Set Side B

Nerdly Pleasures Breaks Down The History of Wizardry

NOTE: WordPress has malfunctioned and isn’t allowing me to use the Visual Editor right now, so I’m writing this with the code editor. I don’t have much experience with this, and I don’t know how to add images using it other than a featured image (which might not even show on the web). It’s a good thing I can write HTML code.

Wizardry was the first popular (actually, mega-popular) CRPG, though as with many CRPGs from the time it’s much forgotten about now, even if its legacy is truly gigantic. It is indeed fortunate that Digital Eclipse has released that modern remake of Wizardry I, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, which is a lot more than you can say about Ultima, Phantasy, Might & Magic or a bunch of other games.

Nerdly Pleasures has posted a detailed history of the original games and their microcomputer ports, breaking down versions, features and bugs. It reminds of a number of interesting things, like that the original Apple II Wizardry would write to the Scenario Disk if you defeated a certain encounter, and thus make it permanently impossible to encounter it again on later playthroughs. Or that character growth was badly broken in the original PC version, with stats going down when they should have gone up. Or that the Commodore 64 version came out so late that it not only includes support for the C128’s extra memory, but even Commodore’s bankswitching RAM expansion modules.

I have come to realize that I much prefer the gameplay in these early CRPGs to those of more recent takes like Skyrim. The simulationist depth of those founding games has largely been replaced with gamish fluff, and in place of the imagination that the first CRPGs asked players to bring to the experience, everything has been made literal, explicitly rendered on your screen just as you’re supposed to perceive it. I know this comes across as nostalgia talking, but I don’t think it necessarily is. There’s a whole approach to making RPGs that has been lost, and I think we’re all poorer for it.

Using COBOL As A Shader Language

Yep, what’s in the title apparently can be done.

COBOL stands for Common Business-Oriented Language, and is an extremely verbose language designed purposely to be understandable to managers. Everything in COBOL reads like it does, which makes it hard to work with. A fair portion of the financial world still runs on COBOL, in some cases using programs nearing their 60th year of existence. And someone wrote a way to use it write code for Vulkan.

Here’s the Github repository. The About blurb says it’s the shader language you didn’t know you needed. With due respect, that’s because no one ever needed it, but it’s still a fun thing that exists.

I admit, it’s weak to use a screenshot of a Github page in a post about a shader language.

There appear to be no examples of output online. I had a look at building it myself, but my distro doesn’t seem to have the necessary programs to do that. Would any of you care to give it a try?

Next Fest 2025 Demo Showcase Part 1

This is the first part of my (Josh Bycer’s) collection of videos of my favorite demos from Steam Next Fest, October 2025.

The 8-Bit Computer Implemented in K’NEX

It’s an oft-forgotten fact that the workings of the modern computer don’t require electronics. All of the basic logic gates can be implemented, although much more slowly and prone to malfunction, with physical Newtonian parts.

Shadowman39 has been working hard to implement an 8-bit computer entirely out of parts of the building set K’NEX. He’s just released his fourth progress video (18 minutes):

Here are the previous videos in the series: Part 1: the ALU (15 minutes), Part 2: Registers, RAM and Data Transfer (18 minutes) and Part 3: ROM, Program Counter and Jumps (20 minutes).

This isn’t the only K’NEX-based computing device out there, but it seems to be the most complex and capable of doing actual work. I do hope that none of the little plastic parts on the inside of that multicolor computational Borg cube doesn’t break a tooth, because replacing it seems like it would be nearly as hard as fixing a cylinder in an engine block.

Sundry Sunday: The Gameoververse Pilot

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Glitch Productions has made a number of well-loved bits of Youtube culture, most notably so far: the concluded Murder Drones, the nearly-done Amazing Digital Circus, and the forthcoming Knights of Guenevere.

Their newest pilot is heavily game-themed, so you can probably expect to see it return to Sunday Sunday eventually. Called “The Gameoververse,” it follows a team of hero-types that go out into the video game cosmos to prevent the good guys from winning, I think on the grounds that, if they win, their worlds cease to exist due to the player turning the game off or some such. Yeah, pretty much a similar premise to Reboot, if we’re honest, though there’s nothing wrong with that. (Wouldn’t the game world also cease to exist if it’s too hard and the player gives up? What about roguelike game worlds, that are generated anew whether the player wins or loses? Let’s see them make a Nethack episode, that would be something….)

Here is that pilot (32 minutes):

Gameoververse (Wikipedia) was created by RubberRoss, and existed before as a web series from 2009, though with substantial differences. Notably the new version has music by former Rare musician Grant Kirkhope. We look forward to seeing, should the pilot be picked up, the continuation of its story.

Three-Up From Pannenkoek

Everyone that counts loves Pannenkoek, whose two Youtube channels pannenkoek2012 and UncommentatedPannen are probably the best, certainly the best-known, videogame internal explainers on the internet. They somehow made people care about an obscure Super Mario 64 challenge to get through the game in as few A button presses as possible. How can that even be?

Not only do they explain, I won’t say effortlessly, but effectively how tiny implementation consequences in the foundational 3D platformer, but along the way they explain a bunch of useful computer science concepts. They are a wonder, and if Nintendo ever paid attention to their fan communities for purposes other than suing them or making them pay licenses to use Their Content, they would hire them like a shot. But they don’t, and they won’t*.

Whenever Pannenkoek publishes a notable new video I usually try to draw a little extra attention to it here, but it’s been a little while since the last one. So here’s three shorter ones, all permutations of the topic of 1-up Mushrooms.

From 12 years ago: 1-up Checkpoint Locations, all the places you can go to increase your already swollen extra life count from 72 to 73 (7 minutes):

There are a few 1-ups in the Bowser levels that aren’t always there. It turns out the game can be set to make them appear only if you’ve already gotten the key from a particular Bowser fight, and that’s what’s going on there. It’s explained here: (1 minute)

And the longest one at 12 minutes, why do some 1-ups flicker before disappearing? Along the way it painlessly explains object activation, visibility and spawning, and the six types of 1-ups:

* A few more contractions, all nonsense: bron’t, fron’t, plon’t, hron’t, vnon’t.

A Bunch Of C64 Music Remixes

Still working on various other things, but fortunately I found out today about remix.kwed.org, which is kind of a version of OCRemix that focuses (but I don’t think is exclusive to) Commodore 64 music remixes. These aren’t also not all played by a C64, but are remixes of songs from them, so, not all chiptunes. If you need a jam to get you started, try this remix of M.U.L.E.

One of those things I mentioned is, I’m getting a table at Vintage Computing Festival Southeast 2026 in Atlanta! And they said they wouldn’t mind if I did another presentation on the history of Loadstar, so it looks like I’ll be doing that again too! If anyone reading this is in Atlanta July 31, or on August 1-2, please drop by and say hello!

PlayChoice-10 Punch-Out Is Different From Cartridge

It’s a weird thing to change, but there is a slight difference between the version of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! in the Playchoice-10 version than any other version of the program. As explained on the NES/Famicom game’s page at The Cutting Room Floor, when you start a game in Playchoice Punch-Out, it asks you to enter your initials.

It does this because of a couple of other changes: the player is identified by their initials before each fight, and it saves a high score table for each fight that’s displayed when the game comes up in attract mode.

While we’re on the subject of Playchoice differences, on dual-screen Playchoice-10 machines, the top screen is used as a simple UI for selecting games and tracking how much playtime you have left, but it also displays instructions for the game. The instruction screen for Metroid contains a simple map of the first area. (Cutting Room Floor article with image)

Just a minor thing today, as I’ve been splitting my time between other projects. I may have mentioned the Punch-Out fact here before, but if I have it’s been awhile.

How Many BBS Programs Were There?

At least 885, according to software.bbsdocumentary.com. (Note: HTTP link, not HTTPS.) It’s an adjunct to www.bbsdocumentary.com.

That documentary is long sold out, but its producers have put its raw DVD files up for free download here.

That’s all for today. See you tomorrow!

Six More Great Indie Games For All Skill Levels

The weekly indie game showcases highlight the many games we check out on the channel. Please reach out if you would like to submit a game for a future one. All games shown are either press keys, demos, or games from my own collection.

00:00 Intro
00:14 Voin
01:50 Dimensionals
3:28 Cairn
5:09 Claire A La Mode
6:33 Epiphany City
8:33 Shady Knight

Multilink Monday 5/11/26

We collect literally hundreds of links in compiling stuff to you, far more to give everything its own post. Here’s a scattershot collection of some of it, we hope that one or two of them might strike your discriminating fancy.

We dusted off the image editor and made the first new page header in years! It’s about time too, for it’s time to shorten our list of pages before they threaten to overwhelm our nonexistent offices.

1. Seminal official D&D blobber Eye of The Beholder got a C64 port three years ago. That’s how long this link’s been laying at the bottom of our barrel. Here’s a demonstration video. (37 minutes) If you play it on a C128 in C128 mode, it uses the 80-column screen to display a map! Something to try out in VICE.

2. Also from around that time LowSpecGamer did a video exploring the origins of the ARM processor. (18 minutes) It was created by people new to processor construction for British Acorn microcomputers, and from there expanded and grew until now it’s the most popular processor style in the whole world, backing both Apple and Android devices, by a long shot. It’s beginning to make inroads into desktop use even; I’m currently writing this on an ARM-powered Raspberry Pi 500+.

3. onaretrotip shows off cancelled arcade games in two videos, Part 1 (18 minutes) and Part 2 (32 minutes).

4. I’ve been having a distracting amount of fun on a kind of public Unix/Linux machine called a tilde lately. I plan on writing a lot more on my experiences, but in the meantime you can find out what they’re about, including finding one to sign up for yourself, at tildeverse.org.

5. It’s been hanging out among my tabs for a few days, a memory of days when I referred to it frequently, Ali Harlow’s Nethack spoiler site. Not that the Nethack Wiki isn’t great, but the Wiki-style organization of information is not always the perfect mechanism for information delivery, and the decline of this style of fansite has weighed down on my soul, a whole species of site preyed upon by Fandom and its horde of highly SEO’d corporate wikis. Here’s some more surviving Nethack info sites, though you should note much of the information is a little outdated: the venerable Steelypips, Stan’s Nethack site, some miscellaneous related files most from 1997, and a few more files scattered about this directory at www.chiark.greenend.org.uk: an identification spoiler and item sheet, a musing about Nethack bots, a brief discussion about combat, a discussion comparing Dungeon Crawl with Nethack, and this cake:

6. A late-breaking development, the 25-year-old forums of classic gaming site Digital Press have been destroyed, apparently due to miscommunication between owners, in order to save a little bit of cash every month. As Time Extension reports, this is a gigantic blow to the retro gaming community, there was a huge amount of information that was contained there, and the Wayback Machine’s preservation of these forums is scattershot.

7. To throw in another last-second inclusion, Nintendo’s “My Nintendo” store is changing its name to just the “Nintendo Store.” This is their web shop, not their console-based digital game sales service called eShop, although you can buy downloadable games from the site too. I’d link to the announcement, but they stupidly only made it via Twitter. Get with the times, Nintendo!