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- GE-Proton 9-23 released with a Battle.net update fix for Linux / Steam Deck
- NVIDIA release new GPU driver updates for Linux and Windows after announcing security issues
- Games to claim from Prime Gaming, Jan 17 edition round-up for SteamOS Linux and Steam Deck
- Cubic Odyssey announced as a fusion of Minecraft and No Man's Sky
- Proton Experimental gets fixes for Marvel Rivals, Sea of Thieves and Stalker 2
- > See more over 30 days here
How to install GE-Proton on Steam Deck, SteamOS, Linux
An idiots guide to setting up Minecraft on Steam Deck / SteamOS with controller support-
90s classics inspired adventure Splittown arrives on St…
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Steam Deck sales drop hard following the Nintendo Switc…
- ripper81358 -
The devs of Celeste have cancelled their follow-up game…
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Steam Deck sales drop hard following the Nintendo Switc…
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Steam Deck sales drop hard following the Nintendo Switc…
- Liam Dawe - > See more comments
Besides that its been real indoor weather here……. We even got some hail…….
Natasha has been practising her Collie Uppercuts……… She can now smack the Dick Trickle off a fly at 150 metres……… Its been a painful week…...
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Natasha
[+..••] As for gaming this week in Emulationville I played [+..••]
Arcade
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (1993 Capcom) - Beat 'em up
Console
Dino Crisis (2000 Capcom) - Sega Dreamcast - Survival Horror
Gran Turismo 4 (2004 Sony) - Sony PlayStation 2 - Sports (Racing)
NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona (2002 Infogrames) - Sony PlayStation 2 - Sports (Racing)
PC
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004 Rockstar) - Steam - Action
NASCAR Heat 5 (2020 Motorsport Games) - Steam - Sports (Racing)
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun (2023 Focus Entertainment) - Steam - First Person Shooter
The Dick Trickles Racing Career: Part 19
NASCAR Dirt to Daytona: Part 19
Weekly Dirt Racing Series Season 2: Race 8
Intro music…... Hello and welcome to Left Turn Heaven..... Im Murray Eastlake and today im going to be bringing you all the action from the 2003 Weekly Dirt Racing Series: Round 8 of 10 here at Kingsfield Raceway....…
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Kingsfield Raceway…...
Kingsfield Raceway is 0.375 miles long with 15 degrees of banking……. This dirt track requires a good handling car with some decent horsepower for the straights…… Driver skill is required too as the grass apron is very close to the racing line that causes chaos when you touch it…….
Last week Dick Trickle was hammering nails into the coffins of his opponents……… This week he has the chance to hammer in the final nail……. If he makes the A Main Matthew Kato and Josh Ginter are out of the championship hunt……. If Dick finishes ahead of Ted Finger in the A Main……. That will make Dick Trickle the 2003 Weekly Dirt Racing Series Champion……… With two races to spare……. A feat which has never been done before…..
Can he do it???…… Or can Ted Finger bounce back after a terrible round last week at Hastings and keep the championship alive???…..
Can Matthew Kato or Josh Ginter get in their and spoil Dick Trickles coronation???…… It will be a hard task to do as Dick has come first in all seven races so far this season……
I managed to get a word with Dick just after rolling the Infogrames Flaming Dick Machine off the trailer…… I asked him how he was feeling heading into what is a very important stage of the season…..
“Im a bit nervous to be honest Murray……. Ted Finger, Matthew Kato and Josh Ginter have nothing to lose…… And will try anything out there today to keep their championship chances alive….. And rightfully so……. I just need to do what ive done all season long……. Qualify on the front row and lead exiting turn two…….. I have real good history here…… So its almost the perfect place to wrap up the championship…….. I just need to focus of coming first…… Like any good Dick should…….”
A nervous Dick Trickle is looking to set even more records tonight…….. He won here earlier this year and hes looking to do it again and wrap up the championship……..
Dont touch the sets...... Dont touch the dials...... You wont want to miss a single moment of the 2003 Weekly Dirt Racing Series action....… Practice and qualifying are coming up right now…...
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Dick Trickle at the track ready to race.…
Practice was good for Dick……. He had the setup data from earlier in the year so he just had to roll off the trailer and run some laps to check everything was ok……..
Qualifying was up next….. Dick rolled onto the track looking very confident……. And rightly so….. Setting a time of 15.613 to claim pole…… 0.2 seconds quicker than defending champion Josh Ginter……
Matthew Kato was thirteenth with a time of 18.633...…….
But the big story…….. championship rival…… Ted Finger……. Posted a time of 18.360……. To be way down in twelfth…… That is terrible news for Finger……. He is in real danger of missing the A main……. And if he misses the A main…… Dick Trickle will be champion……...
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Qualifying Results........
Dick Trickle heads the field to the flag for the 5 lap Heat 1 race……. Dick was not hanging around either as he got a good jump to lead into turn one…….. Dan Diamond was lagging behind as he fell way down the order exiting turn two…… Matthew Kato got a great start as well and worked his way quickly through to field to finish in second place…….
But Dick Trickle won the 5 lap Heat 1 race is ease……. By 6.461 seconds……. And making his way straight to the A Main…….
That means Matthew Kato and Josh Ginter are out of the running for the championship before the A Main even starts…….
In the Heat 2 race….. Ted Finger failed to make the A Main and had to finish in the top three in the B Main to transfer to the A Main…….
Ted Finger just managed to do it…… And will be starting twelfth in the A Main……. But he is way down on pace today……. Lets hope he can sort that out before the A Main…….
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Heat 1 Results....…
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Dick Trickle lined up ready to start the A Main......
The flag dropped for the 75 lap A Main Final……. Dick was a little limp of the line…… But got going hard with the thought of Finger touching him from behind…….. And by the exit of turn two Dick was back in his usual position…….. In the lead and squirting off into the distance……. And the fat lady started to sing…….
Josh Ginter fell away quickly……. Still having problems finding a balance between qualifying trim and race trim…… As he had another race to forget……. While struggling to maintain any speed and only managing to get seventh place……. seven laps behind the winner…… What a disaster of a year it has been for Ginter……. The championship hangover was very real for Josh…...
Matthew Kato had an even worse race…… If he was any slower he would have been going backwards…… Finishing nine laps behind the winner in a lowly tenth place…….
Al Grimstead and Mark Hunter had a ding dong battle for second……. Swapping paint at both ends of the track…… Neither wanting to surrender second place and it came right down to the final turn to decided who would take it……. And in the end it was Al Grimstead that narrowly held onto second place from Mark Hunter……. Although both where a massive three laps behind the winner……
Erik Truet and Alan Andersen had very quiet races…… Just circulating around the track and staying out of trouble…… Nothing much to say about either of them……. They finished down in fourth and fifth respectively…..
Ted Finger just had no answers today for Dick Trickle……… Ted tried his best but there was no speed to be found in the car all weekend…… In a race that he HAD to to win…… Ted could only manage a really disappointing sixth place….. five laps behind the winner……
The winner of the race and the 2003 Weekly Dirt Racing Series Champion…….. DICK…… TRICKLE………. Drove a faultless race today…… Leading all 75 laps and ended up with a record equalling three lap lead…….. The result of the race was never in doubt after the first lap……. And the championship was decided well before when Ted Finger could only manage twelfth in qualifying…….
Dick Trickle also set another record in what has been a phenomenal year…… He becomes the first driver in series history to wrap up the championship with two races left……. That is how dominate he has been this season……
The fat lady has well and truly sung as the Wisconsin native Dick Trickle takes a victory lap around Kingsfield Raceway……. With a 287 point lead and only a maximum of 220 points left in the championship…… Dick Trickle is now officially the 2003 Weekly Dirt Series Championship…….
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A Main Results..…
I congratulated Dick in the winners circle…….. “YOU LITTLE RIPPER!!!!!……. What a season Murray…….. I got my first ever career win here last year and now I wrap up the championship at the very same race track…….. Its like it was meant to be..... I want to thank everyone who helped me along the way…….. My sponsors….. Infogrames, Togo Building Supply, Greenwitch Haulers And Steves Quick Mart……. Without them I wouldnt have been able to afford to keep going……… To the fans turning up every week to witness this big Dick create history….. Its been wonderful to race in front of you all……. And most important of all…….. To my lovely and beautiful wife Pussy Galore……. She is all the motivation I need to get out of the house and tinker with the car during the week and keep racing on the weekends…….” [Dick laughs and kisses Pussy Galore]
“Murray….. I told you…… I TOLD YOU during the off season that I was going to dominate like you had never seen before……. Last year Michael Schumacher dominated the 2002 FIA Formula One World Drivers Championship like no one had ever seen before…… In a season he himself described as “perfect”……. Well im not done yet Murray…….. There are two races left…… And I fully intend to win both of them to be the first ever driver to go undefeated in the Weekly Dirt Racing Series……”
That is one very happy Dick…… And why wouldnt he be…… I think hes going to enjoy himself tonight…… Pussy Galore might have to work some of her magic to calm him down……. What a season he has had indeed…….
Next week the 2003 Weekly Dirt Racing Series heads to Anoka City Speedway….. With the championship already wrapped up…… There is only pride on the line next week…… Dick wants the pride of getting the undefeated record…… Ted Finger wants the pride of beating Dick and getting a race win…… Josh Ginter was the pride of getting a good finish and Matthew Kato wants the pride of taking third place in the championship even though he missed one race……. Who will get the pride they desire????…… And who will fail???…...
Tune in next week for the answers to all these questions and more….. Exclusively here on Left Turn Heaven……..
This is Murray Eastlake reporting for Left Turn Heaven..... And until next time its goodbye from me....
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Winnings.…
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NASCAR Heat Weekly.…
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2003 Weekly Dirt Racing Series Championship Standings after round 8 of 10.…
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First lap A Main action....
Dino Crisis
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“Its Resident Evil with dinosaurs” they said…… “It will be fun” they said…… Dino Crisis tries to mash together so many different ideas and it does not work……. Just like the Street Fighter 6 art style…….
I played the Dreamcast version of Dino Crisis and the graphics are really damn nice…… I believe this is based on the PC version…… Which is why the graphics are so nice…… The characters models are really well done……. The environment textures are also really nice for the time…… To me personally this looks so much better than the PlayStation version……
The sounds are nice…… The voice acting is much better and way less stilted than Resident Evil….. The dinosaur noises are nice and the ambient noises also add to the foreboding atmosphere…….
The controls are well…… Dated to say the least….. Tank controls all the way baby……. Nothing majorly wrong with them….. They work and the game is designed nicely around tank controls….. So yet again this is also a plus for me……
The storyline is simple……. April O’Neil has been kidnapped and its up to the Ninja Tur…….. Wait……. Wrong game *shuffles papers*…… Ahhhh here we go…….. Jill Valentine an elite STARS agent is sent in with a small team under the cover of darkness…….. Hold on thats wrong too…… *shuffles papers….. AGAIN*……. This time ive got it…… Regina an elite SORT (Yes…. Really….. “Secret Operation Raid Team”) agent is send in with a small team under the cover of darkness to rescue another SORT agent sent in earlier to infiltrate a dodgy looking “research” facility…… And its up to you the player to make sure the mission goes off without a hitch……
The gameplay is where the game really falls down though…….. The main enemy of the game is not dinosaurs……. Its locked doors with stupid code mini games to unlock…….. It really should have been called Locked Door Crisis……..
The dinosaurs themselves are a joke and are nothing but background furniture once you figure out the game is way easier if you just run past the dinosaurs and dont bother even trying to kill them….. There are a few times where you HAVE to kill dinosaurs but they are few and far between…… And there is also long periods of the game where there are zero dinosaurs to be found……. Leaving you with only frustrating door code mini games to keep you entertained……..
Other dazzling puzzles await you…….. Such is moving crates with a crane that has a limited number of movies……. How or why that makes sense ill never know…… Seriously…… Who would program a crane so it only has X number of moves to the right and X number of movies to left and same with forwards and backwards….. You have to move the boxes but you can only move left 3 times…….. Crane Control Crisis……..
The puzzles arnt that difficult but its the fact that they dont make sense……. That really pulls me out of the game….. Its like adventure game logic……. Combine the shoelace with the comb and it makes a grappling hook……. In what universe that works ill never know…… But thats adventure game logic…….
Overall Locked Door Crane Control Crisis really falls flat……. The storyline barely kept me invested…….. With the game descending into running all over the research facility to get menial tasks done with only locked doors and stupid crane games standing in my way…… This game could have been fantastic but no……. Long periods of nothing much to do…… And the dinosaurs are almost non existent in the second half of the game besides the last hour or so…….
Just play Resident Evil……. It might not have dinosaurs but its much better……. I think…… I have not played Resident Evil yet….. I should play that real soon……. If you really need a game with dinosaurs…… Just play the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs arcade game…… Its a much better game…...
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Dino Crisis
Next week…… I need to buy some new tree loppers……… I hope to get back out in the garden and finish off cutting back the trees……. And I need to get Natasha out for more walks…….
As for gaming there will be more hardcore Dick Trickle racing action in NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona……. Killing more heretic scum in Warhammer 40K Boltgun…….. And ill be having a second midlife Dino Crisis……….
I did indeed finish my stupid quest of making a setup for every car at every track in NASCAR Heat 5……. And I did it all before Pengling finished her stupid Alien Crush quest……
Current setup checklist…...
Cup: 30 of 30
Xfinity: 30 of 30
Truck: 31 of 31
Dirt: 9 of 9
Well thats it from me…… Hope all you tuxers have a good week……
Now for my bad joke of the week……
Q: Why should you never fight a dinosaur???
A: Because you will get Jurass kicked…...
*ba dum.... tssssh…...*
My pick for this weekend is Sonic CD (Mega CD), which in my opinion is one of the best platformers ever made. I grew up with it, and it still holds up great today. It has excellent game-design, which all hinges on the idea that the world is not built around a protagonist with extraordinary abilities, thus expecting the player to make thoughtful use of those skills in the right places so as to leverage this game's special feature of travelling through time, Superman-style, on a small planet with an unusual flow of time, in order to stop the villains and create the best possible future.
One unusual thing about this game is that it has two different soundtracks - one for Japan and PAL regions, and another for North America. For whatever reason, back then the US arm of the company seemed to be trying to sell a series about rainbow-coloured cartoon animals as being edgy and post-apocalyptic, so they gutted the OST for this game and replaced it with something that is generally more downbeat, and where you can't always tell the difference between the Good Future and Bad Future tracks. However, because the Past themes used the on-board sound-chip instead of redbook audio, these tunes remain the same in both versions, meaning that the North American soundtrack doesn't line up with a key part of the entire game's hook. Both are excellent musical works, though, and which one you prefer to play the game with will come down to personal taste; I grew up with and like both, since the PAL Mega CD version used the JP/PAL soundtrack, and Sonic CD for Windows 95 used the US one, but my preference is the JP/PAL one, and that's what I usually play the game with.
I did a Good Future run back in January, and am returning to it now to do a Bad Future run, since you'll typically never see how the bad versions of the stages look if you're aiming for a good outcome - the game is very much designed for multiple playthroughs so that you can see all of its neat touches, many of which relate to the time-travel element.
And now it's time for...
!Bomberman riding a tank! Pengling's Robot Army
!Pengling's Robot Army 02: Sad, worn-out old Sonic CD enemies
Sonic CD contains many enemy robots, including the debut of Metal Sonic, a prominent secondary antagonist who would reappear in several other games. It also contains various sad, worn-out little guys, found in the present-day and Bad Future stages, and they're so cute that I had to give them a mention - in a game whose central mechanic is time-travel, it's a really nice detail to have old, damaged robots appear in the present and future, since you can then go back in time and see them when they were shiny and new and properly-functional in the past.
!Alien Crush
There's a tiny bit of progress to report on Alien Crush (TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine) this week: The score now sits at 521,900,600 out of 999,999,990.
[+..••] Other stuff that I played this week;
!Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy
!Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (Proton; Currently discounted to £9.89, if anyone else is interested in it!)
!Super Bomberman 3
Super Bomberman 3 (SNES)
I also just heard that Zool Redimensioned, which already worked perfectly under Proton, is now properly Steam Deck Verified, which reminds me that I need to revisit it to check out the local multiplayer update that it got back in May!
Aw, we can forgive her for that because she's so lovely, though!
Trickleverse Extended Universe!
HAHAHA! Oh, this is gonna be good, especially after how we were falling about laughing on Steam Chat about SF6 in all its infinite ugliness.
That is a fairly awful name.
Hehehehe!
Yeah, you should - though you can run past some zombies when you gain the confidence to do so, that's not always possible, and sometimes you'll be penned in or forced to move slowly, and so on, so I don't remember there really being too many situations where you could completely avoid the hook of the game like you can in Dino Crisis.
Indeed, my incredibly stupid journey of pinball is going to continue for a while yet!
Wonderful.
Last edited by Pengling on 17 Jun 2023 at 1:07 am UTC
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Layers of Fear 2023
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1946700/Layers_of_Fear/
I really liked the first one, I bought it in early access and played it several times until they completed it. I loved that creeptastic, ever changing house. It was actually pretty impressive use of the Unity engine (especially for back then). It was a decent Linux version too.
I also played Layers of Fear 2, and it was OK, but meh. There was no Linux port, it was an Unreal 4 game.
This one here, I thought it was just a remaster of the first one, redone with Unreal Engine 5. Was I ever surprised.
First of all, it's wrapped in another story this time. The prologue starts off as a writer that wins a contract to write a book in this creepy old light house. She's trapped there, and gets creepy phone calls from her employer. It almost seems like some Alan Wake type scenario. When you finally sit down at the typewriter, your story starts.
It starts out in the same way, at the entrance to the same house in the original. I'm almost "ahh", familiar surroundings, I already know what to do, I can just enjoy the visuals. That was almost a misdirection, for the game is way different. Different triggers, different rooms (some of them are similar but what you'll have to do isn't).
Different game save/progression mechanic too, it's autosaves now. In the first game, it didn't save anything until you finished an interlude and returned to the painting with the memento you were to collect. If you quit, you'll spawn in that room, but when you open the door you'll be where you're supposed to be.
It looks really nice, Unreal Engine 5, DirectX 12. It worked perfectly out of the box, all settings maxed out, performance is good at 1920x1080 for me.
It's the same creeptastic house, but different, and there are even more disturbing paintings on the walls. Some of them pretty horrific (I did not include any lol)
!Creeptastic hallway
!Weird paintings
!An echo event
Yesterday there was an evening guided tour at the zoo – that was very interesting without all the other visitors. Aside from the two groups going in opposite directions we've only encountered four people. Obviously some animals were already sleeping while other were very active. On old world porcupine even got out of the sleeping box – a rare sight.
Thanks to my traveling work trips I managed to end Maken X (Dreamcast) and got 3 out of the 7 endings. I liked this game a lot which is unusual since it had a lot of features I do not enjoy in games - cutscenes, slow movement and locked in controls. Despite that I enjoyed it for the creature design of all of the enemies and story line which leads into the beginning of the Persona series.
Void Scrappers (Linux native) had an update. I updated my game and my 100% completed game from 03/23 is now at 98% so been trying to get these last challenges and then will uninstall the game. This game has been a blast to play during work down times.
Wife & I started playing Torchlight II (linux native), thanks to a discord members suggestion. We've been playing it on Thursday nights like clock work and it's been a blast.
My favorite bar within walking distance got some new pinball machines. My favorite has been The Big Lebowski (pinball) and it's fucking awesome. Right now I'm in the top 10 on the leaderboard. It made the bar gathering place for both of my gaming group (boardgame vs video/arcade games).
Last edited by Mezron on 21 Jun 2023 at 1:13 pm UTC
GOD DAMMIT PENGLING!!!!!
Thats the problem with being my dog...... You have to listen to my shit 24/7.......
I totally read that and re-read that as "Craptastic".......
Genuine question..... What are your thoughts on the art style in SF6???
Excellent choice...... Torchlight II is really great......
Sounds like my ex...... Only the porcupine is less prickly......
Our zoos here do guided night tours as well..... They are very popular here..... And great fun to go on...... Glad you enjoyed it :)
Its only been one day and I already have a lot to talk about in next weeks post...... I was one very pissed off and quite sore spider yesterday......
Last edited by StoneColdSpider on 17 Jun 2023 at 10:50 pm UTC
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Well, to be fair, I did make the word up on the spot, "creeptastic" it was just how I thought of the house lol
I love creepy old houses. As a kid, my grandma (paternal) lived in a creepy old house with an attic. Some of the stuff in this house (light fixtures, wood, creepy cellar etc.) reminds me of it.
It's a very wrist-friendly setup that is my favoured way of playing video pinball games (I don't just use that layout for Alien Crush) - if I used the shoulder-buttons instead, it'd probably hurt my wrists after a while!
!Bomberman and Tux with Anbernic RG351MP running Alien Crush
I'm playing it on this hardware because it's small and easy to carry, so I've usually got it on me - it makes doing dumb things like trying to reach the ending of Alien Crush a lot easier!
!Super Bomberman R - Training
But one must train, Spider.
I have to second this, if that's ok - I'm curious, too.
Oh man, I know exactly where you're coming from with this. Mine lived in a slightly freaky place that had this incredibly creepy MASSIVE under-stairs cupboard which in spite of its size had zero lighting and didn't let much in even when the door was open, and I've been reminded of that by various games containing such settings*.
*You probably wouldn't guess it from the sorts of titles I usually talk about, but I do quite like old-style horror/liminal-spaces type games - though often I watch others play them as, fairly often, I unfortunately don't get along with either their controls or their gameplay style.
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Heheh... staying overnight at Granny's, the creeks and groans of the old house. Dark, cubby hole closets and storage spaces. The mysterious boarder (Clive... all I knew) that rents a room upstairs, quiet as a mouse, except for the stairs creaking when he comes home, at any strange hour.
This game is WASD controls, and left and right mouse. Click and drag to open a drawer or something, click to pick something up and read or examine it, right click to put it back or pick it up (some things like notes or game objects the game keeps when you dismiss). There's no finger gymnastics or button mashing crap for pimple wizards or anything.
I'll give it a look - though being first-person it's likely to give me terrible motion-sickness, unless played in very short bursts on a handheld. This is still an improvement over years gone by, where I just couldn't play first-person stuff at all, though.
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Heheh... I hated computers back then. I don't know, I guess it was 1982 or so when I was first exposed to annoying devices that did silly things I could do more easily with a pen and paper lol
Arcades were about pinball machines for me, Donkey Kong and similar cabineted electronic games were annoying to me. I didn't mind a few things like Asteroids, or even some space invader type games (e.g. Galaga) but to me at the time those games were like "You're not actually doing anything, it's just stupid blips on a screen"
In fact all computers were to me was "type this shit and print it" until the 90's when they started to get more sophisticated.
You got Pengling to mention Grannys Garden.... RUN AND HIDE!!!!!....... EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!!!!
And three levels of Lego Star Wars 3: Clone Wars which is a typical Lego Star Wars game – think doing something while a huge number of spawning enemies shoot at you so it would be better to constantly deflect the shots with the lightsaber but you can't since you have to do something else at the time.
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I am an innocent newcomer. I know nothing about such perils :-)
Street Fighter IV's art style grew on me over time but SF5 & SF6, I'm just not feeling. While the game is good it reminds me too much of KOF in too many aspects. SF6 is a fine game to play for free but not to come out of pocket for.
You won't be surprised to learn that it's somewhat the reverse for me! There were slightly less pinball machines in arcades by the time I got to ever go to any, but I've always had more-or-less equal love for both (as is probably evident from my ridiculous quest to reach the ending of Alien Crush!). And I love Donkey Kong*, Asteroids (one of my all-time favourites), Pac-Man (my first video game hero, and the reason maze-chase is one of my all-time favourite genres - how often do you see maze-chase fans in 2023?
*Nintendo licensed a company called Falcon to distribute Donkey Kong in various places, on different hardware and under the name of "Crazy Kong Part II", and Falcon famously breached this agreement and sold it in other countries as well. I actually find Crazy Kong Part II slightly more interesting than the original game, as Falcon altered some of the stages a bit, adding extra challenge by putting things like extra holes in the girders for unwary players to fall through. (If you're familiar with the differences between Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, it's sort of like that, but less extensive.)
Here in the UK, 8-bit microcomputers were the dominant force in video gaming for a long time, so it was pretty commonplace for homes to have them in the 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s*. I got started with a Commodore 64 C in 1990.
*This didn't just decline for market reasons in the end, but also because in the front half of the late 1990s, school computing lessons were basically handed over to teaching dependency on Microsoft software, whereas prior to that even the tech-fearing schools (like mine) were teaching computing in a more multi-disciplinary way that taught pupils how to transfer skills between very different types of computing environment (at the very least there was usually a mix of the BBC Micro and Acorn Archimedes, along with a few other things peppered in), and of course we'd all experience different machines when visiting friends as well.
There's an interesting Twitter post about how this looked in May of 1992, here - as you can see, the Commodore 64 was top of the heap at that point, whereas elsewhere it was the Nintendo Entertainment System that dominated (this particular console hit about 4% marketshare at its heights in the UK).
Hahahahaha!
Granny's Garden (which, like myself and Bomberman, is also turning 40 this year) was a watershed moment for the use of computers in education over here - it was THE software that proved it was worthwhile, to the point that even the teachers who were scared of their jobs being replaced by computers (I'm sure everybody knew a teacher or two back then who could've been replaced by a BBC Micro, and the BBC Micro would've done a better job
Even though it has several elements that would now be recognised as bad game-design (we didn't think of it that way at the time because everything was still so very experimental, but The Land of Mystery is particularly awful for this, and also includes a puzzle that they really should've play-tested more with the target audience because it's far too difficult for most infant-school-aged kids), it's very fondly remembered by Brits of a certain age, and I'm only half-joking when I say that the Witch, who will send you home at once, is seen as an iconic survival-horror antagonist.
It was several years old by the time I was introduced to it, and the original BBC Micro version remained in use up and down the country well into the 1990s. It was also modernised in the 2000s and both versions are still sold directly by the original developers today (though the BBC Micro version is sold only as an emulated package these days).
Probably, but it's just the default in the custom firmware I'm using, so I stuck with it because it works well.
Last edited by Pengling on 20 Jun 2023 at 1:13 am UTC
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I'm 58, but I've always been a dinosaur, resisting new things, doing things the old way when everyone else is doing something else etc. A teenage dinosaur even.
When I was a kid, arcades were all pinball machines and back then they had clickety clack digit counters. There might have been a foosball table, or one of those smaller billiards tables that take quarters etc. About the only "electronic" games were bloop bloop bloop TV tennis (that used to ruin your TV's phosphors lol). I guess I was probably 16 or so when those first electronic cabinet games started showing up in arcades. Space Invaders was the first I saw.
Asteroids though, that was a cool game. Here, it was a sit down table top screen. I got pissed off and smashed the glass on one though (I was a savage back then lol). The guy who ran the place (not the amusements co. that actually owned the machines) "didn't see" who did it :-)
When I started high school, they had one computer. They called it Ike, and it was the size of a small room, and was programmed with Hollerith interface cards. It was stupid. (and I remember people dropping their stacks of computer cards all over the place and spending their time putting them in order again rofl! No way was I taking THAT class)
Some years later, I went back to finish high school and they had Apple II computers, which also bit the weenie as far as I was concerned.
My father's pharmacy switched over to using computers in the dispensary. My parents got one at home. I think it was DOS 3.0 back then. They had Word Perfect and I learned to use it to type resumes and stuff.
I took an old hand-me-down with me when I started a college program some years later. I hated that stupid Windows, but it was a multi-OS network boot environment at that school and I could avoid it. I could just use the Unix shell which I was a little familiar with (I did for pine, tin, lynx, gopher) or just start in DOS 5 for Word Perfect. The DOS 6.22 load was for Windows 3.11, it didn't have the DOS WP.
You couldn't pry my old style scientific calculator from my stiff dead hands either, while other students were using those fancy pants programmable graphing calculators with equation-like input.
Got a fuss ass Chemistry prof that was actually a computer consultant, so he cared more about the fancy computer presentation than the actual content (prick... he was a body filling a seat). So I had to start using Windows. By the time I got one at home, it was Windows 95.
It consumed me. Soon, it was enough of all that other bollocks, computers now lol
I set up Slackware 3.something a year or so later, just to have some familiar Unix commands again. A friend on IRC chat sent me the files through DCC, it was only 50 megs or so of packages. I didn't do "X Windows", I didn't need some ugly Windows replacement (and screenshots I'd seen of X Windows were all ugly grey, with terrible looking text and widgets etc.). I dialed up with Slackware's PPP scripts (pppsetup and ppp-go) and used command line IRC and stuff.
By 2000 I was using Linux for everything but MCSE studies (oh yeah, I'm a Microsoft Certified Solitaire Engineer, by the way lol) and tinkering with it. My first GUI Linux distro was "Corel Linux" (I bought it at a bookstore). I had to learn to compile a kernel if I wanted my parallel port zip drive working.
From there I went to Mandrake 7.0. What a wonderful distribution that was. Didn't like Mandrake 7.2 as much, so I settled in with Slackware 7 and used Slack for many years.
Around 2007 I started to get into Windows games, as Epic shafted us for Unreal Tournament 3 on Linux. and I had forum friends playing Call of Duty. It exploded from there and I was dependent on Windows again for games.
Now it's customized Arch for my gaming setup, and a very personal "from scratch" system for more serious stuff.
I've babbled too much here, but that's my computer story. I spend a lot of time playing games at night now :-)
Last edited by Grogan on 20 Jun 2023 at 5:26 am UTC