for the past few years i've been working to preserve as much of the multimedia era as i can.

brian thomas's If Monks Had Macs is a weird collection of hypercard modules that brian made, and collected them together into a fascinating piece of multimedia. equal parts interactive book, point and click text adventure, journaling software, art analysis, and social commentary - i wouldn't even know how to review it!

there were two editions of the program. the first was all made in Hypercard by brian in black and white in 1988. this one has a special place in my heart because all of the artwork was done in macpaint. you can play it in-browser here: https://archive.org/details/ifmonkshadmacs_1988

the second was remade by brian and his friends in 1995, using Voyager Expanded Books' Toolkit - which was basically a massive re-implementation of hypercard. it is in full colour this time, with some rendered artwork in place of the old macpaint art. disc image here: https://archive.org/details/IfMonksHadMacs

@MossRC has a great interview with brian on the history of the program, very much worth listening to here: https://lifeandtimes.games/episodes/files/ifmonkshadmacs

does anyone know brian personally? it would be great to have him on mastodon!

#hypercard #macintosh #vintageApple #archival #gamePreservation #multimedia

i just published a new post!
"Backrooms, Liminal Spaces, And The Subliminal Menace Of Loneliness in Indie Horror Games"
http://www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/backrooms-liminal-spaces-and-the-subliminal-menace-of-loneliness-in-indie-horror-games
"This is about the horror of liminal spaces, and the intrinsic surrealism of our digital world… That beautiful awful loneliness of existing in the electric void of shared virtual fantasies that video games are."
~
#GameDev #VideoGames #VideoGame #IndieGameDev #IndieHorror #HorrorGame #Horror #Game #Games #Gaming #IndieGame #IndieGames

Something with a little gaming slant- a cross stitch scene from Dark Castle, one of the early classic Mac games. If you played it, you can hear the sound he made when he ran into a wall, in your head forever. 7/10 #NerdStitch

Macintosh turns 40 today, and to celebrate, I wrote about the weirdest and rarest Macs ever made. Read it at Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/macintosh-at-40-the-oddest-and-rarest-macs-ever-built/

I spoke with @shadsy about the Video Game History Foundation's project for a new digital library for gaming magazines and developer documents. https://www.timeextension.com/features/why-the-video-game-history-foundation-is-creating-a-digital-library-of-games-media

COVID barely gets a mention these days – here’s why that’s a dangerous situation.

"COVID complacency, by governments, the media and the public, is a threat to the overall health of the population, to health services and particularly to those most vulnerable, including older adults and those with pre-existing health conditions."

#COVIDisNotOver @auscovid19

Source: https://theconversation.com/covid-barely-gets-a-mention-these-days-heres-why-thats-a-dangerous-situation-220867