Doctor Whoa That's Awesome!

Timey-Wimey Stuff.

There was a time when Doctor Who was considered really, really geeky, and there was even a time when it was considered really, really retro. However with the rebirth of the series in 2005 and its subsequent re-tailoring for the mainstream market, this has all sort of been thrown out the window as Doctor Who is now, in fact, one of the hipper shows you can watch on television today. As you may or may not know, Doctor's main mode of travel throughout the series is a time-travelling British police call-box called the TARDIS, that, because of some crazy sci fi reason, is actually larger on the inside than it is on the outside. Physically impossible you say? Check out this video from super fan, Greg Kumparak, who proves that nothing, not even a good grounded sense of reality, is a match for computer magic. Ok, well not really magic but augmented reality which when I was a kid, meant you wore glasses. Dig the awesomeness of the larger-than-life, yet smaller than a bread box, TARDIS. If you want to skip the intro, jump to 1:11 of the video.

Rubik-esque Art

Can you solve a Rubik's Cube? Me neither and I've been playing with the damned thing since 1980 and I'm ready to call it a day. But instead of throwing it against a brick wall and watching the colors fly, why not repurpose the frustrating geometry device into a tool for artistic expression? That's what Toronto, Canada's CubeWorks group has done and with great success. Utilizing the pieces of disassembled Rubik's Cubes, as well as delving into other mediums such as Lego bricks, dice and crayons, CubeWorks has created numerous works which can be seen in museums and galleries around the world. Earlier this year (2013) they even made it into the Guinness Book of World's Records with a portrait of the Macau skyline which took 85,794 seperate Rubik's Cubes to create! Check out some of their works and stop by their site if you get a chance, it's definitely worth a look.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE CUBEWORKS SITE

Oh No! Not More Lemmings!

Nope it's not Lemmings, just an incredible simulation. It's called Caveman and if you ever got sucked into a three-hour game of Lemmings then this app is for you. Released all the way back in 1991 by British developer Psygnosis for the Commodore Amiga, Lemmings was a puzzle game in which you guided a herd of lemmings (although they looked more like Fraggles to me) across a treacherous path littered with traps and pitfalls with the ultimate goal of reaching an exit portal, which would invariably lead to another, more difficult level. The catch was, however, that the lemmings never stopped moving and would simply fall off of a cliff or walk into a spinning fan if someone didn't tell them otherwise, which is where the player comes in, assigning specific tasks to individual lemmings to help them overcome any obstacles or dangers that might otherwise get in their way. You could pause the game and plan your strategy, but assigning tasks was all done on the fly and since there was a time limit of just a few minutes, the game could get pretty intense as your cursor flew all over the screen trying to block one group of lemmings from strolling into a fire-pit while simultaneously keeping a builder-lemming busy constructing bridges over a chasm. The game itself was hugely popular and spawned several sequels and conversions for other systems up until about 2000 when the party stopped. Since then gamers have either had to make do with limited-release ports such as the one made for the PSP in 2006 or indie clones such as the excellent Pingus, which runs on Mac, Linux and Windows.

So in early 2010, when a little-known group called mobile1up took it upon themselves to bring Lemmings to the contemporary world of mobile gaming, I about pissed my pants with excitement. Working from a port of the original game that was made for the PalmOS (remember PalmPilots?) the folks at mobile1up managed to strip away the hacks and additions that had been bolted on to make the game work with Palm's unique idiosyncrasies resulting in a pixel-perfect rendition of the game while retaining most of the original source code. Development of the game was tracked on mobile1up's development blog with regular updates until June of 2010 when Sony, who somehow managed to pick up the property after the dissolution of Psygnosis, sent them a cease and desist effectively throwing all of their hard work into the trash. So in a big FU to the man, mobile1up released it anyway, but with all new graphics, sounds and a caveman theme, and it became an underground hit. Sorry, Sony, you had your chance. Caveman plays and feels almost exactly like Lemmings and features all of the same levels and even the same animations as its counterpart and is available for a multitude of platforms:

• iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad 
• Palm Pre / Pre 2 running WebOS 1.4.5 or later 
• TouchPad running WebOS 3.0.0 or later 
• BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0.1 or later 
• Mac OSX 10.4 or later (PowerPC and Intel)

Windows and Linux versions are currently in the works. I don't think there's an Android version yet, but you Android folks are used to not having any apps anyway, right? (just kidding, gawd!)

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE CAVEMAN SITE AND BUY THIS AWESOME GAME!

CLICK HERE TO READ THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF LEMMINGS!

Got Chunk?

I'm lazy today so here's the Truffle Shuffle. Have some chunk.

Blood Covered Wagon

Computers in the 21st century are ubiquitous. They're in absolutely everything. It's not even worth trying to list all the microchips floating around your home, work or vehicle at any given time because they are literally everywhere so let's not even go there, OK? However when that first round of 8-bit personal computers invaded elementary schools in the early 1980s, the vast majority of American households didn't even have a digital watch, let alone a personal computer, so getting to spend even a few minutes of quality time with a Commodore PET or an Apple II at your school was like taking a ride into the future. Hell, for me it was like being frickin' Captain Kirk! Of course, most kids of the time, including myself, were already quite familiar with the 8-bit video games that had long lined the walls of arcades, supermarkets and drug stores, so who could blame us when all we wanted to do with those thousand dollar educational computers is play Pac-Man on them, or maybe blow up some asteroids in outer space or dare to protect the Earth from rapidly advancing waves of bloodthirsty alien invaders?! That's what we hoped for. What we got instead was Oregon Trail (sad trombone). One of the first successful educational games for early personal computers, the Oregon Trail was originally developed in 1974 by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium to run on timeshared mainframes and was used to teach kids about 19th century pioneer life. In the game, the player was given a fixed amount of funds with which to buy food, supplies, bullets, oxen and the like, and was sent on his or her way in a crappety covered wagon to travel the treacherous trail that tied together Missouri and Oregon. Ho hum. Actually I say ho hum because in addition to the fair amount of luck required to traverse the dodgy path to the West, the other key component to ensuring a winning game was good forethought and strategy, which I suck at. Plus my character nearly always died from dysentery. So blessed be I when a local Retrogeeker reader suggested that I use this forum to introduce to you possibly one of the coolest retro 8-bit-style video games ever to grace your iThing or Android device (you can also play it on Facebook, but really, who wants to do that?) The game is called Organ Trail and comes to us from a small indy developer called The Men Who Wear Many Hats. I like that. Descriptive and a mouthful, just how I like my coffee. Organ Trail plays roughly similar to the game that it's based upon, except that instead of trying to lead a happy pioneer family across our great nation to a land of untold bounty, you're trying to get your party of ne'er do wells to the Pacific Northwest in a station wagon while fending off a full-on zombie apocalypse. Funny, great retro graphics and sound, and even a decent plot. Check out the trailer below and then you should totally go and buy it! I did!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE ORGAN TRAIL WEBSITE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE IPHONE APP

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE ANDROID APP

Turn Your Phone Into an Arcade

Gaming just got a whole lot itty-bittier with the iCade Jr. from Ion Audio. Just plug in your iPhone or iPod touch and fire up one of the many compatible games from the App Store for a devilishly diminutive retro experience. Featuring a solid arcade-style joystick and eight action buttons (four on the front and four on the back) the iCade Jr. also sports a pass-thru port for use with a USB cable, turning your mini-arcade into the coolest iPhone dock ever. Best of all, it's made to work perfectly with the "Atari's Greatest Hits" app which features 100 classic home and arcade titles from the number one video game maker of the 1980s. But be warned, this little fella costs $69.99, so for 30 bucks more you could pick up its iPad-compatible sibling, the original iCade, instead.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE ICADE JR. PRODUCT PAGE

Pitfall Harry In Your Pocket

This month we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of the seminal Atari 2600 game, Pitfall! whose rabid popularity helped put a once little-known game company named Activision on the map and on gaming consoles everywhere. Designed by David Crane, Pitfall! was considered to be one of the progenitors of the "platform" genre and paved the way for later games such as Super Mario Bros. and Alex Kidd while showing off to the world just what could be accomplished on such a limited machine as the Atari 2600. So to celebrate, and to cash-in on an old property, Activision has released a new Pitfall! game for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Those familiar with the hit iPhone app, Temple Run, will recognize it as the inspiration for this game in that your 3D character runs down a 3D path of sorts, jumping, swinging and dodging 3D hazards while collecting priceless digital riches and virtual treasures. If you stop, you die. While I personally would have been happier with a translation closer to the original 1982 version, it does prove to be a fun time-waster, albeit a frustrating one at times. Before you go, check out the old Pitfall! commercial featuring none other than a young Jack Black!

CLICK HERE to go to the iTunes page for Pitfall!