I've recently been messing around with the Game Maker 8 system, to see what the state of play was for action-style games that are targeting non-programmers.

Short form: I was pretty impressed. I'm no longer really surprised that Iji and Spelunky could be written in it. But it's not a 'non-programming' system by any measure, other than that it ( Read more... )

I've been on an Ultima IV kick recently, since I'd never really gotten around to beating it as a kid.

If you're unfamiliar with the game, Ultima IV is unusual in that there's no particular Final Boss whose rear end you need to kick; the goal of the game is to become a paragon of Virtue and then collect and wield various mystical items to cement ( Read more... )

I haven't really had anything essay-length to say for quite a while. But after there being rumors of my death and all, I guess I should write something. (IMPORTANT NOTE FOR THE SEVERELY IMPAIRED: I AM NOT THE PERSON IN THE ARTICLE. THAT PERSON, WHO WAS NOT ME, IS IN FACT ACTUALLY DEAD. NEITHER HE NOR I ARE A COUNTRY SINGER, NOR WERE WE ONCE ( Read more... )

Icons and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test.

Bored MIT students, tools, and raw materials: a dangerous combination.

It's been awhile since I've talked video games. Since last time!

• I've beaten Actraiser. This took me all of three or so hours of play, including menu navigation. Not impressed.
• I've (as of about an hour ago) beaten Ristar. This was the result of about 10 hours of play spread over 2 months or so, and the difficulty curve was very nearly ideal; once ( Read more... )

Weishaupt Scholars is complete.

It clocks in at around 53,000 words.

Although it's completed, it's not shelved by any stretch of the imagination; I expect to be doing maintenance releases for awhile, but they're going to be in the "every couple of months" way instead of the "every two days" way.

So, yeah, it was my birthday last week, and so we went off and played Wii and ate way too much food.

A few posts back I promised some reviews of retro games, courtesy the Wii Points I got for Virtual Console silliness, and also some old collections I'd picked up for the Cube and never played (what with not having a Cube). So!

Actraiser. SNES. ( Read more... )

Penny Arcade has a long rant up today on the reviews of classic games, and he almost makes a good point.

It is, indeed, the case that games should be rated, in part, as products of their times. But this is not the whole story, and the example he uses hammers home exactly why that is.In some cases there's simply no need (beyond the business ( Read more... )

So, I finally got around to actually beating the first Sonic Adventure. I can't shake the feeling that the civilization whose ruins you traipse around in in Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles was destroyed because the inhabitants of that civilization did the Sonicverse equivalent of giving kittens 3s ( Read more... )