Obi-Wandi, a retrogaming retrographer.
Experiencing the Star Wars Saga, motion pictures, retrogaming and stuff throughout the ages. Home to Obi-Wandi's Blog Spirits.
Pixellated memories of dancing pixels and cracking joystick switches: how compromises of technology made players’ minds game developers’ foremost asset.
The #RiseOfSkywalker began in earnest in 1987, the year of the 10th anniversary #StarWars celebration. Long before #Rey, #Ben aka #KyloRen, #Finn, #PoeDameron and the #KnightsOfRen, #computergame developer and publisher #Domark could not believe its luck when #Atari strangely did not value their Star Wars arcade game license highly.
Continue reading “Star Wars: The Rise of Domark & Brøderbund”
Advancement has silenced cogwheels, mechanisms and scraping drive heads. A reflection in silence on the noise of the future resting in the far-away past.
Continue reading “The sound of technology: Driver of enthusiasm, distant memory of the past”
Illuminated in a mesmerising green hue of ethereal beauty and presence, a home computer of old comes to life, leaps off a page in Sam Dyer’s latest masterpiece in the exceedingly rewarding “Visual Compendium“-series. Opening the impressive volume emulates perfectly that moment a computer is switched on, with every page impersonating the starkly coloured screen display of the titular ZX Spectrum. Sam Dyer’s “ZX Spectrum: A Visual Compendium” is a special experience of layered significance.
Oh how seductive the eternal evolution of technology! Oh what boredom lies in volumetric dust clouds of uncountable pixels, their toilsome birth betrayed only by the high-pitched struggle of a graphic card labouring inside a run-of-the-mill desktop computer. The mind slackens into a tupor of robotic keyboard spasms. Disbelief no longer needs suspension: with the visual display quite a spitting image of nature, the brain only needs to soften the roughest of edges. Oh what glory then the memories of old bestow on the stalwart art of retrography, the magic of 8-bit computing, beautifully preserved in Lucasfilm Games’ Rescue on Fractalus. And yet the most crucial ally in its creative success, the oft-forgotten and sadly underestimated manual of words crafted bold and true on sheets of paper rested inside boxes colourful and bold.
Continue reading “30 Years Later: Lucasfilm’s Fractalus Revisited”
The circle is now complete: from The Empire Strikes Back by Parker Brothers to the LEGO Star Wars series, the Retro Asylum podcast saga on Star Wars retrogaming is (almost) the next best thing to finally welcoming back Luke, Han and Leia in The Force Awakens. Switch off your targeting computer and let retro flow through you…
The Retro Asylum Star Wars Podcast Saga starts here!
Paul Driscoll’s absolutely astounding volume on all things Star Wars can be downloaded here!
While perusing vintage copies of German computing magazine Happy Computer over at kultpower.de, I read that there was potentially an earlier edition of Gauntlet on the C64 which featured “easily comprehensible speech synthesis”. Follow an intriguing dig in pixels from ages past at Frank Gasking’s always fab Games That Weren’t!
http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2015/06/gauntlet-c64-with-speech/
With great trepidation I turn the page to reveal the next spread of Sam Dyer’s landmark volume on the Commodore Amiga. Sadness is slowly creeping up as I briskly process the remaining years covered by Commodore Amiga: A Visual Commpendium; every letter, every pixel presented in a lavish, precisely elegant layout feasting on the glory of 16-bit graphics I savour like that eagerly sought after drop of water, enjoyed at last, after a perilous journey through a barren landscape.
The Amiga-less years have been harsh and unforgiving and this fabulous volume, clad in a pearly-white sleeve, finally provides relief to Amiga fandom. Continue reading “Review: Commodore Amiga: A Visual Commpendium by Sam Dyer, Bitmap Books”
Brick Bambi has fully announced with the second video, of a C64 work in progress graphical adventure port of the “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ” Amiga, PC, Atari ST and Mac release. Excavate more important information AND videos here >>
Do not miss out on supporting another essential milestone in retrogaming publishing history by backing ZX Spectrum: A Visual Compendium from Sam Dyer, the man behind the Commodore 64 and Amiga “Visual Commpendia”!
Retro Asylum goes to the movies with TheDrisk in charge of tickets and Matt Lambourne armed with the popcorn as the guys look back at a bunch of movie licensed video games!
http://retroasylum.com/episode-113-from-silver-screen-to-video-game/
For an in-depth analysis of the demise of movie tie-ins see Of Movie Tie-Ins and Joystick Storytellers: The Video and Computer Game Revolution that Devoured Hollywood //www.obiwandi.at/?p=1122
