Matthew

9 November 202314 November 2023

The Terminator: Future Shock.

I’ll be back…

Every month, TGI 2.0 features a game and a couple of accompanying images to bring back a smile or a cringe moment from yesteryear, and The Terminator: Future Shock is this month’s. Published in 1995 for MS-DOS (autoexec.bat) and developed by Bethesda Softworks the game was one of the first video games to use full 3D graphics and a totally free mouse-look in a first-person shooter. Imagine being able to look left and right, and up and down – amazing! Continue reading “The Terminator: Future Shock.”

31 October 202326 November 2023

Getting angry with the bird…

Eclair…

Without getting my fruit bashed and bruised, this is the part when I confess that I have never been interested in being hip or fashionable. In fact, I never owned a pair of Adidas trainers until I was fifty years old, and when I hit that milestone of doing stupid shit since 1972 the wife bought me two pairs, as I was undecided between a pair of blue Samba and a pair of grey Court 2.0 which are primarily dog walking trainers, and yes I’ve never been interested in owing an iPhone of which Angry Birds first flew to the heights of 12 million downloads within a year of release, and sets the tone for this trip down memory lane. Continue reading “Getting angry with the bird…”

26 October 20237 November 2023

Far Cry – Jack the lad.

A Far Cry from paradise…

OK, down to the willy waving of PC gaming, the PC arms race (my Pentium 4 was better than your Athlon 64), the master race of not playing games on a controller and swearing by mouse and keyboard. Who out there, back in 2004 managed to max out Far Cry and not bring their PC to a fiery blue standstill?

Before Crysis and that overly used quote, German developers Crytek had created the CryEngine with an accompanying tech demo (X-Isle: Dinosaur Island) aimed specially towards Nvidia graphic processors, which showcased at the 1999 E3 expo. Continue reading “Far Cry – Jack the lad.”

14 October 202329 October 2023

From Computer Arts Incorporated to Active Television which became.

Anybody can do a cartridge…

Everyone has had one of these days, a day that sees you totally hacked of with the way the higher echelons of management treat you. No recognition for the work that you’ve completed, a poor salary compared to the revenue your skill set generates – this was one of those a days David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead had back it the late seventies. The gang of four deprecated by their boss Ray Kasser and labelled “towel designers” used this derogatory, demeaning, devalued tone as a catalyst and the Atari men soon left the company to begin a business venture of their own. Continue reading “From Computer Arts Incorporated to Active Television which became.”

10 October 202327 October 2023

Halloween the video game 1983.

Halloween night, a small American town, fifteen years ago…

Now this astounds me – back in 1983 in an era of Steven King, David Cronenberg and terrible slasher movies where the trailer would be narrated by a guy with a deep voice Halloween the video game released for the Atari 2600 VCS. It was so controversial at the time that many retailers refused to stock/sell it, and those retailers that did stock/sell the game kept it behind the counter and sold it on a request basis only – controversy 1983, and you thought Destructive Creations Hatred from 2015 was the shock jock? Continue reading “Halloween the video game 1983.”