Hello! I'm Sasha, aka Sharka. I'm a self-employed freelance writer, trans-f furrified #retrogaming and #Retrocomputing nerd, and amateur VG and popular culture historian and enthusiast from the UK.
Here in my little corner of Mastodon, you'll find me tooting frequently about one of my geeky passions as I love to bring nostalgic joy and cool stuff to peeps!
These passions include #C64, #Amiga and #DOSGaming, #PS1, #PS2, and #Wii, #TTRPGs, #FFXIV, and VG magazines and ads.
From a December 1998 NEWTYPE - a pleasantly blue and swish desktop: A Sony VAIO.
Look how tiny that tower is! Very compact for the time and just as elegant as the other components.
From what I gather, it was mainly aimed at photo and video editing and packs some beefy specs for the time.
I managed to find the manual on the Sony website so can see the specs:
Pentium II 400mhz
64MB RAM
11.9GB HDD
8MB Matrox 200 AGP
Not bad! No idea about the pricing, but it's bound not to be cheap.
On a galactic patrol today with Palace Software's Rimrunner from 1988.
Cool little Defender-ish game and one of my C64 faves. Ride left to right and keep the generators charged while fending off waves of arachnids!
Haven't yet completed the first stage, but I'm having fun trying ;o;
A new issue of our retro gaming and media 'zine, Between the Scanlines, has rolled out onto digital shelves! A bit of a bumper one as we celebrate the Dreamcast's USA launch, examine a Metroid CYOA, and take a look at the work and history of an unsung Amiga artist!
https://betweenthescanlines.itch.io/issue-twenty
#Amiga #retrogaming #retrocomputing #videogames #gaming #dreamcast #metroid
This is neat to see in NEWTYPE's December 1998 issue - The Dreamcast is here!
Some cool deets and hopes for the future that I've Google Lens'd. Will the Dreamcast bring back the interactive movie? And how will it change gaming, asks NewType.
#Retrogaming #console #dreamcast #90s #newtype #japan #gaming #videogames
@Tama23 Ah, I've never got anywhere close to finishing. Definitely is!
Hello, Paradroid! It's been a while a while.
I've never gotten far on this, but it's still fun to float about and seeing how long you can last taking over robots.
Good afternoon, Fediverse! And today I bring you... Visions of the (Micro)Computer Revolution circa 1983-1984.
A friend kindly sent an unearthed-from-the-loft box of vintage early 80s computer mags a few weeks back. They're a treasure trove of microcomputers are here excitement and cool of-the-time imagery, least of all their covers.
#retrocomputing #tech #technology #80s #retrotech #microcomputer
well that wasn't too difficult
it's not very good at printing graphics though
@darkwitchclaire Riiight, yeah, and the compact version's towers are slimmer and helpfully have 'Compact' on them. ;o; Should have double-checked; I appreciate the correction.
All I can say is... *drool* 🥵
This is the XVI HD version of the X68000 released in 1992, armed with twin 5.25" floppy drives and a 16mhz processor. This particular version has a hefty 80MB HDD. 1MB of text/graphics VRAM gave it a fair bit of oomph over its Motorola 68000 kin on the video games front, especially with arcade conversions.
An appropriately classy ad.
There was also a 'Compact' version with a slimmer, smaller tower and 3.5" floppy drives, that I initially mistook this for. Appreciation to @darkwitchclaire for spotting that I had!
#sharpx68000 #retrocomputing #retrogaming #90s #tech #technology
"Keeping VLC free and without ads is a no-brainer. I know people focus a lot on that part but, for me, it’s just the way it should be and it’s not difficult for me to keep it like that... Sure, more money would be fun, but most of the people I know who have more money are annoying." -- Jean-Baptiste Kempf
EDIT to add: You can donate at https://www.videolan.org/ in the upper-right hand corner.
https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/kempf-interview-vlc-videolan
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g6cqr/iama_vlc_media_player_developer_ama/
Some additional neat info too from 'ItemShopDX: "Their main engineer, Harris went on to be recruited by Sony and played a part in the development of the Playstation chipset. They were famous for getting imports ahead of everyone else...at a price! Exceptionally nice people, knew them for years."
Here's a little curiosity from CVG May 1991 that turned out to be an interesting rabbit hole with a bigger story behind it than I expected: Modded Super Famicoms from a company called Advance Console Entertainment offering 'Colour Enhanced' Super Famicoms.
What initially caught my eye was the fact that this was a full-page ad prominent in the magazine and not just a classifieds listing for an import consoles store at the back. And then there was all the talk about a bespoke colour enhancement modification that seemed to be promising more than the usual non-b/w region switch mod. So I asked around about it and got some neat context:
"The company was run by two brothers or cousins, Nick & Dimitri, their first store was in an office block shared with Capital Radio & next to a dance studio. They moved to an alley on Carnaby St.Their RGB mod was meant to deliver the same colours as seen in JP zines."
#SNES #retrogaming #retrocomputing #gamedev #tech #technology #hacking
A new issue of our 'zine, Between the Scanlines, has rolled out to digital shelves and kind Patreon supporters.
This time around, we've cast our eye over Amiga raytracing, Artdink on PSX, and my partner Kit waxes nostalgic about a popular Polish PC mag: CDAction.
https://betweenthescanlines.itch.io/issue-nineteen
#Retrogaming #Retrocomputing #Amiga #CDAction #PCGaming #PS1 #PSX
A wee bundle of classic UK games magazines has arrived today to join our library, including one of @yesterzine's weekly buys of the past, Games-X.
Some neat reviews and features! And at least one 73% from Amiga Action.
#Retrogaming #retrocomputing #amiga #c64 #zxpectrum #AtariST #amstradcpc
@yesterzine Someone wrote down add bugs for adding thargoids back nto the game and it got misinterpreted. ;o;
The N64's last UK games are hitting shelves, but there's no Gamecube for another 8 months. Quite the problem if, like N64 magazine, you cover Nintendo consoles only. Will a hurried name change help the newly labelled NGC magazine and will they realise there's another format they could cover?
Elsewhere, why did the Cube launch in Japan at literally the worst possible time, do the 3 launch games measure up and which old enemy is on hand to bail Nintendo out?
@hamburglar26 Aha, it's easily done. I did the same earlier while tinkering around with Frontier.
VGA Visions of a terraformed Mars in the 33rd century - and a pair of pursuit fighters on the tail of an Imperial spy.
📺: Frontier: Elite II, David Braben/Gametek/Chris Sawyer (who fixed a LOT of Braben's bugs for the DOS release), 1993
#DOSGaming #Frontier2 #Elite #DOS #Retrogaming #retrocomputing
