Relevant XKCD :

https://xkcd.com/908/

I think the association came from emulation. IIRC, you can sometimes play Colecovision ROMS with the MSX emulator in RetroArch, although it’s been a while since I dealt with this.

For some reason I’m reminded of the Colecovision and the Colecovision Adam. Did those share any architecture with the MSX devices?

I’m assuming interactive fiction means more along the lines of Choose Your Own Adventure books or Fighting Fantasy game books.

Article mentions text adventures as well, but old school like Zork and such wouldn’t work well without a keyboard. Maybe more the nineties era Gabriel Knight and Beneath a Steel Sky,but that would suffer from a black and white screen.

I was looking! I probably will. Was looking through the reviews.

Jealous! I’ve wanted a Casio calculator watch since I was a child. Technically my off brand smart watch has a calculator, but it’s not the same.

Floppy disks are still used in industrial automation. If something works, you don’t mess with it until you need to. The thing with floppies, is that there are lots of them floating around, and they last a long time. You can also write different information to them.

I’ve got a couple of 8" floppies near my desk that aren’t used for anything anymore, but I bet they still work. So even though there are no floppies being produced, the existing supply of floppies will last a heck of a long time.

Just like floppy disks and VHS tapes. Every 3.5" floppy that will ever be made has already been made.

I know there are several seminal works locked in archives or even just lost.

I couldn’t think of any specific examples off the top of my head, but I was considering the fate of Microprose, Sierra On-Line, and other studios that were gobbled up, disbanded, broken up, etc.

Your Mechwarrior example is a good example of licensing, where you might have defunct TTRPG studios (FASA) licensing a property to a have company it studio that has also gone though several mergers.

There should be a “use it or lose it” provision in copyright law, kind of like back in the day with what happened to “It’s A Wonderful Life”. The only reason IAWL became a Christmas classic isbecause it became public domain.

And this is the real cost. Sorry Mario Brothers will pretty much always be available as long as Nintendo is around, but obscure games or classics with disputed Copyright will disappear.

Who is out there even trying to stream the old Sierra games? At least they are on GoG, but I know even GoG has tried to track down current copyright holders for old classics and the are plenty of orphan games where after several mergers and divestments, there is some uncertainty, and it’s not worth it for any of the potential copyright holders to sort it out and license it, and unfortunately it’s not worth it for GoG to publish it to find out if they’ll sue GoG.

This is why Abandonware is such an important concept.

Some controllers are almost integral to the experience. Intellivision and Colecovision come to mind. Having said that, emulation and modern controls are generally great, and generally my preference.

Some might say it’s giving finger counting too much thought, others might say it’s a tangent too serious for dad jokes, I say… the efficiency gains seem to come from a change in technique for how a count is stored.

Base-10 finger counting technique just accumulates, the number of fingers held up is the count.

Base-12 uses a pointer (your thumb) to point to a value (a knuckles or finger segment).

Base-2 uses a finger up or down to show a place value as one or zero.

You could tattoo numbers on your forearm so all five fingers from your other hand could point to a value for up to five more places to point.

ISO 8601 ftw!

Filters out the casuals.

Someone else who knows how to finger count in base-12 and binary!

I think the binary one I learned as a joke, show someone they are number four.

The base-12 was an explanation for how the ancient Sumerians finger counted, using the other hand’s fingers for groups of 12, leading to base 60 (5×12).

I have the same problem with binary counting practically though, and using a modified Sumerian system (both hands to 12) gets you to 144, which is plenty for anything where finger counting is actually useful.

One other thing, I use the finger bones rather than the knuckles, little easier but same idea.

Still, Indie games continue to be developed. This will be gaming’s salvation when the big studios are fully committed to squeezing every loot box/DLC/microtransaction out of “Live service” forever games.

I don’t think Clash of Candy Shadow Tanks is going anywhere, but there will always be the next Stardew Valley passion project.

On that note, I think Indy’s have embraced a retro aesthetic because you don’t need a whole art team rendering your graphics. Combine this with AAA games being rather formulaic (can’t risk a big studio budget trying unproven ideas) and I think you have an audience willing to accept older graphics in retro games.

Not mobile, but I remember TekSavvy blasting the CRTC head for having some pints with his buddy, the CEO of Bell. You know, as the head of an impartial regulatory body should.

https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/2021/06/24/teksavvy-blasts-crtc-chair-for-having-beers-with-bell-exec-at-pub/

I find comparing mobile prices to Australia is more apples to apples, Australia has similar population density as Canada, with a similar urban/rural divide.

Granted Australia is cheaper than Canada as well, but it’s not as outrageous as some other comparison you could make.

True. Any random unverified instance could be set up just to harvest data from the Fediverse.

…and at least a little Lemmy.