The announcement trailer for Gears of War: E-Day

I  very rarely play video or computer games anymore.  Mostly it's because of a lack of time.  And there are other amusements too, like having a miniature dachshund.  But that doesn't mean I don't have an active interest in the industry...

(I am currently trying to finish Fallout: New Vegas at last, whenever I'm having some downtime.  It's only been out since 2010.  Time to wrap that baby up!)

There is one game franchise that is especially near and dear to my heart though: the Gears of War series.

Maybe it's because each of the games seem to have coincided with some circumstance in my life.  Gears of  War was released on November 7th, 2006.  That was also Election Day of my first/likely last political campaign.  Then came Gears of War 2 two years later.  That game came out a few weeks after the worst thing that ever happened to me.  I had lost everything except a few belongings including, somehow, my Xbox 360.  That second Gears game provided a much needed distraction from myself.  And then in 2011 came Gears of War 3.  I think my girlfriend at the time found my excitement to be more than a bit amusing... like when I called her on the phone at 10 p.m. to tell her that I'd successfully defended Anvil Gate.

I haven't been able to play Gears of War: Judgment yet though.  Again, circumstances coincided and not the best of them at that.  And I haven't had much opportunity to get a more modern Xbox system, so the fourth and fifth of the main Gears series are still unplayed by me.

Maybe someday I'll get that newer Xbox.  Maybe it'll coincide with a new BioShock game (another game series I love immensely).  And based on what was released yesterday, I'm making it a personal goal to get that Xbox X or whatever it's called...

Behold the announcement trailer for Gears of War: E-Day.

As the title suggests this game is set during around Emergence Day, fourteen years before the first Gears of War.  These are considerably younger versions of Marcus and Dom.  We're going to see the very first attacks by the Locusts upon the humans of Sera and based on the trailer it's going to be brutal.

Gears of War: E-Day is scheduled to be released sometime in 2025, probably around the fall if previous games have been any indication.

Maybe this next game's release will coincide with happier circumstances.  For all of us.

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Ever wonder what BioShock's Big Daddy looks like without the helmet? Ehhhh...

I've been a massive fan of the BioShock games (admission: I've never played BioShock Infinite) almost since the beginning of the series.  From the first moments of the original BioShock I was swallowed whole by this tale of sub-Atlantic horror.  To me the story of the city of Rapture is a fable, a morality play.  It is about what mankind is reduced to after consciously and willfully choosing against having a belief in God and the restraining morality He provides.  Man without God is a terrible thing, is what I've found in the BioShock games.  It's a theme I'm looking forward to seeing touched upon more in future games from the franchise.

Anyway, if you've played the first two games you're familiar with the Big Daddies: those hulking brutes in diving suits that lumber around Rapture, usually accompanied by the Little Sisters who they are programmed to protect.  The Big Daddy is the most iconic element of the BioShock series, heck it's on the front cover of the games.  And as you play you come to discover more about the Big Daddies, including how they are made.  At one point in the first game you have to put on a Big Daddy getup.

But somehow none of the games have shown us what exactly is inside a Big Daddy.  We haven't seen what it looks like underneath.  All we know is that the poor sap to be converted into a Big Daddy is flayed, chemically treated and them grafted and steam-sealed into the suit.  Yucko.

Well, Kate Harrold over at Gaming Bible has a story up in the past few days about what BioShock's Big Daddy looks like sans helmet.  This is something that PC Gamer's Andy Kelly first found three years ago but it's brand new to me.  The art is attributed to Irrational/Take-Two artist Robb Waters, so it should be considered canon.

Are you ready?  There's no going back once you've scrolled down.

You really sure about this?

Last chance to back out.

All right, let it be on your own conscience.

And here it is: a Big Daddy without the helmet...

Just plain disquieting.  Pretty nightmarish.  I don't know why it has a yellow glow deep within its cranium.  Some plasmid-altered remnant of a mind perhaps?  Those eyes, that translucent skin... eep.  I'll certainly never see those poor creatures the same way again.  For all the potential for brutality that the Big Daddies symbolize, they are very pitiable and tragic monsters who were once human.

And now I've just ruined your day.  Sorry about that.  Maybe.

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I'm three episodes into Amazon Prime's new series Fallout...

 "War.  War never changes."

Actually, Ron Perlman's voice for opening narration is pretty much the only thing missing from Fallout: Amazon Prime's new streaming show based on the legendary video/computer game series.  I was looking forward to what those first words would be.

But that can be forgiven, in light of how epically faithful a live-series adaptation of the Fallout saga is to the source material.  It's all here: the vaults, the stimpacks, the Brotherhood of Steel, the retro-futuristic look of pre-war America... Heck in the second episode we even see a live-action brahmin (the two-headed cattle seen in most if not all of the games).

So I've just finished watching the third episode, and it's pretty well established that Lucy (Ella Purnell) from Vault 33 is way out of her element.  Actually, just about all of the dwellers in Vault 33 are in over their heads.  They are basically touchy-feely types who believe the wasteland and its denizens will be won over by progressive concepts like teaching them Shakespeare and beginner's calculus.

Ahhh yes, the wasteland.  It's definitely in keeping with what is depicted in the games.  It's that helping of Mad Max-style dystopia colored with 1950s-ish aesthetics and a healthy dash of mutant monsters and trademark Fallout humor.  This ruined landscape two hundred-some years after World War III is no place for the weak of heart.  But it's absolutely spot-on filled in with trademark elements from Bethesda's games (speaking of which, I need to finish Fallout: New Vegas sometime, but real life keeps popping up every time I pick up from the most recent save point).

Fallout boasts a strong cast.  In addition to Purnell there is Aaron Moten as Maximus: an aspirant with the knight-like Brotherhood of Steel.  Then there is Walton Goggins as "the Ghoul", who is pretty much like the ghouls you encounter in the games, if one were also decked out like "The Man with No Name" from Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns.  Also featured is Kyle MachLachlan, who won acclaim playing Agent Dale Cooper on Twin Peaks as the Overseer of Vault 33.  And it would be a grave error on my part if I did not mention Michael Emerson's presence.  I became a great fan of his work on Lost and it's a delight to see him again.

Little wonder Fallout is so good, when the series is helmed by Jonathan Nolan - who I thought did a magnificent job as showrunner of HBO's Westworld - along with Fallout games head honcho Todd Holland as executive producer.  It's a practically perfect endeavor with everyone and everything falling into their proper places.  THIS is what a live-action adaptation of a video game is supposed to look like (no, I haven't seen The Last Of Us yet but I'd like to check that out eventually).  From the first episode Fallout the streaming series has sucked me in, just as Fallout 3 did when I first played it fifteen years ago (I played the first two games later on).

If there is a fault I find in Fallout the television series, it's the profanity.  I can't recall there being that much swearing in the games.  There's a modicum of cussin' in the Bethesda works, but not nearly as at times overwhelming as in the Amazon show.  Just because this is a series with production value on par with Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead doesn't mean the crew must go all-out crazy with harsh language.  But then again, I doubt it's going to be small children who are playing the Fallout games.  These are games for a mature audience and I can overlook the show's language, kinda.

 Otherwise, consider me a fan, and that's hard to pull off when I've become so jaded about entertainment in general that the only other thing I'm looking forward to is the final season of Stranger Things.

There are five episodes left in Fallout's first season.  I'm going to try to watch the rest sometime over the weekend, in between working on other projects.  If the following installments are as good as these three are, then I am already anticipating more seasons to come.

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Reveal trailer for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle!

Word is breaking loose at this hour that Bethesda's new Indiana Jones game has finally been revealed...

Coming later this year it's Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.  Looks set pre World War II aka the "golden era" of the saga.  As for the "MacGuffin" of this particular adventure, there are hints of in in the trailer that went live a little while ago.

So let's take a look at it!

I'm not much of a video game player anymore (though I still want to eventually finish Fallout: New Vegas) but this might tempt me to get a new console.  Well, of course a new BioShock game would make me want that even more :-)

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DOOM is thirty years old today!

Doom, arguably the most installed piece of software in the history of anything, today celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of its release.

It was at 12:01 AM on the morning of December 10th, 1993 that the team at id Software uploaded the first one-third of the game - the shareware version - to an FTP server at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Within minutes wanna-be players crashed the school's system as everyone and their brother (and a few sisters) tried to get Doom.  Hours later and campuses around the world were banning the game's network play capability, it was such a resource hog.

By the end of that first day it was very obviously clear: the world was Doomed.  It wasn't long afterward that the id Software staff started getting sales of the full game to the tune of a hundred THOUSAND dollars a day.

And it wasn't just the high school and college crowd that was playing Doom: it was people from all walks of life.  Young and old.  Students and professionals.  Especially when it came to the game's revolutionary multiplayer component.  Doom was the great leveler after death itself.  In a perfect world there would be no wars: only games of Doom to prove one's skill.

My first exposure to Doom came a few months later, when a friend brought over a box containing the shareware version that he had found at K-Mart for like a dollar.  This was still a time when most homes in America didn't have Internet and consequently no FTP access, so id also distributed the shareware edition in boxes for the cost of packaging.  Johnny's own computer was having problems running it, but maybe mine would.  We were sharing rides to the community college for a history class on Tuesday nights.  After I returned home that evening I installed Doom on the 486-SX system that I had gotten for Christmas.

Doom was a little overwhelming at first.  Also plenty violent.  I didn't honestly know what to make of it when I initially cranked it up, and there was school work and my job at the nearby seafood restaurant for most of the weekend.  But on Sunday afternoon I gave Doom another shot.  It sucked me in hard and refused to let go.  I was firing at anything and everything that moved.  By the time I found the chainsaw I was grinning like a maniac.  Dad walked past my door and looked in to see what I was doing.  He saw me blasting those Imps away with the shotgun and just sort-of shook his head in disbelief.  Later on he watched me sawing into the demons and I like to think he found it pretty amusing.  Just as I was finding that killing off hordes of the undead was a GREAT stress reliever after all.

It wasn't long after that when I sent a check off to Texas.  A week or so later the full version of Doom - containing version 1.666 - arrived at my door.  By that time I had conquered "Knee Deep In The Dead" many times on the various difficulties.  Now it was time at last to wade upon "The Shores Of Hell" on my way to "Inferno".

And then came the discovery that id Software had made the game almost completely customizable!  People had figured out how to create their own levels, edit and add-in new graphics, change up the sounds and music... pretty much anything pertaining to the game's environment.  That first night I tried an add-on, when I UNZIP-ped a WAD (acronym for "Where's All the Data?") file and changed the Baron of Hell into Barney the Dinosaur... that just lit a fire under me to find and collect EVERY add-on file that I could locate.  I think my favorite custom level was "Deimos Subway": a very well-designed board imitating a train station along with a catchy tune for background music.  There was the WAD that added sounds from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  And there is also no forgetting the various WADs that added classical MIDI music to the game.  All very clever (and often very funny) stuff.  Although I kind of harbor doubts that many people these days would be comfortable with loading the COSBY.WAD before starting the game...

Wow.  Thirty years.  So much has happened both in personal time and across the realm of video/computer gaming.  But even today, that first one-third of Doom is with us as much as ever.  Ports of the game have been made for everything from calculators to refrigerator doors to home pregnancy tests to John Deere tractors.  It's become an unofficial mantra of the coding sector: "It's not a computer if it doesn't run Doom."

And I would be remiss if I did not admit that every so often I find myself playing original Doom again.  There's just something about this game that charms the player and leaves an indelible mark on one's cerebral pleasure center.  I've played a lot of so-called "Doom-clones", but it's the original game which the game-oriented part of my personal entertainment proclivity owes its allegiance to.

Time has proven that it is true: "Doom will never die.  Only its players will."

So Happy Thirtieth Birthday to Doom!  May we be playing it for another thirty!

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Happy 15th Birthday to FALLOUT 3!

 "War.  War never changes."

 

It was on this day in 2008, exactly fifteen years ago, that the long-awaited Fallout 3 was released.  And computerized role-playing gaming was never the same again.

This was the first Fallout game that I ever played.  I bought it a few months after it was released.  At that point in my life I was needing something to distract my mind from itself, after a lot of recent events had rocked my world.  I bought Fallout 3 on something of a lark, having heard how much it sucked the player into it.

I am very glad that it did.

At the time I blogged about my journey through the Capitol Wasteland: the grim setting of the game.  Fallout 3 became not so much a game as an experience.  Something that put you in situations that you share as tales you tell your friends.  To this day I have to giggle whenever I think of going into the Lee Mansion and finding that shrine to Abraham Lincoln down in the basement.  Fallout 3 is rife with little details like that.

I've played other Fallout games since.  Though I haven't finished Fallout: New Vegas (one of these years I will) and Fallout 4 was certainly worth waiting to get a proper rig to play it on.  I sincerely tried to get into Fallout 76 but ultimately it just didn't have the same allure.  And I did eventually play and enjoy the first and second game in the series, which are definitely products of their time and not the 3-D worlds of the third game onward.

Fallout 3 though.. that's the one that I'm going to take with me the rest of my life.  It and I have a very rare connection between a game and its player.  And I'm always going to appreciate that.

Think I'll have the Fallout 3 soundtrack album playing for the rest of the afternoon as I work on some things...

 

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Good deals on Indiana Jones computer games

I'm hearing very mixed word about the upcoming motion picture Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  I seriously want this to be a good movie.  Raiders of the Lost Ark is my all time most favorite film and I found something good in each entry of the franchise.  I even thought that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was pretty good: all you need do is keep in mind that Lucas and Spielberg wanted to make a homage to the "flying saucer B-movies" of the Fifties, that they fondly remembered from adolescence.  Do that and it's a perfectly fine movie.

But I want Dial of Destiny to be good because seeing an Indiana Jones movie in the theater together was something Dad and I did with every chapter of the series.  This will be my first time seeing a new Indy movie without him. I want to enjoy this movie in Dad's memory as much as for my own sake.  We'll find out later this month.  I hope there will be some pleasure in writing that review.

Anyhoo, while we're waiting for that next Indiana Jones movie to be released, you might consider immersing yourself in the role with some of the saga's computer games that have been released over the years.  I've played and completed each of these (including all three of Fate of Atlantis's paths) and can vouch for their entertainment value.  And I just checked: there are some very solid deals going on right now if you purchase them from an online vendor.  Over at GOG.com they're each currently selling for a little over two bucks, while Steam's store has them for $5.99.  So you might wanna jump at the opportunity to add one or all of these to your game library while the iron's hot right now.

Like I said, I can attest to how good these games are.  Especially 1992's Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.  This classic "point and click" adventure set in 1938 finds Indy and former protege Sophia Hapgood traveling from the streets of New York City to Iceland to Monte Carlo and everywhere in between seeking the lost continent, trying to keep the Nazis from obtaining a mystical metal that could power everything from cars and airplanes to atomic-grade munitions.  One of the things I like about this game is that it has great replay value because of its multiple paths feature.  At a certain point in the game the player chooses from three ways forward: Team (having Hapgood along for the entire ride), Fists (where Indy resolves a lot of conflict with knuckle-baring action) or Wits (encouraging Jones to use his noggin to solve various puzzles).  The version on GOG and Steam is the 1993 "talkie" edition that was released on CD-ROM, taking advantage of multimedia technology that was just coming to market.  Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is still wildly acclaimed now more than thirty years after its release.  I would highly recommend this one if you're at all interested in the world of Indiana Jones.

Some years later - in real life as well as in the Indy universe - Doctor Jones is enjoying the relative post-war calm of 1947 as he looks for Native American artifacts in the Utah desert.  That is where he is found by Sophia Hapgood, who wants to recruit Indy on behalf of the newly-formed Central Intelligence Agency.  Seems that the Soviets have had scientists scouring the Mid-East looking for the remains of the Tower of Babel.  The goal: locate a mechanism of extraordinary - some would say un-earthly- power.  So begins Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine from 1999.  This game was LucasArts's answer to the popular Tomb Raider games that had been a hit for a few years already.  Admittedly the visuals when compared to the graphics of nearly a quarter-century later leave MUCH to be desired.  But if you can overlook that Infernal Machine is still a rip-roaring adventure around the globe.

And finally, we have 2003's Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb.  Set in 1935, this game is something of a prequel to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which itself was a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, pretty meta aye?).  The game opens with Indy in Ceylon (what will later become known as Sri Lanka) and there is a positively enormous crocodile that once encountered you will never forget it.  Afterward our archeologist hero is approached by officials with the Chinese government, asking for his aid in recovering the Heart of the Dragon: a black pearl of reputed power that had been secreted away in the resting place of the country's first ruler.  Emperor's Tomb features far better graphics than its predecessor, and also provides a much more action-oriented experience, especially when using Indiana's signature bullwhip.  Emperor's Tomb is a rather hidden gem of the Indyverse: it was kind of overlooked upon first release. Maybe now, twenty years after it was published, it can be discovered anew and better appreciated.

Just in case you're wondering: no, nobody is paying me to hawk these games.  I'm simply doing it because I'm an Indiana Jones nut (hey, I watched every episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) and have always found the world through his eyes to be a fascinating one.  If you dig (ha-ha, "dig", get it?  Yes ladies and gentlemen I'll be here all week!) a good quest rife with solid story, great action, perplexing puzzles and terrific characterization, and if you just want to experience a bit of what it's like to be cinema's most famous globe-trotting archaeologist, any of these three games will satisfy you.

Come to think of it, I may play one of these also while we're waiting for the next movie to drop.

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Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun: Carnage-filled fun for gamers of a certain age (and other people too!)

This coming December will mark thirty years since the original computer game Doom was released by id Software.  Gadzooks!!  Where did all that time go to?!?  Well, Doom sucked me in hard and refused to release its grip.  There had been a few first-person shooters before, notably id's own Wolfenstein 3-D.  But it was Doom that showed off the REAL potential of the genre.  And it broke the ground for other high-drama atmospheric entries in the category, like Star Wars: Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3-D, and Quake.  Those in turn showed the way for more advanced games in the forthcoming generations, such as Halo and Call of Duty.

But no matter how advanced home computers and gaming consoles have become, my heart belongs to 1993's Doom and its contemporaries.  Especially for how editable it was, and it seemed like everyone and their brother was creating WAD files containing new graphics (my favorite is still the one that turned the Baron of Hell into Barney the Dinosaur), or sounds and music, right on up to new maps to play in.  Yes, the music was MIDI and the graphics were REALLY pixelated when you got up close to an element like scenery or an attacking monster... but that was just part of the charm.  Part of why I and many others came to love those games.

Well, a few weeks ago I heard about Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, from Auroch Digital.  And what grabbed my attention was that it was created in the very same style of the Nineties-era first person shooters like Doom.  The game came out a few days ago and lo and behold a friend gifted it to me on Steam (where it's currently priced around twenty bucks).  So I installed Boltgun and played around with it.

Friends, that evening I felt what it was like to have played Doom for the very first time all those decades ago.  Auroch took the Warhammer 40,000 franchise and gave it a game it didn't know it needed.  If you're a "gamer of a certain age" who was among the first to play classic shooters, you will LOVE Boltgun.

The game has you playing a member of the Ultramarines chapter of the Adeptus Astartes (faux Imperial lingua franca for Space Marines).  If you ever played the Space Marine third-person game, you'll be especially delighted to learn that Boltgun takes place following that tale (and before the upcoming Space Marine II).  Your well-enhanced warrior, Malum Caedo, finds himself on the forge world of Graia.  Just like those Union Aerospace scientists did in Doom, it seems that the local techpriests got to messin' around with stuff they shouldn't have and opened a portal to Hel... I mean, the Warp.  Demons and mutant heretics and traitor marines have come through and are threatening the planet and all around it.  So as Caedo, you set out to make things right... by shootin', explodin', and chainsawin' every thing that's in your way.

Boltgun is an intense game, and the blocky pixelated blood and gore that splatters across your screen is all the more like enjoying a classic again.  Befitting a Warhammer 40,000 product, it is unfettered chaos and wreckage that will have you attacking anything and everything that moves.  I've gotten pretty good at taking aim with the selected firearm (mostly the boltgun) at relatively far targets, then rushing in to chainsword the baddie and any surrounding renegades.  It was like when I was playing Doom for the first time and came upon the chainsaw: Dad was walking past my room and had to see what I was giggling about.  I got the sense that he thought it was pretty gruesome (but also kind of funny).  Lord only knows what he would think of modern gaming.

I'm only three levels into the game, but felt it was already worth recommending to all two of this blog's readers.  I've been pretty well entertained by Boltgun so far.  What I would VERY much like to see however is for Auroch (provided that Games Workshop approves the concept) to open the game up for editing, just like we could do with many of the more popular first-person shooters of that epoch.  At the very least the studio could produce some add-on campaigns.  I would DEFINITELY pay to have Boltgun pitting the player against the Orks, or Tyranids (which reminds me of that legendary megaWAD that transformed Doom into the movie Aliens).

If you have fond memories of the gaming of thirty-some years ago, I think you'll like Boltgun.  It may also entice younger gamers to look around at the titles we had back then and give them a try also.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun can be found for purchase on Steam, again for about twenty bucks.  Not a bad deal if you're looking for something to vent a little angst and tension without having to shoot at the wall like Sherlock did.

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Replacing the battery in a Game Boy cartridge (yes, it CAN be done!)

A few weeks ago I found my Game Boy Advance.  Still in pristine condition after being in a really nice case all this time.  Vintage game consoles seem to be enjoying a renaissance lately, like systems that play Atari and Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges on high-def television sets.  And this particular Game Boy Advance holds a special place in my heart, it having been a gift for Christmas eighteen years ago.

I still had a bunch of cartridges on hand: Game Boy Advance ones as well as for the classic Game Boy and the Game Boy Color.  They all still work great!  Except for one small problem...

The cartridges that utilize battery backup have almost all run dry.

Battery backup in game cartridges goes back at least as far as the original The Legend of Zelda for the NES.  After choosing to save a game it would use the built-in battery to hold the game state and vital stats, like which items your character possessed, amount of life it had, whatever.  I guess the most well known example of batteries used in game cartridges are the first several editions of Pokemon, before it went to flash memory starting with the Game Boy Advance (though batteries still powered the internal clocks of those cartridges).

But as with all such things, the batteries eventually go dead.  And along with it any practical means of playing the game again. If only there was a way to replace that battery...

It turns out, that there is.  And it works amazingly well!

Here's what you need:

From left to right: Game Boy cartridge, new CR2025 battery with tabs for soldering (available here), soldering iron (and sufficient amount of solder) such as this set that I used, and set of security screwdrivers (like this set available on Amazon for $6.99).

For the first attempt I used my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.  Bought when it first came out in the summer of 1993.  Took me a few weeks to beat it (SPOILER: the entire game is just a dream, sorta like when Pam Ewing found Bobby in the shower).  Twenty-seven years later the battery inside the cartridge had long been dry.  Perfect specimen for experimentation.  In the pic to right you see the cartridge along with the 4.5mm screwdriver.  None of the Nintendo gear seems to have used standard screwdrivers.  Instead they're special "security" screws.  That set for seven bucks I just told you about?  It comes with 3.8mm and 4.5mm screwdrivers as well as a tri-wing screwdriver that's supposed to come in especially handy for Game Boy Advance cartridges.  Along with opening up other Nintendo cartridges and game systems.

So first we open the cartridge (shown with the new battery):

 

Instead of lifting straight off, the top of the cartridge sort of slides up and out from the rest of the plastic casing.  And then we get to the guts of the thing:

See that round looking gimmick?  That's the original battery, which is what will be replaced.  It looks welded to the board.  Which, it kinda is.  But it's going to be a snap to remove it.

Simply heat up the soldering iron and apply it to the places where the battery is soldered to the board.  It should not take much effort at all to do this to each solder.  Do NOT apply the iron to the battery itself!  Just on the two metal tabs coming off of the battery (which, is what they are there for):

 And here is the old battery now removed from the cartridge:

Make extra sure that you are soldering the right tabs to the proper places on the circuit board (i.e. + to + and - to -.  But if you keep in mind how the old battery was placed, it should be easy to match them up right):

Here is our new battery completely soldered onto the board:

And now the cartridge is closed up and screwed down tight, looking brand new as ever!

But will it work??  The game turned on fine when inserted into the Game Boy Advance.  I started a new game/file and after playing around with it a few minutes I saved and turned it off.  Waited thirty seconds before turning it on again.

And there is the saved game:

The entire operation took less than five minutes!  Emboldened by the first surgery, I now turned the soldering iron to Pokemon Blue.  I bought this on a lark in 1998, out of curiosity about what the Pokemon craze was about.

A few minutes and one new battery later...

My Pokemon Blue now has at least 22 more years left before it needs the battery changed again.  Which means I've plenty of time to catch them all before I turn 70.  Who knows: I may buy a GameCube and the other intervening consoles between Game Boy and Switch or whatever, just to keep expanding my collection until the day I die.  Yes, that too is possible.

So if you want to extend the longevity of your Game Boy cartridges, don't be intimidated by the batteries!  A few simple tools are all you need to keep your games going for the next several decades :-)

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Star Wars: Squadrons has Chris feeling like he's 20 years old all over again

For the vastest part I have moved on past video games.  These days if I play any game at all it's going to be something like a rewarding round of Go against a human opponent, or the miniatures game Warhammer 40,000 (either of which provides for keen exercise of the tactical mind).  You know, something physical with tactile sensation.  A few months ago I reviewed Gears Tactics, but then again Gears of War for me isn't so much a game franchise as it is an epic tale (along with the BioShock games and Halo).  And that came when we ALL needed something to keep from going totally bonkers from COVID sequestration from society...

But about that same time came word of Star Wars: Squadrons.  Electronic Arts' foray into what seemed like the first truly dedicated Star Wars flight sim since perhaps X-Wing: Alliance all the way back in 1999.  Oh sure, there have been others involving an element of space warfare.  But the still much-beloved X-Wing series went beyond "aiming and shooting" by adding power management, ordnance selection and other elements that made it truly feel like you were responsibly flying a real ship.  And then there was how 1994's TIE Fighter somehow made you glad to be blasting those Rebel insurgents into space dust!

No Star Wars game like that has come about in the more than two decades since X-Wing: Alliance.  In fact, the entire flight sim genre has seemed pretty much dead or at best in deep coma.  Would one be welcomed with eager arms today?

Based on the wild reviews and raving word of mouth about Star Wars: Squadrons, the answer to that question is an emphatic "Yes!".  So yesterday evening I took the plunge and bought the game.

And now?  I have felt like a 20 year-old kid all over again, that very first night when X-Wing installed on my MS-DOS machine (running on a 486-SX CPU with 4 megabytes of RAM and a 70 megabyte hard drive... yes, I'm ancient).

Star Wars: Squadrons is the X-Wing games all over again, updated to the nth degree.  I've played through the prologue and just a few missions into the main game but that's been enough to bowl me over.  It looks so new, and yet it is so beautifully familiar.  The cockpit layouts look almost exactly the same as they did for the X-Wing games over a quarter century ago: if you ever played TIE Fighter, your first moments inside Squadrons' standard TIE will be a rapturous return to warm surroundings.  The ever-trusty X-wing starfighter looks almost precisely as it did circa 1993.  Even the cargo vessels - those boxy ships we all thrilled to scan for legal goods or Imperial war materiel back in the day - make a faithful return to form.

Maybe I'm missing it so far, but the ONLY aspects from the X-Wings series that I've found absent from Star Wars: Squadrons are the ability to direct more power to front or rear shields, and getting to cycle lasers between one blast or the (slower but more powerful) four blasts at once.  Or maybe they're in the game and I've missed them.  If it hasn't been implied enough already, I've felt like a wide-eyed kid in a candy store playing this game.  It's been reliving a phase of my life that was well before all of the griefs and heartbreaks came over the years since.

Who'd have thought that a video game could make someone feel so spirited again?

There is the single player story mode.  There is also a multiplayer cross-platform function, which I haven't tried yet but some friends are due to be getting Squadrons soon and we'll likely be playing it together.  Which, I'm looking forward to hooking up with them and shooting those Rebel scu... errr, Imperial swine out of the sky.  Until then, there's plenty of time to practice with the single-player campaign.

Game studio Motive deserves a heap o' praise for not just delivering a solid combat flight sim, but making what some are hailing as one of the best Star Wars games in a very long time.  And from me especially, they get mega high marks for tapping into the vein of the X-Wing series and bringing that same spirit back to Earth for a new generation of gamers to discover and enjoy.

X-Wing: Squadrons is available now for XBox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows.  I know it's on Steam for PC users and it may be for sale on the online stores for the consoles.  It's perfectly playable via keyboard and mouse but for a more realistic feel I'll recommend a moderately priced flight stick.  I'm using an older Microsoft SideWinder Precision joystick and it works perfectly fine.

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Gears Tactics a solid adaptation of a beloved franchise

Some longtime readers already know that the Gears Of War video game franchise is near and dear to my heart.  One of my prized geeky possessions is a copy of the Gears of War 3 soundtrack signed by composer Steve Jablonsky   Maybe it's something to do with how the first game came out on that Election Day in 2006: when my name appeared on the ballot for board of education.  I didn't get to play Gears of War until a year later when I finally scored an Xbox 360 but as soon as that disc stopped loading I was totally sucked into the world of Sera, and the fight against the Locust.

Unfortunately I haven't come into possession of an Xbox One so I'm way behind on the main series, but that doesn't mean a fan has to be completely out of the loop.  Last week Microsoft released Gears Tactics.  It's a turn-based tactical game set in the Gearsiverse.  Specifically, fourteen years before Dom breaking Marcus out of that prison.  It's the countdown to the Hammer of Dawn offensive, and you play a poor shlub who gets tapped by Chairman Prescott (as posturing an a$$hole as ever) to swipe some documents before the surface of Sera gets burned.

I'm a few missions into it and so far have been enjoying every moment.  Gears Tactics truly brings the spirit of the franchise to the desktop, with astounding design choices and situational dynamics.  If you want a Gears Of War game, it's here: the Gears and their signature armor, emergence holes, parkouring over obstacles, charging toward the bad guys... and of course the iconic execution with the chainsaw bayonet.  Movement and targeting are simple, and absent any "hex-based" spacing that the genre is often known for.  In short: it's a solid translation of the typical Gears Of War game into a more casual "thinking person's" exercise.

Gears Tactics is $59 bucks on Steam.

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What's my reaction to playing EVE Online for the first time?

In a word: "intimidated".

Let's back up a bit.  The last time I bought a new computer was almost a decade ago.  It's not that I'm a luddite or anything like that.  Mainly it's that I like to get my money's worth out of something before upgrading.  And also the little matter of spending a lot of that time driving across America, looking for a new place to hang my hat.  With that done a new computer seemed "just right" to further stake my claim on what has become a new shot at life.

So yeah... I took the twelve hundred bucks of "coronavirus stimulus money" and plunged a chunk of it into a new rig.  Completely built in the U-S-of A.  Doing my part to help the domestic economy and all that.  It's a super nice setup too.  I should be good to go for the next five years of writing, blogging, graphics work, video editing (hint: something new may be coming sooner than later), whatever good-natured mischief that all two of this blog's readers have come to expect.

And of course, gaming.

Yesterday a copy of Fallout 4 arrived.  It takes almost an hour to go through the character creation in that!  But now that my 'toon is out of the vault and back on home turf (or the ruins thereof) the game proper should be about to commence.  I also have been having some fun with Diablo III: a game that I once swore never to play because of the "always on" requirement.  Call me a liar but, that one is also a lot of fun.  And four years after getting in on its Kickstarter, I'm finally playing BattleTech: the tactical adaptation of the beloved miniatures game.

All of this in between working from home of course.  Which incidentally is nowhere as enjoyable as one might imagine.  This is now the third week of having to be at my... emphasis on "my"... desk every morning at 9 so that I can call patients from my living room.  COVID-19 cannot burn itself out fast enough.  But anyhoo...

With the firepower to handle it now in my possession, there was one item of computer gaming that I've wanted to investigate for awhile: EVE Online.  That massive multiplayer thingy from the good people at Iceland's CCP Games.  The one that has everyone playing on a single server and has become notorious for betrayal, backstabbing, Ponzi scheming, outright theft...

... and CCP practically encourages it.  EVE Online is like a Randian dystopia writ large across the cosmos of its setting New Eden.  Almost anything and everything goes.  And sometimes it goes bigly.  A few years ago the so-called "Bloodbath of B-R5RB" snagged major headlines for costing more than $300,000 worth of real-world money (it's based on how EVE's economy has a real fiscal correlation through it's PLEX and just roll with me here okay?).

The B-R5RB or BR-549 or whatever massacre is what piqued my curiosity.  I knew: as soon as I could, I would jump into EVE and experience it for myself.

A few days ago I finally installed EVE Online's client, created a character, and proceeded with the tutorial.  And from the first moments the reality came crashing down that I'm in waaaaay over my head.  EVE's learning curve is legendary for being steep, almost completely unforgiving.  Now I have witnessed how that reputation is well deserved.  The appellation this game has earned in being called "Spreadsheets in Space" is just as merited.  I've played MMOs before, beginning with Star Wars Galaxies (was THAT an awesome experience or what, at least before the "new game enhancements" turned it into "Star Wars Costume Party").  MMOs aren't the typical computer game, but they're not unapproachable either.

EVE Online is a looming dark monolith of mystery and frustration.  I'm looking at it and wondering if I should proceed further after eventually completing the tutorial.  I can't even pilot the ship as I "normally" always have with a starcraft simulator (going old-skool with fond memories of X-Wing and Wing Commander... and didn't we have fun taunting those pesky Kilrathi back in the day).  There are like 27 different windows all open at the same time demanding that I orbit or warp or swap out turrets or get a message from someone called CONCORD... who in blazes can keep up with this stuff?!?

Yet my client reported that over 23,000 people were logged in on the server when I was doing my second session of EVE tonight.  More than twenty-three thousand people, all in the same sandbox.  See that ship off in the distance?  That's a real person flying it.  It could be a guy or a woman.  They could be anywhere from thirty miles away to somewhere in eastern Europe.  Everything in game, apart from tutorial assets and other things of that sort, representing a player and their handiwork.

It's... fascinating.  And complex.  Just as real life.  In that regard, EVE Online might be the most accurate depiction of human nature ever engendered by online gaming.

Intimidating.  Very intimidating.  But it's also oddly gripping.  And, it must be said, exceptionally beautiful.  The graphics are pure loveliness to behold and the background soundtrack is so peaceful that I could see using it for periods of relaxation and stress relief.  EVE Online is a masterpiece in almost every way.

And it's been around for closing in on seventeen years now.  That's quite a lot of other people who seem to readily defend it, despite the nature of the game.

I'm probably going to try it out some more, and maybe begin a small-ish in-game career as an explorer, or maybe a miner.  Dad worked for a long time in a granite quarry, so maybe there are some asteroids out there that I can drill into and sell on the market.  In the meantime, even if I don't pursue it any further, EVE Online is going to still be something that I'm glad exists.  It's a testament to human ingenuity and a monument to human nature.

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Will a forty-year old Atari 2600 work on a modern HDTV?

The notion has been bugging me for a few years now: could my old Atari 2600 - technology that's fully four decades old - be made to work on a high-def television set?  Seemingly no easy task, what with the analog connector and antenna switch box and those screws on the back of the televisions of yesteryear (that had the antenna feed either with those C-shaped ends or just bare wire).  And yet, we are talking about the grand-daddy of all home video game systems.  The forerunner of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the PlayStation, the Xbox.  Marcus Fenix may hold his own against Locusts but he never had to face down the unstoppable Evil Otto, did he?

The Atari 2600 Video Computer System was there first.  And it deserves some respect and honor.  And I decided it was time to hook it up to my high-def television, for hopefully still more years of fun and frolic.  So tonight I went to experimenting...

It turned out that it was much easier to pull off than one might expect.  In the end it was only one small part (an RF TV coaxial F plug female adapter, found in various online outlets for three to five bucks) that was needed to modify the end of the Atari's cable so that it could be run into the HDTV's coax jack.  Then it was turning on the Atari absent any cartridges, having the TV re-scan for channels so that it only detected the one for the Atari, and then turning off the console and inserting a cartridge.  Total time: about 7 minutes.

The results?  Here's a video I made of the entire procedure, including that magnificent moment when the E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial game came onscreen!  Which might be the best-ever use of the E.T. game.

Game play itself was a bit wonky.  Pitfall Harry ran straight into the scorpions and my poor little ship kept getting smashed into cosmic dust by the asteroids.  And not every game cartridge worked at all.  I'm going to assume that the cartridges; internal board and the console's slot have accumulated some dust.  Blowing or vacuuming it out should fix that problem.  And the Atari joysticks weren't as responsive as I remembered.  Or maybe I'm the one not as responsive (hey, be kind! :-)  Still, it's a nice accomplishment and I'm rather happy to have pulled it off.

Maybe next time I'll figure out how to hook up a Nintendo Entertainment System.  And play Super Mario Bros. 3 in all its original glory.

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Fun with animated GIFs!

Seems like lately I've been feeling extra wacky and I've no idea why.  Maybe the twisted creature that is my id is retaliating against the general nastiness that seems pervasive too much.  So the best course of action is to go in the opposite direction and do what I can to make people laugh a little.

Perhaps that's why I've been playing around with GIF-making apps the past few days.  There've been a few that I've cranked out, so I figured I'd share them with y'all.

This first is a few seconds taken and edited from my first movie Forcery.  In hindsight this should have been done a WAY long time ago.  But in any case, here is Frannie telling her hostage George Lucas what she thinks about the "Han and Greedo shooting" thing:

Talk about toxic fandom!

Next up is a result of looking to see if this was already out there.  And it wasn't.  So I set out to fix it.  A few seconds from the Coen Brothers' 2001 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?  George Nelson ("Not 'Babyface'!!!") shooting a herd of cows with his tommy gun as he's being pursued by Mississippi's finest.  Tim Blake Nelson's "Oh George, not the livestock" delivery slays me every time I hear it!

And finally... for now anyway... okay, lemme preface this a bit.  In 1993 computer game company Infocom released Return To Zork.  It was a technologically cutting-edge (for early days of CD-ROM anyway) journey back to the Great Underground Empire that gamers had first visited via all-text adventure in 1977.  It had a live-action cast and for its time an extensive soundtrack.  It was also baffling beyond all mortal reckoning!  And completely unforgiving.  Make the slightest mistake and you were dead.  Or at least a mysterious guardian guy wearing what looked like strips of bacon would appear and take away all of your possessions and you had no choice but to begin the game all over again.

So at one point, when it's time to at last descend into the Great Underground Empire, the entrance to it is a trapdoor in a waterwheeled millhouse.  And sitting atop said trap door is a guy named Boos Myller: bearded, wearing a pizza restaurant tablecloth and drunk as hell.  It's up to you to figure out that you have to make Boos even MORE drunk, get him to give you the keys to his car and then drive him to pass out onto the floor and off the trapdoor.

Boos will forever be remembered for his oft-repeated line "Want some rye?  'Course ya do!" every time he pours you a glass of whiskey.  And I thought it was fine fodder for a GIF but again, an exhaustive search couldn't find one.  So I found that scene on YouTube and manufactured an animated GIF with it:

There'll probably be some more coming as I monkey around with this.  Hadn't made an animated pic since that weird one of my head spinning around when I was in college.  Using a film camera on a tripod, and eight shots of my head as I sat in an office chair and rotated 1/8th for each snap as I held the same face.

Telling you kids here and now: y'all have no idea what lengths we had to go through to cause mischief on the Internet back in the day...

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Since FALLOUT 76 is now officially in West Virginia...

...I just had to run with it!

Actually, "Walton's Mountain" would be a hilariously appropriate name for a player's encampment.  Maybe someone on your team can set up a moonshine still in his or her house.  Y'know, in honor of the Baldwin Sisters and their "recipe".

Fallout 76 streets on November 14.

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Bethesda has just announced FALLOUT 76!

Look!  Teaser trailer!

Seems like the Fallout series is going to West Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley area.  Definitely somewhere in Appalachia...

 
I have but one thing to say:

After they release Fallout 76 Bethesda should make Fallout: Lucky City based on my old hometown Reidsville, North Carolina. They wouldn't even have to design anything from scratch, just use what's already there!  Here, I've even bombed the place ahead of schedule for them...

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FALLOUT 4 gets a release date and a REAL Pip-Boy!

Game studio Bethesda unloaded the big guns last night at their first-ever E3 presentation.  Since its announcement months ago the hype had been stoked about Fallout 4.  Then two weeks ago Bethesda lifted the cover on that mega-anticipated title with this toad-strangling doozie of a trailer.  So what else could Bethesda bring before us at this point?

By the time Bethesda execs got to Fallout 4 last night the keynote was being watched by at least a million viewers over gaming broadcast site Twitch and probably just as many on Twitter.  After going over some other games (including the new Doom, due next spring) it was time to enter the Vault.  Because war... war never changes.

Okay so, Fallout 4 is getting released this coming November 10!  It's available for pre-order now.

And look!  If you wanna spend $119 for the Collector's Edition you get a real-working Pip-boy!

 From the "Don't Really Need But Are Lusting For Badly" files.  Wearable and functional.  Usable with your iPhone or just about any other smartphone on the market today.  Interactive with your game via an app.

A whole lotta cosplayers are swabbing up drool looking at that thing this morning.

I'm not ashamed to admit that Fallout 3 devoured about 120-140 hours of my life.  That wasn't a game.  That was a life-impacting experience on par with a Star Wars movie or having tickets to the Super Bowl.  With Fallout 4, I'm expecting no less.

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Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Pong, and Donkey Kong... all in one game

Using the paddles from Pong to shuttle Pac-Man back and forth through his maze while dodging the aliens of Space Invaders.  All while Donkey Kong showers the screen with barrels.  This wonderfully schizoid mash-up of four of the most classic video games of all time is called Pacapong and it comes courtesy of a clever lad named Dick Poelen as his contribution to the Ludum Dare 58 video game jam.

I look at this screen and visions of my childhood erupt across my inner retina.  This is the kind of thing that we used to dream up as kids: crossovers between video games.  I think one idea was to have Pac-Man gobbling dots as he moved up Donkey Kong's girders.  Kinda weird to see something like that actually come to pass.

Kotaku has more about Pacapong, including where you can play it (bear in mind that it's a two-player game just like Pong).

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Die in this game and you can never EVER play it again

Thank the Lord this isn't a Super Mario Brothers game.  Or a Fallout title.

So here's the conceit: if you die in Upsilon Circuit, you get perma-permadeath.  As in: you'll never play the game again.  Not because you won't want to play but because you literally can't play.  Ever again.  You get one life, one chance to make it through.  And that's it.  One shot at making it through to final screen.

And it won't be easy.

From the article at Kotaku:

The fantasy RPG plops specially selected players onto a single server and divides them into two teams of four. This means only eight players will ever be playing Upsilon Circuit at any given moment, and their adventures will likely come to swift, brutal ends. Sounds terrifying, right? Every move you make can literally be your last.

On top of that, the game will have a participatory audience watching live, something nearly as cool as the "one death ever" conceit. Here's how it works:

"Each Contestant explores the overworld and generated dungeons in search of the Dream Tech Crystals. They fight monsters, avoid traps, and compete with the opposing team."

"When the Contestant fights monsters or gets treasure, the EXP and other rewards go to the Audience. EXP is used collectively by the Audience to level up the Contestant's Skill Tree. Simply put, the Audience is part dungeon master, part strategist, and part judge & jury."

Sorta makes you wish Gary Gygax was still alive and making easy stuff like "Tomb of Horrors", aye?

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I finally beat Zaxxon!

You might have heard about the Internet Arcade that Internet Archive fired up a few months ago.  All of those arcade games that we (or at least some of us) used to feed quarters into?  Well, almost 700 of them - as in the originals, not home console ports - are available to play for free in your web browser!  Which is a great thing because these games are a considerable part of computer technology history and Internet Archive is preserving them for posterity.

Well anyhoo, last week I visited Internet Arcade for the first time.  And something occurred to me: that maybe I could see if Zaxxon was in the collection.

Bit of info: Zaxxon was a game that Sega came out with in the early Eighties, and it's arguably the first video game to attempt a 3-D feel for the player.  As you fly your fighter jet/spaceship/thingy you can adjust the altitude, which you're gonna have to do because otherwise you'll smash into walls, energy barriers, homing missiles and the like.  The object of the game was to fly across one big space fortress loaded with obstacles, then a segment in space as you take on enemy planes, and then another fortress.  At the end of which is a robot that you have to destroy before it destroys you.

This is what Chris has been obsessed with
for more than thirty years.
The boy needs to get outside more.

That is Zaxxon.  And I had been trying to take out that @%#$ robot since 1983.  Except that I haven't even been able to approach the droid, much less shoot his missile-arm to make him self-destruct.

Well, Zaxxon wasn't very hard to find at all.  After going through the instructions on how to play through the emulator, and a few mis-steps that required restarting the game, I was finally off again.  It's been at least fifteen years since I've found a Zaxxon machine to play on, so I was a little rusty...

...but on my third try, I got through to the robot.  For the first time in my life I got to see it after getting to it with my own efforts.

He destroyed me.  I played through again.  Still got to him, this time he retreated off the screen.

It was on my fourth trip through the fortresses that I blew up the missile before he could fire it.

It had taken more than 31 years but at long last, I beat Zaxxon.

The game re-started after that, with more difficult fortresses to fly through.  More aggressive obstacles like rockets and turrets aiming at me.  But by that point, I didn't care.  I had destroyed the robot and that's all that mattered.

(There was a sequel, Super Zaxxon, that was much more difficult and had the robot replaced with a dragon.  I never found that game anywhere, much less played it.  The original classic is more than enough.)

Maybe this is a sign or an omen.  You remember how Mister Miyagi told Daniel in The Karate Kid that a man who can catch flies with chopsticks can do anything?  Well, that's what Zaxxon has been to me: a fly that I've been doing my darndest to snatch out of the air for more than three decades.  And now I've done it.  Perhaps it's an indicator of things to come.

Or perhaps it just means that I've been sadly obsessed with a video game for all this time...

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