Get Psyched! @kinsie - Tumblr Blog

The Playdate? Yeah, it runs Doom.

The Playdate is a curious handheld console under development by Mac software lifers and occasional game publishers Panic, with an odd concept about games being delivered wirelessly at regular intervals and, uh, a turn crank controller on the side. Might be cool.

Developer preview units have been sent out to a lucky, randomly-chosen few, like indie dev Nic Magnier, who thankfully decided to answer the question this blog’s existence eternally poses by way of adapting a pre-existing port of Chocolate Doom to an embedded platform.

The attempts to shove Doom’s detailed pixel art through a purely two-colour display are interesting, but a 3D game on this platform would definitely need artwork to be specifically authored for the display’s limitations. Might be a fun concept to play around with…

Thanks Mechadon for bringing this to my attention!

#gaming #retrogaming #doom #playdate

jeffgerstmann

obscuritory

Maxis, the developer of SimCity, didn’t want to make professional simulation games. But for two brief, strange years, they did.

From 1992 to 1994, a division called Maxis Business Simulations was responsible for making serious professional simulations that looked and played like Maxis games. After Maxis cut the division loose, the company continued to operate independently, taking the simulation game genre in their own direction. Their games found their way into in corporate training rooms and even went as far as the White House.

I’ve been researching Maxis Business Simulations for the last four years, and this is the culmination of all my research. I am so incredibly proud to finally share this.

For the first time ever: this is the story of Maxis Business Simulations and SimRefinery.

When SimCity got serious (read on The Obscuritory)

John Hiles wanted to learn more about artificial intelligence. Not like trying to make computers smart, because as he put it, “that turned out to be largely be baloney.” Computer technology was nowhere near advanced enough for that yet. “It’s like saying we’re gonna start building a 40-story building on the 14th floor,” Hiles said. He wanted to start lower, at the level of unconscious thinking. He had been reading about cognitive theory, and he was fascinated by how the brain makes it possible for us to do things like speak and interpret language, all without a conscious action on our part, just an instinctive behavior.

Could you make a computer think like this instead? Could you give a computer program an unconscious mind?

It was a big idea, but he needed to find a way to make it into an actual product. In 1989, he found his answer. It was a new computer game called SimCity.

jeffgerstmann

itrunsdoom

Myki card readers? Yeah, they run Doom.

For those blissfully unaware, Myki is the perpetually-cursed public transport card system in Melbourne and Regional Victoria, Australia. Nobody likes it and it will never be replaced, but at this point I’m not even sure that we as a state would even know what to do with a competent train card system…

Anyhoo, somehow Reddit user zbios managed to get a hold of an older, obsoleted model of Myki card validator that runs Windows CE. One quick install of the Windows CE port of Chocolate Doom and the addition of VNC software to allow remote keyboard and mouse control, and he was able to help the Demonic hordes touch off… permanently. Check out the link for video footage!

Many thanks to Rudi for telling me about probably the most Melbourne thing I’ll ever post on this site, unless someone somehow ports Doom to graffiti on the side of an alleyway cafe.

#gaming #retrogaming #doom

obscuritory

Carnivores is a series of dinosaur hunting video games, but the fourth game, Carnivores: Cityscape, released in 2002, takes a very different direction. This time, the dinosaurs get to fight back.

This was the first and last Carnivores game that let you play as dinosaurs, and it’s also the only Carnivores game with multiplayer. It’s a significant change, not just because it’s an action-packed shooter now, but because it was made with multiplayer in mind. This game was meant to be played with a dozen people. In single-player, it feels… abandoned.

Carnivores: Cityscape (read on the Obscuritory)

Most of Cityscape takes place inside one massive futuristic city, through streets, buildings, and underground tunnels. The weird part is how much empty space there is. It doesn’t feel like there’s much to destroy or defend. It reminded me of logging into a nearly empty server in an online game and trying to find where the other players were.

Many of the indoor levels feel closer to the claustrophobic disaster movie atmosphere that the developers were going for, but it really depends on how interesting the level geometry is, if it gives you opportunities to hide and pounce. Otherwise you’re wide out in the open, and once again, you’re back in a hunting game, only this time you’re the prey, in a city instead of an open wilderness.

theweirdwideweb

slipgatetourist

Stopsignal’s Mimic sprite

michaelsandfordcomics

onegianthand

Social isolation

jeffgerstmann

Hot Take: Valorant is a bad name for a video game.

It sounds like the name of a disgruntled military blog

It's April 1st over here. What better day to properly announce I've started working on a new version of that thing you liked somewhere along the lines of five years ago?

#gaming #doom #modding #gzdoom #reelism #reelism 2 #untitled biblical rts