And so Apple’s attempt to convert all my electronic gadgets into sleek, glossy slabs of sci-fi magic continues, as I cave in and finally buy an iPad.

I no longer have a laptop, so my only two options for doing computery things were my desktop PC and my iPod Touch. As you can imagine, the former isn’t very mobile and the latter has a variety of limitations, so I needed something in between.

I did debate getting a new laptop, or even a notebook, but to a certain extent I still ran into the mobility issue. You see, I do a helluva lot of reading. Not just ebooks, but magazines, blogs, web sites, etc. And being fairly active on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, I like to share and discuss that content as much as possible. And, more often than not, most of the opportunities I get for reading, sharing, and discussing, tend to occur when I’m not in front of my desktop computer.

The iPod Touch is very good at handling all of this, and its retina display is pretty nifty, but the display screen is still relatively small and typing anything longer than a tweet or quick email can become a chore. Given the sheer amount of reading I like to do, a laptop simply wouldn’t have been a viable option; I’d have quickly fallen back to using the iPod Touch to read stuff. So it looked like a tablet device was the smartest choice.

It didn’t take me too long to decide which brand to go for. There’s some nice Android-based tablets out there, but having lived with an Android smartphone for the past year or so, and run into numerous problems with it, I decided to pass up that corner of the marketplace for now. The nook Tablet is one of the best devices in its class, but it’s not really powerful enough to run the sort of apps I need. So that only really left one contender, and given how useful I’ve found my iPod Touch, the iPad remained the only logical choice.

At this point I’ve only had it about 24 hours, yet I already feel perfectly at home with it. Well, it does have the same operating system as the iPod Touch, so that’s pretty much a given. And most of the apps work the same way.

I was a little disappointed to find that Reeder, my news reader of choice on the iPod, behaved a lot differently on the iPad. I subscribe to about 1300+ blogs via Google Reader (more about that in a future blog post), so I’m very particular about news reader apps. I like to be able to punch up a label and see a list of all the news feeds with that label. The iPod Touch version of Reeder allowed you to do that, but the iPad version will just group articles by feed or chronologically. With some labels containing up to 50 blogs, that would mean a lot of scrolling to find what I’m looking for, so being able to punch up one of those blogs as quickly as possible is quite important. (Edit: Reeder kinda gives you a label/tag view, but it treats them like photo gallery images, where each label is represented as a thumbnail which you can pinch open or closed. It looks nice visually but isn’t very practical for browsing large numbers of feeds.)

Thankfully, a bit of digging around the interwebs led me to a wonderful app, exclusive to the iPad, called Mr. Reader. It does everything that the iPod version of Reeder does, but has a lot more bells and whistles. If they ever bring out an iPod version I’ll most likely be switching to it on that platform too.

Mr. Reader being awesome, giving me an accessible list of feeds in the sidebar for each label. (Click image to enormify.)

Given how unsatisfied I’ve been with my Android phone, once Verizon open the gates and let me upgrade, I’ll more than likely be switching to an iPhone. See how easily I’ve slipped into Apple’s grasp? But while they may even talk me into getting a MacBook  in the dim, distant future, I’m going to draw the line at desktop computing. I’ve been a hardcore PC gamer for almost 20 years now, so unless something happens to kill off the PC gaming industry, my desktop allegiance will remain with Windows.

And that’s all it boils down to really—picking the most suitable tool for the job. Brand loyalty’s all well and good, but at the end of the day I’ll go for whichever device lets me do what I need to do as quickly and efficiently as possible. You’ve won this round, Apple. Five years down the line? All bets are off.

If you’re anything like me, not only do you have access to more than one gaming platform, but you also like to take advantage of sales, deals and other such discountery in order to bolster your video game collection.

This is good. We like games. We like good games. We like good, cheap games. Unfortunately, the planet we live on isn’t terribly sporting and refuses to increase the number of hours available to us on any given day, so at some point that collection becomes just a little too unwieldy. We can’t possibly play everything through to completion, so choices need to be made, priorities readjusted, lovers unspurned, etc.

In the past I’ve cultivated a rather nasty habit of starting a new game, getting anywhere from 10-90% into it, then gleefully abandoning it once something newer and shinier comes along. In short, I’m a gaming polygamist. Which I guess is a fancy-pants way of saying that I’m easily distracted.

A casual glance at the PlayStation 3 games on my shelf reveals a startling number of titles that have long since been abandoned, simply because I bought something else (probably many something elses) before I finished them. Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Red Dead Redemption, LA Noire, Fallout: New Vegas. They all stare accusingly back at me, demanding to know how they wronged me. A similar glance at the (gulp) 230+ games on my Steam account earns similar disapproving looks from those I grabbed during a Steam sale and have barely touched since.

"Hey there Peter, Emily, or whatever the hell your name is. You're ruining a rather beautiful photograph of daddy's gaming backlog."

Why do so many games in my collection remain unfinished? Has my attention span shortened over the years? Am I buying more games than I have spare time to play? Or are developers at fault for failing to deliver a sustainable gaming experience?

I pondered these questions a couple of months ago after I noticed just how many games I’d purchased since Thanksgiving. To that end, I made a conscious effort (I guess you could call it a belated New Year’s Resolution) to see more games through to completion, or at the very least play through one game at a time. I started out well, playing through the PC version of Alan Wake from start to finish in less than a week, before moving onto Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and then spending a week or so with Journey.

I’ve currently clocked up about 16 hours with STALKER: Call of Pripyat. I purchased it when it first came out, but the desktop PC I had at the time wasn’t quite up to snuff, so it wasn’t until I put a new system together in February that I finally found myself with the opportunity to go back to it. I’m very much near the end of that game now, although I have been a little bit naughty and have started to overlap with a new play through of LA Noire. In fact, Rockstar’s 1940s detective epic has become something of a bedtime ritual for me, where I’m able to play through one new case each night. The game’s episodic nature lends itself quite well to shorter, concentrated bursts of gameplay, which contrasts nicely with Call of Pripyat’s more voracious time consumption.

"Jesus Christ, Phelps. I gave you this case 11 months ago and you're trying to tell me you've spent all this time wandering aimlessly around the Soviet Union? Now get back in there and get me that confession!"

Assuming I do manage to stick with more titles through to the end, or not play as many games simultaneously, I don’t think I’ll be able to completely curtail my bargain hunting tendencies. But I am being mindful of reducing the quantity of sale items I end up purchasing. Sometimes it’s too tempting to grab a title simply because it’s down 75% to $4.99 rather than because I actually have a burning desire to play that game any time soon. So now my bargain hunting will be conducted with an eye to choosing titles I’m more likely to play.

Thankfully I’m not alone in all this madness. Many of my online peers report the same problem—too many games, too little time to play them. I guess we should count our blessings that our favorite hobby consistently delivers products of an exceptionally high quality, otherwise this problem wouldn’t exist in the first place.

More shitty games, please, developers? It’s the only way some of us may ever hope to catch up with our backlog.

I finally got round to seeing The Hunger Games last week.

It’s not the kind of movie I’d normally run out to see at the theater, but having been subjected to the TV spot trailer in excess of 1800 times (yes, I worked it out) within the last month, thanks to my day job, I really needed to get the damn movie out of my system.

Verdict? It was okay.

I’d previously read about half the novel and skimmed the rest. I found the story to be derivative, but Suzanne Collins had a fairly engaging prose style that kept me going. The movie itself had a vague TV movie whiff about it, although I’d long since resigned myself to the notion of a watered down interpretation of the novel once I heard that Gary Ross (previously responsible for Seabiscuit and Pleasantville) was involved.

Jennifer Lawrence did a remarkable job with the material at hand, but losing Katniss’s first-person narration from the novel ensured that we only ever got to see a very superficially-rendered Katniss. The odd blub or two aside, the movie version of Katniss never really seemed emotionally connected to the unfolding drama. In the novel, she’s very much plunged into inner turmoil and conflict, all of which is deftly handled, but we never really see that translated to the big screen.

I’ll avoid drawing the obvious comparisons with the much meatier Battle Royale, but one thing The Hunger Games did remind me of is the post-apocalyptic young adult fiction written by John Christopher throughout the sixties and seventies, particularly The Guardians and Wild Jack. While the plots of those books have very little to do with The Hunger Games, the broader themes at play are very similar: a world divided by the haves and have-nots in the wake of some post-apocalyptic tragedy; young adult protagonists making the transition from one half of that world to another, inciting the underdogs to overthrow the technological elite, etc.

Now, given that this is primarily a video game blog, I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the obvious question: why isn’t there a video game tie-in?

Well, apparently Lionsgate are keen to expand the franchise into video game territory. Not only does it make financial sense (it’s unusual for a $300M grossing movie to not have a video game tie-in), but it makes logistical sense too, given that the eponymous Hunger Games event within the book/movie is essentially one huge deathmatch.

Of course, anyone familiar with the source material will automatically recognize the biggest hurdle facing any developer brave enough to tackle this property: how do you present a game in which a 12 year-old child will inevitably kill, or be killed by, another child? You can already hear a tsunami of outcry and indignation beginning to well up, from certain interest groups, at the merest hint of such a possibility. So what’s a game developer to do?

To ignore the Hunger Games event itself would be nuts, because every narrative thread and character arc converges there. It’s the primary focus of the novel (and movie), and to sidestep around the event just to avoid a controversy wouldn’t be doing the source material justice. So assuming the game is about the Hunger Games event, how do you depict teen-on-teen violence without earning the game an M rating (or equivalent) and incurring the wrath of the Perpetually Indignant?

Should the game pull back, mere milliseconds from the moment of a kill, and depict things implicitly rather than explicitly? Call of Duty and Battlefield fans wouldn’t be happy. They’re quite used to shoving shotguns up one another’s assholes and dancing in the post-trigger-pull shower of viscera that follows. People get shot or sliced and diced in The Hunger Games just like any other deathmatch game, but how far do you go to portray that?

I’m asking a lot of questions here but not really giving any answers. The Hunger Games event isn’t something that’s supposed to be entertaining. While it’s a nationwide TV event, it’s only the pampered power elite who gain any sort of pleasure from it. The friends and families of the Tributes who watch on the giant screens erected in their respective Districts simply watch in numbed silence, praying that their sons and daughters make it out alive. Given that any video game’s primary intent is to entertain those who play it, it will be interesting to see how that discrepancy is addressed.

Any prospective Hunger Games video game should be about survival, compassion and constantly require the player to question their role in the event and the society that allows it to continue, year after year. Only once that strong, contextual backdrop is in place can the developer start to explore just how far they’re willing to take the violence. We’ll just have to wait and see if anyone out there is up to this task.

You know what I like most about STALKER: Call of Pripyat? It doesn’t hold your hand.

I think we’ve become rather too accustomed to hand-holding within the last ten years or so. These days you’d be hard-pressed to find a game that doesn’t want to walk you through the first hour or two of the game, telling you what all the buttons do, introducing you to an array of gameplay mechanics, doing its best to shoehorn some exposition (or even keep the plot moving!) as it does so. Some games do this a little more invisibly than others, but that hand-holding phase is still there.

Call of Pripyat grabs the comfortable crutch of the tutorial phase and snaps it in two over its knee. You get a brief FMV sequence that serves as the intro to the game before you’re thrust out into the world, given six vague objectives to get you started, but are otherwise left to your own devices. Granted, there’s a major plot line you can follow, if you decide to focus on the yellow missions, but there’s a huge array of optional side missions that really allow you to see everything the game has to offer.

Regardless of whether you doggedly stick to the main narrative or embark upon an intricate web of tangents, one thing quickly becomes abundantly clear: you’ll need resources in order to survive. Once again, the game doesn’t really give you any pointers as to where to locate these resources. It’s up to you to decide where these are to be found and how much risk you’re willing to take on in order to claim your reward. You won’t get very far in the game unless you manage the essentials: ammo, food and medicine.

Call of Pripyat isn’t one of those games that scatters these resources around like cheap candy. You need to find them, work for them, trade them. For the first five or six hours of the game, you’ll be hanging onto every bullet for dear life, painfully aware that every bullet that doesn’t hit its target is yet another resource being thrown down the drain. Carelessly wander into an area of high radiation, without adequate protection, and you’ll be cursing yourself when you have to use one of only two or three notoriously expensive anti-radiation kits. Similarly, if you take a bullet and start bleeding, you’ll wish you exercised more caution before you needlessly exposed yourself to enemy fire, reluctantly using up one of your rolls of bandages or precious medical kits.

But the game is fair. After a while you’ll start hammering out your own particular trade routes between locations, know where certain resources can be found, how to stockpile the useful items and sell off the ones you’ll never use. You’ll become more adept with your weapons of choice, learn to make every bullet count, and know which risks are worth taking. Eventually, those narrative-progressing missions that previously seemed unattainable will eventually fall into your reach, taking you to a new, foreign region of the map in which everything you’ve previously learned may not necessarily hold you in adequate stead.

So here I am, edging around the perimeter of the Jupiter Plant, on a wet, grey and windswept morning. Thunder rumbles ominously overhead as I edge round the crumbling concrete facade of this apparently derelict building, knowing only that somewhere inside is a clue about where I should head next if I want to remain on the trail of the military convoy that disappeared somewhere into the heart of the Zone. I’m well prepared: I have adequate medical supplies, enough ammo for my shotgun, scoped-rifle and back-up pistol to see me through a major skirmish or two. All my equipment has been repaired and upgraded with a few enhancements. I have enough drugs and anti-radiation pills to see me through one or two minor mishaps, and plenty of food should hunger strike. Anything else I need will have to procured along the way; I may be lucky enough to stumble upon another Stalker’s cache, or I may have to resort to salvaging what I can from dead bodies.

Other than the booming thunder and lashing rain, the outer perimeter of the Jupiter plant remains eerily quiet. I peer around the corner of a pillar, hoping to gain some sense of what lies before me. A flash of lightning and… was that something moving in the wild grass that has sprouted from the cracked asphalt of the courtyard? I risk another glance. There they are: two wild dogs wander across the abandoned concrete plateau. I remain still, aware that any sudden movement could alert them to my presence, watch them as far as I can without moving from my vantage point, attempting to make a mental note of where they could be heading. I may need to make a dash across that courtyard should an emergency arise.

But for now I’m heading into the building via an open doorway. Darkness looms within. I turn on my flashlight, switch out my rifle for the shotgun and cautiously proceed inside. I can only pray that I’m adequately prepared for whatever I find within.

Oh look, some vague rumors about the technical specs of the next Xbox console.

As expected, the internets are now all a-twitter (or a-plussing, if that’s your thing) about what this could all possibly mean for the fate of Microsoft’s next big hope. Technophiles have been quick to point out how laughably underpowered the new console’s proposed video card is, at least compared to what’s currently available for desktop PC gamers. Naturally, they’re overlooking the fact that the Xbox 360′s Xenos video card was comparably underpowered back in 2005, but we don’t want that to get in the way of a good whine.

The level of negativity this rumor is attracting does beg one question though: what was everyone expecting?

Ever since the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn arrived on the scene — long enough ago to make me feel depressed about how old I’m getting — console manufacturers have been playing a never-ending game of catch-up with PC hardware manufacturers. As each new console rolled off the production line, PC gamers would be there waiting to point, laugh, and compare tech spec e-peens. But in recent years that gap has been closing, at least where visuals are concerned. And, let’s face it, that’s the only yardstick most people use when it comes to assessing just how “advanced” a console is. What’s its maximum resolution? What shaders does it have? How many magical video card things does it do per second? Will the next Final Fantasy game finally look like the FMV of my dreams, dammit?

Not that many PC gamers are in a position to claim a significant technical advantage. The average PC gamer isn’t even playing games in 1080p right now. In fact, fewer than 10% of gamers who use Steam are playing in 1920 x 1080 or above. When the next generation Wii, Xbox and PlayStation arrive on the scene, every console gamer will be playing in 1080p. Now who’s playing catch-up?

Relax, guys. It all boils down to this: PC gamers and console gamers are going to be on pretty level footing when it comes to how pretty everything looks. Sure, those ten percenters will have insane resolutions and enough anti-aliasing to turn a rough day around — and they’ll remind us of this fact every damn opportunity they get — but we’re all one big happy family now.

So now we can stop worrying about how many polygons the neighbors are throwing around every second, let’s turn our attention to some of the things we’ve been neglecting lately, such as AI, physics, sound propagation, narrative/mechanical cohesion, etc. Working on those areas is going to deliver more interesting gaming experiences, not the ability to count a space marine’s bountiful supply of nasal hairs.

Wow, it’s been a last time since I posted something here.

Despite appearances to the contrary, Retroblique isn’t dead. I’m currently working on a collaborative gaming blog project with two fellow gaming bloggers (whose work you can currently find over at Raptured Reality and Pioneer Project), the fruits of which you’ll hopefully be able to enjoy some time in the near future.

Retroblique will stick around, but it will evolve into a more general geekier blog. There will still be occasional gaming banter, but expect to see me prattling on about music, film, literature, design, technology and social media too. In other words, a broader snapshot of my personal interests.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to start posting retro gaming banter on Google+. I’ve seen many other people successfully use the platform for micro-blogging, so I thought I’d give it a whirl and see what I can do with it. If you want to join in the fun, here’s where you can find me on Google+. I may fold some of the content back into Retroblique, but we’ll see.

Watch this space for further announcements!

Recent gaming distractions: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PC), The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection (PS3), Minecraft (PC), Eufloria (PC) and Super Mario Galaxy (Wii).

The 4G’s lovely Retina Display allows web sites to displayed in all their original glory and, most importantly, still remain readable without having to switch to an ugly mobile-friendly stylesheet.

That being said, it’s always nice to have options. And with many mobile users accustomed to swiping and tapping their way through their coffee break reads, I thought I’d give Retroblique’s mobile readers the opportunity to enjoy a more functional way of reading this blog.

From now on, those of you who access this blog with an iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung Touch or Blackberry Storm/Torch will now see this mobile version by default:

Don’t worry—if you prefer the vanilla version of Retroblique, simply scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll see an option to toggle the mobile version off (and, assuming your mobile browser stores cookies, it will remember your choice).

Pretty much anything you can read/write with vanilla Retroblique you can read/write on mobile Retroblique. You won’t see the sidebar or the linkage contained therein, but you’ll see all the posts, pages and comments. Additionally, the top of the screen contains direct links to my Twitter page and the ability to send a direct message to my iPod Touch.

As a bonus for iPhone/iPod Touch users I’ve created a home screen icon, so bookmark away!

I’ll probably be tweaking the mobile version’s appearance over the next few weeks (those calendar icons will probably be replaced by app-style thumbnail images from the articles), so watch this space. In the mean time any feedback you may have (particularly from non-iPhone/iPod Touch users) will be most welcome.

Once upon a time, long before they were bombarding us with no end of mediocre Star Wars titles, LucasArts were responsible for a handful of groundbreaking titles on a variety of 8-bit platforms (primarily the Atari XE/XL and Commodore 64). We’ll discuss each of them in greater detail during the months to come, but for now I’d like to draw your attention to a rather nifty futuristic sports title by the name of Ballblazer.

Don’t worry if the name doesn’t immediately set any bells a-donging. It’s a good quarter of a century old (ouch) and although critically championed it remained one of those titles that everyone attached to their wishlist but never quite got round to buying. Even those who bought it found it a tad esoteric too.

I can understand why Ballblazer left many gamers bemused. While futuristic sports titles were ten a penny back in the mid 80s, those that presented the game in a first-person perspective were the exception rather than the rule. While not a 3D game in the strictest sense of the definition, Ballblazer nevertheless required a slight more advanced understanding of spatial awareness from its players than the average 2D game, not least because much of the game’s playing field (and the actions of the opposing player) existed beyond the player’s immediate field of view.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s take a step back and consider the basics of the game.

Ballblazer is a minimalist hybrid of football (that’s soccer to you North American heathens) and basketball. Each player takes control of a Roger Dean-esque pod called a rotofoil that glides above the surface of a rectangular field of play. A glowing sphere is ejected onto the playing field, whereupon the rotofoils made a bee line for it, hoping to capture it and blast it between the opposing player’s goal posts.

Did I mention that the goal posts are constantly moving along the goal line? Not only that, they get closer together each time a goal is scored. It’s a pretty nifty device for ensuring that two evenly-matched players remain closely tied throughout the duration of the match, leading to some rather intense brawling as the countdown timer threatens to bring the game to a halt.

Another major concern for the offensive player is that their rotofoil slows down while in possession of the sphere. Not significantly, but it’s a subtle enough distinction that the defensive player always has the upper hand. The offensive player needs to decide if he wants to risk maintaining possession of the sphere as he charges towards the goal, or release it by blasting it further down the pitch to gain some speed back. Either way there’s a strong chance an experienced opponent will be able to regain possession.

To help simplify the controls and prevent players from getting completely lost on the relatively large playing field, the rotofoils always snap round to face the direction of the sphere. Keeping pushing forward on the joystick and you will eventually find the sphere, regardless of where you are in relation to it. A useful aid for players who are aware of the feature, but for the uninitiated gamer the constant viewpoint shifting is bewildering and disorientating, which may explain why some of my friends threw their joysticks away in frustration, claiming they just didn’t get it.

Matches last three minutes or until someone scores ten points, whichever happens first. Two points are scored for a regular goal, three points if the goal posts are beyond the player’s field of view. Games are quick, fast and often dirty. Two player games provide the most entertainment, although the computer AI presents a significant challenge.

Ballblazer was certainly technically impressive for its day. On screen clutter was kept to a minimum to ensure a snappy framerate; the playing field itself was rendered as a flat checkerboard, serving to enhance the illusion of speed. Sound effects were sparse but always provided sufficient cues as to what was happening on the field of play. Most other sports games of the day, traditional or otherwise, would often attempt to throw too much detail at the player, thus slowing gameplay down to a crawl. Lucasfilm Games quite rightly sacrificed detail for speed and were able to deliver a more compelling, competitive experience as a result.

Ballblazer remains one of those 8-bit titles that’s still worth playing today. Its frantic, kinetic pace is a good fit for the modern gamer’s sensibilities and the three minute matches ensure the game never outstays its welcome. Ideal for a quick “pick up and play” if you’ve only ten minutes to spare.

I like roguelikes.

I don’t love them, but when you have half an hour to kill and a laptop close at hand they’re a pretty nifty diversion. Well, it’s either that or annoy the shit out of my Facebook friends with Farmville updates.

If you’re still staring at the third word of this post, wondering what the hell I’m talking about, then listen up. Roguelikes are (traditionally) minimalist, turn-based RPGs that offer a fresh, randomized gaming experience each time you play them. They’re also (traditionally) presented in ASCII graphics/characters. They’re about as retro as anything else you’re ever likely to play this side of of the Magnavox Odyssey. (The term “roguelike” is derived from Rogue, one of the earliest and most fondly remembered games of its type.)

On the surface it all sounds rather dull, but if there’s one thing roguelikes have going for them it’s this: they are as addictive as chocolate-coated Hobnobs. Go on, just try one. Give it a superficial, half-hearted play through and you’re unlikely to see what all the fuss is about.  But take time to learn its mechanics and its scope may surprise you. Once everything clicks you’ll be in “just one more go” territory, burning the midnight oil like there’s no tomorrow.

If there’s just one problem with roguelikes it’s that there’s just too damn many of them. If you’re anything like me you’ll find it hard to settle on just one roguelike and fully explore everything it has to offer. I really should, but each time I suddenly get a roguelike craving (it seems to happen about once a year), I have to download dozens of the fuckers and give them all a try. This time round I seem to be gravitating towards Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, although DoomRL is proving to be a worthy distraction.

Also worth checking out is Dwarf Fortress, which takes the basic roguelike template and adds elements of city building, resource management and tower defense. Be warned: it’s not for the faint of heart and has a learning curve so steep it’s almost vertical. However, if you persevere through the early learning stages (perhaps with the aid of various wikis and online tutorials) you’ll come to appreciate just how deep and rewarding the game is. If you still have any doubt as to game’s awesomeness, check out this amazing Let’s Play Dwarf Fortress thread that originally appeared on the Something Awful forums.

But let’s not get too carried away. If you’ve yet to delve into the world of roguelikes, it’s best to start with one of the simpler ones. The aforementioned Stone Soup is an ideal starting point. It has a built-in tutorial that’s genuinely useful and its internal mechanics are lot more focused than some of the older roguelikes. You also get a graphical tile set thrown in with the main package. If you’re familiar with Doom (and, let’s face it, who isn’t?), then DoomRL may also be a good starting point.

If you want to go for something with a little bit more depth then NetHack is where it’s at. If you find the ASCII graphics to be a little too retro for your liking, you might want to check out one of the many tile sets; Falcon’s Eye and Vulture’s Eye are very easy on the eye. Once you’re familiar with the basics of how these games work, just experiment with some of the other roguelikes. Play around with whatever else sounds interesting. The chronology of roguelike video games on Wikipedia is a good place to start, although just Googling for “roguelike” will turn up no end of resources.

Meanwhile, for all you roguelike veterans out there: which one is your favorite?

Further reading:

• The History of Rogue: Have @ You, You Deadly Zs
• ASCII Dreams: A Roguelike Developer’s Diary
• Temple of the Roguelike
• RogueBasin Wiki
• Do You Want Your Roguelikes Identified? (Y/N)

I make a point of reading as many books about the history of computer & video games as possible. Most of them are pretty decent reads, well researched and historically accurate. But if there’s one alarming trend common to most, it’s the glaring omission of anything relating to the European (particularly the British) video game scene during the 1980s.

If you don’t believe me, pick up a copy of Steven L. Kent’s The Ultimate History of Video Games, turn to the index and try to find any mention of the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro or Amstrad CPC. Nope, I don’t see anything either. Now grab your copy of Vintage Games by Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton and do the same. Zippity-nilch. A bit strange given that these computers, along with the Commodore 64, dominated the British gaming scene for most the 1980s.

While it’s fair to say that neither of these machines found commercial success outside Europe (which I’m assuming is the main reason the annals of video game history appears to be ignoring them), it’s dangerous to overlook them as they made significant contributions to the video game industry and helped shape it into the one we’re familiar with today.

One of the most critically acclaimed developers for the ZX Spectrum were Ultimate Play the Game, responsible for the likes of Sabre Wulf, Knight Lore and Underwurlde. These days you know them better as Rare, who gave us Donkey Kong Country, Banjo Kazooie, Goldeneye, Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark and Viva Piñata (amongst countless others). Without their early success on the ZX Spectrum it’s fair to say they wouldn’t be around today.

Meanwhile, the BBC Micro introduced us to Geoff Crammond and David Braben. Crammond gave us the highly successful Formula One Grand Prix series of racing simulators, while Braben is perhaps most famous for introducing Elite to the world (a game that’s 25 years old but still continues to be the yardstick by which all space combat/trading games are judged). His current studio, Frontier Developments, are currently working on The Outsider for Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows platforms.

As far as the existing video game history books are concerned, everything happened in either the USA or Japan. It’s all about Atari, Mattel, Nintendo and Sega, with a little bit of Commodore on the side. Sinclair, Acorn and Amstrad rarely get a look in, which is a bit of a shame given the rather exceptional and unique games that appeared on those systems. To ignore the European contribution to video game history is to ignore the likes of The Last Ninja, Head Over Heels, Lords of Midnight, The Hobbit, Alien Breed, Manic Miner, Mercenary, Flashback, Paradroid, Elite, Revs, Knight Lore, The Pawn and hundreds of other critically acclaimed titles I could reel off without a pause for breath. All these titles directly influenced an entire generation of PC developers during the 1990s, who in turn influenced many of the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 developers working today.

I urge those writers responsible for the next batch of video game history books not to overlook the influence of the countless British/European developers responsible for so many great gaming experiences during the 1980s. Without their influence many of the contemporary classics you count as your favorites probably wouldn’t exist.