Join me this Wednesday to explore the (mostly) forgotten game cities of the 8-bit era in a free and not-too-long lecture.
From the ZX Spectrum to the NES, and from Mercenary to Ant Attack this will be one for historians and designers both.
Grab a seat here: https://www.d6learning.com/course/8-bit-cities
164 Landing #games for 53 platforms from 1969 to 2017:
Some impressions from last tuesday's meeting of the "Work Group for #GameLabs in Academia". (Photos were taken by René Meyer:
Starting next week, I will be holding a 4-sessions online course on the history of video games (from a creatives perspective).
Also, here's a 40% OFF coupon for said 'History of Video Games: A Tale of Tech & Game Design' course: VGHISTORY40
Use the code at checkout – valid today only!
Enroll and find out more here: https://www.d6learning.com/course/history-of-video-games-en
In Richard Garriott's DND1, written in 1977, he is using ascending AC.
The monster attack against the character is as follows.
Use the following number for the character's armor.
None = 6
Leather = 12
Chain = 16
Plate = 20
Add that to the character's dexterity score (which will be between 3-18)
The monster then rolls a 1d40
The monster needs to get above the characters armor + dexterity.
Was reading Richard Garriott talking about writing code and porting it to different systems and how porting to the PC was harder than other systems, because most computers in the early 80s used the same cpu, the MOS Technology 6501 and 6502.
It is not too far fetched to imagine a world where Intel did not become the dominate cpu.
As I work through the DND1 source code, it is obviously derived from playing D&D. Just look at the name of the program for one, DND1.
But did you know Richard Garriott was very aggressive (pressuring, threatening lawsuits) of any game that mirrored the Ultima games?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questron_(video_game)
He dumped EA as a distributor after they released Deathlord
https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2018/01/deathlord-summary-and-rating_29.html
It reminds me of Gary Gygax in a way. Gary would copy things like the Thief from player submissions, or Fireball from Len Patt, but would be critical of anyone else using ideas from D&D.
https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-conversation-with-len-patt.html
Also similar to Kevin Siembieda and the Palladium RPG. Is that not derived from D&D? But when WotC released the Envoy system that referenced Palladium, he brought a lawsuit against them. (note this was all before Magic the Gathering). And Palladium was known for being aggressive against fan websites.
In Richard Garriott's DND1 written in BASIC in 1977, I thought this bit of code was interesting.
It would be Death Saves for HP in more modern discourse.
If the characters's HP are 0, the character survives if their CONSTITUTION is 9 or above.
If the characters' HP are below 0, the character survives if their CONSTITUTION is 9 or above, but they lose 2 points of CONSTITUTION and gain 1 hit point.
This was only 3 or 4 years after D&D had been introduced to the world.
Richard Garriott wrote a program to simulate a d&d like rpg in the 1977-1979 timeframe. He kept his notes he wrote from that era. He would have been 16-18 years old at the time. Here is a picture of the first dungeon he made.
I copied out the series of 0,1,2,3,4 as text and ran it through my ascii dungeon tile converter to make the second image.
https://www.mobygames.com/game/143932/dungeons-and-dragons-1/
Surrounded by old games, writing about them, and studying their evolution for nearly 20 years, I simply had to prepare the 'History of Video Games: a tale of tech and design' course for d6learning.com.
Join me in the course presentation on March 11: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/history-of-video-games-a-tale-of-tech-and-design-course-presentation-tickets-1259287064509?aff=oddtdtcreator
Now, this is important! The Video Game History Foundation has launched its online library, and it's already packed with magazines, productions docs, and promo material.
Visit it here: https://library.gamehistory.org/
The Video Game History Foundation opened up digital access to a large portion of its massive archives today, offering access to information from the past 50 years.
"Today's launch of the VGHF Library comprises more than 30,000 indexed and curated files, including high-quality artwork, promotional material, and searchable full-text archives - over 1,500 video game magazine issues. This initial dump of digital materials also contains never-before-seen game development and production archival material stored by the VGHF, such as over 100 hours of raw production files from the creation of the Myst series or Sonic the Hedgehog concept art and design files contributed by artist Tom Payne."
https://library.gamehistory.org
More about it here at Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01/vghf-opens-free-online-access-to-1500-classic-game-mags-30k-historic-files
Today the "#VideoGame History Foundation" announced they opend their digital library to the public:
Sometimes I stumble upon some old corner of the Internet and it reminds me of how things use to be online. Today it was this page.
https://fancyclopedia.org/Ted_Johnstone
There is a real posibility David McDaniel aka Ted Johnstone was the first to propose 1d8 type dice notation in the first issue of Alarums & Excursions.
Test Drive: The Racing Game That Started It All
#TestDrive #Accolade #DistinctiveSoftware #Commodore64 #C64 #GameHistory #ClassicGames #RetroGaming #RacingGames
https://theoasisbbs.com/test-drive-the-racing-game-that-started-it-all/?feed_id=1149&_unique_id=67851e49130d1
One of the things I liked about 2e when it came out, was it did away with various male versus female strength restrictions. Not that I ever used that anyways.
Curiously, in the preface to the PHB, Gary Gygax wrote, "You will find no pretentious dictums herein, no baseless limits arbitrarily placed on female strength or male charisma"
But then on page 9, the Strength table has pretentious baseless limits arbitrarily placed on female strength.
Maybe he did not feel like it was baseless. Maybe it was such a ponderous tome, he forgot his train of thought.
Also, many others contributed to the writing of the PHB and DMG. Lawrence Schick wrote he was tasked with putting the DMG together and filling in missing pieces.
So @JesseSkinner tipped me off to this wild Wikipedia page 'List of video games considered the best' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_considered_the_best). And so many of my own favorite games are on this list. From Centipede to Wolfenstein 3D to Diablo and Diablo II. Good group.
Save the date & spread the word:
Tomorrow I will visit the "Haus der Computerspiele" (http://www.spielepower.de/) in Leipzig to meet René Meyer who curates an enormous collection of #Games, #RetroComputers and #GameConsoles. The tour will be presented in my lecture series "The World of #GameLabs".
If you like, you can attend online:
17.12.24 - 16:15pm at https://mluconf.uni-halle.de/b/ste-zv2-y8r-ecd
Today, we’re adding Company of Hero mock-ups to Games That Weren't. Created by @iHarbonaut for the Mobile #J2ME. Based on the classic real-time strategy game by Relic Entertainment, it sadly never progressed any further. For more details: https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2024/11/company-of-heroes/ #GameHistory
