Well designed playfield in interesting colors.

Yesterday I found an old game, that I’ve played when I was a kid. In fact, it was the third computing-game I’ve ever played in my live. Back in the days I didn’t really got the gameplay, because the instructions were vague und the gameplay somehow complex (for the young boy, that I was). Nevertheless I remembered that ill colors and the cryptic gameplay years and years, but just could not remember the name of this game anymore. And since resources on the Commodore 16 are not that popular (all hail the C64), I had problems finding the name or asking someone, who could have known. Yesterday the day came. The name if the game is “Oblido” and the whole experience is just better than drugs. Game starts immediately.

Detail: This is you shooting and the enemies in the “Sin Bin”

You aim is to “sort tiles” into special fields. At the border enemies running around at random, some can shoot – you have to be careful with them. You can push the tiles against the enemies or shoot, in order to send them back to the “Sin Bin“. If you got hit by one enemy, you loose time. Precious time. Because you have to sort all tiles to the according place before time is running up. Most interestingly the game features various elements from different games, but mixes them all together in a great manner. You can sense elements from Pac Man (the enemies), Sokoban (pushing tiles around), even boardgames (the design of the play-field) or Boulderdash (your overall mission, time limit) etc…

I’ve played the game yesterday for hours (yes, the game is addictive, too) till I managed to finish the level. Well, and figured out, that there is more than only one level! This is where it gets really hard. Simply a great game, lost in the tunnel of time. If you got reading till here, I have something for you. Over at Commodore16.com you can play the game directly in the browser.

This game was published by Mastertronic, a company, that got lots of games on the market for cheap money. Most of the games from them were good, addictive, fair. No milestones, but just great small games. I recently took some inspiration from them for my own games I am writing at the moment over at scnclr.de. You can read more about the glory history of mastertronic at guter.

A fresh new Indie-Gamesstudio from Cologne (One More Games) released their first iPhone app, called Frankenface. It is more a toy than a game, and the idea is pretty simple, derived from childhood play-stuff: You take pictures of the people around you with you iPhone. Then you can mix the faces by changing eyes, nose and mouth of the individuals. Quite fun, especially your face will also be part of the game.

Good news for everyone who develops Ruby on Rails applications on Windows machines. There is finally a Rails-IDE available, that is lightweight, sharp designed, with a good performance (not such a bloated monster). And best of all, it comes for free. Uh. The name is RoRED.

I always looked jealous to the Apple-coders, because with Text-Mate they seem to have a good Ruby on Rails development tool. Other editors (also for PC) all claim to be the best, but in my view all lacked on something. Whether it be poor design or absurd pricing and licencing models. All gone, thanks to RoRED. Like it said on the Website: “It contains the features you need as a Ruby on Rails developer, but without the cruft.” Word. If you like it, they accept donations.

Well, this really looks good. A new game will be coming to the Nintendo Wii. And this time it’s not about 3D or special controller interaction. This time it is about “Wow, how beautiful is that”! And basically 2-dimensional graphics.

As Wired reports, Majesco is on its way to develop the NES Classic Game “A Boy and his Blob” for the Nintendo Wii. And it seems, that they get it right, with lots and lots of beautiful graphics. Like in the original game, you play a boy, that has a multi-functional blob on its side, that can transform its shape.
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Rave signal ON. There has been opened a occasionally updated blog last December, purely dedicated to good nineties techno! Inspired mostly by the “Sound of Frankfurt” old techno-goodness, mixed up with memories, that will occur without any doubt, are part the blog. It contains lots of footage found on YouTube – and this is at the same time the biggest drawback: The videos are often deleted due to “copyright infringement” reasons. Please people! Let the history live on YouTube. In the meanwhile you better visit the site quickly, before all the goodies are gone again: 90stechno.wordpress.com

Well, some people claim 8-bit games to be violent.

I am not sure, if you already seen this. Playpower somehow wants to do similar, than the one laptop per child project (OLPC). But – instead of providing cheap and educational laptops, they want to use 8-bit gaming systems. And it looks also very interesting.

The Playpower Foundation is using a $10 computer as a platform for 8-bit learning games in order to improve educational access for millions of children around the world. Motivated by the availability of this radically affordable platform, our goal is to design and discover high-quality 8-bit learning games and make computer-aided learning affordable for people everywhere.

About the technical details: The Playpower Platform will be basically a keyboard with mouse and 1Mhz processor that connects to a TV screen and takes plastic-encased chip cartridges that plug directly into the keyboard. The cartridges will use the 1980’s era 8-bit Nintendo Famicom cartridge form. One single cartridge can contain hundreds of software titles and it seems, that modding of old cartridges will be also possible.

The creators are sure, that 8-bit systems can be interesting enough, to engage people (I think they are right). With that slow and old machines, you are not able to let multimedia-applications run, or even higher sophisticated programs. Even building icons, that represent something, can be challenging. We all now that from the past. But also know, how much fun is hidden inside this constraints. As the project is meant as a educational project, they think developing own software. But here lies the drawback, because they say “there would be a lack of finding developers”. But, they propose a special framework, that could be interesting:

The issue with developing new content for the NES/Famicom TVC is that it requires assembly coding, which is a difficult and specialized skill. This makes it impractical to follow a traditional model of paying hired developers to produce new content, especially as this would limit both access to production and the variety the of resulting products. Therefore, our goal is to develop an open-source 8-bit programming kit that will make it far easier to program learning games. To accomplish this we plan to build on nBASIC, a high-level framework for building assembly code that uses BASIC programming conventions. Combining nBASIC with the complete documentation of the NES forms the core of our open-source programming kit. This simplified programming environment will aid developers from around the world in building or modifying their own 8-bit games, creating an ecosystem of 8-bit content to support regional languages, local educational needs, and diverse cultural expression.

Read the paper or visit the website.