Weekly Links #129

You know, it's funny. Usually when I'm working on something not related to games, the newsletter tends to be pretty thin, since my attention is directed elsewhere. This week is an exception, and a big one at that.

Let's start with news from interactive fiction, where there's a new authoring tool on the block. After years in development, Texture was just opened to the public, prompting Emily Short to interview co-author Jim Munroe. An interesting experiment, but I'd rather explore the interface from Infocom's Journey, as detailed by Jimmy Maher

Moving from IF to retrocomputing, via Vintage Is the New Old we get an interview with a C64 developer from Sweden -- an intriguing history lesson. And from the same source, Nintendo launches a NES clone with dozens of classic games built-in... more than ten years after cheap South Asian clones of the legendary console went out of fashion. Good morning, big N. Last but not least, the world's first graphical MMORPG (it ran on the C64 nearly 30 years ago!) has been open sourced, and they're trying to get it running again. Specifically, the server, which is a rather thorny problem, for reasons both technical and legal.

To end with a trio of random links, the annual Procjam conference and gamedev event just announced its upcoming zine (with a call for submissions), and for fans of tabletop roleplaying there's a new web-based tool to make rule supplements that look just like official D&D books. And knowing the kind of work that goes into good-looking RPG books, I can only appreciate the effort. Last but not least, let me highlight ComboPool, a Pico-8 game that manages to blend billiards with 2048, of all things.

Goes to show that limitations really do spur creativity. So be creative.