Re: Lost Forever Games

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 

 Do you remember PBM games? Did you ever try one of the services? Did you RUN one? Is there any hope, you think, of preserving the
software from this lost era of gaming?
 

I had never heard about concept outside of people in jail playing chess
by mail
The software / gaming thing that I would like to see preserved is those
videogames that were broadcast in TV and you were supposed to call and
play by pressing the numbers on your landline phone.
Sure, you can play the game nowadays since it was a normal Atari ST /
Amiga game and map the inputs to the numpad, but It's not the same
experience as:
a) using an actual landline phone as the controller
b) realizing that it was impossible to play due to the extreme latency
the system had
I guess it would be possible to plug an RJ11 landline phone (rotary for
added fun) to a 56k PCI internal modem and code something for WinUAE,
but the original TV experience is probably lost to time. Given that the
numbers in a numpad are upside down, it makes me wonder if they were
using a custom made version of the game for the TV show, not to mention
the extra software to bridge the inputs. I know that there was a second
version of the TV show where they played locally (computer and landline
phone in the same spot)...
Not even sure why I am writing this. If I start searching internet, most
probably those two special versions of the game have been dumped already
and there are tons on info on how it was made and even attempts to
replicate. Maybe not in english, but definitely in german. It's just
that probably all the nostalgia filter is going to start crumbling, then
having to accept that everything sucked.