The Pixel Prophet #08
Pixel Prophet moves away from Substack to Buttondown due to concerns about Substack's stance on Nazis, and shares updates on Tetris records, PlayStation 1 Easter Eggs, Amazon Prime Video ads, and Chinese regulations on gacha mechanics.
If you're reading this now, it worked. “It” being Pixel Prophet’s move away from Substack to Buttondown because I felt that Substack’s stance on Nazis (“we don't like them but they are profitable”) didn’t vibe with me.
That episode left me cautious and while I don't anticipate another move in the foreseeable future, I have my metaphorical emergency backpack packed and ready. Worst case, I return to blogging.
Anyway.
Happy 2024! I hope you could catch a break over the Christmas holidays. As mentioned in the last issue, the Prophet will be released every two weeks now but with more content. I hope you like the new format at least as much as the previous one. Have a great 2024!
— Phil
News & Updates
13-year-old sets a new Tetris world record. I’m sure you’ve picked it already up elsewhere but since I am a substantial Tetris fan, you’ll have to hear the story again. 13-year-old Willis Gibson a.k.a. Blue Scuti became the first human player ever to beat the NES game, 34 years after its release. “Beating” means playing until you hit a crash trigger that effectively causes the game to lock up because some ill-optimized scoring routine runs longer than the game expects. If you are interested in the technicalities, this is a good resource (section “Game Quirks”). Huge props to Blue and congratulations!!Certification Fail: Easter Egg unlocks PlayStation 1. Martin Piper of the famous Argonaut Software of Starfox and X fame (not that one), shared the story of a secret Easter Egg he buried in the code of the PlayStation 1 game Alien Resurrection, both Polygon and GamesRadar report. It was merely a “technical test” Martin implemented and kept to himself. What’s special about this one is that it practically unlocks the PS1 to burned/unlicensed games, something the console hardware would normally prevent.
Amazon Prime Video will start showing ads. Yes, that’s right: The enshittification of streaming services is in full swing. The Verge reports that starting on January 29th, “Amazon’s streaming service will start getting broken up with ads in January — unless you’re willing to pony up an extra fee each month.”
China Kills Gacha Mechanics. A gacha is a Japanese toy vending machine, gacha mechanics are thinly veiled gambling with in-game currency in many games, especially free-to-play ones. Reuters reports on the impact of new regulations from the Chinese government regarding games. “The announcement is a crackdown on ‘gacha’ style monetization strategies, loot boxes and battle passes,” GamesFromScratch comments.
The next streams take place on Sunday, January 14th at 23:00 CET
(► here’s that in your time zone), and Saturday, January 20th at the same time.
Games
Big and small, old, and new, indie and very indie.
INDIE • Low Poly Racing – There is something special about the early 3D arcade classic by SEGA, Virtua Racing (1991). The clean polygons and deep blue skies are just so inviting compared to the off-putting nuts and bolts simulation of a, say, Gran Turismo (1997). ►SPGP; (Super-Polygon Grand Prix) by developer Rozz Games tries to revive that arcarde spirit and add more to the formula (ha!) and will soon hit early access.
INDIE • Battling Voxels – Puppy Games is currently developing ►Battledroid, “a [asynchronous] multiplayer battle simulation game in the auto-battle genre, with elements of tower defense”. Just watching the trailer of those blocky and weirdly cute-looking mechs blasting each other to bits in Puppy Games’ own voxel engine feels like Teardown (2020) cranked up a notch. Yes, “Notch” is another voxel reference. Yes, I stop now. Delta Force (1998)! Sorry. If the game’s description ticks some of your boxes, you like big chunky voxels and you cannot lie!, you can get access to the alpha by getting in contact with battledroidät puppygamesdötnet.
INDIE • Fantasy FPS — “Embark on an epic journey against Chaos in this 90s-inspired fantasy FPS!!”, the pinned tweet for ►Wizordum shouts. Developer Emberheart’s game looks like your finest Gen-X-shooters out there. Imagine World of Warcraft’s (2005) art style through the lens of Minecraft (2008) with Duke Nukem 3D (1996)-like gameplay. The first episode with eight levels is out now. The trailer alone makes it look very juicy indeed.
INDIE • City Builder — There appears to be a return of Good Old (=isometric) city builders these days and I am all for it. ►Times of Progress by Anselmo Sampietro (Pressing Thumbs Games) is another construction site in that high-density commercial zone. Unlike SimCity 2000 (1993), Cities Skylines (2015), or Metropolis 1998 (see Issue #06), Times of Progress takes you back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution when the steam engine reigned supreme. While it’s still a long rail to lay, I am already enjoying the muted color palette in the trailer. For the nerds who trust in Rust: The game is written in Bevy.
INDIE • 3D Jump ’n Run — “Feeling nostalgic for games like Crash Bandicoot (1996), Spyro the Dragon (1998), Jak & Daxter (2001), etc.?” — that’s what the Twitter account of indie studio Hologram Monster asked last week. If your answer is yes, then check out ►__Project: Longtail__’s website and Discord, or give the Finnish devs a follow.
INDIE • Point 'n' Click — I will post the Steam shop description here verbatim because it’s a perfect example of how Jacob Janerka describes their game both concisely and intriguing: “Paradigm is a surreal adventure game set in the strange and post-apocalyptic Eastern European country of Krusz. Play as the handsome mutant, Paradigm, whose past comes back to haunt him in the form of a genetically engineered sloth that vomits candy.” You can buy ►__Paradigm__ now on Steam.
INDIE • Moar games MOAR! — Chris Lawn took it upon himself to highlight the best 151 (!!) indie games of 2023. Have a look at this ►__massive list__ and buy them all!
Programming & Game Dev
Tools, resources, wisdom, humor.
GAME LENGTH • How long is too long? — Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou, Creative Director/Lead Developer at Polygon Treehouse recently ►asked his Twitter followers about the perfect game length. Here are the results: 
DEBUG• Indie event in Nottingham — The wonderful Debug magazine has organized the ►_Debug U_ event in Nottingham on February 2nd. There will be “in-depth talks and panels featuring indie success stories and industry legends“ as well as easily approachable indie devs from all stripes.
KONAMI • Arcade Secrets — “A rare peak behind the curtain” of Konami’s arcade division gives Jack Yarwood in his detailed ►article on TimeExtension. The interviews with Masahiro Inoue (Programmer/Producer), Yoshiki Okamoto (Illustrator/Designer), and Masaaki Kukino (Designer/Director/Artist) give an intriguing insight into this part of history.
PUBLIC DOMAIN • Free new old stuff! — As mentioned in the previous issue, Mickey Mouse has finally entered the public domain (at least his very first Steamboat Willie incarnation). That’s just the most prominent case, other intellectual property can also be yours now. The Public Domain Review ►__posted__ an inspiring overview of what’s there for the taking.
INDIE • Shmup Secrets — Late last year, Crunchyroll News ►published an interview with developers Antti and Eero of System Erasure of the unsurprisingly epic Void Stranger (2023) and the hidden gem that is ZeroRanger (2018). They talk about the origins of their games and the challenges they faced when switching genres; from Shmup to Puzzle epic. 
RETRO • 47 Shmups on a C 64 — More about shmups, you ask? You’re welcome: Jake Birkett from Grey Alien Games likes Shoot-em-Ups on the Commodore 64. When he is not working on Regency Solitaire II, all he ever does* is play shmups. If you are interested in seeing some but can’t be bothered to configure your C64 emulator and hunt down every one of them, for your convenience Jake made a ►__playlist__ of them on YouTube.
(* This statement is a gross simplification for the sake of sensationalism by the editor. Jake does lots of other things too.)
PIRATE GAME RURALISM • Exploring the towns of Monkey Island — Games urbanist and developer Konstantinos Dimopoulos (whose posts I draw on a lot when assembling the Pixel Prophet) published “an exploration of (all) the towns and settlements of Monkey Island from 1990’s Monkey Island 1 all the way to 2022’s Return to Monkey Island” ►on Medium.
HISTORY • NES Game Development — I just can’t learn enough about how old games were made and look at old source code of games from my youth. Retired industry veteran Keven Edwards has a neat ►YouTube channel showing some of the tools Software Creations used back in the day on games such as Solstice (1990) or Silver Surfer (1990)
TOOL • Things you never knew about PureRef — Thomas Roy William Butters, weapons and prop designer at Facepunch ►__shared__ some things about PureRef that could speed up your workflows substantially.
HISTORY • Apple’s Sosumi Sound — CNBC Make featured Apple’s sound designer Jim Reeks with the story of the Sosumi sound and how a lawsuit inspired it (“So sue me!”). He ►__tells__ it with delightful sarcasm.
SIERRA ADVENTURES • 3 hours with Al Lowe — Daniel Albu ►__talked at length__ with the Sierra adventure game legend and general funnyman Al Lowe about his career.
LUCAS’ MUSIC • 3 hours with Michal Land — You watched the previous conversation and still have half an afternoon to fill? Daniel Albu published another ►__conversation__ with a legend: Michael Land is the genius behind the iconic Monkey Island theme music, the awe-inspiring vastness of The Dig, and co-designed LucasArts’ iMUSE system.
STAR TREK • LCARS on your phone — No, this has nothing to do with cars, instead it's an acronym for the in-universe UI we see with Star Trek: The Next Generation onwards, designed by Mike Okuda. Being a Next Generation trekkie myself back in the day, I recall trying to mod my Windows 95 to look and sound like LCARS as much as possible … with limited success.
Almost 30 years later, there seems to be a total conversion skin for your Android device, as ►__this video shows__. In its description, you find all you need for an inscrutable trek-PADD of your very own. 
AUDIO • Frequency-Modulation Synthesis — That’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it? You might have come across this term as “FM Synth”, “OPL” or “that AdLib sound” where it sits comfortably between the bleeps of 8-bit chipmusic (think NES, C64, GameBoy) and sample-based playback (from the likes of the Amiga, Super Nintendo, etc). If you want to learn more about how it works, Eldar Tagi wrote a ►great explainer at Digital Circuit. (via Martijn Fraser on Mastodon)
Art & Inspiration
Art, science, and other inspirations that left an impression on me
“Midnight” (1891)
by Jean-Charles Cazin (1840–1901) 
more on ►Artnet.
I’ve been thinking about reducing this section a lot because I overestimated the amount of art and science I come across! Since I don’t want to force it and scour subreddits, Tumblr collections, or, goddess-forbid, Facebook groups, I will just feature here one or two key artworks going forward.
Pixel’s Mixed Bag
What I’ve been up to, posts, random thoughts, and stuff that doesn’t fit in anywhere else.
◾ Setting up my “studio”, which has been an ongoing project for the past 15 months is finally getting closer to completion. I now have room and background setups for upcoming video productions in 2024.
◾ Tetrospective, that’s what I call my retrospective of Tetris games over the years in my stream from last Saturday where I played ten different Tetris incarnations, starting with the very first one on the Электроника-60. 
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