vga256

happy 27th birthday Ultima Online.

on september 24th, UO launched with a massive subscriber base, after two public beta tests and a pre-alpha a year earlier.

this is the UO launch page in september of 1997.

following that is the "chest opening" animation for the game login (with the Stones midi playing in the background).

the first year of UO was one of the most active and fascinating experiments in player-driven democracy, and live-patching exercises i've ever seen. the skeleton crew who was kept on to update the game ran "House of Commons" chats directly with players to get feedback on the game, and help make decisions on how to deal with problems with griefing/exploits/gameplay.

the cat-and-mouse game of players discovering exploits and developers patching them became a meta-game itself, forcing patches that changed gameplay on a weekly basis.

within a couple of years, the experiment in player-led design and open-ended gameplay would more or less be over: EverQuest and (to a much larger extent) World of Warcraft would turn a living world into a locked down carnival ride. MMO companies didn't want to deal with the dynamics of a game that let players do too much, and the UO experiment was quietly decided to be a failure of design.

i don't share that opinion, and still consider it to be the finest experience i've had in an online world to this day.

#ultimaOnline #retroGaming #gamePreservation

although i've finished Conquests of Camelot several times, i've never thought to sit through the credits to the end.

i find a few things fascinating about this. first off, the game never prompts you with sound effects showing that you've received points for solving a puzzle or winning a battle, contrary to almost every other sierra adventure title.

second, unlike sierra adventures that lump all points together into a single score, this one has been stratified into three categories.

third - and this is more in comparison to RPGs where playable characters are created for at the beginning of the game, this title inverts the process. "your" king arthur is really the outcome of the choices you made over the course of the game: my particular playthrough seems to have valued soul over skill or wisdom.

#adventureGames #retroGaming #sierra

did i just drive 300 km one way in the middle of the night to pick up fifteen big box games.

yes.

yes i did.

#bigboxgames #retrogaming

re: my last post - if you didn't already know, Stephen Biesty has the most beautifully animated and hilariously voiced multimedia version of Incredible Cross-Sections, called: Stowaway!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9jKE6Y7vJQ

#retroGaming #windows311

wondrous Boardwatch BBS magazine "top 100" boards in the united states from 1994. this was based on a reader's choice vote-in.

the first two boards are (respectively) the homes of Apogee software and Epic MegaGames shareware publishers.

now just guess how many of the remaining 98 are porn boards!

credit: @fearfair on /r/bbs: https://i.redd.it/5pb1m577m9pd1.jpeg

#shareware #bbs #retroGaming

you... you included regina, but edmonton didn't make the cut?

😭

#RetroGaming #canada #yeg

academic researchers/readers of mastodon: is there a solid historical book (books?) that documents and explores the transition from the mechanical age to the age of “modern” technology as someone like heidegger understands the term technology?

i’m imagining a book that interprets the social and cultural transformations between the late medieval and victorian periods, from older conceptions of morality and mechanism to newer ideas about individualism and automation? eg. documenting not only demographic changes, but also the ways of thinking about people that were preconditions for modern technological thought.

i realize this is a rather nebulous request covering a huge time span, but my background is in the philosophy of science and not british history literature.

#academicmastodon #history

i can't believe it took me 10 years to find out that Transport Tycoon got a full live jazz orchestral remaster of its midi soundtrack 🤯

and it sounds GREAT. john broomhall and his "TT band" knock every piece out of the park

https://archive.org/details/Transport-Tycoon-2014-OST

#retroGaming #music #ost

if you grew up in canada in the 90s and 2000s, you probably visited a Playdium arcade at one point or another.

if you didn't, playdium was a canadian national mega-arcade that had over a dozen locations at its peak. it grew in the late 90s and early 2000s when arcades had already withered away in most malls. they imported a ton of interesting massive arcade units, like Dance Dance Revolution, monster truck simulators and ride-racing sims

the playdium archive is an online mini-museum of playdium history. the edmonton-based archivist has done an incredible job of digitizing old footage.

my personal favourite are these reloadable Playcards that you'd use instead of cash in the arcade cabs. i wish i had hung on to mine.

#canada #history #arcade #yeg

oh boy. i just found my academic records published on my old CS department's server 🤣

back in 1997 when i was a snot nosed first year university student, i was planning on becoming a CS student.

the first requirement of the degree was CMPUT 114: Introduction to Computer Science.

the course was pretty straightforward: learn how to code and solve problems with Turbo Pascal 7 in a lab, while learning about data structures and bubble search and encapsulation in class.

unfortunately, that same semester, Ultima Online launched. 12 of my 14 hours a day were spent playing UO, leaving a few minutes for completing assignments.

i have circled the assignments i missed, and final exam which i did not study for because i was trying to GM my swordsman in UO 🤣

#ultima #uo #retroGaming

found a really cool document: the official developer/user documentation for the codec used to compress most of the Sega CD FMV games: Cinepak for Sega-CD

https://dn720003.ca.archive.org/0/items/sega-cinepak-users-guide/SEGA%20Cinepak%20Users%20Guide_text.pdf

sadly, the software (macintosh) doesn't seem to be preserved anywhere. it had a really simple interface, and came with a driver for playback on the console

#macintosh #gamePreservation #vintageApple #sega #retroGaming

back in the early 90s, i only knew of four ways to get new computer games:

• buying my own (i could afford a new one every 3-6 months at best)
• trading with friends (only 3 kids in my school had computers at home)
• buying shareware diskettes at the grocery store for a few bucks
• downloading shareware from local BBSes

of all of the above, only the last two were reliable sources of new games every week. i was one of the only kids in the school that had a modem, so i spent every evening sourcing out hot new shareware on my local boards. i'd wear out my credits and time limits downloading every single disk i could find at 2400 baud, usually taking about an hour

of the dozens of games I downloaded, two of them proved to be mega-hits: Tank Wars and Crystal Caves. for over a year, my two best friends and i huddled around the computer playing hotseat tank wars, and took turns trying to finish CC levels.

consider that, at the time, we owned AAA titles like Wing Commander II and Space Quest IV, and a sega genesis with a dozen games between us. and yet, crystal caves was the first thing we'd load up on sleepovers. it found the exact right balance of addictive, fun and friendly.

a few years ago i started collecting old shareware distributor diskettes - the kind you'd find for $2 at a grocery store. and i absolutely treasure them. 🙏

#apogee #shareware #retroGaming #dosgaming