Edge of Disgrace

Terry Jan 27, 2009 0 Comments

Spotted on the GDR: Edge of Disgrace is an incredible C64 Demo, especially given the machine’s technical limitations (basically; no more than 8 sprites on screen at once, a very limited CPU, only 64kb of memory, only 16 colours). This was made last year. It delights me to know that there’s still a C64 scene and that there are still things like this being made 🙂

(You can download the disk image here.)

(Another thing for my endless to do list: finally get around to learning C64 ASM and make a C64 game!)

Also wonderful: Deus Ex Machina.

Reformat the Planet

Terry Aug 21, 2008 0 Comments

I saw this on TIGSource – a documentary on chiptune music, the New York scene in particular. It’s well worth watching if you have an hour or so to spare.

Here’s the catch – if you want to watch it, you need to watch it TODAY. Like, right now. For some reason they’re taking it away after that 😥 Check it out here while you still can!

I really like the documentary’s central idea – that Chiptune is to Electronica as Punk is to Rock – in other words, it’s what happens when you strip away all the fat from something complicated and you’re left with the core concept. Same could be said about a lot of indie game development.

FREEDOM

Terry Jun 30, 2008 3 Comments

Swimfail, and the Major Arcana Soundtrack

Terry Apr 15, 2008 2 Comments

Josiah Tobin‘s posting again, and he has something of an announcement. He’s selling his “Self-Centered Tales From The Project That Failed” album for $10 CAD on his site.

You can download it for free if you want, but do support him if you can, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it 🙂 If you haven’t heard it yet, here’s a sample (and one of my favourite tracks from the album):

Greyhound:

This seems like a good opportunity to post about something that’s long overdue – in February of last year Josiah composed the soundtrack to my tarot card inspired RPG Major Arcana. I never managed to release much more than a very basic demo, and at this point the project is well and truly on the long finger. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever return to working on Major Arcana, but it’s about time people heard its excellent soundtrack!

I guess I’m a little biased, but I think it’s awesome – especially considering that most of it was created in less than two weeks. I still have the tracks on my MP3 player to this day to listen to from time to time.

You can download all seven tracks in one 30Mb zip file here, or alternatively listen to them streaming on this page!

Hiding From the Clouds: (Download, 3Mb)

Vol (Original): (Download, 5.3Mb)

Vol (Battle Theme): (Download, 2.9Mb)

(This is the same song as before, sped up and used as a battle theme in the demo.)

Callous: (Download, 5.6Mb)

Valley: (Download, 3Mb)

Trappers: (Download, 3.6Mb)

Paper: (Download, 3.2Mb)

Peril: (Download, 3.8Mb)

Jigsaw Falling into Place

Terry Jan 20, 2008 2 Comments

I’ve got a real update coming later on, but for now, just thought I’d share this – it’s the video from Radiohead’s new single, Jigsaw Falling Into Place. The band members have attached cameras pointing at their faces to bicycle helmets. The result is quite trippy…

This tendency to experiment is why Radiohead are probably my all time favourite band (this, and their music, of course 🙂 ). I didn’t really take to In Rainbows though – it sounded a lot like Thom Yorke’s solo album, which I didn’t really care for. I should probably give it another shot.

Only one of us can survive!

Terry Nov 18, 2007 3 Comments

Saw this on reddit this morning and thought it was pretty funny 🙂 Well, it appeals to my particular sense of humour anyway, heh.

It’s big picture though, so I’ve broken it up – hit the link to see the full thing. Only reference I could find to the author was in the email address in the first frame.

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The internet is awesome, Take 2

Terry Nov 4, 2007 0 Comments

I came across this excellent take on the Wizball theme the other day after watching a video of the remake, and it’s brilliant! So I went looking for more YouTube guitarist’s takes on C64 songs…

I was hoping to find a lot more, but unfortunately a lot of my searches turned up blank. Seems there aren’t nearly as many C64 covers as there are Final Fantasy covers, but I did find a few…

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Knytt Stories

Terry Aug 29, 2007 4 Comments

If you read the various indie gaming blogs, I’m sure you’ve heard the news already: “Within a Deep Forest” creator Nifflas has finally released his long awaited atmosphere-em-up Knytt Stories.

The poor game’s had to endure a hell of a lot of hype – in part, just from being the sequel to the excellent Knytt – but mostly from all the interviews, the previews, the hundreds of people who seem to have got their hands on the pre-release version – all of which seem to have come back ecstatic about new game.

It wouldn’t be easy for any game to live up to all that. And yet, it does. Knytt Stories is fantastic.

First of all, Knytt Stories is not just a game. It is nine games – and no doubt in a few weeks, it’ll be dozens more. Rather than just make a straight sequel, Nifflas has instead opted to make an engine, a good level editor, and a couple of small and very distinct mini-levels. The release pack contains one level, and there are eight more on his site (which includes four “third party” levels).

All the levels are good, but my favourite has to be “An underwater adventure”, which returns to the last level from “Within a deep forest” and is the most game like of the lot.

Wanna see it in action? Tim’s put up a video of the “Strange Dream” level on youtube:

This is NotKnytt. It’s way better. In fact, it’s so good, I’m giving it a place on that all exclusive list 🙂

The internet is awesome

Terry Jun 23, 2007 7 Comments

It looks like embedded YouTube players stop working if there are too many of them on one page. If the music stops playing, just refreshing the page seems to get them working again!

Right now, somewhere in the world, somebody is working on a rock cover of a Final Fantasy song and uploading it to YouTube. Or at least, I can only assume. After all, it turns out there are about a hundred thousand of them.

So! Here are my favourites!

I was going to post four or five, but I kept finding more that I liked, got a bit carried away, and actually posted about twenty videos, heh. Well, that happens when you discover something awesome.

The first two are probably my favourites – first up, this Joseph Dennis guy. Instead of a plain FFVI battle theme cover, he totally goes his own way with it:

Then there’s this great acoustic cover of “Forever Rachel”, again from Final Fantasy VI. Just maybe the most underrated song in the series, I think.

There are quite a few more, so hit the button to see the rest!

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Thumb Candy

Terry Jun 17, 2007 3 Comments

Wow, a record two posts in one day!

A couple of years ago I caught the end of a really fantastic TV documentary by Iain Lee, the guy who did “The 11 ‘O Clock Show” on Channel 4. It’s called Thumb Candy.

Well, this evening I thought to search for it. And it’s on google video. Hurrah!

The show follows Iain as he meets some of the people who were involved in the evolution of videogames, and includes interviews with the reclusive creator of Manic Miner Matthew Smith, with Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov, and some more familar names like Shigeru Miyamoto.

If you’ve got an hour to spare, I recommend getting comfortable and sitting down to watch it. (You can even blow it up full screen if you follow the link in the embedded video.)

[The google video is now gone, but the show’s still on YouTube, in several parts. It doesn’t look like it’s going to reappear on google video anytime soon, so I’ve just linked to the first part.]