One commonality between Mastodon, Threads and Bluesky seems to be people grumbling that they don’t immediately get their big Twitter followings back. Did everyone forget how long those things took to build? And how much time they invested in doing so?
#DailyRetroGame 207: Dig Dug (1982)
Freeing itself from the rigidity of Pac-Man’s preset mazes, Dig Dug had you dig your own paths as you sought to eradicate underground monsters. They’d float through the ground as disembodied eyes. But when solid again, you could squash them with rocks or unsportingly inflate them until they burst. Nasty. Still a great game today – and to my mind the best Quarter Arcade mini-cab too.
Play it on: #arcade
Gameplay: https://youtu.be/zOuLiKwHciw?si=BprGPl3gZ_nCX26p
#retrogaming
Rewatching the Google event and recently watching a Microsoft event and the Apple event… they all sound the same. I’m not talking about products. It’s same way of speaking. That slightly robotic pace. Identical inflections. It all looks modelled on Jobs-era keynotes but too often these things now lack character. They certainly lack any real sense of individuality – ironic, given that the number of people on stage at these events continues to grow.
@210de87f “I first saw them 26 years ago, at the Barbican performance of KLF’s Fuck the Millennium – a gig which lasted (if I remember) 24 minutes”
Blimey! Before we met, but I was there too. I couldn’t get anyone to go with me so ended up there on my own. I recall the gig starting very close to 24 minutes late and for a time wondered if the whole thing was a prank. I also recall having a swag bag thrust into my hand as I left, the value of which matched the ticket price.
@a0b872c9 I think it’s more that some drivers think themselves so amazing that they genuinely don’t believe THEY will ever be in that position.
We have roads in town that went from 30 to 20 because they were rat runs. Certain drivers were fucking furious about this and said they could safely drive at 50+ (and should be able to). That’s the kind of person I’m talking about.
@a0b872c9 But even that argument won’t do anything. We had the same thing in my town. Roads parallel to the high street were cut to 20. Motorists got very noisy. Since then, Tories in that ward have done far better in LEs, while drivers claim things are now far more dangerous because, apparently, everyone now has to drive while looking at their dashboards. The whole thing is insane.
In 2012, I fell ill. Abrupt dizziness. It took a while to realise it had been triggered by OS X animations. iOS 7 was worse. I couldn’t use my phone. Ten years ago today, my piece ‘Why iOS 7 is making some users sick’ was published in The Guardian, kicking off years of fighting for better vestibular accessibility in apps.
I wrote a piece about all this here: https://reverttosaved.com/2023/09/27/apple-reduce-motion-and-the-battle-for-vestibular-accessibility/
#DailyRetroGame 202: Dandy (1983)
The inspiration for Gauntlet, Dandy shared many gameplay elements with the more famous title, having you fight through mazes packed with doors, keys, monsters and generators. Unlike Gauntlet, powerful monsters ‘devolved’ as you shot them in Dandy and the game had a level editor. Oddly, Electric Dreams licensed Dandy for UK home micros, but the ports bore almost no relation to the original.
Play it on: #Atari800
Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT8grHJweO4
#retrogaming
#DailyRetroGame 201: Miner 2049er (1982)
Creator Bill Hogue told me this early platformer arrived from “wanting to blend together fun elements from many different arcade games” he enjoyed. Aspects from Donkey Kong and Pac-Man combined to create something fresh; but Hogue also added unique features within his game’s levels that affected gameplay and forced you to create new strategies. Top stuff – as is sequel Bounty Bob.
Play it on: #Atari8Bit
Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWszRjD_pY8
#retrogaming
On that Guardian piece, I see the “I went to a non-uniform school and children were bullied for what they wore” mob rocked up. I went to a secondary *with* a uniform policy. Guess what? Bullying was rife there too. And *still* about garments and accessories. Your coat. The shoes you wore. The trainers you had in PE. The bag you had, how tatty it was and whether it had a brand. It’s a bullying culture problem, not a uniform/non-uniform one.
@43d7c4ea Two options:
1. We get lucky and Tories crow that they made the right call.
2. We have a bad winter and the Tories hand-wrong and say they did everything they could.
(In either case, those with long covid and also the long-term ramifications of multiple infections will be ignored.)
@a0b872c9 I put him in the same bucket as Dominic Grieve. A good Tory, for a certain value of good. Although I imagine Grieve *did* understand how the EU worked.
@a0b872c9 Although I also clearly recall him backing May’s Brexit and at one time conflating SM and CU. Although he admittedly got better and was one of the better of that bad bunch.
@a0b872c9 It’s extremely likely the hornets now ravaging bee and wasp colonies across the south of England are down to a lack of post-Brexit checks on imports. So it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that they’ll fuck this up to. (And then blame Labour for it.)
@bb1a99d2 Sounds about right. Check out the episode count and dates for Detectorists. That’s very British in its cadence. (Also, despite one or two wobbles, really lovely. Highly recommended if you’ve not seen it.)
@bb1a99d2 It doesn’t help with many US sitcoms that they go on forever. They have big writing teams, but it’s just too much. Like a soap with laughs. We have the other problem in the UK, but at least sometimes you get that swig of rocket fuel. Although even with my favourites, I’m scared to go back and watch. (Might eg Spaced now be awful‽)
@bb1a99d2 Add to that Frasier always being an entitled and stupidly rich prick we are supposed to sympathise with and I can skip it. Not least given the lead’s own worldviews.
@a0b872c9 Glad It’s not in the UK. Although knowing our current shitshow of a government they’ll find some way to import it due to Brexit knocking out countless safeguards.
#DailyRetroGame 193: F-Zero (1990)
No faffing with ‘realism’ here. F-Zero launched you headlong into futuristic races, where you careened along, trying hard to not die. But despite the game’s arcade sensibilities, it punished the slightest of errors. Still, once you mastered the controls and tracks, you felt like a champ. And the lack of weapons – the bane of futuristic racers – meant you’d only yourself to blame for failure.
Play it on: #SNES
Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhz5fH6pT4I
#retrogaming
@03a95182 Too long. Too many numbers. Felt like it was trying too hard. Credit mention made my alarm bells go off. I *hope* Apple is being meaningfully better. But it’d need a pile of journos to do the investigative reporting to get the answers. That sketch was just bloody awful.
The entire event should have been cut down by a third. It was the first in a long, long time tbag felt padded rather than constant dense blasts of yet more info to take in.
Interesting that primarily US journos are today Team Apple Would Have Gone USB-C Anyway, saying the EU had nothing to do with the changes.
Quite possibly. But also possibly not. Personally, I think something had to give re wired transfer on the iPhone Pro. But that’s for a *tiny* user base, so: <shrug>
And in the hmm camp, remember how a company exec initially responded to the legislation: https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/26/23423977/iphone-usb-c-eu-law-joswiak-confirms-compliance-lightning
#DailyRetroGame 189: Wetrix (1998)
This one was like if Populous and Tetris had a baby. You dropped blocks on a map to create mounds, the aim being to hold water that fell from the sky. Lose too much water and it was game over. Naturally, hazards rocked up to ruin your work, including water-freezing ice cubes and smashy earthquakes. Most games that tried to evolve Tetris were a damp squib. This one made a splash.
Play it on: #N64, #Dreamcast
Overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pKLJWQXvas
#retrogaming
@544f4f05@6fce6863@43d7c4ea Lexit was always a baffling project led by deluded people aiming to fool those without the time and inclination to look into basic facts. The main arguments appeared to be eradicating FOM would be beneficial (ignoring knock-on effect of leaving SM) and that EU standards weren’t good enough, despite being minimums. (Similar energy in unions – fortunately a diminishing number – that support FPTP.)
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