Tag: amiga

#oneaday Day 210: Making some video plans

I was hoping to make more videos over the course of December for "DOScember", but a nasty cold with a cough that's been lingering for a while (and still is a bit) put paid to those plans. I was really hoping to play through both The Dagger of Amon Ra and the spiritual successor to the Laura Bow series, The Crimson Diamond, but that hasn't happened. I did start trying to record a The Dagger of Amon Ra playthrough, but my throat gave out in less than ten minutes, so I abandoned that plan.

I mean, there's no reason they still can't happen, they just won't be "DOScember" features any more. And that's fine. So I think I may well still go ahead with those, 'cause doing adventure game playthroughs is always a lot of fun.

I've been pondering other things to do along the way, too. One thing I definitely want to do is spend some time exploring other microcomputer systems alongside the Atari stuff I've done a bunch of to date. There was some interesting discussion on Bluesky earlier today about how the overly "Americanised" canon of gaming history has a habit of erasing stuff like the European microcomputer scene, so I want to spend some time redressing the balance there a bit. I've obviously done a lot of Atari stuff already, and I intend to keep going that because it's a personal passion, but I also want to make some use of the C64 "Maxi", TheA500 Mini and The Spectrum that I have, because those are all thoroughly lovely machines.

As good a place as any to start with those would be to work through the built-in games on each, since that's actually not something I've done to date for anything other than The400 Mini. So a cautious plan I have is to spend a bit of time exploring each of those systems' built-in libraries, then onward into some other stuff on each of those platforms, just like I've done with the Atari 8-bit.

Assuming my voice holds out, then, I think that's what I'm going to try and make a start on this weekend, along with maybe a bit of The Dagger of Amon Ra.

I've also reached a conclusion I think I've known all along: I am absolutely not cut out for streaming. I just can't be arsed with it. It's a lot of setup and effort to get going, it's a pain to promote (particularly given my potential audience is all over the globe and thus there's no "good" timezone for it) and the number of viewers I get (both live and on the archived version on YouTube) is crap compared to my standard videos. I know that's something that improves with time, but this is supposed to be a hobby, not work, so I'm just going to stick with what I know and enjoy, and which works well — which is YouTube.

I'm not ruling out occasional "special" streams for events, charity drives and suchlike, or occasional chats with my buddy Chris in a quasi-podcast format. But I'm not going to make it a regular part of my routine. I know several people who want desperately to "make it" as a streamer, and they seem to spend a lot of their lives being miserable, and I have no desire to get into that situation. I do this for fun.

So, amid a bit of game room reorganisation that may be happening this weekend, I'm going to make a start on another year of retro computing fun. Broadening my remit will be an interesting journey for me to take, and it may well bring some new people to the channel, too. I know from previous times I've done this that there are a couple of people who get a bit sniffy when I cover non-Atari stuff, but y'know what? My channel, my rules. I am interested in gaming and microcomputer history, and while Atari stuff will always carry significant personal meaning for me, I want to know more about the other parts of this side of things, too.

So that means C64, Spectrum and Amiga stuff! There's a huge library of things for me to explore on all of those platforms, and still plenty of Atari material I haven't covered, either. So I certainly don't think I'm going to be short of things to play and talk about this year. Now I just need to make the dang videos!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday, Day 325: Interactive Fiction

There's a lot to be said for interactivity (or at least the illusion of interactivity) in storytelling. It allows things to be done that are simply impossible with non-interactive media such as books, TV and film.

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon playing Digital: A Love Story, a wonderful game set on the desktop of an Amiga "five minutes into the future of 1988". If you haven't played it yet and are intrigued by the premise, I suggest you play it before reading on, because I'm probably going to spoil some things about it. I'll try not to be too explicit.

At the outset of the game, the player is the proud recipient of a brand-new "Amie" computer with a built-in modem. Your benefactor also provides you with a phone number of a BBS that you might want to check out. And so the story begins with the player dialing into the BBS, complete with terrifyingly authentic-sounding dial and modem tones screeching from your computer's speakers. The player quickly gets friendly with a person named Emilia and things develop quickly in a manner that will be immediately familiar to anyone who has ever had an online relationship.

All is not as it seems, however, and the player, through a bit of investigation, discovers that there are strange things at work. The BBS crashes, and there is no way of getting in contact with Emilia. Just prior to the crash, she said she was "leaving home" and "getting out". Thus begins a quest across several BBSes, ARPANet and Sprint's long-distance calling-card system to track down Emilia and discover what happened.

The game is completely linear. Things happen in a set order, right up to the ending, when the player is faced with an inevitable conclusion that there really is no way around. At this point, we reach one of the most powerful things that gaming can do, and ironically one of the least interactive things about narrative games.

Offer the player the opportunity to do two things: do something, or walk away. Walking away is usually not an option, though Heavy Rain managed to convincingly offer this as an alternative at several points throughout its narrative. Digital: A Love Story, however, makes it abundantly clear that there is only one course of action open to you, and it's an unpleasant one. Given the great pains that the game has taken up until this point to make you "feel" for the characters involved, despite being based around screens of text, it is difficult to make that final mouse click.

This is something you just can't do with a book. Stopping halfway down the page and printing "Turn the page to see what happens next" is not an established literary convention, nor should it be. Same with TV and film; with those media, we're just along for the ride. It's the reason very few books save the Fighting Fantasy and Choose Your Own Adventure series are written in second-person perspective.

But with a game, the player has been driving the story all along, even if there is only really ever one thing they can do at a time to advance the plot to the next "event". That illusion of interactivity allows the player to be all the more invested in the story, as if they're part of the game world. This is further aided in titles such as Digital: A Love Story, which don't break "character" for a moment. As far as the player is concerned, they're using an Amiga… sorry, "Amie". They're not playing a game, they've been transported back in time to 1988, a land of 320×200 graphics, questionable multitasking capabilities and scanlines.

The ending of Digital: A Love Story is bittersweet and if you've engaged with the game up until that point in the way it is intended to be engaged with, you'll find it genuinely emotionally affecting. It's always interesting when a title which looks so unassuming can actually end up being more powerful than self-consciously "epic" CG cutscenes and over-the-top orchestral music with people singing in Latin.

So, if you remember 1988, if you ever had an Amiga or you remember the golden age of the BBS, check out Digital: A Love Story. It's free, and well worth your time.