My Very First Beat ‘Em Up on My Old Apple II…Karateka!!

High atop a craggy cliff, guarded by an army of fierce warriors stands the fortress of the evil warlord Akuma. Deep in the darkest dungeon of the castle Akuma gloats over his lovely captive, the princess Mariko.
You are one trained in the way of karate: a Karateka. Alone and unarmed, you must defeat Akuma rescue the beautiful Mariko.

Put fear and self-concern behind you. Focus your will on your objective, accepting death as a possibility. This is the way of the Karateka.

Beat-’em-ups, of fighting games are the staple of PC games and consoles, a trend largely inherited from the coin-op arcade forefathers.

On the consoles, you have dozens of realistic fighting games, like Street Fighter, Tekken, Power Stone, Dead or Alive, Mortal Kombat. Each game has a particular idea, which they execute pretty well, and that’s what make it a good game, apart from the literally hundreds of wannabe games out there.

But many years ago, the very first beat-’em-up game a humble little game we played on the monochrome screen called Karateka. At that time there were other great fighting games on other platforms, notably Double Dragon and The Way of the Exploding Fist.

Karateka, programmed by a guy called Jordan Mercer for Broderbund Software (they were also famous for Lode Runner, Mercer went on to Prince of Persia), came in a single 5.25″ floppy disk (yes, those days they came in 5.25″ disks only).

The game was super simple. This hero with while hair climbs up a mountain cliff onto Akuma’s lair (the bad master) who is holding the beautiful princess Mariko hostage (yeah, like the hero has still all the energy to fight after climbing up the mountain).

First you fight the guards outside the palace one by one (gee, don’t these henchmen know how to gang up on you? Or use weapons?!), then you enter the palace and fight the stronger henchmen. Finally, you take on Akuma’s annoying eagle, then the great master himself. And finally, if you win, you get to save the princess…

The game was simple, with 3 punches and 3 kicks (high, medium and low, go figure), a far cry from all the combos and juggling attacks you get on Tekken or Virtua Fighter.

Some interesting stuff i remember from the game:

• The sound and music was pretty good for such an early game.
• There was a gate at the entrance to the castle. If you ran straight into it, it would fall down on you and instantly killed you…
• If you approached Princess Mariko with a fighting stance, she’d kick you down and you die. Yeah, i know it’s cruel…
• As with most games of that era, you couldn’t save the game at any point. Which really added to the fun of the game…

I remember my friends and i were really crazy about the game, one of ‘em had an all-expensive colour monitor and we could see Akuma’s regal costume in full colour. There are emulators around the internet for the game, but i really wish i had my old apple II to fire up the game one last time… Meanwhile i should probably stick to the latest Street Fighter on the Playstation.

Technorati Tags: apple ii, apple, karateka, games, gaming

This Day in History (a.k.a. Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah)

January 27th, Saturday, which was yesterday is remembered for a few things. Googling up ‘this day in history‘ i found some out some stuff that may or may not interest people stuck on a desert island in the pacific:

1880 - Thomas Edison patented the lightbulb. If not for him, we’d still be blogging with a kerosene lamp and / or candlelight.

1910 - The man who invented and developed the flush toilet mechanism that most of us use today, Thomas Crapper, died. That’s probably where were get the term ‘crap‘. And ‘holy crap‘. And ‘crappola‘.

1984 - Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in Los Angeles. He has since changed to Coke, and later Jesus juice.

Incidentally, my blog was 2 years old yesterday. Yes, I started blogging on January 27, 2005. Since then, i’ve migrated it once, started a few more blogs, and joined a few more group blogs. And made lots of friends along the way.

On another note, my wife’s trying to unclog the bathroom sink with a plunger. The sound it’s making is reminiscent of someone regurgitating. We’ve tried everything, it isn’t working. Don’t like all those “drop in card” plumbers. Any ideas anyone? I’m not going to google “how to unclog your pipes”. Might come up with some p0rn0 searches, for all i know.

Some Local Blog Pinging / RSS / Aggregator Services

Since it’s Friday, and i’ve nothing else to do, i’m going to plug some blog pinging services. We all know Project Petaling Street, it’s been around quite awhile. There were others that followed, some survived the first few months, some didn’t (remember PPS2? Project Kacang Kuda?). A few others that are still around are Planet Malaysia and sarawho. Both actually use RSS feeds, but also acts as a blog update service.

The end result is pretty much the same with all the services - you update your blog, they’ll get to know about it and highlight it on their front page either through the RSS feed or an auto-pinger, or you manually ping it (like some people still do on PPS).

But recently, (well not very recent actually), a couple other local services surfaced. The first is fakapster (what a name!) which has been around awhile in one form or another, but recently launched in it’s current incarnation. The layout is pretty spartan here, but it’s nice and clean, without any ads or complicated sidebars.

Another one would be FrenzRSS, run by none other than Rojaks (who was a client of mine in a court case once) and 5xmom, two long-time fehmes bloggers who… aw heck, if you don’t know them, you should start reading more local blogs.

So sign up, get more people to read your blog, and get to know more cool blogs to read, it helps to pass the time at work between clocking in and clock out…

Top Ten Signs This Won’t Be a Great Chinese New Year for You

Top Ten Signs This Won’t Be a Great Chinese New Year for You

• Your neighbour’s kids have stockpiled enough fireworks to burn down a small island republic.
• You’re over 35 and not married. And you have 37 uncles and aunties who are extremely paat (nosy).
• Your parents home, where you’re gonna spend a week there, has no Astro, no internet connection, no DVD player. Only RTM1 and 2.
• Since last week, your parents have been dropping heavy hints that they are expecting a 12-course Chinese New Year dinner at the most expensive restaurant in town (Guess who’s paying…?).
• Last time you were here, your neighbour, who’s a pirated DVD kingpin, promised to ‘do you in’ the next time you showed your face ‘in his town’. (Something to do with you ‘looking at his girl the wrong way‘).
• Your parents and family have all embarked on this weird vegetarian power diet through the New Year. The only rule – no meat, no carb. (which means no bak kua, no yee sang, no everything…)
• It’s only the first day of the New Year, and you’re looking forward to coming back to work.
• Everyone says that this year, at age 30, you no longer eligible for ang pows anymore. Damn.
• For the one week of Chinese New Year, 15 people staying in the small house. And one toilet.

My Very First FPS: Wolf 3D…!!! (um, 12 years ago?)

Last week’s post was all about real time strategy (RTS) games. Today, since the alignment of Jupiter and the moons are right, let’s talk about that other computer game genre, the FPS (that first person shooter, not frames per second).

My very first FPS was undoubtedly the very first one released, Wolf 3D. I even played the sequel (more like extra levels, really) called Spear of Destiny. And of course, following Wolf 3D was the big one, Doom. I’ve you can’t imagine how it’s like, it’s worlds away from the realism of Counter-Strike and Halo 2.

Doom was such a hit game that until today, all FPS are called Doom-clones. What made Doom a refreshing new approach to games was the ability freely move around in 360 degrees, not to mention up and down. But of course, the graphics were still in VGA and if you wall close up to another character or the wall you can see the huge ugly pixels. Some of my friends complained they got nauseous from playing it too much, what do you expect if you’ve been playing static screen games like Lode Runner and Aztec all these years?

Before Doom and Wolf 3D, home computers weren’t powerful enough to render 3D sprites in real time, some games used were static step-by-step movement. Doom also introduce the BFG, a kickass weapon (yeah, guess what it stands for).

Soon after the two games came the hanger-ons, like Duke Nukem, Quake, Unreal, each subsequent getting more realistic by taking advantage of the quantum leap in PC processor speed and graphic accelerator cards.

These days, the latest FPS games (like GoldenEye, Call of Duty) are really nifty, almost like Hollywood movies. But really, it’ll still probably take a few more years before gamers and strap on VR goggles, load up a Wii-mote like controller, and play a FULL 3D FPS, like on the Holodeck of the Enterprise…

Technorati Tags: PC, games, FPS, doom, wolf 3d

American Idol IS BACK!!!

• “Horrendous.”
• “What’s up, dawg?”
• “Ghastly.”
• “You’re the sweetest.”
• “Keeping it real, dude.”

Yeah, baby, American Idol is BACK. In the interim months, you can have all those pretender filler shows like Aka-lamey Fantasia, or your One In A Million, but AMERICAN IDOL is the REAL DEAL, the big daddy of ‘em all.

If you’re new the series, some things to look forward to…

• Simon Cowell’s man boobs bulging out of his tight, tight black baby tees.
• How has-been popstar Paula Abdul tries to keep sober every episode.
• Ryan Seacreast two day old stubble. (I can just hear the fanboys going “rowrrrrr…”)
• How many time per episode Randy Jackson does that ‘Satan’ symbol.
• The freaky non-talent losers that appear on the show thinking they’re Mariah Carey. Some of these people need a SERIOUS reality check…

Can’t wait for next week’s episode. Yeah, baby. I wonder if William Hung is going to make another appearance this year…

Technorati Tags: American idol, simon cowell, paula abdul, ryan seacrest, william hung, randy jackson

Internet Connection Down (and some anime update)

Dang, my internet connection is out completely, that explains the lack of updates here. In the meantime, while Internet-less, I’m left with watching anime to pass the time between work and sleep (some eating and toilet time in between).

I’ve currently still watching Black Lagoon, although the latest story arc (Roberta the killer south American maid) isn’t up to par with the start of the season. But apparently Season 2 is better. let’s hope so.

I’ve just got Gunslinger Girl too, haven’t watch it except the intro to Episode 1. Seems like these European themed anime are pretty popular these days.

I’m also in the midst of getting Last Exile, the animation quality looks a lot better than expected, i’m a sucker for high quality graphics…

Now when on earth is my Internet connection gonna get fixed?!

Technorati Tags: Gunslinger Girl, Last Exile, anime, Internet

My Very First RTS (15 Years Ago): Dune II…!!!

I’ve just got my new PC up and running, so If you see less and less around here, you should know what I’m doing instead of blogging…

I’ve played quite a lot of games over the years since the mid-80’s, and I have had lots of favourites, spanning Apple, PC and Playstation (and Gameboy even). These days real time strategy (RTS) games are dime a dozen – you see so many of them at the shops. You have them based in medieval Rome, exploring the New World, outer space (Starcraft!), global domination, almost every thinkable historic or fictional scenario for a RTS, its probably been done before.

Basically, the concept is the same – gather resources (usually involving some environmentally unfriendly activity like chopping down trees and mining gold), build city, then amass bad-ass army, and go and battle. Some games has levels with slight variations, like ‘cross to safety, Hero must survive’ (made famous by Warcraft) and even hold against the zerglings for 15 minutes (ditto by Starcraft)…

The very first RTS I ever played was Dune II, back in the 1993. I think it the very first major one ever released. Before that, strategy games were turn-based, not ‘real-time’ so to speak. It was a bit like playing board games like Risk – everyone waits for one person to finish his turn. I doubt in real life George W. Bush would wait for Osama to ‘finish his turn’ before mobilizing his troops.

The graphics back then were pretty crude by today’s standards, and the level of difficulty was low. The game was loosely based on Frank Herbert series in name only. Here you gather the spice mélange, the primary commodity in the game. Harvesting the spice was super-dangerous, if you weren’t careful, giant worms would come out and swallow your precious equipment.

You had 3 factions to choose from - the noble House of Atreides, the insidious House of Ordos and the evil House of Harkonnen (my favourite). The Atrides have to advantage in the Ornithoper, the fastest craft in the game, and the help of the Fremen, the native warriors that could camouflage themselves. The Ordos were pretty weak (they didn’t exist in Herbert’s books), but they had this annoying gas launcher that could convert your units into theirs (something like the priest in Age of Empires). The Harkonnen were the best – they had long range missiles. Kaboom.

Undoubtedly Dune 2 inspired that other great series, Command & Conquer and it’s many sequels, and ultimately Microsoft’s Age of Empires and of course, Blizzard’s super successful Warcraft (and it’s many incarnations…)

Some years ago they released an updated version called Dune 2000, although I didn’t get to play it.

Anyone want to recommend a new RTS for me to play? The last one I played was Rise of Nations, I think.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, age of empires, dune II, command & conquer, games, pc, starcraft, blizzard, warcraft, starcraft, rts

I’m Getting A New PC!!!

Yep, I’m buying a new PC. My home desktop, if you can believe it, is almost 7 years old. It’s a Celeron 433, I remember clearly I opted for it over the 466 to save something like RM40. Along the way, I’ve changed the motherboard and mouse once, and only a few months ago changed the 17” monitor. This is not to mention the countless re-formats over the years.

It runs Windows 98 perfectly well, and it still has those addictive window games that were once the staple of bored office workers, like WordZap and TetraVex.

Anyway, I’m getting a new one soon. It’s not going be a kick-ass one, I hardly have time for stuff like DOTA or Half-Life, but it’s adequate enough for the latest Championship Manager or Civilization 4. I’m getting a 17” LCD monitor, although my friend Boone says it’s not that great for games, but I reckon it’s good for your eyes.

Thinking back over the years, my very first one back in 1985, that was actually an Apple II. The second one I bought in university, it was a 386SX with a maths co-processor (although I don’t think I ever fully used its full capabilities). That one lasted quite a bit, with a lot of upgrading courtesy of Plaza Imbi. Then for some time after it died, I was PC-less, since I was mostly using the office PCs. Then in 1999 I bought the current one, cost me about RM2400, I think. That was until now, but in the last few years I’ve also been using a notebook.

I still keeping the old PC even after my new one is set up, probably let my kids go wild with it with their ‘edutainment interactive games’ featuring Mickey Mouse or Barney the Pervert Dinosaur or something like that. Keeps them occupied while I play my Civilization.

Technorati Tags: PC, Pentium, Civilization, Chanmpionship Manager, Windows, Celeron, Apple, DOTA

Being A Millionaire By The Age 30

If you’ve been reading the papers recently, they’ve been doing a series of interviews with loads of people from different industries about their job, i think it has something to do with some Education Fair. They always end the interview with a question about whether you can be a millionaire by the age 30.

Oh, sure, everybody wants to be a millionaire by 30. Heck better still, most people regret they didn’t win the genetic lottery and be born as Bill Gates’ kid.

But then of course, you and I know it’s far more difficult than it seems, unless:

• You do it via the less-than-legal way,
• You’re a hot chick and marry a millionaire,
• You’ve got some freaky talent like singing or sports or swallowing snakes or something like that.

Anyway, for the rest of us, we can only give excuses when our children asks us why we can’t go to Disneyland like all that anak Datuk…

Excuses For Not Being A Millionaire By Age 30

• “The very low fixed deposit rate of 3.7% per annum has slightly delayed by first million by another 35.4 years. But I still have faith in the magic of compound interest to make that happen.”
• “Somehow I think I overestimated the demand and underestimated the market saturation of direct selling beauty products and scented air purifiers. Apparently Avon and Amway are doing it too! And my upline promised me I can be millionaire if I believed in my mind I can do it! Damn it! Too bad my joining fee of RM10,000 isn’t refundable. And to think my Diamond ArchEmperor status would mean something…”
• “I did my market research well, but too bad, Malaysia isn’t ready for my concept upmarket bistro-cum-deli serving espresso and Vietnam style fried grasshoppers and cockroaches. Losing money there was tough, but now I’m looking to bring Thailand tuk-tuks to the streets of KL…”
• “I did a calculation on Excel. In order to be a millionaire by 30, I needed a reasonable pay increase of X amount. Unfortunately, my boss didn’t warm to the idea. So I had to kiss goodbye to that dream.”
• “I set up a PayPal tip jar in my pr0n website, takings have been a little slow these two years. Not to mention how offensive the gahmen has been with me. And they say they ‘support’ local entrepreneurs.”
• “I had this fantastic plan of to bring in mobile self-cleaning toilets right here in the city! Then someone beat me to it…”
• “Money isn’t everything, I’m happy to live on potato chips and ketchup as long as I get to play DOTA all day long.”
• “I bought a RM500,000 bungalow for investment last week. The next day, the gahmen announced plans to build a waste treatment plant next door.”

Technorati Tags: money, millionaire, Bill Gates, Avon, Amway