124 years ago today, on 26 May 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published. It spawned numerous other novels, films, and games, not least among them the Castlevania series. The literal and bloody version by CRL pictured here (the first game to be rated by the BBFC) has always been especially dear to me.
What better game to play today, on World UFO Day, than 1994’s Enemy Unknown, the first game of the XCOM franchise that still runs strong today?
I got my first retrogaming tattoo today, thanks to @tattooer_phil! Can you guess the game? (Medium difficulty.)
488 years ago today, on 7 September 1533, the “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth I was born. What better day to play the original Europa Universalis (2000), where you can control Elizabeth’s England, among other powers?
Today, the USA celebrates the Day of the Computer Game. There can hardly be a more iconic game than 1962’s Spacewar, one of the first electronic games, and the very first one with graphics. It was created by Steve Russell on a PDP-1, which came with a screen and was therefore ideally suited for this novel experiment.
The PDP-1 image (https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spacewar_screenshot.jpg) was taken by Kenneth Lu and is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en).
Today, on the 13th official Day of the Programmer, the retrogaming scene has a lot to celebrate! I chose to honour Andrew Braybrook, who was one of the first programmers to be recognised for his art, and created classics such as Uridium, Alleykat and the game featured here – the inimitable Paradroid. This was a completely novel concept: take over enemy robots, and work your way up by gradually getting more powerful. While the graphics and sound of the game weren’t absolutely terrific, everything about the gameplay and its smooth realisation was perfect, or close to it. There are many other contenders for the best programming of an 80s game, but Paradroid is certainly up there.
Which game would you single out today for its flawless programming?
Today, Software Freedom Day is observed for the 18th time. Software Freedom is all about sharing your software and letting other people use, study and modify your code to maybe create something even better from it. One of the first game companies to embrace the idea of open source was id Software, who released the source code for Doom in 1997, which led to many enhanced engines such as GLDoom, Boom or Doomsday that make the game still playable today.
Would you consider making the code of your own game open source? Or did you ever take somebody else’s open code and create something new from it?
Happy International Translation Day! Translation and localisation are extremely important aspects of today’s gaming industry, but the first game to be localised in more ways than just transcribing a name was Pac-Man in 1980. It was originally known in Japan as “Puck Man” and was renamed for the American market for fear of vandals disfiguring the first word. While at it, the ghosts were also localised from names based on their character to the more cartoonish Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde.
The photo shows a Japanese handheld variant created by Tomy.
