PixelatedArcade News

A while back I started what I intended to be a series on CGA colors and then a pandemic and other forms of real life intervened! Well, after a delay from what was supposed to be some sort of a timetable I'm finally returning to CGA graphics and how they can possibly be improved. In the first chapter, I considered an alternate universe where IBM had made a minor change to the hardware allowing for a different color. This time around, I wanted to keep the possibilities in the real world; given the actual options, what if developers had made a different choice? While many games have chosen a palette that looks pretty decent (at least as much as is possible with only 4 colors), I find other games use a less than ideal selection. As before, what constitutes “better” is highly subjective, and I'm sure not everyone will agree with my opinion...

It is almost July of 2020! You might think a pandemic would be the perfect time to get a ton of site updates completed and content updated due to being stuck at home, but as I mentioned in the previous update we're in the middle of moving here which takes up a large amount of time. The process has, of course, taken three times as long as I originally estimated and when I'm not moving boxes, I'm taking a break to add more information to PixelatedArcade. The exciting news for me is that the final boxes of our game and hardware collection has been moved out of storage just this morning, so plenty more scans, photos, screenshots and more will be coming later this year.

I also wanted to point out a few other cool things which can be found around the web...

Welcome to Memorial Day 2020! Here in the United States it is, more or less, the unofficial start of summer but also don't forget to take a moment to think of those who sacrificed their life serving their country.

Here at PixelatedArcade, we're moving! In real life, not the site; PixelatedArcade is remaining at www.pixelatedarcade.com with plenty of updates and more game information planned! Site updates will be a little slower than usual for a while, however, as we are moving to a new home and the process takes a lot of time to sort itself out...not to mention a lot of our equipment isn't unpacked let alone setup yet...

We're still in the midst of the Coranavirus pandemic; originally my plan to was to come up with a few virus related games and write some mini-reviews for each to keep a theme going with Virus Rage being the first in the list, but as this disaster continues the premise started to look less interesting. Instead, I took the time to do some code updates which have just been released! This time around the update features the usual array of backend fixes and enhancements and also adds some changes to the release information layout. There is also, of course, a lot of work that is still in progress but not quite complete.

As of this writing, the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading with everything from sporting events to concerts being cancelled or re-scheduled and it's recommended you stay in, avoid crowds, and so forth. So, why not take the opportunity to review an obscure, appropriately themed IBM PC game? For this mini-review I'm inviting you take a look at Virus Rage which was published by Fantasy Research, Inc. in 1983! The game is rather tough to find and I'm sure sold few copies so there's a pretty good chance you've never heard of it. As an early IBM PC action game the technical limitations can make it a little frustrating to play, but the idea is decent enough and it can even be fun to try out for a while.

Back in the late 1980's, a small company from Eugene, Oregon known as Dynamix was working on ways to bring more narative and a more cinematic quality to their games. One of their first self-published titles, alongside A-10 Tank Killer, was the half 3D simulator / half James Bond movie mish-mash David Wolf: Secret Agent. This oddball game was a bit ambitious for the time, especially for a quasi-small company; Billed as an “Interactive Movie”, the game's attempt to mix action and story (with live actors) was an interesting experiment. However, despite a few nice ideas and a decent enough high-level concept, the ultimate combination is rather disappointing.

To start off 2020, I just pushed live the first code update of the year! There's always a lot of work going on behind the scenes, even though it may not always be immediately visible. For this update a number of minor bug fixes are included such as layout tweaks, especially to improve pages on mobile devices. There are also some new features that are still in the works even if there isn't a completed version that has been released at this time. A new feature that did make it, and was long overdue, is the ability to tag games that are, in some abstract way, related.

Happy holidays everyone! It's been a busy year here with lots of classic gaming fun. We acquired numerous new games to document on the site, deployed several code revisions including a new, more responsive layout, added this news feature (including the first two rambling game reviews), and numerous bug fixes and behind the scenes updates. We're looking forward to 2020 with plenty more to come; there's still a stack of boxes that haven't been scanned and screenshots to be captured so look for more images, games, credits, features, and possibly even a few new platforms to be added....