One of the highlights of my year is Play Expo – a weekend away in Blackpool that has a bunch of retro and modern video games. It’s pretty much the same every year: arcade machines as you walk in, trading hall to the left, pinball machines to the right, home consoles towards the back along with the main stage. Play Expo has a familiarity to it, which makes it a must attend every year for me. If only to see the same faces every year.
The traders hall is often a place I go for a wander. Not straight away, as it’s hectic, but towards the middle afternoon on Saturday it dies down a bit and you get to check out the trading hall, have a bit of a chat and just generally have a better buying experience. You feel less pressured as you check through the boxes on the floor (which – as somebody who has dropped 3 stone in the past year – is a lot more easier experience on the knees).
One such place is The Gaming Newsagent – a long time attendee that started as SegaMags, but branched out into all such other magazines. It was in one of these boxes and a bit of time for exploring I found this magazine. St Format issue 70, from May 1995. An immediate buy. When I said immediate, I meant immediate. I never bothered looking through the rest.
So what was so special? This small PD Game on the cover disk, Chain Reaction. A simple addictive game I played so much and stuck with me for a while. Here whas what was written about it.
Chain Reaction from ST Format Issue 70 (image taken from Atari Mania)
If you followed me online for a while, you’d know that this sounds a lot like a game I made. Gone Fission! was inspired by Chain Reaction (and a thousand other PD games, I’ve got an article in my drafts where I talk about all different versions of the game and everything cool that has happened post launch. This is another of those things to add to that post, in a fun coincidence.
Anyway, weird kind of full circle on a side project that dominated this year.
I see that AOL has ended it’s dial-up service after 30 years with barely a whimper. I think the first times I explored the internet was on AOL sometimes in the early 2000s, usually playing Slingo or downloading Quake Maps off a friends internet connection.
It was also the first time I experienced some form of gatekeeping. With AOL being ubiquitous with early internet with it’s easy setup, and the fact it was incompatible with Netscape Navigator, meant that it was always for those who weren’t the most technically literate. Something I – sadly – participated in.
This gatekeeping was reinforced when, during University in 2002, the “Social and Technical Internet” module I studied in my degree included a fascinating few lessons on early internet culture, and things like Eternal September. Further studies meant I really wanted to go back to that time.
Anyway, it’s kind of ironic that the cause of Eternal September died on 1st October.
I miss folks commenting on blog posts really. At my peak I’d post a blog post at home, walk the half a mile from my student digs to university, and then be greeted with 4 or 5 comments. Now? I think I’ve had one comment in the past year. I still don’t stubbornly take the comments off here nor Dwi’n Rhys though, in a vain hope they come back. They won’t. But they may.
But seemingly like half the attendees at LoopConf last week in London (read Tim Nash’s post about his ridiculous schedule from Yorkshire > London > Poland to be at events), I too was inspired by Ana Rodrigues’ talk “Building, Sharing, and Owning Your Online Presence”, who had a number of inspiring slides, including the one I’ve used as the header image (albeit with a terrible photo :-
Personal websites are the perfect playground for experimentation. They afford a space to explore new technologies that might not yet be suitable for professional projects and a safe space to fail.
So consider me inspired, and me testing more things that may fail. I’ve switched on Webmentions using this plugin, and also using Autoblue as well to try and foster some more comments from BlueSky (this post should automatically post there and also automatically pull in replies as comments). It may work. It may be utter rubbish. But we try.
It’s the first strand of things to do. I want to promote this blog to all the things. I want to take this blog back to the 00’s. I want to put 88×31 buttons on. I was bored on Sunday made a few because James Huff on the Post Status Slack wanted a retro button and the ones on the Web Archive were terrible. I want under-construction GIFs. I want to use my new found Aseprite skills to make this blog look a little less like the blog of a 41 year old business owner who renewed his home insurance today, and more of the bloke in his early 20’s who spend his evenings drawing little graphics, installing ridiculously unsafe PHP scripts, and generally having a good life online. Granted less of the PHP scripts, but more moving purposefully and breaking things.
I was happy to see that Homestar Runner, a web toon, celebrated their 25th anniversary of their website going live in their usual style that resonated in the same way it did when I was a student. Surrealist humour with enough satirical nostalgia touchpoints to make a bearded Welshman with high blood pressure smile.
Their content is syndicated on YouTube now, rather than Flash cartoons, but the website is still present, and although it’s output is a lot slower nowadays (cartoons are now at best quarterly), they’re still must watch.
I got into Homestar Runner during university, I’d say my third year – when Yahoo! Music would be my Spotify, and I’d use the University T3 connection to browse the internet, read blogs, moderating the forum of the university’s ten pin bowling team and dip my toes into website building. Wednesday mornings were dedicated to consuming the latest Strong Bad Email. My girlfriend at the time for my 21st birthday got me a Homestar Runner T-shirt. I probably still know all the words to “The Ballad of the Sneak”.
Another blog post about a video game I made, entitled “Frosty’s Snowed Under!”. Should you wish to just play the game rather than read the story behind it please click here.
Recently, I got into making video games. A little hobby for something I wanted to take a bit seriously especially outside the cricket season. One such element I’ve enjoyed has been that game development, either because I’ve a 16 year development career behind me or there are tools out there that makes life a lot easier to put out games. The struggle I had with Blitz Basic at the turn of the millennium doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and I believe that anybody with some creative idea could put out something in one of these tools.
What you are greeted with when you open Pico-8. Note the 8192 in the bottom corner. That is your limit.
One such tool is the Pico 8. It is a fantasy console that imposes limitations on your coding (you can only have a certain number of “tokens” in each programme. For example: "if x==1 then print("Hello") end" counts as 8 tokens). But it includes a simple music player, graphics and map editor. This allows some pretty nifty games (of course somebody has ported Doom to it) and most games – from racing games to shooters – exist on the little console.
I was drawn to it after putting a few games on my Ambernic retro device, and after completing an excellent Metroidvania – UFO Swamp Odyssey – I wanted to have a go at making a game. I wanted to make a little game to play on my Anbernic – the thought of somebody curling up in the festive season with my game like a good book to while away the winter nights was rather romantic, and I thought that a little retro platformer may be perfect. With the time of the year it was, I began making a game from my childhood.
The original Frosty the Snowman game for the Commodore 64. A game that has had a bigger affect on my life than it had any right to be.
Frosty The Snowman
A game that had a special place for me in the Wynne household has been Frosty the Snowman. A festive game that usually came out of it’s sleeve in the festive season, Frosty the Snowman was on the covertape of the first edition of Commodore Power released in 1991. One of the staff writers – Richard Taylor – was an amateur game developer, and put it on the covertape. With a cracking remix of the Frosty the Snowman tune by Steve Barrett on the soundtrack, the game stuck with me for longer than it had any right to. I also have the original covertape still! There’s a bit more history to the game which you can read on the Retro Garden blog.
The Frosty the Snowman Covertape from Commodore Power. Please note: only Frosty is worth playing. The rest are utter crap.
For my first Pico-8 game, I thought of remixing Frosty. With the tracker, map editor and sprite editor, I felt I could knock something together that looked similar to the 1991 original. After MonoScale, I wanted something relatively easy with the graphics. Thankfully with the 128×128 screen and a 16×16 sprites even I couldn’t mess up something that resembled a snowman!
I was happy with how it turned out. I removed a bunch of the unfair deaths and made it accessible for a modern audience, kept the scoring and introduced a timer and multiplier system. I wanted it to introduce an end game: have a timer and require Frosty to take shelter towards the end of the game, to avoid the ending of the most traumatic Christmas experience (the ending of The Snowman). Time and effort made it not so, but I kept it a high score push.
My basic take on Frosty The Snowman for the C64, but for the Pico-8. Please note, the stopping snow indoors took forever.
So far the feedback has been positive. With folks commenting it has replayability. I’m not sure where I’d go to improve it. It’s by no means the best games, but was built over 6 weeks and I’m happy for how it looked. It also was the first game I live-developed on Twitch.
Pico-8 Advent Calendar
I intended to release Frosty a Friday before Christmas, however I heard about the Pico-8 Advent Calendar Game Jam. I joined it to share my game. No doubt it gets more eyes on the game. It’s also been fun seeing some games being developed and helping out with them in real time, taking on a more supportive and critiquing role.
Anyway, at the time of publication there are a few more games due to be released in the calendar. I’d love you to check out the rest of the advent calendar, but if you just want to check out Frosty’s Snowed Under, then you can do at the link here:-
There is a download link so you can play it on devices like an Anbernic or RetroArch, which I’ve done below. You may need to update the Pico-8 version on your Retroarch to do so mind.
A real sense of pride seeing this run on an Anbernic.
If you do like the game, please do share it or add it to your collection on itch.io.
