Posts tagged with 'gaming'
Matt Bok is back yet again for an extra long, extra special episode. (Check out episode 16 for our last discussion on retro gaming). Just in time for the holiday season, we discuss the Atari Flashback portable and the NES Classic Edition.
Show notes:
- AtGames - makers of the Atari Flashback systems
- NES Classic Edition
- Racing the Beam, a book about the amazing stuff that Atari developers were able to do with extremely primitive hardware.
- The RCA Studio II, an early cartidge-based system that I actually didn't know about until this podcast!
- Tempest 2000 on Atari Jaguar - a game that definitely needs a rerelease or a remaster or something.
- Ben Heck, the console hacker, has a book called Hacking Video Game Consoles
- The documentary we mentioned is called Atari: Game Over (also available on Netflix). Certainly the E.T. landfill legend is part of it, but the overall rise & fall of Atari is the subject of the documentary.
- The E.T. 2600 ROM hack, with some commentary on why it's not a terrible game, and was perhaps just ahead of its time
- I did a live stream of E.T. for 2600 on my on-again off-again show MSTCX.
- CORGS: The Columbus Ohio Retro Gaming Society
- Homestar Runner Atari 2600 home page - hover over the "email" button.
- The Kia Sorento / Tecmo Bowl commercial. Here's some background on Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl.
Want to be on the next episode? You can! All you need is the willingness to talk about something technical.
Theme music is "Crosscutting Concerns" by The Dirty Truckers, check out their music on Amazon or iTunes.
Matt Bok is back again, and he discusses retro games and a few tech products that retro gamers might want to check out.
Show notes:
- Racing the Beam, a book about the amazing stuff that Atari developers were able to do with extremely primitive hardware.
- Hyperkin, the makers of the Retron 3 and the Retron 5
- Return of the Jedi arcade game. I love the voice samples in this game.
Want to be on the next episode? You can! All you need is the willingness to talk about something technical.
Theme music is "Crosscutting Concerns" by The Dirty Truckers, check out their music on Amazon or iTunes.
Welcome to another "Weekly Concerns". This is a post-a-week series of interesting links, relevant to programming and programmers. You can check out previous Weekly Concerns posts in the archive.
- Are you watching AMC's Halt and Catch Fire? So far, a decent show. Lots of nerd meat in there: topical 80s computer industry references, Mythical Man Month contributing to a plot point, and so on. It's mostly fictional, but what makes it unique to me is that it's not a story about all the gleaming genius visionaries in Silicon Valley like Microsoft, Apple, Xerox, etc., but about hackers everywhere, scratching out market share, challenging IBM, and grinding out results.
- AMC posted a web version of Colossal Cave Adventure to promote the show. Why Colossal Cave Adventure? Because it's a plot point in the show. See? You should be watching.
- I've said it before, but one of the best things about this show is the intro credit sequence. Though I think it stands on its own, the music, colors, graphics, everything, also fit the tone of the rest of the show well.
- In a recent episode, Ada Lovelace (featured in a Brief Bio) was mentioned, as was Grace Hopper (subject of an upcoming Brief Bio).
- There's lots of stories and urban legends about the "Halt and Catch Fire" phrase. I'm sure most of them are apocryphal, but it's entertaining apocrypha.
If you have an interesting link that you'd like to see in Weekly Concerns, leave a comment or contact me.
