Watching this made me think back when the local video rental had a #NES area and I was lucky enough to actually have a #NES computer and was able to test a lot of games.

This gave me so many flashbacks in nostalgia ..

https://9gag.com/gag/aQzOgbW

#Games #ComputerGames #OldTimes #BackInYor

History rhymes

The more things change, the more things stay the same. I don’t subscribe to the idea of history repeating itself. Instead, it rhymes. Certain kind of events keep happening generationally, and the whole hundred years cycle seems to have a point to it. That’s enough generations to go through some hardship, who has children seeing what happens, who can’t really get it through with the next generation, and then we lose the point of connection with people and events. Rarely people look at history and learn from it. School teaches as about history, and that’s where we usually stop. That’s good enough. However, politicians and businessmen should learn from history. That changes the game drastically. Resorting to the way of thinking technological and social advancements somehow refute or disvalue the past successes and mistakes.

Things change constantly even if we don’t notice it ourselves. A lot of things don’t matter to us, and we’re lulled that the world is an unchanging place to a certain extent. Take Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an example. After the Berlin Wall and Soviet Union fell, that was seen as a certain point where history ended. The Western World would include Russia, as it was seen the democratic change in the country would make all things better. It was a march for all things good. This didn’t happen. A nation and culture going through a shock treatment of sorts, freeing industries and economy from the socialist stranglehold into Russian version of capitalism, but Yeltsin’s government didn’t implement rules and regulations that would direct the change. Instead, the oligarchs would sweep government issued vouchers (that could’ve been traded for shares of a company, deposited in mutual funds, sold or exchanged) from people who didn’t know investing and owning stocks worked, privatizing Russia’s industries to a large extend under their own names. Not that the government could’ve done much to prevent this, they didn’t have the resources or the knowhow.

Fast-forward to 1998 when the Russian government went through a financial meltdown partly how to oligarchs kept fighting with each other. Russia never had a chance with democracy or proper capitalism. The change was too fast and unregulated, letting people who knew how to game the system take advantage of others and thus screwing up the whole pot for everyone. With Putin in the big seat after Yeltsin, the New Millennium saw oligarchs being chased out of Russia, or killed, as a class. His autocracy and direction promised Russian people better living. Under Putin, Russia is a democracy in name only. His long-term leadership has the long cultural aftertaste of the tzars, and in recent years it has gained the poisonous tinge of leader worship in fashion of Stalin.

Despite the recent history of Russia, and the 2014 Annexation of Crimea, Western powers believed Russia to be a benevolent power that was going toward good for all through hard patches. Especially European powers believed there’d be no large-scale war in Europe anymore, but here we now are. Europe’s defences are largely scuffed, major centre powers were reliant on Russian gas for energy while downsizing their nuclear power, and then the Middle East powder keg began to shake again. People know about the history Russian and Middle East history, but only a few would’ve voiced out loud how we’re going to see the shit hitting the fan. We live through history every day. If you look under the crust of it all, we always live in interesting times. Not necessarily directly related to us in any manner, but the psychohistorical forces are working onwards each day. Some work hard to be on the right side of history, but in the moment of things taking place, there is no right or wrong side. That’s for the future generations to decide with (hopefully) better hindsight. They could be completely screwed by the historians interpreting events and people wrong, politicians intentionally changing the story to fit certain narratives to make them and the people feel better.

The whole SARS-Covid-19 Pandemic is an example where this happens. The amount of first-hand anecdotes historians will have to go through in the future is immense thanks to the social media. Then you have all the cases where politicians and the mainstream mass media told the people you wouldn’t get the virus if you were vaccinated. Of course, that’s not how vaccines work; they give you better resistance, but you’ll still catch the virus and can spread it around. Suspicions about the vaccines themselves were raised, seeing they didn’t go through any of the long-term testing other vaccines had to go through. No governing body was ready for the pandemic, and now that we’re at a point where its endemic, the global response was lacklustre.

The idea of global pandemic had been something that belonged in the realms of fiction. Very few people were alive, who had gone through the Spanish Flu, or the Great Influenza Epidemic. We know about it, but no government had anyone who had learned from it. There were no protocols to rely on, no people who had expert knowledge on what to do or how to enact whatever policies. People just did what they thought was the best, with some taking the advantage of the situation, as usual.

How does this reflect on the general motif of the blog? Entertainment doesn’t really change, it reflects the times and cultures it is created in. A parody of the ruling class made in the Ancient Greece has the same pushing power as the modern late-night comedy show dissing whomever is the in the Big Chair. Games naturally are there to offer friendly competition.

Video and computer games are still a relatively young media, but it has already seen a generational change once or twice. Much like how some people can’t stand black-and-white movies or read books that have old-fashioned language, there is a generation that can barely tolerate games that don’t have polygons. First and Second Generation of consoles are outright dismissed as unplayable junk. Quality of life is a must for everything to streamline the experience, which in some cases means cutting out part of the play. I’m looking at you, Monster Hunter.

The US Video Game Crash of 1983 has been exaggerated (mainly by US video game historians) as it had no real effect on the European or Asian markets, where consumers were buying different kind of machines. Often flooding the market with lousy games and rising interest in personal computers are cited as the main reasons why the Crash took place, but rarely the core reasons are pin pointed. The one point I want to put a pin on is how all the suits pushing for more games at a lower quality weren’t players themselves. They understood making money on video games in then-current paradigm, but not how to sustain the market properly. When you’re looking at the numbers, you often forget the people. You may understand what sells, but not why it sells or how to evolve the market. That only leads to weakened state, where you’re open for competition to disturb the market with a new product. In Nintendo’s case, kick the market back into action in the US, while staying in the second place in European markets.

Currently, the major console manufacturers are in a similar position, where they’re running on investor fumes and chasing an unchanging market. Nintendo must rely on their souped-up handheld now to carry them all the while Sony’s porting all their possible system sellers to other platforms and Microsoft has all but waved a white flag on the console business. A competitor could come from the woodworks and offer a home console at an affordable price with attractive exclusive titles, the lifeblood of console gaming. Electronic gaming is so safe nowadays, nobody is taking risks or chancing to kick the industry into a new curve that might excite customers. None of the Three Big Ones have leadership that understands their customers or play games themselves. At its core, the ’83 American Video Game Crash was because of corporate complacency and unwillingness to have customer-driven approach. Then again, both Microsoft and Sony seem to be bending out of the race

Gaming won’t crash a second time, however. Much like how computer gaming got its rise during the Crash in the US (in Europe, micro-computers were already trending over US consoles, with Sega later upping the stage by offering a cheaper and more accessible alternative than its supposed main competitor, Nintendo), modern gaming is rhyming with the small single-developed computer games of the era.

More than a handful of remarkable games were developed by a small team of enthusiastic people working toward their dream. Ultima and Wizardry, the mainstay examples were developed by what’d be called now as indies. Even if the console market crashed, PC gaming kicked off to a whole new start, leading to multiple manufacturers to compete with their own hardware. Atari’s consoles may have been a footnote in the European market on the grand scale, but the Atari’s computers’ rivalry against the Commodore Amiga had its own system war worth talking about one of these days.

The interest in indies hasn’t vaned since the term was coined sometime in the ‘00s. Just the contrary, indies have become the place where people are able to find far more interesting and daring games that big companies aren’t willing to entertain a thought of. Hence, quite many voices says the most interesting games are now found in the indies-sphere. Some claim to have abandoned Triple A games altogether in favour of indie titles. Not just because they’re more interesting, but also because they’re cheaper and often better optimized.

History rhymes in gaming. I’ve seen a steady rise of want for games that are distilled play. People who played one game for hundreds of hours are now looking for games that are shorter and meatier. People want games that have the arcade spirit, games you can get quickly in, have dense play, and you can get quickly out. Life changes. As a kid or a teenager, you’ve got all the time to walk around in a RPG that’s mostly walking around, a hot-air game. After you start getting responsibilities, work starts to take time, kids roll around, and suddenly you find yourself an adult, games fall behind in priority. That’s only natural, but you can’t really let go of a loved hobby. So, games that pack a punch become more valuable. Mega Man 11 was a great entry, because it wasn’t a hot-air game. It was all play, like Classic Mega Man should be. Arcades as a place may have gone the way of the dodo, but the need for games that have the same function has never gone away.

There is a market for console gaming. Sega’s and Nintendo’s mini-consoles sold out fast, necessitating additional production runs. Sony’s mini-PlayStation lingered on the shelves a bit longer, mostly due to the bad choices in its design and game selection. The current state of console gaming is waiting for some company to disrupt it. I know there are Sega diehards who would like see their return to the home-hardware business, but Sega has largely been a Red Ocean company when it came to consoles. One of the reasons why they had lacklustre success in Japan compared to US and Europe, which the Sega of Japan heads didn’t really understand. Sega’s innovation in the arcades never really translated into innovation with consoles, even when they had the best D-Pad in the industry up until the Dreamcast. Apple probably won’t try consoles again thanks to the failure of the Pippin. Google showing how big money can’t really net you a workable console either, especially when you’re tying it into something crippling like cloud service.

Console gaming fails when the companies behind the consoles are failing to deliver. Nowadays, all the consoles are dumbed-down PCs, Xboxes the most. When all systems share the same library, none of them is unique. Nintendo still has an edge in this regard, but even exclusives will carry them only so far. New physical game carts that function as keys to game downloads and customers not even owning their consoles according to their TOS are all steps toward the customer not owning their hardware and software anymore. At some point, anti-consumer antics will come home to roost and then there’s hell to pay. I keep saying exclusives matter with consoles, but at some point the scales will tip to the opposite direction and only sycophants will pay for lesser value hardware and software. History will rhyme at some point, and if console companies don’t realize it, someone else will be taking the top spot. Big things happen and change will take place in your lifetime. It’s just a matter of time. The harmony of things will get disrupted.

#computerGames #design #electronicGames #games #gaming #microsoft #Nintendo #sega #Sony #videoGames #videogames

Woran merkt man, daß man alt wird?
"Where in the world is Carmen Santiego" wird dieses Jahr 40...

A sure sign of getting old?
'Where in the world is Carmen Santiego' is 40 this year...

#ComputerGames

I'm so freaking happy that #Windows11 has become so bloated to fail at gaming against #SteamOS, and fail at everything else against #macOS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWs5qwZKDhA

#Dave2D video title is goated:

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJXp3UYj50Q

#Videogames #Gaming #Games #Steam #Valve #Microsoft #MicrosoftHandled #Laptop #Laptops #PCGaming #PC #PCGames #Computer #Computers #ComputerGames #Hardware #Handled #SteamDeck #ROGAlly #LegionGoS

Here's a gem that I just found on the Internet Archive. It's a catalogue for the JOHN SANDS SEGA home computer system, from around 1984: archive.org/details/John... #ComputerHistory #ComputerGames #RetroComputers #RetroGames #Sega #RetroComputing #Australia

Sega 3000 Catalog: John Sands ...

Here's a gem that I just found on the Internet Archive. It's a catalogue for the JOHN SANDS SEGA home computer system, from around 1984: https://archive.org/details/John_Sands_Sega_Home_Computers_1984_John_Sands_Electronics_AU/mode/1up

#ComputerHistory #ComputerGames #RetroComputers #RetroGames #Sega #RetroComputing #Australia

Which retro game fits your personality?

Loom (Lucasarts/Brian Moriarty), Doom (id Software) or .... Boom (Morrie Brianarty/Space Quest X)?

#retrogaming #retrocomputing #Games #ComputerGames

I'm trying to pad out my Mastodon Lists. So if possible, could you all send me your favourite #Videogame #Hockey and #FPL accounts.

The more the merrier.

Also sorry for the hashtags below:

#Gaming #RetroGames #ComputerGames #Soccer #Mastodon #NHL #Football #Sport #Games #HNOM #MastodonFC @hockey #FollowFriday

Civilization – 7 seconds AI

https://wiesmann.codiferes.net/wordpress/archives/41031

#4xGame #AI #Civilization #ComputerGames #TBSGame

Does anyone remember an early computer card game where, when closing out of the game, a monkey pops up and says, "Why monkey eat so many tacos? Stupid, stupid monkey!"
#computergames #videogames #dos

BBC Archive: "IMAGINE SOFTWARE: Dawn of the Rock Star Coder?"

https://youtu.be/3aV5Pfj7_20

#ComputerGames #VideoGames #Games #1980s #Liverpool #Computing

History of Computer Art, HTML versions in English and German with embedded videos: I updated the embed codes (YouTube, Vimeo and dailymotion changed them). Now you can see the videos within the text and go to the videos on the platforms - as it was before.
All versions of the "History of Computer Art": URL: https://iasl.uni-muenchen.de/links/GCA_Indexe.html #ComputerArt #ComputerGames #Animation #ComputerAnimation #ComputerGraphics #reactiveInstallations #Cybernetics #CyberneticSculptures

If you ask me, I have hopes that #HalfLife3 will come with something revolutionary, with a good written story.

The games have been always about technology used in the environment to react to the user. I wonder what will bring the third main installment.

#Videogames #Gaming #Games #Steam #Valve #Source #SourceEngine #Source2 #PC #PCGaming #PCGames #Computer #Computers #Laptop #Laptops #LaptopGaming #ComputerGames

Think I just finished Dakka Squadron: Flyboyz Edition. I beat the Warboss and took over. But then I went into another mission. But it seems like that's it and I was just replaying something?

I got 10h out of it. It's fun orky dakka. VERY arcade-y (literally "you bounce back off stuff when you fly into it" physics!). But I loved the metal music and the orky voice acting 😁

#Warhammer40K #GamesWorkshop #ComputerGames

If you like to read 5,400 words about my hardware history from home computers to computers on my wrist while reminiscing about the 1980s, 1990s, and early gaming consoles including #ColecoVision and #NES, I have you covered:

https://michaelnordmeyer.com/my-computer-history-since-the-1980s

#RetroComputing #ComputerGames #Gaming #Nintendo #Blogging #SmallWeb

https://youtu.be/J3eK_3A7Xpg

#StopKilliingGames #Retro #games #computergames #gaming

Die Aktion läuft noch und kann alles an Unterstützung brauchen was Sie bekommen kann! Die Games zu retten ist nur ein Schritt mit dem wir unsere Verbraucherrechte zurück bekommen können. Es ist ja längst kein Games only Problem mehr das Produkte nicht mehr funktionieren wenn Server abgeschaltet werden oder das man zu Abbos erpresst wird für Dinge die man schon voll bezahlt hat. Widerstand ist nicht sinnlos! 💿 💀

OxenFree II: Lost Signals

https://wiesmann.codiferes.net/wordpress/archives/40923

#ClickAndPointGame #ComputerGames #iOs #Oxenfree #Radio

On the one hand, this account is mostly 1980s futurism already.

On the other hand, I should start a communication and media thread of 1980s futurism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsHYSs_qgmU

#MiSex #ComputerGames #NowPlaying #80sFuturism

With the amount of games available on pc and console we really are living in a golden age of computer games.

If you don't care for the latest games many are really affordable.

#gaming #computergames #grateful