Whenever you activate the game Snake on your shiny Nokia phone, have you ever paused to think who programmed the game or if the mobile phone is the game’s first platform? No, I didn’t think so.
Well, I did. Not because of curiosity, unfortunately. It’s because I programmed a game just like Snake in Basic language back in the early 80s on my rusty Apple IIc.
“Wait! You mean to say you’re the creator of the first Snake game?”
Duh, no. What I mean is, “I was around 10 years old at that time, and I had been studying how to write different …read more

So I got an emulator! This emulator in fact. Already through hands-on experience I have discovered that:
- Monsters wasn’t as scary as I made it out to be.
- It’s probably not worth doing a post on Arcade Action, Acornsoft’s attempt to write some games in Mode 7 so that owners of the BBC Micro Model A could actually play a game at some point in their hopeless, useless lives.
- The fact that games load in seconds means that I don’t have the same patience with them that I did when loading them took a half hour so you’d better be …read more

Back on the old Space Panic trail, I’ve discovered reports – disturbing reports – that make me question my very sanity.

What is the most often-used element in any advertisement? Take a look at this vintage ad for Superior Software/Acornsoft’s Barbarian and see if you can guess.

Yes! It’s a comprehensive price guide!
No, it’s sex.

We’re still on a Spider-Man 3 kick after I went to see it last night, and what better Spider-Man game is there in the entire universe than Questprobe, by the fantastic Scott Adams, adventure king?

I’ve not forgotten The Seventh Day Of Elite, but the post I have in mind is so huge that it may take a whole day to write – a day I frankly don’t have, what with the many deadline commitments swarming about my head. Also, I’ll be gone until Monday evening to be at the Bristol International Comics Expo, where I plan to schmooze and network my ass off to get even more work so I can delay the Elite post still further. Wish me luck.
In the meantime, to fill out the week, here’s a link to Elite: The Musical.
This …read more

With Tony’s weepily defiant leaving-do speech the talk of the nation, it’s probably a decent time to look over this gem from the days of yore – Yes Prime Minister on the Spectrum.

Worth pointing out immediately that one thing you couldn’t do in the game was go to war.

Thrust was a classy game. Simple, elegant, relying on simulated gravity – which had been around since that early Space War game – to create dazzlingly difficult puzzles that tested your skill and your nerves to the utmost, right up until it ran out of levels and just turned the screen upside down.
It looked like this:

Thanks again to cpmisalive. If you look closely at that video, you might notice some words occasionally popping up saying PLANET DESTROYED BONUS 4000 POINTS.
Thereby hangs a tale.

This may prove to be a regular feature, as one thing old games are not short of is extreme and frustrating difficulty. These days games are made with fat, balding duffers in their late twenties and early thirties, such as myself, in mind – they’re all about the story, with only a modicum of difficulty acting as a gateway from one chunk of plot to the next. I’m thinking of Bully here – or Canis Canem Edit – which gave me several hours of pleasure despite the fact that none of the ‘missions’ needed a second go. Similarly, the two …read more

Yesterday evening, in the pub, the conversation turned to Elite and my brother informed me that my entire life was a lie!