mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06By day, I'm a systems and software engineer. By night, I'm curious about the history of computers. Posting from #lisbon, #portugal. 🇵🇹🇪🇺
In the last few years I've been exploring gaming from the '80s and '90s (something that passed me by as I was never much of a gamer back then). 🕹️
Expect posts on #retrogaming, #retrocomputing, or out-of-fashion (albeit current) computing. All posts are crafted by a human — even those carrying em dashes. 🧔🏻♂️
"Pinball Dreams" (1992), "Pinball Fantasies" (1992), and "Pinball Illusions" (1995) are perhaps the best computer pinball — or "flippers" in some countries — games of the 90s.
They don't have the flashiest tables, but the gameplay is smooth and the music is excellent.
Pinball Fantasies is my favourite of the three, specifically the MS-DOS version, because of its higher resolution (larger playing field).
In "Lemmings" (1991), a certain number of lemmings enter each of the 120 levels, and a minimum percentage of them must reach the exit. You can make them dig, climb, block other lemmings, etc. as you keep them from dying.
The game turned 35 last week, and I spent some time today slouching on a beanbag watching this retrospective, and then some more playing through a dozen or so levels of the Amiga version. Relaxing, and I recommend it.
Listening to some music while I work, and contemplating the fact that the set of speakers on my desk are older than just about half my team.
25 years old and still sound great. 🔊 💯
Happy towel day! 👍
TIL about the Pulfrich effect, whereby lateral motion can be perceived as depth due to timing differences (signal delay) between the eyes.
The effect can be triggered by wearing sunglasses in such a way that only one eye is covered. 🤪 🕶️
Then you can play "Jim Power: The Lost Dimension in 3D" (SNES, 1993) and the background layer will appear further away (only when moving).
The game originally included paper glasses featuring a darker filter over the left eye.
By launching a new laptop with only 8GB of RAM and no upgrade option, Apple appears to be embracing #MARCHintosh — because 8GB of RAM in 2026 is almost #retrocomputing.
I first played through "Beneath a Steel Sky" (1994) over a decade after its release. The game felt retro at the time, but doesn't feel any older 20 years later.
It's an adventure set in a dystopian future, in Australia (a popular location for dystopian futures). It's also a more serious game than what you'd get from LucasArts, but still humourous often enough (as adventure games should be).
The voices don't always match the text exactly, which can be annoying.
Is "Limbo" (2010) retro yet? I guess it has always been retro, at least in style.
Limbo was originally released on the Xbox 360, download-only. With Xbox Live Arcade dead since 2024, my copy of the game is stuck on my Xbox 360 and will only live as long as its spinning-rust hard drive lives. Not a retro situation, really. 🫠
I like this game. The puzzles are logical and I finished it back then in a few days. I saw it's just €0.50 on Android, and couldn't resist.
Now, *this* is a demo... 🌀
The visualisation is the music, and the music is the visualisation, on a vintage oscilloscope in X-Y mode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCukVSqoZyI
And it really picks up about halfway through. 🔊
I'm quite certain I once knew how to play "SimCity 2000" (1993)...
But now I think I'll have to read the manual, and it's almost 150 pages. 📖
John Bradley, the author of the XV image viewer, has passed away.
XV evokes a great deal of nostalgia in me. It harks back to a time when Linux was simpler and felt like unexplored territory.
"Guwange" (1999) is yet another bullet hell shoot'em up by CAVE.
This time, your character is on foot and movement alternates between vertical and horizontal. But you can only shoot upwards, which feels like a missed opportunity.
I feel that pre-rendered graphics lack the charm of hand-crafted pixel art and really scream for a higher resolution. Still, looks good, and the bullets consume all your brain's visual bandwidth anyway.
All text is in japanese, but that's OK. 🇯🇵
"Ghostbusters" (1990) for the Mega Drive has a 7.4 rating on Moby Games. Sega Retro says it is "generally considered one of the higher-quality games derived from the popular franchise".
I don't follow. There's so much wrong with this game...
The intro features the iconic Ray Parker Jr. theme, but the in-game music doesn't sound like Ghostbusters at all.
There are *four* ghostbusters, not three. Where's Winston?
Egon makes the gadgets. Not some random Einstein bloke.
"Pulseman" (1994) is weird: the graphics are often psychedelic and the music sometimes sounds... experimental.
It is clearly meant to be a cross between Sonic and Mega Man but, for the most part, gameplay feels distinct from either. 👍
Pulseman can charge himself by dashing forward or running. When charged, he can shoot enemies. And when he shoots, he screams "f*ck you" at them.
https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkxppkc5I_mttE9OFRXuVtpxU_2VYLVvF9q 🗣️🖕
Actually, he screams "slash arrow", but I can't unhear it. 🙄
"Disney's Hercules" (1997) looks good, and seems to be regarded as one of the best Disney games on the PS1, but it feels off to me.
Maybe it's from being a tie-in to a film I never saw or even remembered existed.
Maybe it's from the awkward levels where you're running and must avoid obstacles, or the levels where you can move into the background, but only at random points.
Or maybe it just isn't to my taste through no fault of its own. Off to play something else. 🤷♂️
