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August 1, 2010

Halo 2600

Ed Fries demakes Halo for Atari

Ed Fries, who used to run game publishing for Xbox, has created a demake of Halo for the Atari 2600. I'd talked to Ed about the project when I was exhibiting A Slow Year at the IGF this year, and he'd been kind enough to show me some late stage ...

June 25, 2010

Playful & Playable

Plus yet another update on A Slow Year

My forthcoming game A Slow Year is on exhibit at a show curated by Lara Sánchez Coterón, Playful & Playable: Critica y Experimentacion con Videojuegos. It runs until September 15 at Sala Amarica, in Vitoria Gasteiz (in northern Spain). Here's a description of the exhibition, which also includes work by ...

June 2, 2010

A Slow Tease

Updates on the Development and Release of A Slow Year

One of the lovely things about making a videogame called A Slow Year is that I can take as damn well long as I please to get it done. But that doesn't mean I don't owe an update to those of you who have been following the game. At the ...

March 20, 2010

I Wore Pixel Socks

Interview about A Slow Year

At the IGF, Adam Niese over at PixelSocks interviewed me about A Slow Year. The interview is now online, and you can read it at PixelSocks.com. Issues we discussed include the idea of the "game poem," how instructions and other meta-textual materials contribute to a work, reactions and expectations for ...

March 12, 2010

A Slow Year Cover Art

GDC continues, and I owe this site updates. For now, a small one. I gave a short talk about A Slow Year at the Nuovo Sessions today, in which I revealed the cover and label art for the game. I thought I'd post those here for the rest of you, ...

March 10, 2010

An Atari Travels

My VCS Goes to GDC

As you may remember, I brought my Atari out to GDC for the Independent Game Festival. It's been having an unusual time indeed during its travels, and I believe it hasn't seen this much excitement in some 33 years. Here are some highlights: In the Delta SkyClub Stowed under the ...

March 5, 2010

Exhaust Objects

Thoughts from an Atari 1978 Board and ROM

In anticipation of the Independent Game Festival next week, today I constructed the first two cartridges of A Slow Year. More on that soon, but for now I wanted to share the object below, residue from the construction. It's a board holding a 2k mask ROM for an Atari game. ...

February 23, 2010

A Slow Year Nears

Updated Screenshots and Trailer

As the IGF approaches, I have a few updates to relate about A Slow Year. First, expect to see a number of interviews with me about the game emerging over the next two weeks. The first is on Rock Paper Shotgun, and I'll report back when the others drop. My ...

February 17, 2010

Chicken's Revenge

Hacking Freeway

Today in my Atari Hacks, Remakes, and Demakes class we talked about disassembling binaries and doing graphical hacks. These are the simplest kind of ROM hacks to do, as they only require changes to data in the disassembly, which is usually relatively easy to find and identify. My in-class example ...

Atari Hacks, Remakes, and Demakes

Special Topics in Game Design and Analysis, Spring 2010

In this intensive seminar, we will explore every aspect of the Atari VCS (2600), the most important early home videogame console. Based on a critical-technical practice Nick Montfort and I call platform studies, we will investigate the way the Atari VCS influenced games and game design through a thorough analysis ...

January 8, 2010

Premature Sunsets

Will XBLA's Game Room ever support new games for old systems?

Back when the Nintendo Wii first came out, I wrote about a hope for it, specifically for its Virtual Console feature. Here's what I said: Without exception, the Virtual Console has been touted as a digital distribution channel for new games and "classic" games from vintage consoles. But the Virtual ...

December 12, 2009

Racing the Beam is a Front Line Award Finalist

Game Developer Magazine holds an annual Front Line Awards, for "the year's best game-making tools in the categories of programming, art, audio, game engine, middleware, and books." Racing the Beam is among the finalists. We're definitely an outlier, the other books covering much more "practical" development concerns (Game Coding Complete ...

December 10, 2009

Eight Bit Me

Promotional Materials for Think Inside the Box

Nick Montfort and I are giving a lecture tomorrow (Friday) at UC Irvine, as a part of the Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds lecture series. The talk, held at 4pm in Donald Bren Hall, covers aspects of Racing the Beam and platform studies. All of that's just context ...

December 9, 2009

Panic for Atari

Broken dreams and cool boxes

Panic Software, who makes Mac utilities like Transmit (an FTP client) and Unison (a USENET client), has created a set of hypothetical boxes and watercolor box art, as if their apps had been made for the Atari 2600. You can buy them online. They are insanely awesome. ...

November 29, 2009

Once Upon a Time in the West

Exhibiting Guru Meditation

I spent part of today assembling and testing Guru Meditation cartridges. Some are bound for collectors, but I'm also readying one to ship off to Slovenia for exhibition at Pixxelpoint 2009, the 10th International New Media Art Festival. The theme of the show is "Once Upon a Time in the ...

November 24, 2009

Atari Reborn (Again)

New in-browser emulators for classic Atari games

Atari has been through a lot as a company. Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded it in 1972. They sold it to Warner Communication in 1976. Ray Kassar ran it through the crash of 1983, after which he was forced out due to accusations of insider trading. Warner split Atari ...

A Slow Year

A chapbook of game poems for Atari VCS, PC, and Mac

November 1, 2009

Atari Hacks and Demakes

My Spring 2010 seminar

Some of you might be interested in this, the course description for my Spring 2010 graduate seminar/studio course, LCC 8823 Special Topics in Game Design and Analysis: The Atari Video Computer System: Hacks and Demakes In this intensive seminar, we will explore every aspect of the Atari VCS (2600), the ...

September 4, 2009

Computers and Creative Play

Nolan Bushnell on Educational Videogames

I stumbled upon an article by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell about the educational potential of videogames. It's not dated, but based on the biographical one-liner I'd say it's from around 1982. Here's the first paragraph: The computer, the single most powerful development of the twentieth century, is still puny in ...

July 22, 2009

Media Studies and Realism

A response to Levi Bryant

In a lengthy comment on my pragmatic speculative realism post, philosopher Levi Bryant asks what issues in technology and media studies prompted my interest in object-oriented ontology. I'd like to try to answer the question for the benefit of readers finding their way here from sources in philosophy rather than ...