I booked tickets to the Digital Revolution exhibition at The Barbican Centre before I knew they had this in the first room: towering multiscreen audiovisual retrogame amazingness. If I had known, I’d have brought a camera with better focus control. The exhibition was a strange one: “digital creativity” was the theme, and that essentially amounted to “computers,… Continue reading Gigantic multiscreen retrogame display at The Barbican
Category: Old games
Explorer: an exploration game from before there were exploration games
I’ve been wanting to write something about Explorer for a long time. The more that contemplative exploration games like Proteus, Dear Esther and Fract become an established thing, the more interesting this little (read: absolutely gigantic) 1986 game seems to become. Explorer was created for the ZX Spectrum by UK coders Graham Relf and Simon Dunstan… Continue reading Explorer: an exploration game from before there were exploration games
Ed Logg’s GDC 2012 talk on Atari’s Gauntlet
Photo by Spyderella I’ve got a real soft spot for Gauntlet. The 4-player coin-op seemed monstrously big to me as a child, and I loved the resounding bass of the music and the “Wizard is about to die” speech. I was so desperate to own US Gold’s ZX Spectrum home conversion, I swapped my precious copy… Continue reading Ed Logg’s GDC 2012 talk on Atari’s Gauntlet
Cassette 50: the interview
I’m pretty proud of this one. The authors of Cassette 50 – a notorious collection of primitive, mostly BASIC games advertised in seemingly every single ’80s game magazine, every single month – were mostly anonymous, uncredited kids, paid just £10 for their efforts. In 2005, thanks to a name left on a title screen and a few hopeful… Continue reading Cassette 50: the interview
Matthew “Manic Miner” Smith: complete transcript of 2005 interview
Matthew Smith, the eccentric creator of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy for the ZX Spectrum, was ‘missing’ for years. He reappeared in the mid-2000s – and made his first public reappearance on stage at Nottingham’s Screenplay festival in February 2005, interviewed by journalist Paul Drury. No doubt there’s a video or audio recording of… Continue reading Matthew “Manic Miner” Smith: complete transcript of 2005 interview