In Lesson Four, we experienced a crash course in manipulating Atari computer memory, specifically to initialize and control Player/Missile Graphics, and we learned how to move our players across the playfield. With those powerful techniques under our belt, this lesson is action-packed! Not only will we cover joystick control, but also how to fire the mighty Fission Gun Tower…
Back before the adults of the Western World depended almost exclusively on digital sprites and dressed up as toys and cartoons, one of the world’s most popular games was synonymous with the image of an immaculately groomed, middle-aged Caucasian man…
On July 5, 1987, the day after Independence Day, a year and two days after President Reagan’s centennial rededication of the Statue of Liberty, and at the height of the Iran-Contra hearings, a monumental story appeared in the Miami Herald. Penned by investigative reporter Alfonso Chardy, the piece claimed to expose the workings of a “secret government” in place during the first six-and-a-half years of the Reagan Presidency…
The world of The Brady Bunch can be defined by a conspicuous style. After all, the setting is an architect father’s passion project, accoutered with what Carol Brady once described as Danish Modern furniture. The family’s fashion arc went from Ozzie and Harriet in season one to post-’60s extremes in season three. Yet the Brady’s choice of household artwork seems oddly uninspired…
Two years ago at Christmas, I parlayed a then-recent obsession with the weird, haunted media of 1970s Britain and the field of hauntology into an Amazon Wish List. When my wife and I were in the UK visiting family, I found most of that list waiting for me under the tree. A king’s ransom, for me the Yank, of barely-remembered and never-seen British television series…
Of all the visual shorthand for a particular type of outmoded futurism, one of the most immediately recognizable—like the chrome lettering with which it is often paired—must be the light grid. Usually depicted as a network of glowing straight lines receding in perspective against a black background, occasionally with the outlines of mountains or the blush of dawn visible on the horizon…
By K.E. Roberts
The idea that alien astronauts visited the Earth at some point in primitive human history, endowing us with imagination and ingenuity—and possibly our genetic code—has become the cult religion of a hyper-materialistic Western world that consecrates nothing beyond its own egomaniacal gadgetry…
In Lesson Three, we learned about Atari’s revolutionary Player/Missile Graphics and spent some time designing Space Assault’s players (or sprites), including enemy ships and the crosshair of the Fission Gun Tower. Now it’s time to make our players move…
For people of a certain age, the synthesized tones of the ident above and the animation of the “P-head” logo of the Public Broadcasting Service is indelibly marked in our memories of childhood. We can recall the educational programming that PBS brought into our homes: stalwart institutions like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood…
1982 was the year The Future began to supplant The Past. It began with Time magazine’s claim that “Video Games Are Blitzing the World,” and ended with the home computer being made the publication’s “Machine of the Year” (allegedly bringing Steve Jobs, who coveted the title, to tears)…
We Are the Mutants 