Long Live Glitch! The Art & Code from the Game Now Released into the Public Domain

in Technology, Video Games | November 19th, 2013

Back in 2009, a start­up called Tiny Speck (whose co-founder Stew­art But­ter­field also co-found­ed Flickr) launched a mul­ti­play­er online video game called Glitch, which won praise for its cre­ative visu­al style. Although more than 150,000 peo­ple played the game, Glitch nev­er quite found its foot­ing in the mar­ket. And, in 2012, it was shut down. But, now Glitch ris­es from the ash­es and lives again.

Yes­ter­day Tiny Speck made this announce­ment:

The entire library of art assets from the game, has been made freely avail­able, ded­i­cat­ed to the pub­lic domain.… All of it can be down­loaded and used by any­one, for any pur­pose. (But: use it for good.)

Tiny Speck … has relin­quished its own­er­ship of copy­right over these 10,000+ assets in the hopes that they help oth­ers in their cre­ative endeav­ours and build on Glitch’s lega­cy of sim­ple fun, cre­ativ­i­ty and an appre­ci­a­tion for the pre­pos­ter­ous. Go and make beau­ti­ful things.

Accord­ing to Tiny Speck, this release “is intend­ed pri­mar­i­ly for devel­op­ers and those with the tech­ni­cal abil­i­ty to take advan­tage of the struc­tured assets.”

Glitch-Game-Logo

Now, assum­ing you have some tech chops, here are some help­ful links that will get you start­ed:

Long live Glitch!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

Run Vin­tage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Soft­ware in Your Web Brows­er, Thanks to Archive.org

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

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Timothy Leary Plans a Neuromancer Video Game, with Art by Keith Haring, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

in Video Games | November 13th, 2013

Few sci­ence fic­tion nov­els have res­onat­ed as strong­ly with pop­u­lar cul­ture as William Gibson’s Neu­ro­mancer (1984). The book, where­in the first trick­les of Inter­net cul­ture coa­lesced into the grit­ty film noir world so dear to read­ers of Philip K. Dick, became one of the sem­i­nal reads of the 1980s. The cyber­punk genre was born.

Since its appear­ance, Gibson’s work has con­tin­u­ous­ly echoed in pop­u­lar cul­ture. While movies have tried to dis­till his impend­ing, tech-filled dystopi­anism, the most appro­pri­ate, if not the most strik­ing trib­utes, have come in the form of video games. From 1993’s Shad­owrun, to the somber mix of con­spir­a­cy and tech­nol­o­gy of the Deus Ex tril­o­gy, video games were inher­ent­ly suit­ed to the visu­al por­tray­al of cyber­punk. The most ambi­tious of these was spear­head­ed by one of counterculture’s most promi­nent pro­po­nents: Dr. Tim­o­thy Leary.

Leary is best known as the psy­chol­o­gist who cham­pi­oned LSD and psilo­cy­bin use, engag­ing in metic­u­lous research—both per­son­al and professional—of their effects. By the 1980s, the same Leary who had pop­u­lar­ized the phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out” was now pros­e­ly­tiz­ing com­put­er use with the phrase “turn on, boot up, jack in.” To those who doubt­ed his about-face, Leary declared, “the PC is the LSD of the 1990s.”

byrne video game

In addi­tion to hav­ing cre­at­ed sev­er­al tran­scen­den­tal com­put­er games of his own design (a ver­sion of Mind Mir­ror, where play­ers improve their per­son­al­i­ties, sold 65,000 copies under Elec­tron­ic Arts, and is avail­able on Face­book), Leary had plans to build a for­mi­da­ble ver­sion of Neu­ro­mancer. As you can see in this clip, he was an ardent Gib­son fan; not sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing the self-bet­ter­ment that emerged from the fusion of tech­nol­o­gy and human­i­ty in Gibson’s work.

haring diskIn the clip above, the New York Pub­lic Library’s Don­ald Men­ner­ich dis­cuss­es his archival work on Leary’s unfin­ished game, which was recent­ly unearthed by Leary’s estate. Although he had made lit­tle head­way, Leary had a grandiose design for his “mind movie:” Devo would han­dle the music, Kei­th Har­ing would take care of the visu­als, and Hel­mut New­ton would include his pho­tog­ra­phy. Two char­ac­ters were based on Grace Jones and David Byrne. The sto­ry was to be writ­ten by Leary, along­side William S. Bur­roughs.

While Leary’s Neu­ro­mancer failed to mate­ri­al­ize, a ver­sion of the game was lat­er made by Inter­play. Although most of the big names had dropped off the ros­ter, Devo’s “Some Things Nev­er Change” was still used as the theme. And, while Leary’s oeu­vre lies in the archives, the game­play from Interplay’s ver­sion, seen here, is still good for a hit of ‘80s nos­tal­gia.

Via Kotaku

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Oper­ate Your Brain: A User Man­u­al by Tim­o­thy Leary (1993)

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

Run Vin­tage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Soft­ware in Your Web Brows­er, Thanks to Archive.org

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

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Run Vintage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Software in Your Web Browser, Thanks to Archive.org

in Archives, Internet Archive, Software, Technology, Video Games | October 30th, 2013

karateka-apple-ii-screen3

Note: If you’re hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties get­ting this soft­ware run­ning in your brows­er give Fire­fox a try. It seems to work the best.

Movies, com­mer­cials, radio shows, even books: we’ve enjoyed the abil­i­ty to effort­less­ly pull up things we remem­ber from our child­hood on the inter­net just long enough that it feels strange and uncom­fort­able when we can’t. Up until now, though, we haven’t had an easy way to re-expe­ri­ence the com­put­er soft­ware we remem­ber using in decades past. In my case, of course — and like­ly in a fair few of yours as well — I spent most of my com­put­er time in decades past play­ing games and not, say, build­ing bal­ance sheets. But whichev­er you did, the Inter­net Archive’s new­ly opened His­tor­i­cal Soft­ware Archive makes it easy to re-live those old days at the key­board with­out hav­ing to buy a vin­tage com­put­er on eBay, track down its soft­ware, remem­ber all its required com­mands and key­strokes, and hope the flop­py discs — or, heav­en help us, cas­sette tapes — boot up cor­rect­ly. They’ve made these wealth of games, appli­ca­tions, and odd­i­ties freely avail­able with the devel­op­ment of JMESS, a Javascript-pow­ered ver­sion of the Mul­ti Emu­la­tor Super Sys­tem, “a mature and breath­tak­ing­ly flex­i­ble com­put­er and con­sole emu­la­tor that has been in devel­op­ment for over a decade and a half by hun­dreds of vol­un­teers.”

mystery-house

They say a bit more about the tech­nol­o­gy behind all this on the Inter­net Archive Blog, and the His­tor­i­cal Soft­ware Archive’s front page offers rec­om­men­da­tions for which “ground-break­ing and his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant soft­ware prod­ucts” to try first, includ­ing 1.) Jor­dan Mech­n­er’s Karate­ka (top), a hot game in 1980 and the most pop­u­lar item in the archive today; 2) Sier­ra On-Line’s Mys­tery House (above), which gave rise more or less by itself to a vast genre of graph­ic adven­tures; 3) three adap­ta­tions of Nam­co’s Pac-Man (one for the Atari 2600, one remade for that same con­sole, one law­suit-induc­ing knock­off for the less­er-known Odyssey2); 4) E.T. the Extra-Ter­res­tri­al, a “1982 adven­ture video game devel­oped and pub­lished by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600 video game con­sole;” and 5) Dan Brick­lin and Bob Frankston’s Visi-Calc (below), the grand­dad­dy of all spread­sheet pro­grams, and arguably the sin­gle appli­ca­tion that turned com­put­ing from hob­by into neces­si­ty. Or how about 6) Word­Star, the ear­ly word pro­cess­ing pro­gram? Just click on the “Run an in-brows­er emu­la­tion of the pro­gram” link to fire up any of these and, if you’re under about 30, expe­ri­ence just what com­put­er users of the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies had to deal with — and how much fun they had.

Visicalc

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Indie Video Game Mak­ers Are Chang­ing the Game

The Great Gats­by and Wait­ing for Godot: The Video Game Edi­tions

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Indie Video Game Makers Are Changing the Game

in Art, Technology, Video Games | October 5th, 2012

In a fol­low-up to its fea­ture on Glitch Art, which we wrote up in August, PBS’s Off Book series has released this short video pro­mot­ing indie video games. The video packs a lot of infor­ma­tion into a very short time frame, so it’s worth watch­ing twice. Over­all, the take­away here is that indie game design­ers can do inno­v­a­tive, quirky things the big guys–the so-called AAA games–can’t, since the indies can fund their own projects through enti­ties like Kick­starter and Indiegogo. It’s a per­sua­sive mes­sage giv­en the amaz­ing vari­ety of sound and vision on dis­play; in sev­en and a half min­utes, we get a glimpse of over two dozen indie games rang­ing from throw­backs to clas­sic 8‑bit ani­ma­tion to gor­geous, painter­ly envi­ron­ments and land­scapes.

The Off Book video breaks its sub­ject into four basic cat­e­gories, each one cov­ered by dif­fer­ent gam­ing jour­nal­ists or game cre­ators: Mechan­ics, Sound, Visu­als, and Sto­ry­telling. The last cat­e­go­ry is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant since it real­ly is an emo­tion­al engage­ment with a game’s char­ac­ters and plot­lines that push­es peo­ple through the game. At least I can say that’s always been the case for me. My fond­est mem­o­ries of the games I sat up all night with are those that pulled me into a world through, yes, fan­cy graph­ics and com­plex moves, but even more so through nar­ra­tive: from the sim­ple, repet­i­tive tales of the Mega Man series to the glo­be­trot­ting intrigues of Tomb Raider. For some­one who remem­bers the first incar­na­tions of both of those games, it’s excit­ing to see indie game design­ers draw­ing on nostalgia—in graph­ic pre­sen­ta­tion and in the small craft stu­dio pro­duc­tion teams—while also inte­grat­ing con­tem­po­rary sounds and ideas. Like many of their con­tem­po­raries in var­i­ous indie music nich­es, indie game design­ers are push­ing the medi­um for­ward by scal­ing back to basics and by draw­ing on the trea­sures of their past.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Ancient Greek Punishments: The Retro Video Game

in Video Games | January 5th, 2012

When you have a sense of humor and some free time, this is what you can come up with: Let’s Play Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ment!

This amus­ing lit­tle cre­ation lets users play vin­tage-style video games based on Ancient Greek mythol­o­gy. You’re asked to tog­gle the “G” and “H” keys as rapid­ly as you can … until you real­ize some­thing: the games, like the pun­ish­ments met­ed out in Greek mythol­o­gy, have no end. They go on for eter­ni­ty.

The Theoi Greek Mythol­o­gy inter­net ency­clo­pe­dia will tell you more about the suf­fer­ing of Sisy­phus, Prometheus and oth­ers.

Ready for more retro-cul­tur­al video games? Here you go:

The Great Gats­by and Wait­ing for Godot: The Video Game Edi­tions

The Long Lost Video Game of Paris Review Edi­tor George Plimp­ton?

via Metafil­ter

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The Great Gatsby and Waiting for Godot: The Video Game Editions

in Books, Literature, Video Games | September 7th, 2011

Some genius­es have tak­en two lit­er­ary clas­sics and reworked them as retro video games. The Great Gats­by Game, obvi­ous­ly based on the clas­sic by F. Scott Fitzger­ald, reworks the game in vin­tage Nin­ten­do Style. The clip above gives you a lit­tle pre­view, but you can always play the game right here. Then, for a lit­tle more absur­dist fun, the Wait­ing for Godot Game awaits you. The game, sport­ing a throw­back 70s look, requires you to down­load a plu­g­in — one we can’t vouch for. So may just want to watch this YouTube clip. You’ll get the schtick pret­ty quick.

By the way, you can read both clas­sics online — Find The Great Gats­by here, and Wait­ing for Godot here. Both are list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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