Inappropriate use of the gauge is unfair to legitimate crab measurers. If you need to measure crayfish so much, pay for and install your own damn gauge.

retrohistories, to random
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

Suddenly thinking again about the LotR scene where a fully ablaze Denethor sprints like half a mile to throw himself off the most photogenic part of the rocky outcrop.

retrohistories, to random
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

Created a stub page for the wiki project of the week: the infamously withheld GBA classic Mother 3.

https://morguefile.wiki/Mother_3

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!

retrohistories, to random
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

Finally updated the 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.

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

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!

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

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.

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

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!

Here's an example of the kind of thing we might want: https://morguefile.wiki/Lemmings

There are 267 games on the wiki atm, many of them stubs. I'd love to hit 500. Let's build more.

damianogerli, to random
@damianogerli@mastodon.social avatar

Liking this Italian Microsoft 1995 ad against piracy which basically threatens you with all kinds of evil and illness if you are using a pirated Windows version: viruses, "contamination", data loss, prison, nervous breakdown, etc

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

@damianogerli Its not strictly misleading, but most of these are just symptoms of using Windows in any form.

vga256, to iOS
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

working on some graphic design today, and remembered Rob Cobb's "Semiotic Standard for All Commercial Trans-Stellar & Heavy Element Transport Craft" designs used in Alien, pasted surreptitiously all over backgrounds in the ship as warning stickers

Rab8Bit's painstaking vectorized interpretation:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/78297841/Semiotic-Standard

Dave Brasgalla's 7 icon set interpretation: https://freeware.iconfactory.com/preview/semi

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

@vga256 The impeccably-realised Alien: Isolation uses these pictographs extensively, both in the world and in the UI, and adds several new ones of its own.

retrohistories, to random
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

Frank Cifaldi and @shadsy from the Video Game History Foundation are doing a Reddit AMA now. Lots of great questions about game history and preservation being asked and answered!

https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18hqtbi/we_are_the_video_game_history_foundation_a/

retrohistories, to random
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

Kat/Pixel a Day's new video, about the games industry's institutional biases and creative rut, is a masterpiece. Important subjects, passionately and persuasively argued. Well worth devoting an hour of your time to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JbfFYUVR-U

retrohistories, to random
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

Amazon's Fallout trailer looks cautiously promising, though I'm not sure about Todd Howard as a producer. Wasn't there anyone available who understood the IP?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kQ8i2FpRDk

retrohistories, to random
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

isn’t that how purchases generally work

retrohistories, to random
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

I'm so tired of the discourse on being framed as users vs. creators.

Creators suffer from rampant unregulated advertising attached to their hard work. Seeing their labours being exploited to promote scams and enrich surveillance capitalists with no control or recourse. Seeing potential subscribers close the tab because their impression of the channel in those crucial first few seconds was some obnoxious ad.

You think makers want this system? Hell no. We just want an income.

markwyner, to animals
@markwyner@mas.to avatar

Crows are amazing creatures. That is all.

A crow is trying to drink water from a water bottle with a narrow opening. The water is too far down so it’s slowly adding rocks to push the water upward to a reachable depth.

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

@markwyner This specific demonstration of their intelligence is one of their oldest documented behaviours! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crow_and_the_Pitcher

I love that we share a sense of appreciation and wonder at this with people who lived millennia ago.

danieldurrans, to random
@danieldurrans@mastodon.me.uk avatar

I went to Nisbets to pick up some port glasses. They had a 34 slice toaster on display.

34 slice.

Just think of the crumpets you could make with that.

retrohistories,
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

@danieldurrans Yeah, but where would I find a 34-bladed butter knife?

retrohistories, to vtmb
@retrohistories@digipres.club avatar

On this day 19 years ago, Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines was released!

(Also, a little game called Half-Life 2; a detail which is more than mere coincidence.)

I made a video last year about the death and rebirth of this unusual cult favourite; the studio that made it, the circumstances behind its initial commercial failure, and its remarkable comeback from buggy flop to genre classic.

Blood Pressure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO4S2VY3pJE

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