Explore over 50 years of creativity and inspiration with our *Video Game Graphics: a brief history* live lecture.

Enroll for free, and join me on May 22 https://www.d6learning.com/course/video-game-graphics-history-j25

Out now: Daniel M. Feige's & Rudolf Inderst's collection "Computerspiele. 50 zentrale Titel" - with my chapter on #Pong:

https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-6825-4/computerspiele/

Today the 4th issue of the German #GameStudies magazine "Spiel-Formen" has been published. Main topic of this issue is #GameLabs. I contributed a photo galery about the "Signal Laboratory" at HU Berlin:

http://txt3.de/signal-noises

Will the #VacuumTube #MainFrame Computer Bendix G-15 from 1956 run #Doom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no0CkQk7id0

Join me this Wednesday to explore the (mostly) forgotten game cities of the 8-bit era in a free and not-too-long lecture.

From the ZX Spectrum to the NES, and from Mercenary to Ant Attack this will be one for historians and designers both.

Grab a seat here: https://www.d6learning.com/course/8-bit-cities

164 Landing #games for 53 platforms from 1969 to 2017:

https://www.uvlist.net/groups/info/landing

Some impressions from last tuesday's meeting of the "Work Group for #GameLabs in Academia". (Photos were taken by René Meyer:

Starting next week, I will be holding a 4-sessions online course on the history of video games (from a creatives perspective).

Also, here's a 40% OFF coupon for said 'History of Video Games: A Tale of Tech & Game Design' course: VGHISTORY40

Use the code at checkout – valid today only!

Enroll and find out more here: https://www.d6learning.com/course/history-of-video-games-en

In Richard Garriott's DND1, written in 1977, he is using ascending AC.

The monster attack against the character is as follows.

Use the following number for the character's armor.
None = 6
Leather = 12
Chain = 16
Plate = 20

Add that to the character's dexterity score (which will be between 3-18)

The monster then rolls a 1d40

The monster needs to get above the characters armor + dexterity.

Was reading Richard Garriott talking about writing code and porting it to different systems and how porting to the PC was harder than other systems, because most computers in the early 80s used the same cpu, the MOS Technology 6501 and 6502.

It is not too far fetched to imagine a world where Intel did not become the dominate cpu.

As I work through the DND1 source code, it is obviously derived from playing D&D. Just look at the name of the program for one, DND1.

But did you know Richard Garriott was very aggressive (pressuring, threatening lawsuits) of any game that mirrored the Ultima games?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questron_(video_game)

He dumped EA as a distributor after they released Deathlord

https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2018/01/deathlord-summary-and-rating_29.html

It reminds me of Gary Gygax in a way. Gary would copy things like the Thief from player submissions, or Fireball from Len Patt, but would be critical of anyone else using ideas from D&D.

https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-conversation-with-len-patt.html

Also similar to Kevin Siembieda and the Palladium RPG. Is that not derived from D&D? But when WotC released the Envoy system that referenced Palladium, he brought a lawsuit against them. (note this was all before Magic the Gathering). And Palladium was known for being aggressive against fan websites.

https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/palladium-lawsuits.8616/

In Richard Garriott's DND1 written in BASIC in 1977, I thought this bit of code was interesting.

It would be Death Saves for HP in more modern discourse.

If the characters's HP are 0, the character survives if their CONSTITUTION is 9 or above.

If the characters' HP are below 0, the character survives if their CONSTITUTION is 9 or above, but they lose 2 points of CONSTITUTION and gain 1 hit point.

This was only 3 or 4 years after D&D had been introduced to the world.

Richard Garriott wrote a program to simulate a d&d like rpg in the 1977-1979 timeframe. He kept his notes he wrote from that era. He would have been 16-18 years old at the time. Here is a picture of the first dungeon he made.

I copied out the series of 0,1,2,3,4 as text and ran it through my ascii dungeon tile converter to make the second image.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/143932/dungeons-and-dragons-1/

Surrounded by old games, writing about them, and studying their evolution for nearly 20 years, I simply had to prepare the 'History of Video Games: a tale of tech and design' course for d6learning.com.

Join me in the course presentation on March 11: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/history-of-video-games-a-tale-of-tech-and-design-course-presentation-tickets-1259287064509?aff=oddtdtcreator

ROMChip game studies journal is doing a twitch telethon today to raise money to keep their #OpenAccess journal running. Lots of guests on stream today showing off obscure games, speedruns and more:
https://buff.ly/4hgQtAg - twitch stream (redirect link)
https://donate.romchip.org/ - more info and full schedule

Now, this is important! The Video Game History Foundation has launched its online library, and it's already packed with magazines, productions docs, and promo material.

Visit it here: https://library.gamehistory.org/

The Video Game History Foundation opened up digital access to a large portion of its massive archives today, offering access to information from the past 50 years.

"Today's launch of the VGHF Library comprises more than 30,000 indexed and curated files, including high-quality artwork, promotional material, and searchable full-text archives - over 1,500 video game magazine issues. This initial dump of digital materials also contains never-before-seen game development and production archival material stored by the VGHF, such as over 100 hours of raw production files from the creation of the Myst series or Sonic the Hedgehog concept art and design files contributed by artist Tom Payne."

https://library.gamehistory.org

More about it here at Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01/vghf-opens-free-online-access-to-1500-classic-game-mags-30k-historic-files

Who needs a time machine when you've got 1,500 classic gaming magazines and 30K historic files at your fingertips? VGHF just dropped the ultimate retro gaming library - free for everyone! From Sonic concept art to Myst production files, it's like jumping into a portal to gaming's past. #RetroGaming #GameHistory

https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/01/30/2259236/vghf-opens-free-online-access-to-1500-classic-game-mags-30k-historic-files

Today the "#VideoGame History Foundation" announced they opend their digital library to the public:

https://library.gamehistory.org/

Sometimes I stumble upon some old corner of the Internet and it reminds me of how things use to be online. Today it was this page.

https://fancyclopedia.org/Ted_Johnstone

There is a real posibility David McDaniel aka Ted Johnstone was the first to propose 1d8 type dice notation in the first issue of Alarums & Excursions.