Retro Video: Classic DOS-era Art Step By Step

For your morning retro-game pleasure, I humbly present to you the following: A video from the wonderful channel "DOS Nostalgia"containing time-lapses of all of the background art from a Sierra On-Line classic "The Colonel's Bequest". Until the widespread adoption of VGA color modes in computer monitors, the designers at Sierra stored background art for their games in a special vector format.

One especially neat thing about this format (at least if you're a behind the scenes graphic design nerd like I am) is that the background screen art can be displayed and drawn in a sort of step by step fashion-- essentially letting you see just how it was imagined, laid out and created by the game's artists. All in all, it's a fascinating peek at the artistic process in an otherwise long-lost game format.

Please enjoy this gorgeous, dark, and detailed art set to the beautiful MT-32 music from the game below.

The Father of the Roguelike: Hack-ing the System

Gamasutura recently posted a chapter from David L. Craddick's book, "Dungeon Hacks" and it offers a tantalizing glimpse into the history, culture and the beginnings of one man's idea for a game that ended up inspiring a genre that live on to this day-- the roguelike. An excerpt:

Drawing on the eight or so hours he had spent playing Rogue at UCB, Fenlason laid groundwork in San Francisco. His intention, more or less, was to recreate Rogue as he remembered it: the dungeon layouts, the monsters, and the items. Fenlason dubbed his clone Hack for two reasons: "One definition was 'a quick [computer] hack because I don't have access to Rogue'. The other was 'hack-n-slash', a reference to one of the styles of playing Dungeons and Dragons." 

Thus the roguelike, a game clearly inspired by Rogue rather than coincidentally exhibiting similar game systems and features, was born. 

Fenlason composed a wish list of features he felt Rogue lacked, as well as those which Rogue could have implemented better. Level design, for instance, had been too simplistic; it would be more fun if players could explore dungeons that spanned more than a single screen. Monsters posed another shortcoming. There were only twenty-six, one per capital letter—far fewer than the text symbols available. More egregious was that they all attacked in the same way, making a beeline for the player instead of, say, maneuvering around for a sneak attack or standing in place—perhaps blocking a doorway—and forcing the "@" avatar to venture closer.

The entire sneak  peek is available here, and is well worth your time to read.

Now You're Printing With Power: 3D Printer Retro Portable

Friend of the blog Drew of Drew's Robots has done some pretty awesome things with his custom designed and built 3-D printer-- a TARDIS that transforms into Optimus Prime, remote controlled walker robots, and his latest upload to Thingaverse: a little retro portable handheld console he calls the PiSP, for PiStation Portable.

My main design goal was to have good ergonomics. This design fits nicely with my large hands, with an analog joystick that I find more comfortable than a D-pad, and large illuminated buttons with nice mechanical action instead of small membrane buttons. 

The mechanical assembly is fairly simple, only two printed pieces, with nearly all the electrical parts attached to the front half. It has an internal battery charger, and can be played while charging - although you will discharge faster than you charge, so you still need to shut down to recharge fully. The second USB port on the PI is accessible, so you can plug in a USB drive to transfer roms, or an external keyboard for configuration or emulating systems needing a keyboard.

If you want to make this for yourself, you can download the files and print them out for free by visiting his Thingaverse page.

You Can Now Watch Kung Fury Online for Free? Radical!

Photo via Laser Unicorn

After the trailer concept for Kung Fury, an explosion-drenched tribute to ridiculous action movies of the 80s went viral and took the internet by storm last year, the newly-formed production company Laser Unicorn took to Kickstarter, where they raised enough to make a full length short. The movie clock in at 30 minutes and features explosions, kung fu, dinosaurs, Norse gods, bikini Vikings, fights against Nazis and a theme song performed by David Hasslehoff. Check out the full movie below:

Hands-Free Super MArio: Now You're Playing (Music) With (SMB's) Power

Via Kotaku, an incredible 10 minute video of a Super Mario World level that not only plays itself, but plays MUSIC.

Go. Watch it now. NOW.

Polybius Lives?

Last year, I linked to a cool project-- dedicated arcade gamer nerds took the urban-legend game "Polybius", and made it a reality, sort of.

A few days ago, a user named POLYBIUS left a comment linking to the site www.polybiuslives.com .

They're been around a few other sites, doing pretty much the same thing, sometimes adding a "Have you forgotten?".

Is this for a game? An ARG? An art project? A bored spammer?

WHoever you are, I invite you to send an email to shawn_struck at rpgx.org and we can set up an interview. Let's see what you're all about.

Pontiac Ad References Spy Hunter Arcade Game

Pontiac cashes in on arcade classic Spy Hunter nostalgia with this awesome new ad:

Life Meter: Amazing Art & Creative Comics, All About Video Games

Hey, you!

You read The Code, so you obviously like video games.

You probably like art. You've maybe even read a comic or two in your lifetime, I'd wager.

Then you will love the happy mutants over at LifeMeter.

Edited by Zack Giallongo, Dave Roman, and Stephanie Yue, Life Meter is a collection of comics and cartoon art inspired by the artists' collective appreciation and love of video games. The site manages to show off a diverse range of art styles, while maintaining respect for the characters and their game worlds.

And contributors to Life Meter have racked up some pretty impressive recognition. Life Meter contributor Matt Loux's videogame inspired graphic novel, Sidescrollers,
was listed by The American Library Association as one of the Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2008.

You can check out the art gallery or read up on the collection of comics.

(The art piece used in this post is entitled Castelvania by Bill Mudron and is one of many outstand fan works presented in the Life Meter art gallery.)

Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Tetris With A Twist: Retro Sabotage

Retro Sabotage, at first blush, seems to be a collection of mini-versions of classic arcade games like Space Invaders, Pong, Pac-Man or Tetris... but there is more than meets the eye.

Some of the games, like "pong 2.0" are pure parody. Others, like "Compromise", have some very interesting nuggets of gameplay.

They update every Thursday, and if you have a single pixel's worth of gaming nostalgia, or a sense of humor, you'll want to check it it.

8-Bit NES Tribute and the WWE: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together!

I loves me some pro wrestling. I obviously loves me some old-school NES games.

John Cena, a pro wrestler for WWE has combined both in what is the only T-shirt related to pro wrestling I've ever wanted to a)buy and b) wear in public:
OH HELL YES.

At the risk of losing my "wrestling smart internet guy indie cred", I will say that John Cena is one of my favorite wrestlers, and him coming up with a shirt like this is just AWESOME.

And he's not frontin', either! In his very first DVD, he talks about his love of old-school NES games, is wearing a "NO! I don't need a strategy guide" T-Shirt from the webcomic Deisel Sweeties, and he did a freestyle rap for a webmaster who runs an NES video game site that namedrops everything from Excitebike to the Konami Code.

Gamers, we're EVERYWHERE.

Thanks to Nyterayn of PMO for clueing me in!

Have Fun Now, ASCII Me How!

While PC games like Crysis make your video card cry and beg for its motherboard, there is a revival of appreciation for ASCII games rippling its way through the gaming community.

Here are some gems I've found recently:

• ASCII Sector, a remake of the classic Wing Commander Privateer
• The surprisingly action-packed Doom RL;
• Legerdemain (
• And the hardest strategy game ever, Dwarf Fortress (now with a new unofficial tileset and experimental 3-D visualizer that may prevent some eye-bleeding).

Classic, complex Rogue-like RPGs continue to go strong, too.

Those interested in exploring further should peruse this list of the best new releases from ASCII dreams.

A Quit To Go Galga For!

This Galaga quilt from Carolina Patchworks is, according to the etsy listing, it "is fully compatible with the XBox 360, Wii, PlayStation III, all high-definition televisions, most models of fireplace, and a wide variety of good books."

It is also 100% AWESOME.

A Very Weird And Blocky Future: Video Game Nostalgia From Todd Levin

Todd Levin, best known for his monthly comedy reading series, How To Kick People, began a retrospective on the various home video game console systems he has known and loved. From the article:

In 1979, my father brought home a beige-colored box made of industrial plastic. There were a few metal toggles and dials on the face, and a tangle of black electrical cords hanging from it, attached to a pair of smaller plastic boxes outfitted with small, sliding dimmer switches. It looked like something hospitals use to test blood glucose levels, or jump-start a patient’s heart. But, instead of squirting conductive jelly on its two electric paddles, my father hooked the device up to our 13-inch black-and-white television set, gathered up his children, and said, “Here is your new toy.

This looks like a promising series, so you'll want to get in on the ground floor.