Playotron

Here’s a superbly-produced video that’s a veritable...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 14:24:47 -0700

Here’s a superbly-produced video that’s a veritable C64 trainspotter’s nostalgia-fest. In many respects, it’s like a modern-day tribute to classic C64 games and demos! Love it.

I absolutely love this papercraft site. It has everything you...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 14:22:06 -0700

I absolutely love this papercraft site. It has everything you need to make some absolutely fantastic toys, from StreetFighter characters to your favorite Super-Heros. All you need is a printer, some scissors and some paper glue! Fun for all the family! Check it out!

Back in the day, we’d hunch over our trusty old rubbery ZX...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:41:35 -0700

Back in the day, we’d hunch over our trusty old rubbery ZX Spectrums, praying to the Great Gods of Loading to bless our tape head azimuths and ensure our cassettes were free of drop-outs and spool errors so we could enjoy whatever game we’d just bought. Loading was a long and painful process… and often fraught with frustration. These days, it takes just a couple of clicks and a few nanoseconds to load an entire ZX Spectrum and superb range of games into a browser for instant retro enjoyment. Better still, this emu will play .tap, .tzx, .sna, .z80 files if you have them!

I guess the Great Gods of Loading did listen to us…

At the risk of eliciting Sega fanboy backlash along the lines...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:25:00 -0700

At the risk of eliciting Sega fanboy backlash along the lines of, “OMG U SO BIAS 4 NINTENDOE”, I’m posting a third-in-a-row Nintendo browser emu. This time it’s for the 8-bit generation king of the hill, the trusty old Famicom, aka Nintendo Entertainment System. Click on the link… select your game and play away. Just the way enjoying a retro-ride down gaming’s memory lane should be. Awesome.

I seem to be developing a habit of posting browser-based emus....

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:16:17 -0700

I seem to be developing a habit of posting browser-based emus. But then again - it’s route one for gaming’s history to become what it should be: ubiquitous and open for all to enjoy. Not something that only works on certain things with certain hacks. Anyway, the latest point of interest is this SNES Java emu, which is still early, but you can see where it’s going. Keep on watching this space!

I believe that a large portion of gaming’s future will be...

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:12:19 -0700

I believe that a large portion of gaming’s future will be driven by web browsers. And judging by what’s going on here - gaming’s past too. I’ve already posted several browser emus on this blog - and here’s a new one. It’s very, very early days yet, and it obviously needs a lot of work - but this upcoming N64 emu is making all the right noises. It’s created by Paul Holden, author of the rather good Daedalus N64 emu, who also happens to have a day job as Media Molecule’s Lead Architect. It needs ROMs to run, which you’ll have to find yourself, and don’t be surprised if things don’t always work. But like I said - this is early days. Let’s hope development continues - web browser emus are a perfect way of enabling everyone to enjoy gaming’s past.

iPad Plague Inc Review

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 11:04:00 -0700

“Plague Inc on iPad is superb. Action-strategy that’s fast, addictive and makes you think. One of the best iOS games this year. A must. 93%”

A few weeks after I Tweeted that minirev, I’m still enjoying this utterly terrific iPad release. It’s a game whose kill count is hard to match - it requires you to mutate a virus, bacteria or other micro-organism (depending on level) and create a global pandemic that destroys every human on earth. Of course, those humans won’t go down easy. They’re a pesky bunch, what with their annoying cures and preventative actions like closing borders and shutting down airports to stop the spread of your glorious creation. But that’s where the game’s strategy comes in. As you begin to infect people with your disease, you gain points that you can use to mutate it. Perhaps making people cough to spread the disease in cities, or giving them cysts that pop with infectious blood (yes, the game really is that sick). You can also make your disease more resilient to different types of climate, evolve it to be water or airborne - or even do things like enable it to infect birds or livestock that can carry it far and wide.

It’s this massive range of options that gives the game a really strange, but extremely compelling “feel”. It requires some deft balancing as you approach your culling of all humans. Make the disease too deadly too soon, and humans will dial up the effort to find a cure - and likely panic and close borders before you can spread your evil creation across the globe. Go out too innocuous, and you might spread yourself far and wide, but by the time you start evolving to become fatal, you won’t quite have enough points to become truly deadly, and will find yourself unable to kill people fast enough before a cure is found.

Finding that right balance is very challenging and fun. Plague Inc is a game you definitely won’t win on your first few goes - and you’ll also likely find yourself in a situation where you think you’ve won, but you haven’t - because the game requires you to kill everybody on earth, and you’ve somehow missed a few survivors (for some reason, usually in Canada - I kid you not). But work at it, and you’ll start to get the cadence of the game, and you’ll just know when you’ve reached that tipping point where you see humans dying by their millions as they desperately try to find a cure… but just won’t make it in time. Which is simultaneously fun, fascinating… and absolutely awful all at the same time.

Plague Inc is an action strategy game that’s perfectly suited to iPad. I love the way it makes you think - and some of the things you can actually do in the game are seriously disturbing. But that’s what makes it fun. It’s creative in the most horrendous and fiendish ways, while also presenting a classic gaming challenge that’s fun, addictive and highly satisfying.

An absolute must.

Check the game out here.

Flashback: A Yuki Horii and Miyamoto chat from '89

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 10:33:00 -0700

If you’re particularly interested in deep and nerdy console stuff, Glitterberi.com has some very interesting articles. One that I particularly enjoyed was this chat between Miyamoto and Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii from ‘89. Amongst many things, Miyamoto talks about a “Famicom Network”… some 23 years before Nintendo finally got around to making one. Check out the full interview here - it has some fascinating insight into what two of the industry’s biggest designers were thinking at that time.

If you remember this game, you’ll probably be interested...

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:48:58 -0700

If you remember this game, you’ll probably be interested to hear that it’s been remade for Windows by the beezer bods over at Ovine.net. Not wanting to fix something that wasn’t broken, the new Hunter’s Moon features the same classic gameplay, but does have uprated audio-visuals, which are a definite improvement. Like to give it a go? Download it here for the princely sum of eff-all.

So this is an actual screenshot of J Kyle Pittman’s...

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:36:00 -0700

So this is an actual screenshot of J Kyle Pittman’s “You Have to Win the Game” - an awesome old-school platformer that has one of the best retro-aesthetics I’ve seen. Boasting highly realistic CRT TV looks, complete with scanlines and fish-bowl screen effect, and authentic ZX Spectrum-esque flick-screen action, You Have to Win the Game feels like it just fell out of a time warp from the early 80’s. It’s tough, but a lot of fun. And this brilliant little game is also free! So you’ve got no excuse not to go and download it for your PC.

GameBoy Color browser emulator

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:44:05 -0700

GameBoy Color browser emulator:

Written in Javascript and HTML5, this emulator packs a great collection of games, including Tetris, and a bunch of Megaman, Super Mario and Wario titles. Not sure how long it’ll be around, but it’s definitely well worth checking out!

Elite’s continuing series of classic 8-bit micro iOS...

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:07:55 -0700

Elite’s continuing series of classic 8-bit micro iOS re-releases turns up trumps again - this time around, it’s the brilliant isometric action adventure Head over Heels getting a new lease of life. I’ve just been playing it, and it’s a great trip down memory lane. Of course, it’s rock hard like most games of the era, but Elite has put in an insta-save option that makes the game’s challenging jumps and harsh deaths much easier to deal with. Save early! Save often.

If you don’t have an iPad or iPhone, you can play the game for free on Mac, PC and Linux thanks to this absolutely fantastic free remake available here.

Boasting some classic 90’s platform action, but adding a...

Mon, 07 May 2012 16:14:08 -0700

Boasting some classic 90’s platform action, but adding a healthy dose of high quality modern graphics and effects, I’m really liking the look of Mark of the Ninja. Created in Vancouver, Canada by Shank developers Klei Entertainment, this upcoming Xbox Live game definitely looks like one to keep your eye on. Check the full site here.

Wondering what this rather strange-looking screenshot is?...

Mon, 07 May 2012 16:05:49 -0700

Wondering what this rather strange-looking screenshot is? It’s an ultra bare-bones, super-minimalist take on the RPG genre. It has no graphics or sound to speak of, and gameplay basically involves clicking stuff - but somehow Japanese developer Nekogames has captured the pure essence of RPG gaming in this stripped-down browser game. Work your way through the dungeon collecting “treasure”, looting “chests”, and leveling up your weapons and stats so you can kill the increasingly challenging “boss monsters.” It’s short, but I found it fun - and a really fascinating exercise in the essence of gaming. It might not be your cup of tea, but give it a go - and don’t forget to choose the English language option! Check it out here.

Created by seriously cool indie developer Locomaltio, Verminest...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:56:00 -0700

Created by seriously cool indie developer Locomaltio, Verminest combines gameplay elements from shoot ‘em up classics like Galaga and Centipede, and infuses them with a 50’s sci-fi movie feel. The end result is an absolutely terrific old-school PC retro-blaster that’s addictive and incredibly fun to play. Best of all - it’s free! So what are you waiting for? Download it here and enjoy.

Nine golden rules for touch screen game controls

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:54:00 -0700

Touch screen devices are becoming an increasingly important part of the gaming landscape. But since they don’t feature conventional game controls, what are the best practices when it comes to adapting traditional joypad-type games to these new machines? Here’s my take on what can make a touch screen game fun to play… and where things can go completely wrong.

Over the last 40 years, video games have taken enormous evolutionary steps, driven by unprecedented advancements in computing power and technology. But something that has evolved at a far slower pace is the hardware used to control them. Paddles, joysticks and joypads all appeared alongside the very earliest gaming systems, and while they’ve been refined and improved over the years, their fundamental functionality has remained largely unchanged.

The mouse (and associated keyboard) ushered in some new control concepts during the 80’s and 90’s, but even then, the vast majority of games that use a keyboard and mouse can be very easily adapted to work with a modern joypad (barring the occasional challenge of games that use the keyboard as a multi-button bank). And while new kinds of controllers have appeared throughout gaming history, such as the U-Force and Power Glove, and a variety of light guns, steering wheels and music game peripherals, they’ve all essentially remained niche products at best, and the joypad has continued to reign supreme.

Even the newest revolutionary control hardware such as Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect are not really changing the way games are fundamentally controlled. Sure, enterprising and creative designers have taken advantage of these new controllers and made some great games that go beyond the realm of the joypad, but the reality is that traditional game control systems continue to dominate gaming, as they have done for the last four decades - because they are absolutely engrained into the way we think about and design games.

Now there are even newer devices that could literally change the way we play games due to the ironic fact that they don’t actually have a controller – touch screen tablets and phones. As more and more consumers buy them and the demand for games on them continues to grow, we’ll be seeing touch screen games becoming an increasingly permanent and prevalent part of the gaming landscape. But will they be a literal game changer? Probably not. Despite enabling new kinds of games and control systems, I think a huge amount of touch screen games will continue to be built around traditional control paradigms. And while some of them will probably work very well, I get the feeling from what I’ve already played over the last year or two, many of them won’t.

Why not? Because rather than being forced to design a game around a standard controller like every console released in the last several decades, designers actually have a blank slate. And it’s that blank slate that is separating the creative clever people from those who simply don’t have the chops or imagination to make the leap from the physical control paradigm to touch.

So bearing that in mind, I’ve come up with what I hope are a few useful golden rules, hints and tips for designers making games that use traditional control paradigms on touch screen devices:

1. Generally speaking, virtual controllers suck

First things first, let’s look at Midway Arcade, a definitive example of how traditional game controls can be incredibly poorly implemented on a touch screen. A recent release on iPad that emulates authentic versions of classic Williams and Midway arcade games, it’s ruined by the thing that makes many, many other touch screen games frustrating and difficult to play: a virtual controller. Basically, the designers of Midway Arcade have tried to recreate an on-screen virtual joypad and buttons to emulate the original controls of the arcade machine. But it just doesn’t work.

For starters, virtual controls are just not ergonomic. They’re difficult and fiddly to use because you have to place your fingers in the right place to get the right movement - something that is very hard to do when the action is fast and furious. A virtual controller also sets physical distance - you have to move your fingers a certain distance to activate a change in direction, and when that happens, you are automatically building in a lack of responsiveness. And that’s a terrible thing to have on a touch screen that is capable of super-fast reactivity.

A virtual controller also means the player has to constantly check it to ensure their fingers are still on it, because they can’t feel anything. Even when the controller moves with your fingers, that distance between left and right or up and down creates issues, because you don’t know where your fingers are on the virtual controller without constantly looking at them.

Ultimately, virtual controllers are not a good control scheme, because they lack tactility and feedback: something that is fundamental to their real-life counterparts. My recommendation is to try to avoid using them - best practice is to never use them.

2. Finger creep. It happens

As I’ve already explained, static controls or virtual controllers are often challenging to use. No tactile feel means constant finger creep. Finger creep means users’ fingers “slipping off the controls” because the user can’t feel where they are.

At the very least, your controls should move with users’ fingers. Better still, don’t use real “controls” - create a system that looks at what the user’s fingers are doing and interprets that movement immediately, wherever they are on the screen: finger goes left, game goes left; finger goes right, game goes right, and so on. If the user has to use two hands to control the game, split the screen in half if you’re having an issue with interpretation.

If you need to confine the controls to a specific part of the screen, at the very least create some room for movement, so that the user doesn’t constantly have to adjust - it really doesn’t have to be that huge, just big enough to allow for that dreaded finger creep.

Check out Cave’s arcade shooters like DoDonPachi to see how fast-action arcade games can work really well using this kind of control system. Dariusburst SP is also a very fine example of a shooter whose controls work without you even having to think about them.

3. Don’t program in mechanical travel

Mechanical joysticks have travel. Virtual ones shouldn’t. If the user’s finger is moving right, moving left should result in as close to an immediate response as you can program, and not require some kind of arbitrary “travel” to go past some invisible point before activating the opposite direction.

Best practice here is to enable users to adjust the “responsiveness,” ie, the amount of travel required by the finger before activating movement in the opposite direction.

Gridrunner is a good example here. It’s almost perfect, but does have a little feeling of sluggishness that I’d have like to be able to adjust by tightening the responsiveness. Definitely a good case study though. Infinity Gene is pretty decent too.

4. Adjustability is a player’s friend

If at all possible, controls should always be adjustable, particularly on games whose controls are pseudo-analog, or feature controllable objects that have weight or acceleration curves.

Enable adjustment on linear, convex and concave acceleration curves. This will help users find the right reactivity and “weight” - and it’ll help make your game “feel” perfect.

5. Virtual buttons also suck

Like virtual controllers, virtual buttons are also challenging to use. Mashing a flat glass screen is not fun. If at all possible, use an autofire option, preferably with some kind of adjustment - perhaps a finger held down and slid to dial up or down the firing rate.

If you’re making a game with multiple buttons, let the user lock them a certain distance apart to suit themselves, and at the very least enable them to move and follow the users fingers. Better still just let users tap the screen or an area of the screen to fire without having to hit a small, specific area. As always, no tactility and feedback means it’s easy for users to miss the buttons completely, which makes the game very frustrating.

6. Hands are not transparent

Remember: hands can obscure the screen. Full screen games might look great, but if the user has to put their hands on the screen and important game events are obscured, you’re making the game unplayable. Or at the very least really annoying.

Design around that: perhaps create control areas are where nothing important happens, or simply build in non-critical game areas where non-essential info is displayed that doesn’t matter if it’s covered up.

For games with selection systems, rather than use drop-down menus, try thinking of other ways of cycling through options – perhaps a double-tap, or hold-and-slide.

7. Tilt controls: can be fun. But only with the right games

Generally speaking, tilt is most effective as a gaming controller when paired with games that require slow, deliberate movements. Aaaaaaaaaaaaa is a good example of that.

The problem with wafting a tablet around is that there’s no feedback, meaning users don’t have any idea where the center point is. This creates a very vague feeling of control that as a consequence can feel unresponsive or sluggish. Which is why these controls aren’t much fun when used with faster, more complex games. Hyper Light is a fast-action arcade game that’s potentially incredibly good, but simply serves to showcase poor tilt controls. Midway Arcade also has tilt control options, and they’re even more horrible then the virtual controllers. Definitely check them out to see how it shouldn’t be done. The Incident is one of the few faster action games that I’ve played that does work reasonably well with tilt controls.

The other thing to bear in mind with tilt controls is that they do make your game somewhat embarrassing to play in public. It also makes it surprisingly tiring, so if you’re designing games around tilt, make them short and sweet, or at least “burst” gaming with the ability for players to pause between rounds, or play the game over short periods.

8. Tablets: a chiropractor’s best friend

Tablet ergonomics are quite poor, especially when using heavier devices, and people hold them in many different ways. That’s an important thing to bear in mind when making a game. For example, if your game requires lots of finger work, it might actually be hard to play while holding the tablet. If that’s the case, ensure it’s easier and more comfortable to play if it’s resting on someone’s lap or table. Test it out and tweak if necessary. It’s surprising how many games can cause aches and pains quite quickly because they are not particularly comfortable to play.

9. At the end of the day, don’t be afraid to try something new

Touch screen gaming is still a relatively new thing, and I believe there are many new things yet to be discovered, both in terms of new game concepts - and new controls.

Be experimental. Try new things! Tap to aim. Tap to move. Follow-a-finger directional controls. Dynamic sequence aiming and/or movement (tap multiple targets and then fire for example). Multi-touch controls with finger slide to dynamically adjust parameters like shooting, jumping rate, acceleration curves. Two or three fingers held to the touch screen and then rotated simultaneously to turn or manipulate objects. Develop intelligent controls that recognize the amount of fingers on the touch surface, or the distance between two digits.

Ultimately, think creatively. Be daring. You never know, the creative ideas you’re thinking about could very well be the next big thing, ushering in a whole new kind of game - or spin on an existing game genre - that touch controls take to a whole new level. Just always remember, though: it’s all about the playability. Doesn’t matter how good your game looks or sounds - if the controls render it unplayable, it’s a failure.

Some of my favorite touch games that feel great are Osmos, Flick Soccer, Triple Town, Dungeon Raid, Galcon and Draw Something. All are simple games, but make great use of the touch screen to deliver a natural, intuitive experience. I’d definitely recommend trying them out if you want to experience good controls in action - as well as play some entertaining games in their own right.

The epic ZX Spectrum classic, Lords of Midnight is on its way to...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:25:31 -0700

The epic ZX Spectrum classic, Lords of Midnight is on its way to iOS! Here’s a (blurry) video of it smoothly running on iPad. Can’t wait to play the final product and once again take on Doomdark, the evil Witchking.

Just got an alert from the guys over at RGCD that they’re...

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 21:43:10 -0800

Just got an alert from the guys over at RGCD that they’re releasing a new limited edition C64 cartridge, a Swedish-developed game called Panic Analog. Just checked out a video of the game, and it reminds me of Activision’s Kaboom. I just ordered one from here and will duly review it when I get it in a few weeks. Let’s hope it’s fun!

The Amstrad CPC was one of the also-ran home micros of the...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:21:00 -0800

The Amstrad CPC was one of the also-ran home micros of the mid-‘80’s, achieving only moderate success compared to its massive-selling peers, the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. Despite that, it still had more than a few good games available for it. Some of those - including a minimal early version of Tetris, and one of my all-time favorites, Head over Heels - are available to play in this excellent in-browser Java emulator of the machine. It occasionally runs a little slowly, but considering it’s still Beta, it’s very impressive - and excellent fun! Check it out here.

Wow! A brand new C64 game. On cartridge!

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:04:00 -0800

If you’d told me 25 years ago that in 2012, I’d be excitedly unwrapping a brand new Commodore 64 game, I’d have thought you were completely nuts. Yet here I am doing exactly that.

The game in question is the highly enjoyable Canabalt, an autorunner that started life as a flash game before evolving into a fully conceived and very well received iOS release. And now it’s evolved again – or devolved if you think that making the leap to a platform that made its debut 30 years at the 1982 CES Show is a backwards step.

The game was programmed by Paulko64 and published by RGCD, a group of dedicated programmers and writers who originally formed to create Retro Gamer CD, a hand-published CD magazine that ran for six issues between ’06 and ’09. With the magazine taking too much time to produce – something I can certainly relate to – the group has turned its attention to releasing retro games, and over the last couple of years has produced an Atari ST game called Rox, and Robotz DX, an old-school PC game. RGCD’s third, and arguably greatest release is Canabalt, or C64anabalt, as this version is otherwise known.

The game is available to download for use with C64 emulators, but the moment I saw that it was also available as a cartridge, I absolutely HAD to have it for my collection. My first job in the games industry was at ZZAP! 64, a magazine dedicated to Commodore’s brilliant home micro, and during my time there the machine became engrained into my gaming DNA. I just love the idea that three decades after the debut of the system, there are programmers out there who are not only still making games for it, but are dedicated enough to hand craft them into cartridges.

And here it is: A fantastic piece of retro-craftsmanship that includes box, cool little instruction booklet and, of course, the game itself on a slice of gloriously old-school hardware. Opening up the game triggered many memories of some of the early C64 cartridges I used to play back in the day, and while I rode that wave of nostalgia, I thought that it’d be fun to pay old-school tribute to this most recent addition to the C64 software lineup by giving it a ZZAP! 64-style review – the first time I’ve done that since the summer of 1988! So here goes!

If you’re interested in learning more about Canabalt and RGCD, you can visit them here.