Tiny Tea Dispatch #022

Published:

Nov 28, 2020, 01:00:00

It’s time to kick ass and chew bubblegum… and I’m all outta gum.

I fell into a bit of retro gaming obsession, so this issue will mainly revolve around that.
Ready? Go!

# Made

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you might have seen me working on some retro gaming related things. I put all the pictures together on my blog, with some explanation.
In short: I built a retro gaming device and a case to house it in.
The next step, of course, is to make my own retro game. After a bit of online research (a.k.a. ‘falling down an internet rabbit hole’), I stumbled upon the community of indie Gameboy game developers and some of the tools available. I have an outline for what I would like to make and I’m breaking it down into screens. I’m not going to say much about it for the moment because I’m not entirely sure I will be able to make it 😀
Hopefully I’ll have more on this by the next newsletter.

Oh, and at some point I’ll also need to buy an actual Gameboy + a flash cartridge to put the game on. You know, for realism. I’m sad to say, I’ve had one gifted to me years ago but it got lost between house moves (Sorry, T).

# Watched

As you can guess, the most memorable viewing experiences (for me anyway), revolve around video games this month.

The Unauthorized Biography of Mario: Doesn’t just give you a history of Mario but some very insightful thoughts on people building something completely new for the first time and how (for real) no one knows what they’re doing.
The 10-Year Hunt for the Lost McDonald’s DS Game: The thrilling (no, really) story of trying to recover a piece of McDonald’s training software, which is actually a story about video game preservation. Nick is a true video game detective and storyteller.
How I solved Super Monkey Ball’s biggest mystery is another one of Nick Robinson’s videos to do with video game history, but in this one you can see he makes them from a place of genuine love. It’s a hunt for the uncredited voice of the narrator and at least made me think it’s a real shame so much of our recent history gets lost so easily.
The iconic Duke Nukem line (quote at the very top of the page), has a clear and direct origin. Or does it? One of the first commented origins, is from the movie ‘They Live’. This flick has a legacy I won’t get into here but the line was supposedly improvised by Roddy Piper. However, other people have pointed out it can be found 15 years earlier in ‘Five on the Black Hand Side’. I’m sure there’s a whole thesis to be written about the media and public consciousness but I just love this clip and I’m sad I never heard about this movie before.

# Played

There are many, many old video games to find & play out there on the internet but I was delighted to find there are still games being made to play on 30 year old hardware, such as for the Gameboy. I’ve been adding them to an itch.io list. Most of them you can also play in the browser, so you don’t need to run any special software.

The stand-outs for me are:

The Van Gogh Museum: take a tour through 11 works of Van Gogh’s art, including guides sharing parts of his biography. It’s a bit short and the works don’t all translate very well to the limited color palette, but I love the feel and originality of it.
All my bedrooms: a very personal game. You follow along the character as you trace back his memories through the places he’s lived. Shows a very different side to video game potential.
And an FFXI remake: this one is simply awesome, in every sense of the word. This person managed to rebuild a big Final Fantasy game using the very limited possibilities of the Gameboy. I was never into this game series but this is very impressive.

Besides those, I’ve been exploring the classics and collecting the ROM’s for what are (supposedly) the best games on various consoles. To be honest, I’ve been collecting a lot more than I’ve been playing. A quick count comes to more than 700. So I have a lot of ground to cover.
But I have to mention at least 1 game I encountered (via SnesDrunk on YouTube):

Ihatovo Monogatari: A kind of ‘walking’ or ‘discovery’ game (I wouldn’t call it an RPG) that centers around the stories of Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa. There’s not much to find about it but here’s 2 posts do a good job at providing some info. You can play it using a fan translation and it is one of the most fascinating and calming games I’ve found. It’s a shame there’s nothing quite like that to be found on these old consoles. Definitely a type of game that needs to be explored more by the indie gameboy dev community.

# Final notes

It seems that by the end of every year, I take up a new interest and do a deep dive in the new year. So far, it’s been mechanical watches and pens. Granted, I’m a bit early this year but retro games might continue that trend.
I hope you are doing well as we near the end of the year. Maybe pick up an old classic to get clear away some stress. What have been some of your favorite video games through the years? Are there any you like to revisit?
As always, take care of yourself. We still have some way to go and we need you around for the good parts.

That’s it from me, see you next month!