Videogames

I’m going through a bit of an odd phase at the moment with games, of pretty much any description. I realised it late last year, when I found myself stuck on the final level of Portal, despite beating it years ago. I also found myself stuck in the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time, despite beating that years ago too.¹ I have so much going on in my life at the moment that Switch Sports Golf is about all I can manage. Figuring out puzzles is entirely beyond me. My head is too full.

But I still need that hit of seeing a puzzle solved, even if I have to get someone else to do it for me. So one constant joy over the past year has been Jason Dyer and his All the Adventures project, described as: “I play and blog about every adventure game ever made in (nearly) chronological order.” This is clearly an utterly ridiculous thing to attempt. Fantastic.

I tend to dip into Jason’s extensive archive on a fairly random basis, rather than reading everything from the beginning. And recently, a set of connected games by mostly the same author² has been keeping me company. These are very unusual – a set of first-person adventure games made between 1980-82, for the TRS-80. No overhead view or text adventures here. The closest thing I’ve seen in my world of the BBC Micro is Acornsoft Maze, but the similarity is really very superficial. It’s a whole different type of game.

The games in the series, linked to Jason’s write-ups, are:

• Deathmaze 5000 (1980)
• Labyrinth (1980)
• Asylum (1981)
• Asylum II (1982)

Now, I’ve never touched a real TRS-80. I did spend a little time emulating one a while back, just for fun, but didn’t end doing that much with it. I didn’t really need to. Articles like these scratch every single itch I have for a bit of adventuring, without actually having to put the work in to map mazes and suchlike. (Something I was invariably terrible at anyway.) I was never, ever going to find the time to play these games, but reading Jason it is almost as much fun.

You might think this kind of thing would be ideal to do on YouTube instead, and I suppose for many, it would be. I think doing it as a blog does have some real advantages, though. It really does allow Jason to go into detail regarding how the puzzles are constructed, which a Let’s Play would find difficult to encapsulate, and a more general review would probably skip over. It’s this construction detail which I find so immensely pleasing about these pieces, and by the end of the final game in the series, you really do feel like you’ve learnt something tangible about how games work, rather than just being taken on a pleasure ride through nothing.

These articles are the gold standard for writing online, as far as I’m concerned. What better thing is there to write about than something obscure and under-appreciated, and actually analysing it properly? In a world where so many write about the same boring thing over and over again, stuff like this is an utter joy.

It’s something anyone writing shit on the internet can aspire to. There’s a whole world of stuff out there. Find the bits that haven’t been poked enough yet. And poke ’em.

1. Incidentally, in the most cliched thing I will ever admit to on this site, years ago I ended up getting stuck on the Water Temple in Ocarina, and never got past it. Bah. ↩

2. The first three are by William F. Denman, Jr. and Frank Corr, Jr. The final one is by William Denman only, although it reuses some graphics by Frank Corr. ↩

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An interesting thing happens to people who are very successful in their chosen line of work. Often, when they retire or just move on, they never want to talk about the field they worked in again. Maybe it bores them now. Maybe they were never truly interested in the first place. Either way, it’s stymied a fair amount of research for Dirty Feed: people who achieved great things, but are more interested in walking their dog these days.

Then there’s the other type. Those successful people who still clearly love what they did. People like Ed Fries, who writes an amazing blog about vintage arcade games… and was Vice President of Game Publishing at Microsoft for much of the initial XBox years. The kind of person who shatters any notions that huge success requires a destruction of your soul.

Ed’s pieces are fascinating; just read his brilliant pieces on the first arcade game easter egg, or fixing old games like Gran Trak 10. Each is a wonderful mix of research, history, and practical electronics. One of my favourite things about his writing is his acknowledgement of other people in the research process. It’s something I always try to do here on Dirty Feed; to point out that this kind of writing doesn’t always spring out of nowhere, but is often the result of people working together.¹

But here’s the real reason I want to link to Ed’s work here. His blog currently consists of just six articles, written between 2015 and 2021. On average, one a year, although there was some concentrated work in 2017, and his writing has slowed recently. But each of those articles is wonderful, and each of them forges new ground in our understanding of its topic. You won’t find six better posts anywhere on the net.

And it’s a reminder that blogging – or just writing, or whatever you want to call it – can take many different forms. Despite my occasional sarcasm, it’s not something you need to show up every day to do, or even every month. One in-depth post a year, if that’s the best way you write, can result in something amazing.²

Owning a blog doesn’t need to take over your life. Nor does it need to be at the technical level that Ed Fries is working at. You can still contribute something worthwhile.

All you have to do is attempt to say something new. That’s all.

1. To read some people’s writing, you’d think they were the only people who ever did anything. This kind of self-aggrandising gets my goat. No, I’m not going to give examples. But it’s truly pathetic. ↩

2. Frankly, it’s how I’d prefer to write myself, but I come up with too many silly things I want to write about. ↩

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