Tales from the Old School

Two very cool peeks into the fascinating days of the 80s and 90s games industry.

First, a half hour documentary about Ocean and Imagine games circa the early 80s. The boom and bust stuff is so over the top that it couldn't even be scripted. An absolutely amazing look into the world of the early UK development scene and gaming culture.

Secondly, listen to episode 91 of the 1up podcast Retronauts. It's a round table interview of developers from Tengen. It's a great conversation about NES development that goes into everything from unreleased games to Sega Technical Institute to how these guys are starting to find a place again in the age of Flash and iPhone development. Pretty awesome stuff.

Ripple Dot Zero

My future favorite game. Beautiful colorful spritework. Yamaha-style Sega Genesis synths. It's the real Rocket Knight sequel as far as I'm concerned.

http://blog.pixeltruss.com/
http://www.simonstalenhag.se/

Shnabubula - Playing Super Mario World While Taking Mushrooms

Holy cow, what a tour de force. This is an incredible Super Mario World Medley/Jam Session injected with healthy dose of soul and humor by Shnabubula using the original Super Nintendo soundfonts. The final few minutes are pretty mind blowing. Take ten minutes out of your time and listen to this insane thing.

I'm starting a resource for Kabuki Quantum Fighter

Kabuki Quantum Fighter has always held my fascination for some reason. It is basically a mediocre Ninja Gaiden clone, but it's uniqueness is weirdly mesmering to me. I do tend to like "guy goes into the computer" stories, I suppose. I started a small fansite at kabukiquantumfighter.com. It's kind of sparse right now, but I'll add more things as time goes on. There really wasn't enough info on the game in general out there, so I hope someone enjoys it as much as I do.