video games

Good friend and fellow blogger Scott Bradford pointed out that today is the 30th anniversary of Microsoft giving MS-DOS its name. That was the main operating system for the vast majority of personal computers for many years, until it came to be supplanted in the mid-Nineties by Microsoft’s own DOS-less Windows software (even though every version of Windows since Win95 has had the original style DOS window available to open, just like the old days).

Well, 1981 was another landmark year for Microsoft, though it’s the kind of history that Bill Gates would no doubt just as well wish nobody would remember! It was in 1981 that Gates and fellow programmer Neil Konzen wrote DONKEY.BAS. This was the very first video game that Microsoft would ever produce for commercial retail. It was packed in the early versions of MS-DOS, as a way to sorta “show off” the IBM PC ...

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It is the eternal question: “What if Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy DID marry and have kids?”

Now we know…

All I can really say to this is: Heaven help us if the folks at Rovio Mobile ever see Avenue Q! 😛

Mash down here for more “Muppemathics” courtesy of one “idiotjim” at Picture Is Unrelated. Click here if you haven’t been addicted to Angry Birds yet. And if you don’t know who the Muppets are well, shame on you!

Thanks to fellow blogger Scott Bradford for a great find! 🙂...

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Yes, it really is! I even went out late yesterday evening along with good friend/fellow blogger and Eagle Scout Steven Glaspie to be at the local GameStop for the midnight release, just to behold it with our own eyes.

But that wound up not being good enough. I had to have some tactile sensation of it as well, so I bought a copy of the standard edition.

And though I hadn’t planned on it, I wound up shooting and then editing together a lil’ film to document the event for posterity. This is the first time that I’ve ever put together a movie with an iOS device. May this be the first of many more to come 🙂

Anyhoo, here is… Vaporware Nevermore!

...

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And that was the gist of the seven e-mails that I found in my inbox this morning: about the new trailer for Gears of War 3 campaign!

And here it is! Featuring Marcus Fenix! Anya! What seems to be the VERY much alive Adam Fenix! Lambent! King Ravens! Locust Grubs! Underwater combat! More Lambent! The weaselish Chairman Prescott! Big guns! Brumaks! STILL MORE LAMBENT! All set to Black Sabbath’s classic 1970 song “War Pigs”!

The story of Marcus, Dom and the rest of Delta Squad arrives at its conclusion on September 20th. And I am stoked about this game like I haven’t been for a video game in a long time. The Gears of War franchise really does have a very human heart and soul to it and seeing this chapter of the saga end… well, I’ve got a lot of high hopes for it 🙂

(And I am still ...

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This has to be a SERIOUS sign that the Apocalypse truly is upon us!

When game studio 3D Realms started work on Duke Nukem Forever in 1996, Bill Clinton was winding down his first term as U.S. President. “Broadband Internet” meant a 56K modem. The first Star Wars prequel was only in pre-production. You could board a commercial airliner without once taking off your shoes. The Simpsons was still consistently funny. Gasoline cost around a dollar a gallon. “Burning a CD” was uncommon vernacular. Pluto was still a planet.

Fifteen years, millions of dollars wasted, multiple changes in graphics engines and a studio takeover later, the game that has come to be called “Duke Nukem Never”, “Duke Nukem Whenever”, “Duke Nukem If-Ever”, “Duke Nukem Not-Ever” and so many other mocking epithets is finally a finished product and has been released to manufacturing!

No, I’m not kidding. Even as you ...

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Well, you do now! But be of good cheer: I’m about to tell you how to fix that.

I’ve had StarCraft II for awhile now, but haven’t played even anywhere close to finishing the first campaign. Among other reasons, I’ve been frustrated by what I have been certain is too slow performance for the high-end rig I’ve got it installed on. And yesterday, I finally set out to find out why (or if I was even right about that).

Turns out that StarCraft II doesn’t like multiple CPUs all that well. Optimally it should be running on two cores, not three or four. So Yours Truly went searching for a way to bring it down to operating on only two processors. Lo and behold: it can be done! Start up StarCraft II from the desktop, then bring up Task Manager (usually done through CTRL+ALT+Delete), go to the sc2.exe process and ...

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The big news coming out of the video game industry today is Activision shutting down the Guitar Hero series: once one of the most insanely popular set of video games in recent history. The company cited declining sales as being the biggest factor in the decision to bring the “music ‘n rhythm” series to a halt.

This reminds me a lot… a whole lot even… of the “video game crash” that took place between 1983 and 1985. This might come as a shock to the younger readers of this blog (ooh-boy am I dating myself here :-P) but once upon a time, video games were not “hip” at all. Ya see, in 1982 the Atari 2600 was the king of home video gaming. It seemed nigh-invulnerable. But within a year or two the home video game industry hit rock-bottom hard.

What happened? Mostly it was a market way...

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On April 28th, 1997, video game studio 3D Realms announced that Duke Nukem Forever, the follow-up to its 1996 hit Duke Nukem 3-D, was in development.

Fourteen years, hundreds of thousands of wasted man-hours, numerous rendering engines long gone obsolete, two or more full generations of console technology and a bankruptcy later, Gearbox Software – which picked up the pieces last year to try to make some sense of this mess – will be releasing Duke Nukem Forever on May 6th.

Yes, as in: this year. 2011.

Look! Release trailer!

Here’s the official synopsis:

Put on your shades and prepare to step into the boots of Duke Nukem,whose legend has reached epic proportions in the years since his last adventure. The alien hordes are invading and only Duke can save the world. Pig cops, alien shrink rays and enormous alien bosses can’t stop our hero from accomplishing his

...
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Now this could be a story about copyright issues that may wind up having a very happy ending…

It all starts with one Ryan Winzen, a 25-year old artist who claims to have no inclination toward video game programming but who has been creating custom maps for Blizzard’s Warcraft and StarCraft games since he was 13.

A few days ago Ryan sent shockwaves across the Intertubes when he went public with a lil’ project that he’s been working on…

Yup, “World of StarCraft”! Ryan is using the in-game editor and assets to create a StarCraft II mod that is… well, World of StarCraft. And it’s exactly what you’re thinking it is: a massively multiplayer online game that does for StarCraft what Blizzard’s mega-popular World of Warcraft has done for the company’s other well-known franchise.

Remember: Ryan used the StarCraft II editor and the game’s own assets to ...

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I can just hear it now: “Chris you’ve gotten lazy with your blog! It took seven years but you’re finally all tapped out!”

Well the fact of the matter is, Simon Burdett from Great Britain has been a good friend of this blog for some time now and it was all his idea that perhaps I could allow “special guest stars” to write for The Knight Shift every now and then. And the more I thought about his idea… the more I liked it! Who knows: this might be the first of many guest writers who’ll be finding an audience here. And if it spins attention to their individual talents and perspectives well… that’s the kind of thing that I enjoy being able to do for others 🙂

So for his first submission, Simon has turned in his review of Fallout: New Vegas. The game came out a few ...

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