Pleroma

Pleroma

Richard Moss | @MossRC@social.mossrc.me

Author of *Shareware Heroes: The renegades who redefined gaming at the dawn of the Internet* and *The Secret History of Mac Gaming*, as well as two upcoming books — one on the creation of #AgeOfEmpires and the other about the history of football (soccer) games.

Writer/director on TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming, an upcoming five-part docuseries about horror games. Producer/co-writer on FPSDOC, a 4.5-hour documentary film celebrating the first-person shooter genre (with an emphasis on the 90s/early-2000s golden age) that's guided by the developers themselves.

Creates The Life & Times of Video Games and Ludiphilia podcasts.

He/him.

rich@mossrc.me
@MossRC on Twitter and @mossrc.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Posts mainly about #gamedev and #indiegames histories and stories, #retrogaming/#retrogames, #retrocomputing, #classicmac, #shareware, #tombraider, and #videogamehistory.

Richard Moss MossRC
One day I'll write a book on the post-2000 indie games resurgence, but in the meantime there's now a cool free ebook by Ben Latimore (creator of the excellent Flashpoint preservation project) about the heyday of Flash games. https://archive.org/details/flashpoint-a-tribute-to-web-games/

Richard Moss MossRC
@fluffypuffin That reminds me of the mental gymnastics I had to go through to convince myself to buy it during the Kickstarter, despite what was at the time a brutal exchange rate to AUD. I feel vindicated for talking myself into it, though, now that I see how much book — and how many stories — I got for my money.

Richard Moss MossRC
New games history book. This one's a hybrid of memoir and game company history, written by one of the co-founders of Revolution Software and self-published via Kickstarter.

It's really dense, too — heaps of text and loads of images make it even thicker than my Mac gaming book. I won't have time to read it until July, but as a Broken Sword fan I'm really looking forward to digging in. (cc @johnpassfield)
Front cover of the limited edition version of the book Revolution: The Quest for Game Development Greatness, by Tony Warriner. Back cover of Revolution book. The first part of (a very long) blurb reads "From one of the makers of the highly acclaimed Lure of the Temptress and Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse (and everything in between) comes a brand-new book of epic proportions." Contents page of Revolution book. It contains 35 chapters and three appendices, amounting to over 600 pages.

Richard Moss MossRC
@llamasoft_ox @vampiress Games in general have been devalued slowly over the past 20-ish years, likely due to digital distribution and too many sales promotions, but mobile games specifically went through rapid devaluation over around 4-5 months from late 2008 to early 2009 during a race to the bottom that was all about visibility on the App Store charts.

Nobody batted an eyelid at prices of several dollars per game on mobile before that brief period of chaos. I made a podcast documentary episode about it years ago.

Cosmic Void cosmicvoid@mastodon.gamedev.place

Twilight Oracle's Kickstarter campaign is LIVE! 🔴

Back Twilight Oracle, a fantasy comedy point and click adventure: https://bit.ly/twilight-oracle-campaign

Demo available!

Pls boost and spread the news! 🥰🙏

Jordan Mechner jmechner@mastodon.art

Ma nouvelle autobiographique REPLAY est maintenant en librairie ! 📕

I'm thrilled to share my new graphic memoir REPLAY. French edition is now in bookstores 🇫🇷: https://www.jordanmechner.com/fr/books/replay

UPDATE: English edition is out now! 🇺🇸https://www.jordanmechner.com/en/books/replay

My blog post explains how my family's 20th-century journey through two world wars is connected to my own history making Prince of Persia, Karateka🥋 and The Last Express🚂.

Page of Jordan Mechner's graphic novel REPLAY (French edition) about making Apple II games in the 1970s. Jordan Mechner shows graphic novel REPLAY to his brother David, who appears in its pages. Stack of copies of Jordan Mechner's graphic novel memoir REPLAY (French edition) Page of Jordan Mechner's graphic novel REPLAY (French edition) in which his dad, Francis Mechner, talks about his childhood as a refugee in France in 1940.

Richard Moss MossRC
One of the quirkier chapters in my Shareware Heroes book, titled 'Experimental, Experiential Weirdness', has been translated into Chinese and published at Indienova.
https://indienova.com/indie-game-news/richard-moss-chapter-8-experimental-experiential-weirdness/

The chapter covers F.Godmom, MicroMan, the Grandad games, and Llamatron, while also touching on Tournament of Zulula and Robert Carr's bizarre Mac shareware games.

💾 DOS GAME CLUB 💾 dosgameclub@dosgame.club

Recently @theLobdegg released The Aching, an authentic Sierra AGI-style adventure game for MS-DOS, designed for Tandy 1000 and better PCs.

Check it out, it's very cool!

Itch.io: https://hadrosoft.itch.io/the-aching

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2295210/The_Aching/

Richard Moss MossRC
@vga256 You'll be able to appreciate The Betrayal more and more as you work through this book and the rest of the Riftwar Saga. Lots of good world building and backstories on some of the characters. The later (non-Riftwar) series are all really good, too, and everything's set in the same universe (though not necessarily same world) except for Faerie Tale. So you could well have your fantasy reading sorted for a long time.

Richard Moss MossRC
@vga256 My favourite author. My mum bought me a copy of Magician when I was a kid, thinking I might enjoy it (even though I'd only read a couple of fantasy novels before), and I was enraptured. Now I have a shelf just for his books.

Richard Moss MossRC

@MichaelKlamerus Yay. Happy reading!

Richard Moss MossRC

@BrendanSinclair I use Rocket Player. It has themes, lots of library options, dynamic playlists, etc, and a pretty good UI/UX.

Richard Moss MossRC

@mookie @jrconlin @MisterArix It’d have to have a 90s theme. You’re an Apple true believer fighting hordes of Windows-toting Microsoft fanboys. Final boss is Bill Gates with boxed copies of the Office suite.

Richard Moss MossRC
@MisterArix @mookie @jrconlin I've joked before about how it could double as a weapon in an emergency (although that wouldn't be good for the binding).

Richard Moss MossRC
@vga256 It's a very 90s way to convey motion and add excitement to the imagery.

Richard Moss MossRC
@vga256 Oh, cool. I don't think I've ever seen those before. I like how the Karl Malone one shows him finishing a dunk while everyone else is seen in the middle of executing a move.

Richard Moss MossRC
@KzintiCV Yeah, it's great. I think the two photos capture the feeling of playing each sport pretty well, too. He looks so hot and bothered standing in the sun at right field in the baseball photo.

Richard Moss MossRC
I was really into basketball for a few years when I was a kid, during a stint where you could actually watch NBA games on free-to-air Australian TV, and for most of that time I collected basketball, soccer, and AFL cards.

I found them all during an office move recently. Flicking through the folders, I spotted two copies of this Michael Jordan NBA card that shows him...not playing basketball.
A Collector's Choice Upper Deck 1994 trading card showing Michael Jordan in a baseball outfit The back of a Collector's Choice Upper Deck 1994 trading card for Michael Jordan. It features a photo of Jordan playing golf, along with NBA career history up to the 92-93 season, a brief bit of info about his budding pro baseball career, and height/weight/college/birthdate info.

Richard Moss MossRC
Big thanks to @gruber for the Shareware Heroes shoutout on Daring Fireball. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/04/13/shareware-heroes

If anyone wants a copy of the book, or just to learn more about it, the best place to start is the fun DOS-themed website I made at https://sharewareheroes.com.

Richard Moss MossRC
@granthuhn Thanks! You'll probably love my Mac gaming book, then, and enjoy the Mac-related stories scattered through Shareware Heroes.

It's a career highlight for me that I got to freelance for Mac|Life (I was too late to get in before the name change) for five or so years before it shut down. Wonderful magazine in its MacAddict heyday.

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