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Retro: Stairway To Hell


Image courtesy of 1000bit.net.

The Stairway to Hell is an awesome collection of Acorn Electron and BBC Model B ROMs, tape/disk images and utilities, and named after a classic BBC/Electron game. A labor of love by Dave Moore and other contributors, it's the central place to get access to classic games that I used to play many years ago. The game database is incredibly extensive with a huge inventory of games, and cover scans for tapes and boxes are also included. This should be considered THE resource for Old Skool Acorn gaming. I've lost many hours of my life playing the games listed on this site and I've not really regretted any of it at all. The price was right years ago, and I had a lot of fun playing them back then, and even more so now.

Games I can heartily recommend are:

  • Philosopher's Quest (Adventure)
  • Sphinx Adventure (Adventure, duhr)
  • Twin Kingdom Valley (Adventure)
  • Starship Command
  • Spellbinder
  • Citadel
  • Stryker's Run
  • Codename: Droid (Stryker's Run 2)
  • Dare Devil Dennis
  • Danger UXB
  • Jet Boot Jack
  • Deathstar
  • Chuckie Egg (A must!)
  • Hunkidory
  • Ghouls
  • Imogen
  • Impossible Mission
  • Omega Orb
  • Thrust
  • Thunderstruck
  • Thunderstruck 2
  • Vindaloo
  • Night World
  • Elite
  • Elixir
  • Exile
  • Repton (any of the games)
  • Rubble Trouble
  • Smash & Grab
  • Frak!
  • and Stairway to Hell (obviously)

You'll need to grab an emulator and both BASIC and OS ROMS to get up and running with this great gaming platform, but if you're big into retro gaming and remember the days of the Spectrum 48k and the Commodore 64 well, you'll probably remember the Acorn machines (probably with snobbery) and you should check out the goodness that there was on offer all those years ago.

The Acorn Electron is the computer I cut my teeth on for programming, writing my first computer program when I was 12 years old (that would be in 1985). Today I still have fond memories of that computer and I have a single unit sitting in the basement here that I take out from time to time and look at, remembering just how old I am today.

If you don't hear from me, I'm lost in the mists of time.

Links

Technorati Tags: acorn electron, bagder, retro, stairway to hell

Tags: Retro, Retro Tuesday by Teh Bagder
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Play: Bagder Household To Stay 360-less Until Spring 2009

 
Image courtesy of IGN.com

Mrs Teh Bagder and I have been doing some talking about the state of my Xbox 360-less-ness. While we’d both really like to get one so that I could get some online hang time with friends, we’re none to happy with the financial implications of the currently overheating version of the console. We had planned for this year to be a bumper year for consoles in the Bagder Household with Good ‘Ole Santy Claws bringing a 360, a Wii and a new HD TV to us and the cubs. We decided to scale back on this and put more money towards one of the above Crimble gifts.

The Wii won out. Not that that’s any real surprise.

We’ll get a Wii, another 3 controllers and nunchuks and a couple of classic controllers, and a bunch of games including Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, Wii Play (for the controller), Super Paper Mario, Wario Ware Smooth Moves, Mario Party 8 and put a bunch of credit into the Virtual Console. Overall, we figure that we’ll get a lot of family enjoyment from this single purchase, and it’s not as if we need a decent HD display to play the console. I can still buy up lots of Xbox and PS2 games until the end of the year and build my collection, and then look at an Xbox 360 in the new year when some of the manufacturing issues with the console are addressed.

Links

 

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Tags: Play by Teh Bagder
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Retro: Impossible Mission

 
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

I was 13 years old and feeling sick one day (one of many days that turned out to be from recently discovered food allergies). My parents decided to let me stay home from school. Two days before this I had ordered Mission Impossible for my Acorn Electron and wasn’t expecting it to arrive by mail for another week when it popped through my mailbox that morning. I rushed to open the package, pulled the cassette tape out of its holder, put it into my tape recorder and typed “CHAIN *.*” . Within ten seconds, the screeching and scrawing of the tape only added to the anticipation I had to play this game. As soon as it loaded, I was all over it, actually managing to complete the game that day, which was a first for me, and something I’ve yet to repeat. For years afterwards, I’d bring this game out when I’d get annoyed with Elite. Ah, those were glory days back then, back when I had lots of free gaming time and didn’t mind a 10 minute load for each game.

The platforming in this game was part of the fun. Much like in Prince of Persia, timing was everything. You only had a set amount of time to complete the game and stop the evil Professor Atombender from succeeding as his evil plans. Rooms on different levels were accessed by an elevator system, and you had to dodge various robot sentries to access the computer terminals scattered throughout the game. Accessing these terminals allowed you to send various robots to sleep as well as resetting lifts in each room. Furniture held parts of the password that you needed to compile so that you could finally capture Professor Atombender in his secret room, and once you had all the parts you could compile it. From the first time that I did a somersault over a sentry robot while playing the game on my friend’s Commodore 64, I fell in love with this game.

Lately, the Wii remake of the game has been announced and has garnered some acclaim as being the first non-emulated Virtual Console game to be released by Nintendo. This is pretty awesome news because it means the game has been written for specific platforms, not that it really needs it. It runs perfectly under emulation. There’s DS, PSP and PS2 versions coming soon as well according to the developer website (System 3). 

You can still play this game under emulation on a number of platforms, including the original Commodore 64 version. There was a second game in the series which I didn’t enjoy as much, but that could simply be because the first game was so much fun that a sequel seemed superfluous.

Links

Tags: Retro, Retro Tuesday by Teh Bagder
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Opine: AMA Rejects Video Game Addiction, WoW Players Ignore It Because They’re Too Busy Playing WoW


Image courtesy of the AMA.

The American Medical Association (AMA) has announced that there's currently no such thing as true clinical video game addiction, according to a Yahoo News article. Basically their current investigation states that more evidence is needed before a thorough decision can be made about whether video game "addiction" falls into the same category as alcoholism or substance abuse, both of which have external chemical substance components that feed the addiction. Hey, game industry haters, take a page from the AMA. Follow the Scientific Method and get more evidence before making judgement calls about whether games cause violence.  Dr. Louis Krauth says it best in the article when he says:

"It's not necessarily a cause-and-effect type issue. There may be certain kids who have a compulsive component to what they are doing".

Yay for common sense!

Am I addicted to games? No. Do I know people that are addicted to games? No, but I do know people that spend a large amount of time playing games in lieu of other activities such as drinking, following sports, hunting, going to church, and other such more socially acceptable addiction-type behaviour. They get misclassified as being addicted to it because they spend a lot of time doing it.

I've been a game player for 25 years, and I'd say that I'm probably one of the most psychologically grounded people I know. I've been through phases when I played a lot of games over a period of time, and in particular times when a game just wouldn't allow me to let it go and I wanted to keep playing it. I've had the same reaction to various books, roleplaying games, board games, collectible card games, movies, television shows and all manner of other activities. Currently my big thing is collectible pirate ships. Go figure.

Some personalities are keyed to be termed "addicts", but if you look deeper you'll probably find that there's more to it. Today's socially awkward members find games an entertainment medium as well as a social medium that's often highly charged with competitiveness. Years ago, it would have been chess, comic collecting or miniature model painting that was the escape from the social "norm". If you look at sports fans, movie fans, music fans, fashion fans or any other type of fan, you'll see the same behavior exhibited in those areas as in gaming; when you really dig something, you really dig it. The big difference between gamers and those other groups is that we're not out in the open as much, or part of a larger clique (pronounced cleek BTW, and not click - damnable Americans have a French language hate-on all the time…).

Here in Buckeye State Ohio, there's quite frankly a rather disturbing allegiance to the Scarlet and Gray. It's nuts. People are part of the collective whether they're really interested or not. They just want to belong to something that others are a part of.  The difference with gamers is that they operate the opposite way. Gamers are interested in something and then become part of the collective because the social stigma attached to gaming is different; gamers are seen as outside the norm and pro-actively join the social group through interaction whilst college football fans join because of social and business pressures in most cases as I see it.

So, say it loud and say it proud. We're not addicts. We're gamers. We just like things that are different from you, and we're cool with that, so you might as well be as well. If not, then tough, because in the next two generations coming up, the Geek will inherit the Earth.

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Technorati Tags: bagder, game addiction, AMA

Tags: Opine, Politics by Teh Bagder
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Play: Rabbids Rock, Not Interested In Paper or Scissors

I’ll admit it. We’ve gone Rabbid Mad here at the Bagder household (not enough to change my name to Teh Rabbid … yet). Last night saw much playing of Rayman Raving Rabbids. Even without the Wii controller, the game rocks and is a lot of fun. We all sat and took turns trying to complete the challenges.

The favorite games by far so far are:

  • Anything involving plungers
  • Throwing a cow
  • Slapping Rabbids on the head with a shovel
  • The dancing competitions

There’s a couple of annoying games, including one where you have to pick up pigs while flying a bat thing, but overall, each of the games so far has been pretty fun. Did I mention that you should pick this game up yet? Especially if you have kids. 

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Deals of the Day: 26th June 2007

Amazon.com

Woot.com

Tanga.com

DirecTron.com

JustDeals.com

PacificGeek.com

Technorati Tags: amazon, bagder, deals, directron, just deals, pacific geek, tanga, woot

Tags: Uncategorized by Teh Bagder
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Deals: Tangathon! 26th June 2007

Tanga is having another Tangathon. Up for grabs already has been Axis and Allies Revised Edition and Hasbro Mission Paintball Trainer. Currently Puerto Rico the Board Game is up for sale for $22.99 + $5.99 shipping. Like most other Tanathons, this one will last a couple of days and there are some good board game deals to get here. There have been some awesome deals at the last one, which I'm hoping they'll repeat, namely Age of Empires III the board game, which I just missed out on.

Links

 

Technorati Tags: bagder, deals, tangathon, tanga

Tags: Uncategorized by Teh Bagder
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Pimpage: Dude, I’m SAG-Sanctioned!

SAGSanctioned

W00T! I'm now officially sanctioned at the SAG website!

Seriously, if you enjoy podcasts and websites run by guys from Missouri, check it out. Great community and nice blokes and lassies all round.

Oh, and here's a sample so you can see what you're missing. Check out the cans on that! 

 

This animation was put together by Agent Xenon (one of the forum crew) and uses an actual snippet of real SAG podcast content. Likeness to actual hosts is non-accidental and funny as all hell.

 

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Technorati Tags: bagder, Short Attention Gamer

Tags: Pimpage, Podcast by Teh Bagder
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