The following was originally intended as a footnote in the final part of Press '6' to Move Right. As it's a significant digression from that article, I've spun it out here as a separate entity. The BBC Special Projects division could be described as a significant inspiration to me in so many ways, both here … Continue reading The Special Projects Division or “Only at the BBC”
Click here for Part 1. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Blur and Oasis. Swap Shop and Tiswas. X Factor and Strictly. For every stand out success, there is always a rival up against it, conflicting and complementing. Aside from blatant SEO, the analogy extends to phone in games, with ITE matched against Total Control … Continue reading Press 6 to move right – the world of phone in video games (Part 2, Total Control Media)
Just doing a random YouTube scout and I saw a video from Neil Robinson showing off what looked like the timer from Futuristic in the original maze. https://youtu.be/-aW3mMEkIXY It is genuine, and you'll see on the video page his efforts to repair it. It just makes me wonder how many of these props and other … Continue reading One a’maze’ing find
As soon as this blog went live, one of the the first requests made was to look into the traditional Blockbusters game board - a sophisticated setup that implied a massive complex display screen without a traditional monitor in sight. First, let's look at what's being discussed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7bOVvaCJeQ So, the game board is a 4x5 matrix … Continue reading Taking the ‘P’ – The Big Blockbusters board
Following on from the Crystal Maze Arcade Game discussion, I stumbled upon the PC version via the Collection Chamber. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq56LbBLmPE As you can see in the Retro Pixel Lizard video, the general principles are similar to the Team Challenge, in that individual players can be assigned to particular games. However, unlike the arcade game, each of … Continue reading Cyberdrome in your own home ? – the PC Crystal Maze
Recently, I've been watching Bob the Fish's brilliant chronicle of UK Saturday morning TV "Watch and Smile", which in its 5th episode talks briefly about the ITV's (wrong) answer to Live and Kicking, Tricky, amongst other ITV missteps (look, I'm still bitter about the cancellation of WOW, but that's another story). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcCpNMsPAJE Watch and Smile … Continue reading Press 6 to move right – the world of phone in video games (Part 1, ITE)
Comments on articles are now fully enabled, but you will need to login to use them. This should provide some spam detection without me having to manually approve your first comment in each case. I've embedded the login into the comments section itself, and you can use WordPress, Google, Twitter or Facebook for credentials (they'll … Continue reading Housekeeping
One of the benefits of emulation is the preservation of rare software for the masses. The Multiple Fruit Machine Emulator (MFME) has an internal driver that can be used to play the video quiz machines marketed by Barcrest on their MPU4 platform on a Windows PC. This includes the Crystal Maze series of games, although … Continue reading Cyberdrome in your own home ? – Arcade Crystal Maze
Courtesy of JX866 from YouTube, an interesting recovery of a a flash frame from the credits of Bob's Full House, and what it represents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICYFLRv9iYE Now, advertising on the BBC is obviously a dodgy subject, and this technical credit was obviously ruled too much of a plug to be acceptable. It is interesting to note, … Continue reading Bob’s Full Disclosure
https://twitter.com/NaismithMatt/status/1051496110026575872 When I first soft launched this site, this was among the first Tweets I received. This has always been something that interested me, the idea of the original Catchphrase, but I never got to to the end of. What follows is an example of the sort of thing I do to research one of … Continue reading By Special Request
