Clearly all my blog posts from the Learning Without Frontiers conference tired me out, so I am unbelievably late with my first Fun On Friday of 2011... but better late than never.
This post is partly inspired by seeing and talking to David Braben at LWF11 (see LWF11 - David Braben, Founder, Frontier Developme...). David's presentation was excellent and his passion and desire to see children get the same opportunities to play with computers that he had was inspiring. An unfortunate side effect of his appearance at the conference was, it made me want to dust off the old BBC Master I have sitting in a cupboard at work and see if I can find my copy of Elite - the game that he co-wrote back in the 80s. (This is unfortunate because of the likely effect on my productivity if I give into temptation!)
The other main inspiration was this advert for an iCADE - iPad Arcade Cabinet which makes your iPad look like an old style arcade machine. Just looking at the picture reminded me of my days at university and the vast amounts of my grant that I must have pumped into machines like this.
I thought that some retro-style computer games would be appropriate and one of the most retro is Space Invaders. (Well Pong was arguably the one that paved the way for all subsequent video games but Space Invaders was the one that really took my money and my time!) I was pleased to find good online emulation of Space Invaders on the Classic Gaming site where you can also find emulations of Asteroids and Pacman (among others) as well as a section for classic PC games.
My only problem now is resisting the temptation to go and look for even more emulations of old video games. What is your favourite old-style game?
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Marginally on-topic: I ran a quiz for my S5/6 class last week and was happily surprised that one of the class could actually name all four ghosts from Pac-Man.
I remember Space Invaders - and Asteroids. Later there was Jet Set Willy - tune drove me bonkers. We played on the Spectrum ZX we gave Neil - I'll never forget the trauma of loading a game and the green and pink striped screen of death when it hadn't worked. think I love Bubbles HD because of its retro simplicity. :-)
Hello Mosher
I ploughed goodness knows how many coins into PacMan machines but I couldn't name any of the ghosts... I was about to say I didn't even know they had names when "Pinky"popped into my head from nowhere. I guessing they rhyme so I'll venture Pinky, Rinky, Binky and Dinky.
Hello Chris
Never got the hang of Asteroids and never owned a Spectrum (although I still have a ZX80 in a cupboard at work). I did play JetPac incessantly on my friend's spectrum though.
We've got a ZX-81 in our cupboard at work!
The ghosts were Shadow, Speedy, Bashful and Pokey (red, pink, blue, orange) but they also had nicknames: Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde.
Well, I had the right idea with rhyming names... I'm miffed though because I originally wrote "Blinky" and then changed it to "Binky"!
Ah well - better luck next time!
BTW, I have an interview for a PGDE(P) on March 3rd over your way *gulp*
Hello again Mr Mosh
Swing past my office before, during or after your interview. If I'm in, I might even treat you to a coffee.
I may well take you up on that. I assume you're in the same toy-infested hovel? ;)
Oh, and a tea would be lovely! I'm one of these geeks who gets his caffeine hit from Cola rather than coffee :)
You need to check out MAME on google. Many, many, many emulated games by a die-hard group of fans.
You need to check out MAME on google. Many, many, many emulated games by a die-hard group of fans.
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