“Spluvix Games was founded by high school buddies John and George...”

June 9, 2022 8:04 AM

[Twitter thread] “I'm reading and watching stuff about 80s and early 90s game development, and it's stuff like this...” by David Stark (@zarkonnen_com)
posted by Wordshore (15 comments total)

I love it. Yup.
posted by brainwane at 8:19 AM on June 9, 2022

"Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven!"
posted by clew at 8:41 AM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

I miss the Cold War too, Madeline.
posted by praemunire at 8:43 AM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

The twitter thread has been unrolled into a web page here:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1534827898770792448.html
posted by Wordshore at 8:57 AM on June 9, 2022

Oh man, I LOVED ZigZog back in the day. The hidden level blew my mind.
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 9:07 AM on June 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

Oh, neat. If you want the real stories the thread is based on - and exaggerates really only slightly - read filfre.net and watch the classic game postmortems on the GDC YouTube channel.
posted by Zarkonnen at 9:25 AM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

There's also Halcyon Days, which was a floppy-based ebook-by-mail now free to read online.
posted by credulous at 10:35 AM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

I played the Apple IIe version of ZigZog that didn't have the hidden level :-(
posted by allegedly at 10:50 AM on June 9, 2022

The only version of ZigZog that I ever had was on a demo disc included in issue 8 of Newstand Gamer!.
posted by maxwelton at 11:53 AM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

I remember Spluvix had the license to make a game for ZX Spectrum based on the movie Risky Business, but they had to deliver it in like 36 hours or something? Crazy. It sold half a million copies, but it turns out it was unwinnable due to a bug in the third level where it's not possible to pick up the glass egg. Crackers patched it almost immediately though, so make sure to download the cracked version if you're looking for it. It's a pretty standard platformer, but the wonky little beepy-speaker version of Old Time Rock and Roll is incredible, for its time.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:13 PM on June 9, 2022 [7 favorites]

Capitalism makes video games worse. This is the first time today I have posted this.
posted by AlSweigart at 1:40 PM on June 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

Sitting in my bedroom in ‘95, trying to figure out what the hell you were supposed to click on in Atmospheres
posted by Countess Elena at 5:40 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

I loved the Harmonies of Edernity soundtrack, but could never finish the game. It still haunts my dreams sometimes.
posted by Wilbefort at 9:30 AM on June 10, 2022

The "nowadays" bit is why I've more or less committed to making all of my own hobbyist/indie games short, non-stressful to make, and free. Sadly, there are way too many good indie games out there these days for all of them to be successful.
posted by May Kasahara at 9:36 AM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Sitting in my bedroom in ‘95, trying to figure out what the hell you were supposed to click on in Atmospheres

The puzzles were not intuitive at all. I would have never finished it if not for the dedicated AOL chat room. All it took was answering some (in retrospect) wildly inappropriate questions from older players.

It was a different time.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:44 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]