I was always an admirer of intros on games in general, and Amiga games in particular. It was very impressive back in the day to see some pseudo-full screen animation in a computer game. You also have to take in account that floppy space was sparse, and not many developers allowed themselves the luxury of having an extensive introduction sequence. Some of the intros I’m going to show may not be very spectacular, but I’m still getting a kick out of watching these attempts at animation.
Continue reading “Amiga Game Intros Vol. 1: Wolfchild (Core Design, 1992)”
Greedy Balloon Race
Monsieur LeBalon needs to satisfy his greed for money. Help him out by navigating the skies and steal gold coins from the peaceful potatoe people living in the clouds. But beware – they are not too happy about your looting and will do everything to pop poor Monsieur LeBalon!
Who needs Google Earth if you have THIS!?
After browsing a website on the supposed early maps of Antartica, I thought the idea of mapping out the world without any of the high-tech equipment we have today to be pretty fascinating. Most of the maps look ridiculous from our point of view now, but I remembered an article in Zeit Magazin from a long time ago which had German politicians draw up maps of their country. The results were pretty funny. Now I tried to do the same, but up the ante a little bit – draw a world map from memory. I have to say, I used to be good in geography in school, but my memory for where countries are located is pretty spotty at best. There are a lot of embarassing blank spots in Africa, South America, Asia but also Eastern Europe. I don’t even know all the countries there. The result is a pretty Euro-centric map, as was to be expected … By the way, why not create a map yourself and post it in the comments section? You can add an extra challenge if you like and try to locate all the capitals. I decided not to do that because I couldn’t remember how to spell Reijkjavic Reykjavík. Now without further ado, behold! I give you the world according to me:
Funding Science
Money is always short when it comes to spaceflight. While NASA does have a rather large budget in comparison to ESA for example, very little seems to come out of it if you look at the development time of the new Ares rockets which are supposed to take human beings to the moon again. If you consider that it’s already been done before a couple of decades ago, you’d think it could be repeated in a shorter time frame and with less money now since a lot of the basic research has already been done (of course, a lot of know-how has been lost as well.)
Face it
This is a short film we created last year for our animation class. Enjoy!
Bit. Trip Beat
I’m not exactly a fan of what modern technology has meant for video games most of the time. With improved hardware capabilities always came graphics that tried to push the boundaries between the virtual and reality, while at the same time not quite getting there yet. Sure, it can work out real nice and a couple of genres really lend themselves quite well to photo-realistic graphics, like sports or racing games. However, I’m not always interested in reproducing what I can find outside on my screen at home. If I’m sitting in front of a games console, I want to be entertained with something unique nobody ever has thought of. Not an easy task of course. But I’m always happy if there is this one game every once in a while that breaks the usual conventions and starts doing something different with the visual potential that is inherent to the medium.
Of Giants and Dwarves
This impressive photo taken by Thierry Legault shows the Space Shuttle and the Hubble telescope crossing in front of the Sun. Click for full view.
38400 pixels
It’s been a long time since I last pixeled something. Well, I finally got off my lazy butt and made this, a kind of by-product of the work I’ve done for my thesis so far. I’m not sure if it’s 100% finished yet, maybe I’ll update the image at some later point in time.
y1
I’m back from London just in time for the first anniversary of the blog. One of the most interesting discoveries for me was a clothing store chain that sells video game t-shirts. How cool is that! I wanted to get a black Arkanoid shirt, but since they were out of stock, I went for a Bomberman motive instead. I usually hate shopping for clothes, but this was really awesome. If they had stores in Germany or Austria as well, I’d be going out on the hunt for clothes more often. HINT HINT!
Oh, I almost forgot: to celebrate the first year, the blog can now be reached via robotriot.org as well.
Games to Get: 2009 Edition
I think it’s time for a new list of (mostly upcoming) games that are worth a closer look. Since I was able to get most of the games in my previous list, I’ve added a whole bunch of new games I’m interested in. Maybe there’s something in for you, as well. This time it’s complete with gameplay videos, yay!