Some years ago I played through Beneath Apple Manor, one of the earliest commercially available CRPGs (and possibly the first ever). It’s something of a proto-Roguelike, and as I recall it was a tight, replayable game that I enjoyed quite a bit. It scored a 41 on the RADNESS Index, […]
The Shareware Scene, Part 1: The Pioneers
The digital society which we’ve created over the last few decades has upended many of our traditional notions about commerce. Everyday teenagers now stress over their ratings and advertising revenues on YouTube; gamers in “free” games pay staggering sums for the privilege of advancing through them a little faster (wasn’t […]
Missed Classic 85: Drive-In Adventure (1982)
Written by Joe Pranevich Sex sells. Whether you personally consume pornography or not, it is undeniable that whenever a new media technology came along, it quickly adapted for adult entertainment. Pornography influenced the rise of VHS in the 1970s, the early internet in the 1980s, and eventually the broadband push […]