This tweet reminded me that Retrograde had great loading music.
I don’t think I’ve ever listened to the whole tune and the odd stops are jarring but it’s worth it. Steve Rowlands was a master on the C64.
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Did E.T. come to Ireland?
I don’t remember E.T. making a big impression on my life in 1982. I never saw the movie back then, and a couple of years ago watched half of it before falling asleep in front of the telly. I guess you had to be there when it was first released?
Ireland in the 1980s was a country in recession. I certainly knew nobody with a 2600 console so we were spared the abomination that was the official game of the movie. While we had some sort of Pong clone in the early ’80s we moved away to “proper” computers like the Speccy and C64 after that.
Nonetheless, it was an important game. It helped bring about the collapse of Atari and the video game market in the US!
99% Invisible just featured an episode by podcast Sidedoor about E.T. The Videogame and it’s enthralling. You can hear all about how bad it was, the story of it’s development from game developer Howard Scott Warshaw, and finally to his reaction that people are still obsessed with the game all these years later.
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Opt-Out of all the spam!
I’ve been getting a ton of CBD expo spam for months. Spamassassin picks up most of it, and Gmail collects the rest in the Spam folder.
However, today one got through so I scrolled down to the unsub link and saw it was sendgrid. I recognise them from previously reporting spam. I have no idea if it made a difference but I like to think it did.
So, despite the prevailing advice that you don’t unsubscribe from spam I clicked unsubscribe. I opted-out of that email, and then I saw the greyed out “View Opt Out Preferences” button.
That’s not exactly the friendliest thing to do, making it look like it isn’t active but I clicked on it and discovered a treasure trove!
This spammer has been busy, but Sendgrid allows you to unsubscribe from them all in one click.
“But Donncha, now the spammer knows your email is real!”
Yeah, it’s been inundated with spam for years already. I’m planning on shutting it down sooner or later anyway because I’ve moved most of my logins to service specific email aliases for easy tracking of spam sources. It’s paid off a couple of times too.
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RIP Marian Finucane
Veteran Irish broadcaster, Marian Finucane died suddenly this morning. She was only 69.
I rarely listened to her during the week but I did catch her sometimes on her weekend show in the last few years.
Time marches ever on but with the passing of Gaybo, Niall Toibin, and now Marian Ireland is saying goodbye to voices and faces that generations knew well.
There are still podcasts of her show on the RTÉ website but you’ll have to go back to the start of December as Brendan O’Connor presented the show for the last few weeks.
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Plex adds free movies and tv streaming
I don’t think it’s going to rival Netflix but I just got an email from Plex saying they’re now offering free streaming of movies, tv shows, music shows and documentaries.
I had a quick look and the selection was small, and with not many movies there that I’d recognise. Playback is advert supported so hopefully they’ll do well. This engadget article says,
only about one-third the amount of ads you’d expect on cable television” and that while some movies and TV shows will be geo-restricted, the “vast majority” of content will be available worldwide
You can still serve your own collection of media through Plex and I’m not too gone on the selection of movies I saw but hopefully it’ll improve with time.
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Creeper World 3 – Fortress Siege
This game is ridiculous. I love it. If you’re a fan of tower defense games you’ll love this real time strategy game. Wikipedia describes it as a,
mix of real-time strategy and tower defense, where there is only one enemy and it can only be repelled rather than destroyed. The player must hold back a purple mass called the “Creeper”, which has already destroyed most of humanity and is now attacking Odin City, humanity’s last bastion. This is done by placing towers onto the battlefield which shoot at the Creeper. The main goal of the game is to connect the player’s base to energy totems through the use of energy collectors and relays; doing so opens a jump gate which allows Odin City to teleport to a new planet and attempt to escape the Creeper again.
Steam says I’ve played close to 100 hours in the game, many of those hours in frustration or getting overwhelmed before figuring out how to defeat a level.
It’s like tower defense except that the enemy is a liquid that comes at you from all directions so you have to build towers to protect your assets everywhere. I find most levels have an initial “OMG Moment” at the start where it all seems too much, but by building up your batteries, and your towers you’ll soon be fighting back.
Sometimes it’s a slog, and the last level I just played is one such map. Fortress Siege by Blaze in the Alpha Sector is one to leave until you’ve had plenty of practice. 4 emitters spew out vast amounts of creeper. It’s hard enough just keeping it back but advancing is on another level of difficulty altogether!
I did eventually defeat the map and once one of the emitters fell it was plain sailing. I earned two achievements playing this one:
- Build 25 shields in a mission.
- Build 25 Berthas in a mission.
Maybe a little excessive, but I swear they were needed! For a taste of what it’s like have a look at this video.
Disappointingly only one of my friends on Steam has the game. Check out the reviews on Steam. Recent reviews are “very positive” while all reviews are “overwhelmingly positive”.
Creeper World 4 is on the way too, but there’s no release date for it. It’ll be done when it’s done to paraphrase the developer but I’m looking forward to it already. It looks great!
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RIP Niall Tóibín
Another giant of Irish entertainment and theatre has passed away. Niall Tóibín died today at the age of 89, only a week shy of his 90th birthday party.
Thanks Damien for the longer video and for linking to this article on the Examiner website.
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Retro Asylum on Stunt Car Racer
The guys on the Retro Asylum podcast played Stunt Car Racer this month. That game is one of my favourites. A wild roller coaster of a game where you literally drive a car around a roller coaster.
I played the C64 version for hours on end and listening to them prompted me to set up FS-UAE again as I wanted to try out the Amiga version once more. I think I’ve only ever played that version in emulation as I didn’t have the game when I had an Amiga 500.
Anyway, FS-UAE is a great emulator based on the Winuae Amiga emulator. It uses openretro.org for database files including graphics and game information which is really helpful. It’s sort of an Amiga version of Gamebase64! Here’s a video describing how to set it up. I’ll leave it up to you to find the games and everything else but it’s not hard to find them.
Stunt Car Racer is an amazing game, and in my opinion still holds up today as a decent game. Sure, the graphics are simplistic, sound is limited but what is there is superbly polished.
The Amiga and Atari ST versions even had simultaneous multiplayer which I sadly never experienced but I’d love to know if FS-UAE could handle using some sort of virtual null modem cable to connect emulators on two machines together. It does emulate the Amiga serial port so there might be hope for the future. I found this thread about Winuae but people there didn’t have much luck.
So, what does Stunt Car Racer look like? Here’s someone who doesn’t know how to play it but he’s very entertaining and he learns as he goes..
The game is set on a roller coaster. Timing and speed are everything. You have to hit ramps at the right speed to jump gaps, and failing to line up a turn or a jump in time would result in a crash.
Here’s a much better driver, including the TNT version which I haven’t played yet but looks hard as nails!
[1] This game was created by AmiGer/CARE (http://www.discreetfx.com/care/) by modifying the original game Stunt Car Racer. The TNT of the title stands for “The New Tracks”. A track designer was written in Delphi and used to create 8 new tracks to race. The title screen and menu screen have been modified, as well as the colour palette. [2] The disk version has the track colours incorrect in the track preview window – they retain the reds from the original. The WHDLoad version fixes this problem. [3] 2-player mode via null-modem connection.
This is one of the few games I play exclusively with the keyboard. Start a race and press “p” to pause, then f1 to redefine the keys. I usually use , . t g [space] and then press o to unpause.
Stunt Car Racer appeared on multiple platforms: Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Speccy, and Amstrad machines all had versions. Here’s a video comparing them. It’s amazing what Geoff Crammond and porting teams did back then!
Earlier this year, (2019 for those coming across this post in the future), the game was ported to the BBC Master and it flies along!
That looks way smoother and faster than the C64 version!
There is a sort-of modern remake. The game Assetto Corsa features the first track!
Stunt Car Racer is an amazing racing game. Track down the Amiga version, fire up Winuae or FS-UAE and give it a whirl. You’ll love it!
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RIP Gay Byrne
Like most Irish people my age and older I was shocked to hear about the death of Gay Byrne today. He was ever present in Irish daily life as he presented a daily radio show and a talk show on Friday evenings.
If you’re not yet 40 or not familiar with Gaybo because you haven’t lived here, @PantiBliss explained how big an influence he had on Ireland in this tweet.
The #RIPGaybo hashtag on Twitter and in part Irish Twitter is a place of mourning today.
If you watched Stephen Fry on God then you’ve watched Gay in action. Over 8m people have watched this video!
Stephen himself tweeted today about Gay, with this message sent to one of our national radio stations:
RTÉ published this post about Gay featuring lots of the “finest moments” from the Late Late Show. I couldn’t watch many of them for some reason but maybe you can. They don’t load in Firefox for me, even when I try to load them directly. I do remember Boyzone’s first public appearance on the Late Late. Can’t believe that was in 1993!
Every December The Late Late Show has a toy show episode. Here’s one with Zig & Zag & Dustin from 1992. I have to admit I never saw this clip but it made me laugh!
RIP Gay.
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Solar Jetman on the C64
This is a game I’d forgotten about until recently when I saw someone playing it on Twitch. Solar Jetman came out on the NES in 1991, and conversions were made for the C64, Speccy, Amiga and Atari ST. Unfortunately due to poor sales of the NES original the conversions were never released.
Luckily the team at Games That Weren’t were contacted by Martin Holland, someone who knew about the game’s development.
GTW got to work and began to search for this elusive conversion, and started with Haydn Dalton, who sadly could not find anything of the game after some searching. Two years later, and a month or two after the site relaunch, efforts were made to find the game’s programmer, John Buckley as a last ditch effort. After tracing John down to PlaypoolUK, GTW got the news it dreaded.. John hadn’t got any of his old disks no longer…
GTW
But a week or two after almost giving up hope of finding the game, Haydn Dalton was one day searching through some things at home, when he stumbled upon a disk with the label missing. The label was in there too, and stated “Solar Jetman Disk 1”, and after a bit more digging, Haydn found the second disk.
It’s a fascinating story of digital archaeology and the game now be found in various places including the Solar Jetman page on GTW! You can play the original version on archive.org, but Triad released an excellent version that packed the game into one disk side, and trained it too.
The game itself is like Thrust or Lunar Lander, but it came later and is much better than both! Controls are easier and enemies are more varied so if you liked those games you need to try Solar Jetman.
The conversion is missing a few things present in the NES version, and apparently the maps are a little cut down from the original. I need to download the NES version and give it a spin too!
What do you see when the game ends? Vinny has the answer and posted it on the (old) C64 Game Endings site here.
I discovered an interview with John Buckley, the developer who worked on the C64 version.
What were your first and last ever productions on the C64?
The first thing I did on the C64 was called Jeep Command. I did this in my spare time including the graphics and sound FX. If you have seen it, you will know I ain’t no artist! I sent it off to Bug Byte I think, and they put some music on it and shipped it out. The last thing I did was Solar Jetman, which never got released… until now.Out of all the games you have worked on, which were you most proud and disappointed with?
Interview with John Buckley on C64.com
I can’t say I am disappointed with anything I worked on. Most of them were conversions, some I wish I hadn’t of worked on but such is life. I liked working on Solar Jetman on the C64 but overall I am most proud of PLOK on the SNES.
