JibberJabber (blog) | PlayControl Software

Memories of the Great Video Game Crash & Toys ‘R' Us

Sat, 17 Mar 2018 19:53:27 -0700

While gamers today are aware of the Great (American) Video Game Crash of the 1980’s, those who did not live through it or remember it, don’t really have any sense or context of what it was like. This is partly because while the the technical facts of what happened been preserved, we have done a terrible job documenting and preserving the experience of what it was like for people. Oddly, a lot of video game “history” is told by young YouTubers playing retro video games whom were too young to play the games when they originally came out. …

Happy 30th Anniversary to DuckTales!

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 00:00:23 -0700

What a difference 5 years can make!

Exactly 5 years ago, I released the quintessential DuckTales 25th Anniversary Retrospective. It was the quintessential because it was the only one :P. Disney couldn’t even be bothered to put out more than a two paragraph text statement. (Yes, Chris Barat (RIP) did a year long celebration, but ironically forgot the anniversary date.)

What a stark difference today is for DuckTales at 30. …

An Informal History of Video Game Music

Mon, 26 Jun 2017 13:01:56 -0700

I gave a talk for the South Bay Game Dev meetup on the History of Video Game Music.

Check it out on YouTube.

Official Talk Description:

This is an informal look at music in video games from the early days of video games, starting from the 1970’s, but particularly focused on the MIDI and tracker (MOD) decade of music (1988-1998).

This talk will include games that are not widely discussed by today’s YouTubers, but nonetheless significant to the history of the industry. …

Spring 2017 blog update summaries

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 16:01:24 -0700

It has been a long time since I posted anything. It has been a very tough year for me personally. But I need to announce some things, so I’m doing a simultaneous dump. This is a short summary to each of the new entries.

Carlos Icaza (RIP)

Most publically, was the death of my mentor, friend, and former co-founder Carlos Icaza. Since we were engineers and entrepenuers working on video game engines and tools, I decided writing a …

Thank you for all the supportive responses for “Why We Loved Sierra Games” & follow-up

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 15:59:26 -0700

I wanted to say thank you to all of you who have sent me supportive responses for Why We Loved Sierra Games.

A personal high point is that I got to correspond with some of the Sierra designers, who are like personal heroes to me. I won’t post any private correspondence here, but here are the public posts some of them did. (Order is random.)

The Guys from Andromeda

Al Lowe

Josh Mandel

…

Blurrr SDK (soft) Launch

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 15:59:22 -0700

I finally publicly announced Blurrr SDK during my Swift on Android talk at try! Swift Tokyo. It is a new SDK focusing on making native cross-platform development easier. It features a common foundation of solid open source cross-platform libraries, such as SDL, while additionally providing a sane way to uniformly manage all different native build system processes. And it supports C, Lua, JavaScript, and Swift. …

"Dance of the Fairies” Quest for Glory inspired demo & In memory of Carlos Icaza

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 15:59:21 -0700

What does a fairy dance look like when there are no clumsy, smelly humans around?

For Sierra fans everywhere: This is inspired from the Quest for Glory series. It is also in memory to my friend, mentor, and former co-founder, Carlos Icaza who passed away unexpectedly this summer.

Please make sure to watch it at 60fps. (Direct YouTube link here.)

Dance of the Fairies was first presented during …

Swift on Android at try! Swift Tokyo

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 15:59:19 -0700

I was invited to speak at the try! Swift Tokyo conference about Swift on Android. Since I’m something like only 1 of 4 people in the world who know anything about this, I eventually got asked.

The talk went extremely well. Even though it was by far the longest talk of the conference (slotted for 45 minutes instead of the usual 20), attendees told me it went by fast. It also provoked a lot of strong responses such as “unforgettable” and “intense”.

…

DuckTales 2017 news updates: Song + First-look, RIP Alan Young & Chris Barat,McDuck’s at DisneySea

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 15:59:16 -0700

As some of you may already know, Disney is rebooting DuckTales with a brand new show coming later in 2017. The announcement was devoid of any details, but they have since released a teaser of the new voice cast singing the DuckTales theme song, and finally a proper first look video.

But before I get into that, there were two sad events I want to mention.

Alan Young (RIP)
(1919-2016)

Alan Young, the voice of Scrooge McDuck, passed away in May 2016. …

Why We Loved Sierra Games: King’s Quest 2015: An Opinionated Review by a crotchety Sierra fan who remembers 1984

Fri, 11 Dec 2015 12:58:50 -0800

It’s finally here!

This review/retrospective tackles why we loved Sierra games against the backdrop of King’s Quest 2015. It tries to provide tangible game design reasons about what made classic Sierra games special, with a particular focus on the special relationship between storytelling and puzzles. And of course a look at how KQ2015 measures up.

Even if you don’t ultimately agree with my opinions, it should be a fun, nostalgic romp through Sierra games as it also tries to celebrate Sierra games and their creators. …