We’ve posted before here of Diskmaster, a search engine that works on the contents of old CD-ROM file compilations. Diskmaster has gone away and come back at least once, maybe twice, but for the moment at least is up.
Discmaster Jam is a gamejam where participants are asked to make use of contents found on the CDs the Discmaster searches. The winners were judged by a number of Industry People, so you can expect a certain minimum level of quality from those. The list of submissions on itch.io’s page for the jam has a number of extra items on it, to peruse and examine.
Image from the site
One entry that stands out in my vision is “Where In The World Is That #@*% Owl!?” which was written for the somewhat-obscure ACT Apricot computer from the UK, which had monochrome, yet high-resolution, graphics
Image from the itch page for Where In The World Is That #@*% Owl!?
Of note: it turns out one of the disks that Discmaster searches is the original CD version of Loadstar Compleat! So that is another way you could satisfy a jonesing for C64 program action. If you see me report on a Loadstar program of interest, you could possibly find it there, in addition to the Loadstar Compleat compilation I’ve made for itch.io.
Each indie showcase looks at the variety of games we cover on the channel. Games shown are either press keys, demos, or from my (Josh Bycer’s) collection.
LordBBH has a most excellent website, of the style that those/old of us remember fondly, made out of plain hand-coded HTML scrolling down the finite-length page, with images and writing. Like |tsr’s classic NES site, and Gaming Hell’s current one. (A lot of the pages from our list of great gaming sites are like that!) Some days I fantasize about remaking Set Side B in that style, but we’re daily, I’m not the only one who posts here, and I don’t think Josh Bycer would appreciate it if I suddenly decreed that he write posts in raw HTML. Maybe some other time, or for some other site….
LordBBH is on Bluesky, but is taking a break from all social media right now, which proves his great wisdom and power. His site is still online, and hosts descriptions and information on several old arcade games, which as we all know are the best descriptions and information. One of them is on an SNK arcade game from the early days of the NeoGeo, The Super Spy.
Images from LordBBH’s site, used for the purpose of providing context and to convince you to go to the site itself and read it!
The Super Sky is of a small field of three arcade games, NeoGeo first-person brawlers. It wasn’t too popular when released, but its two followups, Crossed Swords and Crossed Swords II, did considerably better. You can think of them as like Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! series, but less pattern-basis, more scaling, and fighting more opponents at once.
It’s an ambitious game for an arcade format, it has non-linear explorable buildings and an experience system.
In The Super Spy, you’re the titular uber-agent. You know karate, and can also box, and you take your lethal hands and feet (and a knife and a pistol too) against enemy terrorists in a series of three settings. It’s behind-the-back first-person yes, but you can’t rotate your perspective; you’re always facing north. An array of icons at the upper-right corner of the screen show which directions you can move in, and it’s the only indication if you can go south, or “down.” There’s at least one secret passage in the game that’s hidden that way.
You have an array of moves that would make Little Mac proud, including multiple kinds of punchse, but also kicks and slashes and shots. Each building you explore is swarming with enemies, fist guys, ninjas, mini-bosses, bosses, and exactly one woman, who you know SNK’s team of graphics creators were very normal about.
Dammit SNK. This isn’t even the most ridiculous thing about her art, which is that, in the Japanese version, her panties are randomized each time you reach her.
It’s easy to make fun of The Super Spy, but LoadBBH asks us to take it seriously, and while it’s quite unfair in places he makes a strong case that it’s worth your time. He’s written one of my favorite kinds of web pages about it, and I recommend you taking a look of you like weird arcade games. Go, go! And hover the mouse over images on the site to read entertaining alt text about each one!
I’ll admit, I’ve sat on this one for months. After posting about U Can Beat Video Games, I started to worry that this blog might get a bit repetitive if I kept posting about video game walkthrough series, and they take a long time to construct because there’s so many links, but it’s been a while since then, and VG101 has been around for years now.
Video Games 101, a side channel of a Let’s Play channel, covers much the same ground as U Can Beat Video Games. Some of the specific games are different. VG101 is a bit more about entertainment than the specifics of beating games and the strategy involved. Professor Brigands has three “TA” characters that assist him: Scary Gary (covering bosses), Blaze (a surfer who goes over the available items in each game) and Fluff the cat puppet, the most fun of the group, who explains game trivia and history.
I’m just putting it off still further at this point. Here is the intro video to the channel, followed by the list of every walkthrough VG101 has posted to date.
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
Not a Youtube link this time! Over on Bluesky (“blu-skee”) there exists the manifestly ludicrous account Pugberto Dancing Universe, in which a Photoshopped pug animated to various pieces of game music that, I’d say, greatly improves them.
Embeds don’t work as well from Bluesky as from Youtube, so I’m just going to have to link them and insist that they’re worth the clickthrough. Here’s the music from the first level of Super Bomberman:
I’m helping out with Roguelike Celebration 2025, the now ten-year-running conference-like thing about all things roguelike, roguelite, and roguelike-adjacent. Yes, I’ve presented there three times so far, and figured it was time to give back!
While RC got its start as an in-person conference, when the pandemic hit they switched over to being entirely virtual, presented through video feed. All of their talks end up posted online, so anyone can see them for years after. But if you can attend during the conference you can participate in chat, ask questions of the speakers, and explore a very clever MUD-like chat interface!
I’ve tried to spread the word about Roguelike Celebration where I can, through social media and this very blog here. Every year they have several very interesting talks that, if you read Set Side B, I know you’d be interested in seeing. They’ve hosted Tarn Adams, co-creator of Dwarf Fortress, the creators of the original Rogue, and many other thoughtful speakers.
This year Roguelike Celebration takes place October 25-26. They sell tickets, but they also let people who are strapped for cash apply for a free ticket. (If you can pay for admission though, please do, as it takes money to run an event like this.)
And if you have a roguelike, or even vaguely-related project, please please please answer their Call For Proposals, to apply to present your work to their devoted audience of extremely thoughtful attendees! The CFP site is here, and their deadline has been extended to July 20th, so you have about three weeks to get in your proposal!
Give it a shot, it’s a great way to spread the word about roguelike work, or about a procedurally-generated game you’re interested in, or just something you think the world should know about.
By volume most game players, let’s be frank, are interested in the big AAA productions. But there are lots of people out there who are willing to give indies a chance, which roguelike games often are, and we have to stick together. Not only to talk with each other and build those connections, but to do it in public, non-corporate venues. Reddit largely is a sham these days, more interested in monetizing their userbase, and Discord isn’t web-searchable, and requires navigating a maze of requests that you upgrade to “Nitro.”
I do not lie: little volunteer-run organizations like Roguelike Celebration are a lot closer to the true spirit of the internet, and the World Wide Web, than those are. So please keep them in your thoughts, if you can buy a ticket, and if you have something to present, answer their CFP! You won’t regret any of those things.
This one’s for the hardcore techies out there. Computer Archeology is a terrific site with information on the inner workings of several prominent games. One of their most complete and detailed is on the code and hardware of arcade Space Invaders, including a disassembly. While it is not, as the page says, “one of the first” arcade video games, not unless you count everything manufactured between 1972 and 1978 as unimportant, there’s a vast amount of good information there.
Some of the info revealed:
The game tracks five objects every frame. The player’s base, their shot, and three invader shots. The invaders don’t “count” as moving objects; the Mystery Ship temporarily replaces one of the shots, meaning, while it’s on-screen the aliens can only have two shots on-screen instead of three.
Only one of the shots is “aimed” to fall on or near the player. The others are just dropped wherever.
There is a bug where the player’s shot hitting the rightmost shield on the right edge of the screen can be misinterpreted as hitting the last invader on the very left edge.
The reason the invaders speed up as their numbers are diminished is because the game draws the new position of exactly one invader into the framebuffer per frame. Fewer invaders means each gets to move more often, until the last one gets to move every frame.
July 6th is the first day this year of the week-long SGDQ speedrunning marathon! I try to mention it, and its companion marathon AGDQ in January, some time in advance each year. I’m not always successful, but I managed to get the reminder out this time, with around a week and a half to spare. Here is its schedule.
This year SGDQ benefits Doctors Without Borders. Of course it’s a terrible time for the economy this year so giving hurts a bit more, but wouldn’t it be nice to support an organization that’s trying to do actual good in the world, instead of just observing the manifest awfulness that surrounds us?
I’ll give you just a few selected highlights this time. The first first run is an hour-long all-Emeralds run of Sonic 2. Some others are a kaizo showcase of Mega Man Maker levels, a bonus incentive run of Gamecube Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (which is played using the Bongo Drum controller), Blue Prince, We Love Katamari REROLL, Castlevania Rondo of Blood, a Tetris 99 Battle Royale showcase, An Airport For Aliens Currently Run By Dogs, a Spelunky triathalon, a 100% run of Metroid Zero Mission, a Super Mario Maker 2 relay race, and at the very end Deltarune chapters 1 and 2. Everyone loves Spamton!
We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.
Coming in on the heels of his previous game Blasnake, which he unveiled less than a month ago, Kenta Cho, a.k.a. ABAgames, releases another absolute banger in the form of Labyracer. Like Blasnake and most of Cho’s games, it’s absolutely free!
Check out that high score I set! You’ll find it difficult to surpass it, but I won’t say it’s impossible!
Labyracer plays like a mix of Namco’s two games Rally-X and Pac-Man Championship Edition, but unlike either game its mazes are all randomized, and only visible for a short space around your car (an arrow thingy).
Think of the board as having a left and a right half. Each side has a number of flags (letter ‘F’s) on it. When you get all the flags on one side, a Special Flag (an S) appears on the other side of the maze. When you collect it, the first side, the one you got the flags from, is regenerated, with a new random layout and some more flags.
The problem is the suicidal enemy cars that are trying to crash into you. (Presumably that have an insurance company that doesn’t ask questions.) Every time you collect a normal flag, one or more red enemy cars appear close to your location. They start out stunned and blinking, and during that time you pass through them, which I recommend you do.
You have but one defense against the killer kars: pressing Space, or Z, or X, will cause your car to emit a smokescreen directly behind it. If you’ve played Rally-X you’ll know how it works. Enemy cars that run into the smokescreen are stunned again for a few seconds, and can be passed through. An essential skill to learn is, when you encounter an enemy in the way of the passage you need to take to reach a flag, to reverse for a half-second, laying down some smoke, then luring the enemy car into it so you can then get through it.
But the real key to the game is in destroying the enemy, which you can only do by regenerating a section of maze with a Special Flag while they’re in it. This awards points, potentially lots and lots of points; each successive car in a regenerating maze earns double the points of the last: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1,600 and so on! As you play, more and more cars get spawned by collected flags, so if you can get through them and to a Special Flag on the other side of the board before they follow you out of the danger zone, you can earn huge scores pretty quickly! But it’s pretty hard to do, since the enemy cars are devoted pursuers, and you have to find your way through the dark corridors to get to the Special Flag.
You’ll notice that I have a high score of over 70,000. That’s really hard to reach! I was helped a bit by some lucky clears. You earn extra lives according to the Fibonacci plan: first at 1,000 points, then at increasing amounts by the familiar pattern: 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, 8,000, and on and on. A good clear or two can get you multiple extra lives, which can last you a good while.
There is a timer, in the form of a fuel gauge that counts down from 100. It counts faster when you’re emitting smoke. Running out of fuel does not kill you, but it does cut your speed in half, which usually spells doom anyway. Your tank is refilled when you collect an ‘S’ flag.
Like all the best difficult action games, it doesn’t actually feel that hard while you’re playing it! Despite the dark maze and the swarm of pursuers, Labyracer plays fair. While the maze is dark, the crash cars are still shown to you from any distance. Appearing enemies take a little time to activate, and smoke stuns them for a good several seconds. The corridors don’t cause you to crash when you hit a corner or dead end, but instead your car automatically takes corners for you. There do eventually appear red “rocks” in the maze, that can make you crash.
Please give Labyracer a try! It’ll probably be the first play of many!
We’ve mentioned this before, but not only are all of Namco’s science fiction arcade games, which include Galaxian, Galaga, Baraduke, Bosconian, Starblade, Cybersled and many others, considered to be on a single timeline, but they even have a website dedicated to sorting and explaining it, ugsf-series.com! And it includes games you might not have pegged for it, like Dig Dug and Mr. Driller!
This even includes their upcoming “Shadow Labyrinth,” which I derisively describe as grimdark Pac-Man. Well, at least they’re serious about it!
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
Just a few days ago I linked to the complete two-season run of the CG Donkey Kong Country cartoon that got made and aired on Saturday mornings. Well, there’s more where that came from.
As it turns out the people who animated it, “Medialab,” had other plans for the character. It’s not very well known, but in France they made another show, a general cartoon anthology, with the characters performing in bumpers between them, like the original version of Cartoon Planet. It was originally called Donkey Kong Planet, and it’s both bizarre and entirely in French.
Then, the model who was the co-star, along with the DKC characters, left the show. They rebranded it to DKTV, and, um.
You have a choice. You can start off with this 10-minute explainer video by Carlito. It’s the standard Youtuber, “can you BELIEVE this happened??” video. It’s not really bad, I’ve definitely seen worse, but it’s not really a sterling example of the genre either. Here it is embedded:
Or, if you’re a jaded connoisseur of bizarre video like I am, you might want to just go ahead and jump into the deep end of the pool, unprepared. If you’re like that, I got you covered. This is what you want (41 minutes). Don’t say you weren’t warned.
