DocMoblin

Citizen #1247 | DocMoblin.eth

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

"Good evening, Professor. I see you have driven here in your Ferrari."

If I had to pick one intro that blew me away more than any other, it has to be the one from Another World.

This is as close to perfection as it gets. The pacing, the camera work (gliding through Lester Knight Chaykin's body and then seeing him from behind - pure genius), the subtle sound effects, the tension rising in perfect sync with the music, the way he casually sips a soft drink like a boss while running a particle acceleration experiment - and then gets blasted out of this world into… well, another.

Éric Chahi created this game almost entirely by himself. That was 35 years ago now, and anyone who played games back then still remembers it.

True greatness.

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

Total carnage and ass-kicking!

Final Fight (1989 by Capcom) was set in Metro City, where players control one of three heroes - Mike Haggar, Cody Travers, or Guy - to rescue Haggar's kidnapped daughter Jessica from the Mad Gear Gang.

You can punch, kick, and - most fun of all - pick up and use weapons and objects to fight endless waves of thugs.

What made it special were the massive, highly detailed character sprites, fluid animation (including grabs, throws, and special moves), and interactive environments (barrels, oil drums, and other destructible or throwable items).

For 1989, this was almost unheard of and challenged Street Fighter and Double Dragon (I and II) for best beat 'em up.

Funny little glitch in the Matrix: Haggar's one (!?) suspender is over his right shoulder when facing right and over his left shoulder when facing left. That's quite some magic!

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

Chef's kiss, early 2000s.

Sony Trinitron monitor
CD-ROM Drive
The curved keyboard
Optical mouse
"Intel Inside"
...and the GOAT of mouse pads

Bonus points if you recognize the map...

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

Games that have aged gracefully: Civilization II

Created and published by MicroProse 30 years ago, it has lost very little of its original charm.

When I first played the original Civilization in 1991, I thought I’d never see a better strategy game. Then Civilization II arrived and raised the bar dramatically.

Better graphics, improved diplomacy, superior units (goodbye Phalanx vs. Battleship trauma), more tech choices, deeper gameplay - just what fans of the original had hoped for.

It kept the core principles while making everything better. And that's also what makes this game almost timeless - the original idea and concept is still brilliant, and I take an educated guess and say even another 30 years from now there will still be people playing this classic.

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

Closing in on half a century...

The Atari 2600 launched in 1977, and with it the truly epic "Combat" - making it the console's first official game.

It was based on Atari’s earlier arcade game Tank (released in 1974).

In Combat, you control a tank, biplane, or jet and fight against another player. The gameplay was simple to grasp, yet the skill ceiling was surprisingly high. You had to carefully judge enemy movement, shot trajectories, and your own positioning to avoid getting hit. For a game that’s soon approaching 50 years old, it was remarkably advanced.

It remains one of the most iconic games of early gaming history. Younger generations will probably never come across it - and if they did, they’d likely laugh at its primitive graphics. But for those who grew up with it, Combat was one of the best two-player experiences of its era.

[MLB @MLB]

Shohei Ohtani (the pitcher): 2 hits, 1 walk
Shohei Ohtani (the hitter): 3 hits, 2 walks

[TCM @tcm]

After a late-night broadcast of the disaster film ZERO HOUR! ('57), comedy troupe members: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker bought the rights to the film to direct a scene-by-scene spoof.

The result was AIRPLANE ('80) – one of cinema's greatest comedies.

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

Drakkhen (1989) by Infogrames.

This game broke my brain back in the day. I wanted to play it so badly! It looked incredibly awesome and intriguing - yet I had no clue how to properly play it.

Way ahead of its time, an absolute gem. Drakkhen stood out as one of the first RPGs with true 3D/open-world exploration, and it was also an early example of real-time tactics in RPGs.

It had a wonderfully eerie soundtrack, some bizarre enemies, a cryptic story, and a strong sense of exploration. It felt more dreamlike/surreal rather than standard fantasy.

On the flip side, it was notoriously difficult and unforgiving - definitely not easy to learn or master. I think in hindsight I was simply too young. Revisiting it at a later stage was a much better experience.

[Retro Dream @Retroldies]

Classic among classic. Prince of Persia, original Apple II version. Fluid character animation that felt real. In 1989, after 5 years of development, Jordan Mechner showed the world what home computers were capable of, and redefined cinematic storytelling.

Photo shot in my studio

[Retroslayer @TheRetroSlayer]

Ghostbusters - Sega Master System (1987) Jamming to the legendary 8-bit theme while buying traps and lasers. 🎵 Peak nostalgia is watching a giant marshmallow man stomp on buildings!
#Ghostbusters #SegaMasterSystem #RetroGaming

[Enguerrand VII de Coucy @ingelramdecoucy]

Frasier: The Video Game. Could never get past the art gallery opening soirée level, though

[Commodore Computer Museum 🕹 @MuseumCommodore]

Why wasn’t this story the 5th Indiana Jones movie?

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is an adventure game on the Commodore Amiga.

Set in 1939—right after The Last Crusade and before WWII fully kicks off—Fate of Atlantis was designed by LucasArts as a spiritual “fourth movie,” with the same tone, music style (composer Clint Bajakian channeling John Williams), and pulp-adventure feel. Many fans (including me) still argue it’s better than Crystal Skull, and by far better than Dial of Destiny, at capturing classic Indy energy.

Rewatching Crystal Skull after Dial of Destiny, I’d previously thought CS was average compared to the first three movies. But next to Dial of Destiny, it’s actually a pretty good movie.

The key to appreciating Crystal Skull (CS) is watching them in this order—it makes you appreciate it much more, LOL!

Missed opportunity to use an excellent adventure that was already written?

[Baseball’s Greatest Moments @BBGreatMoments]

Geddy Lee as one of the craziest baseball collections you’ll ever see 😳

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

What's a game that you've beaten but still keep coming back to replay once in a while?

One early candidate for me is Bruce Lee (1984), designed by Ron J. Fortier.

Two of the most recognizable sounds - the footsteps and the sound of collecting lanterns (or whatever they are) - are hardwired into my brain.

Bruce Lee is basically kung-fu Jesus, so I was instantly hooked. I still play it to this day, even after finishing it a gazillion times. To me, it’s a true classic that never ages.

What's yours?

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

Who here remembers Spy Hunter?

Originally created by Bally Midway in 1983 for arcades, it was then ported to a gazillion systems. I played this into dust on my C64.

Like so many 80s games, this one doesn't have an end - which I didn't know back in the day and thought if I tried hard enough I'd see it... ahh, good old days.

You start with front-mounted machine guns, then drive into a weapons truck to equip gadgets like oil slicks, smoke screens, and missiles.

The road occasionally leads to waterways, transforming your car into a speedboat for more action - all set to the iconic Peter Gunn theme!

The game has serious James Bond vibes, and that's one of the many reasons why it was so cool back in the day. Highly, highly addictive, your typical "just one more go" kind of game.

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

A total money grave… but also a game for the ages!

All together now: "Elf needs food badly!"

For those of you old enough to remember - would you consider Gauntlet (1985) one of the best arcade games of the 80s?

The four-player mode wasn't just fun, it was also an absolute stroke of genius from Atari. Four times the players, four times the money!

Gauntlet ranks among the highest-grossing arcade games of the 1980s, and that should come as no surprise…

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

Remember this former giant?

25 years ago, at its peak in 2001, Palm's market value briefly surpassed Apple and Amazon combined.

In 2010, Palm was bought by Hewlett-Packard for $1.2 billion. Poor sales and bad decisions led to Hewlett-Packard killing off the Palm brand and hardware in 2011 - just over a year after the acquisition.

Wiping out over a billion dollars in a single year, quite an accomplishment...

[Pirat_Nation 🔴 @Pirat_Nation]

After 37 years, veteran game programmer Colin Porch has completed and released a sequel to the classic 1987 game Head Over Heels.

The project started in 1989 but was shelved when the gaming industry shifted from home computers to consoles.

The new game, titled Return to Blacktooth, continues the legacy of the original cult classic, famous for its unique isometric design. Porch had worked on popular versions of the original and kept the sequel idea alive for decades.

The project revived after Porch reunited with former colleagues from Ocean Software. Inspired by the resurgence of retro gaming, he completed the unfinished game as a passion project.

Published by Thalamus Digital, it has launched for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. It features hundreds of rooms across multiple worlds while staying true to the original's style and gameplay.

[The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor]

I’m making a show about buildings.

The concept is simple: do for the man-made world what Planet Earth did for the natural world.

But, when I pitched the idea, the answer was that nobody would watch it.

So I released a pilot episode on YouTube. It’s got 5.4 million views, 379k likes, and 23k comments.

People are interested, and now it’s time to make the full show.

Six episodes, filming in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the USA, and releasing on a streaming service like HBO, Netflix, or Prime.

Why does this show matter?

First: we’re surrounded by buildings all the time. Look around yourself, right now… what do you see? Buildings are the logical conclusion of everything a society believes in. That’s the real focus of this show: not the buildings themselves, but what they say about us.

Second: there’s global dissatisfaction with modern architecture. This feeling gets written about online, but nobody’s given a voice to it on film or TV. That’s what this show will be. But this isn’t just about criticising modernity. That’s easy. This is about learning from the past in order to understand and improve the present, for everybody.

Third: there’s a drought of high-quality culture shows. When I spoke to film executives they said that only documentaries about sports, music, or true crime get funded. That’s a colossal missed opportunity. Galleries are always full, content about architecture goes viral online all the time, and people spend their precious holidays visiting beautiful cities.

Why no shows about architecture, then?

Tourists flock in their millions to see (for example) the buildings of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona. But, if you asked those same people if they’re interested in “architecture”, they’d probably say no.

To put that another way: not many people want to watch “a show about architecture”, but lots of people want to watch a show that illuminates the real world they’re living in, each and every day.

What will the show be like?

Six episodes, going chronologically through history and arriving at the present, each focussing on the architecture and design of a specific period:

1. Middle Ages
2. Renaissance
3. Enlightenment
4. The Nineteenth Century
5. Art Nouveau & Art Deco
6. Present Day

But, in each case, the point isn’t just to learn about that era; the point is to learn about our modern world through those eras and what they’ve left behind. If you watch the pilot episode (included below) you’ll see what I mean.

So the show’s not really “about” the past; it’s about the twenty-first century.

That’s why it’s called The Modern World.

When you think of a typical history show there are loads of interviews, stock footage, archive photos, historical recreations, and graphics. We’re doing none of that. Everything will be filmed on location, because we’re telling our story only through the real world that exists right now. And, rather than going to the most obvious places, we’ll focus on buildings that aren’t well-known but should be more famous.

But that’s all big picture; what will it be like on screen?

Buildings used to look different in every country, and now they look the same. Why? Because the weather is different everywhere, and buildings were always a way of dealing with that weather, using local materials. Now we have air conditioning and we ship concrete around the world, so we don’t need to design our buildings with regard to local weather or rely on local materials.

Look at really old clocks and you’ll notice something: they don’t have a second hand… because it was only invented 300 years ago! Then you look at the present and you realise we’re surrounded by timers, by seconds ticking down and ticking up relentlessly. If we’re looking for a cause of our anxiety-inducing culture, that might be it.

When you spend time with the sun-softened bricks and time-warped timbers of old cities you notice that synthetic materials like plastic have taken over. When we’re surrounded by things that feel temporary, how do you think it makes us feel?

It’s only by seeing 19th century train stations, designed like cathedrals, that you realise tradition and technology aren’t enemies. New things don’t have to look boring: if the Victorians had designed AI data centres, they’d look like Medieval castles.

In the 1920s, at the zenith of Art Deco, people believed technology would uplift humanity. That’s why they decorated their buildings with statues inspired by electricity. Only by seeing their enthusiasm can we realise our own cynicism, and perhaps begin to fix it.

All of that… and much, much more.

But, above all else, this show is about a way of seeing. If you want to understand any society then you need to look at what it creates, not what it says about itself.

There’s a worldview in every single object; our skyscrapers are designed the same way as our phones. Learn to look at this world, to notice its details, and everything else starts to make sense.

What now?

I’ve been quiet online recently because I’ve been researching and working on scripts for six full-length episodes. Production begins when we’ve raised the funding.

The Modern World is coming.

[Vashi Nedomansky, ACE @vashikoo]

In early 1980, John Williams watched the final cut of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK before recording the score.

• He wrote the entire score in 7 weeks
• All the music was recorded in 9 days
• 124 minutes of original score for the film