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Gordon Cameron

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Screenshot of the Day: Unreal Tournament (1999)

This is me having completed a Deathmatch game on the famous Deck16][ map against "Skilled" bots. When I feel ambitious I turn up the difficulty to "Adept," but then it's touch and go. "Skilled" is as high as I can go and still be assured of a win. None of... Continue reading

Posted Dec 15, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Spooky Screenshot of the Day: Ultima III

How spooky is a black screen? Depends on context. If you're new to computer role-playing games and you start up Ultima III and wander into the first dungeon you see, and then you're confronted with this, it's pretty scary -- or at least disconcerting. For one thing, you might not... Continue reading

Posted Oct 21, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Spooky Screenshot of the Day: Rescue on Fractalus

It's still one of the creepiest and most startling moments in games, and it comes in LucasArts' (then Lucasfilm Games's) 1985 space shooter Rescue on Fractalus. As you cruise along the planetary surface in your spaceship, you must pick up stranded pilots -- but occasionally you'll find that a 'pilot'... Continue reading

Posted Oct 12, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Spooky Screenshot of the Day: Friday the 13th

AAAAAAGGHHH! No, seriously! This is pretty scary when it's 1986 and you're playing Friday the 13th on the Commodore 64 and the image is accompanied by a digitized scream. Also, part of Friday the 13th's soundtrack included a rendition of J.S. Bach's cantata Watchet auf, such that this gorgeous melody... Continue reading

Posted Oct 5, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Bejeweled Twist

Ahhh, the Mega Fruit Bonus. Say what you will about casual games, you have to respect the polish and craft that PopCap put into their titles. Bejeweled Twist wasn't as successful as the mainstream Bejeweled titles -- perhaps the rotation mechanic was too confusing for some, or the stress of... Continue reading

Posted Sep 26, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

As here and here, another shot of characters in a CRPG admiring the view in a lake. This time, the lake is pretty enough that the user can admire it too, rather than projecting imaginatively into the heads of characters who are themselves consist only of a tiny icon and... Continue reading

Posted Sep 23, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Ultima Ratio Regum

Is it not lovely? Once again we have a view by a lake in a tile-based CRPG with the word "Ultima" in the title. The game in question this time is not, however, "an Ultima," but rather a work-in-progress roguelike called Ultima Ratio Regum. It's being developed by a one-man... Continue reading

Posted Sep 4, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Ultima IV, yet again

Reader Tristan Miller, commenting on my previous post about the Ultima IV disk-flipping exploit, wondered what would happen if you reversed it -- that is to say, entered a room in a dungeon after putting the Britannia disk (or, in the case of emulation, its image) in the drive. The... Continue reading

Posted Aug 31, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Adventure and Swords & Serpents

To those young folk who think all old games looked basically the same, I offer the above exhibit -- a contrast between Adventure on the Atari 2600 and Swords & Serpents on the Intellivision. Now, Adventure is a great game and I don't know whether Swords & Serpents is even... Continue reading

Posted Aug 30, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Lords of Midnight (as interpreted by VICE Commodore 64 emulator)

Emulation, alas, is not always a sure thing. The above screenshot is what happened when I loaded a disk image of The Lords of Midnight into the VICE C64 emulator. VICE is a superb program that usually loads the games it's ask to load, and features all sorts of wonderful... Continue reading

Posted Aug 28, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Photoshop and VICE C64 Emulator and Ultima IV and Windows 10

Here's a goofy one. While attempting to grab the screenshot of my favorite videogame bug (Richard Garriott prefers to call it an exploit, which I guess makes sense as you need to deliberately put the wrong disk in the drive in order to make it happen), I kept hitting the... Continue reading

Posted Aug 26, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Sword Coast Legends

I was a fan of Digital Extremes's 2015 D&D role-playing game, Sword Coast Legends. Not everyone was. But its single-player campaign kept me interested enough to play all the way through, which these days is a rare feat. I still haven't completed Pillars of Eternity or The Witcher 3, by... Continue reading

Posted Aug 25, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Adventure

Everybody knows this one, or at least I hope they do. This is the secret room from Warren Robinett's 1979 Atari VCS (later "2600") game, Adventure, in which he hid his signature in defiance of evil corporate leadership -- thereby making himself a hacker-hero for game designers around the world.... Continue reading

Posted Aug 23, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot(s) of the day: Ultima IV, Redux

At last, the screenshot I spent several hours of retrogaming working toward. What you see above is my favorite bug in all of videogames, in the Commodore 64 version of Richard Garriott's RPG masterpiece Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar. When I was a child, I and my brothers nicknamed... Continue reading

Posted Aug 22, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Ultima IV, Redux

While the Quest for the Screenshot of the Ultimate Bug continues, I'm continuing to enjoy my tour through Richard Garriott's seminal 1985 role-playing game. Each Ultima from II at least through V contained so many improvements over its predecessor -- in everything from the cosmetics (graphics, animation) to the interface... Continue reading

Posted Aug 21, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Ultima IV

Sometimes, while looking for a particular screenshot, I stumble on others along the way. I'm currently replaying Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar on an emulated Commodore 64 in an attempt to recreate my favorite bug in all of video games. In order to get just the shot I want,... Continue reading

Posted Aug 21, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Half-Life, again

As far as I know, Quake originated the technique of having the camera fall to the side after your character is killed, allowing you to watch the action through your avatar's dead eyes. Here is the same thing in Half-Life, as an alien grunt probes Gordon Freeman's fresh corpse. The... Continue reading

Posted Aug 19, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Space Harrier

Long before Yu Suzuki made Shenmue, he made this arcade shooter. The quasi-3D graphics were a revelation at the time and led directly to the even more impressive Afterburner and Outrun. But how, exactly, is this guy flying -- and what does any of it have to do with Harriers? Continue reading

Posted Aug 17, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Brataccas

Brataccas is one of the first 16-bit games I ever saw; it was being demoed on an Atari ST at a computer shop round about 1986. I never actually played it, and by now I kind of don't want to, because the idea of Brataccas seems more interesting than the... Continue reading

Posted Aug 15, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Psi-5 Trading Co.

I've been trying to get this game to run emulated for quite some time. Back in the '80s my family had -- purchased legally, I think! -- the Commodore 64 version of Psi-5 Trading Co., which was released in 1986 by Accolade. Accolade games tended to use the C64's high-resolution... Continue reading

Posted Aug 13, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: CyberTracker

My exploration of 8-bit music creation continues with CyberTracker, another C64 program, which can be downloaded here and which -- critically, for me -- actually has an online instruction manual, here. Running down the bottom of the screen are three parallel columns, each representing one of the Commodore 64 SID... Continue reading

Posted Aug 12, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Pac-Man

Its sequel, Ms. Pac-Man, was the better game, but this screen remains to me the iconic image of the Golden Age of arcade games. In its bright plain colors, its symmetry, its self-contained universe, it is perfect. It speaks to us across three and a half decades like an indelible... Continue reading

Posted Aug 10, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Shroud of the Avatar

I'm all for character customization, but "philtrum width"? Well, okay... Continue reading

Posted Aug 9, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: JCH Music Editor

My exploration of emulated Commodore 64 music creation continues. Above is one of many music editors coded for the Commodore 64 -- this one by Jens-Christian Huus. You can find many such programs here if you are willing to download a C64 emulator to run them. Unfortunately, tutorials for this... Continue reading

Posted Aug 9, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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Screenshot of the day: Commodore 64 BASIC

I'm working up a blog post (or posts) about chiptunes, and decided to do a bit of preliminary research. Though I've been an avid chiptune fan since back when chiptunes were just called 'game music' because the games were brand new, I never actually learned much about how sound production... Continue reading

Posted Aug 7, 2016 at Star Comma Eight

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