Sharpworks

Three new homebrew games available from the Sharpworks store at : sharpworks.onlineweb.shop (also on eBay if you prefer).

@_dareDev @UridiumAuthor Not bad at all

@UridiumAuthor The game was pretty much universally praised upon release I recall? Not just in Zzap! 64?

Just to address a comment on a video I saw about the Paradroid Gold Medal and whether it was deserved, or not. Despite the diary articles connection, there was no pressure for a good review. I can say that the Zzap! 64 guys were as relieved as I was that the game turned out well.

@qdream_ru @TopRetroGames I've never heard of that game for the MZ-80A. Are you sure it's for the 'A' and not one of the Japanese machines like the MZ-80K or MZ-80C ?

@TopRetroGames Hello! I'm playing retro Star Wars games and similar games. Could you please send me the game Super Frash (198x) for Sharp MZ-80A or tell me where I can download it?

@jrade762 @exQUIZitely lol of course. The response of the weak minded

@SharpworksMZ @exQUIZitely lol, you sat thru the process did you??…..ffs

Today versus "once upon a time"...

@jrade762 @exQUIZitely What process?

@jrade762 @exQUIZitely Not enough memory in the computer to sit there loading data in for an entire hour

@SharpworksMZ @exQUIZitely It was a cassete tape.

@jrade762 @exQUIZitely How can it take an hour? What's the baud rate?

@exQUIZitely One hour to load the next mission on the C64 version of F-19 Stealth Fighter.

@FrontierAstro @exQUIZitely Nice!

@SharpworksMZ @exQUIZitely 112k! Massive!

An average picture that you save on your phone or PC has a size of around 800 kilobytes. It doesn't do anything, it's just a static image. Now take a game like Elite which had a size of 22 kilobytes on the BBC Micro, or 82 kilobytes on the C64 - and now think about what Braben and Bell turned those 22 kilobytes (or 82 kilobytes) into. A universe with eight galaxies, each containing 256 star systems (for a total of 2,048 planets/systems). Each system also featured unique details: government type, economy, technology level, population, commodity prices, and even descriptive text (e.g., a planet known for "carnivorous arts graduates" or similar quirky combinations). If you still need a bit more help to contextualize that, try this: Elite was smaller than many modern text files or desktop icons, yet it contained (and let you freely explore!) a multi-galaxy-spanning universe that felt vast and limitless. By the way - for thos who will argue "but the universe and stars were created randomly, so that's easy" - I think you wil find that the word is procedurally (with structure), which is not random... and anything but easy. Oh, and by the way, the game also rendered 3D wireframe ships, stations, and planets in real time on processors with 2 MHz. Impressed yet? This is no slight on today's game designers. They work with what they have, and that's okay. But when you think about the worlds that some programmers created with the tools they were given, it sometimes breaks my brain trying to understand how they did it. Elite is a true masterpiece on so many levels. I played the C64 version back in the day, and even 40+ years later it still feels like one of the most incredible programming wonders ever.

@exQUIZitely What about the disk version of the BBC Elite?

@SharpworksMZ Disk space. On the disk.

@AnotherHowie @exQUIZitely This.

Do you remember your very first operating system? I started with the GEOS on the C64, followed by Amiga OS. My first PC with Win 3.11 came much later. What was your journey?

@Lord_Arse @eBay_UK And abolish AI descriptions which have no place on an auction site.

@eBay_UK Hey eBay, how about a button to turn off Live? I get the feeling that the majority of us don't want to see any of this stuff on our phones and it would be great if it could just be switched off.

@exQUIZitely @bkbroiler99205 Level 9 were huge in the adventure world too.

@bkbroiler99205 That’s always the question - and I was also considering Infocom. Those 3, Infocom, Sierra, LucasArts - different eras, all great. Did you play some Infocom games back in the day?

Imagine having two titles in your portfolio that are dubbed the "grandfather" and "father" of FPS games. And to then go full circle and end it with yet another iconic hit. id Software brought us Wolfenstein 3D (1992), the grandfather of FPS games. Then followed it up only a year later in 1993 with Doom, widely considered the father of all modern FPS games, due to its massive popularity, multiplayer deathmatch, and modding community - and defining the genre's mainstream popularity to this day. And if that wasn't enough, they gave us Quake in 1996. If there was ever a studio to not just create a genre but then to also dominate it for years and years, the vote would have to go to id Software, no? Sierra for adventures. MicroProse for simulations. id Software for FPS. Blizzard (or Westwood?) for RTS.

@tandemar Oh, I thought he was attempting to rewrite the dictionary definition of irony.

Hawken criticises RGL. He should look at his own products first. Cynical. Dishonest. Don't care about making good products that people want. He's describing his books.

@exQUIZitely Never played it but did play and love Jeff Minter’s “Llamatron 2112”

Gamers in 2026: Games are too hard! Gamers in 1982:

@LASTEXITshirts Amazing! I never caught that! Nicely done, in that case :D :)

@SharpworksMZ In Aliens (1986), the company name appears as "Weyland-Yutani" rather than the "Weylan-Yutani" seen in Alien (1979). The added "d" is usually regarded as a production inconsistency, later adopted across the franchise without explanation.

On this day in 1945, Tommy Walker is born. - Jamie

@exQUIZitely So have you been following along with Mark Moxon’s disassembly listings and explanations of this game?

One often-forgotten legend in gaming is Geoff Crammond. Some of his games are pure genius and absolute classics, not just in terms of concept and gameplay, but especially considering what he was able to get out of systems with very limited resoruces. One of those early titles was The Sentinel (1986), a masterful 3D polygon puzzle-strategy game. You control a Synthoid robot, absorbing energy from the terrain to create new bodies and teleport uphill. The giant Sentinel scans slowly from the highest peak - if it spots you, it drains your energy. Your goal is to reach the top, absorb the Sentinel, and hyperspace to the next level. Crammond’s genius also gave us Revs, Stunt Car Racer, and the unforgettable Grand Prix franchise - the earlier ones mostly done in solo development. While many of the big blockbuster games were team efforts, Crammond would remain mostly a solo developer for most of his career. He stayed relatively quiet for many years after 2002, but in December 2025 it was announced that MicroProse had reunited with Crammond for updated rereleases of all four Grand Prix games, set for release on Steam in 2026.

I shall be there with my trusty MZ-700 (recently upgraded to run Quick Disks) and my also trusty MZ-80K (showing some games by IMDb creator Col Needham). It's going to be a great weekend with lots and lots of very awesome and interesting machines.

@dmsimon @exQUIZitely Proving you have a working mobile number doesn’t really verify anything.

@exQUIZitely The first indicator is they are usually unverified.

This is such an odd statement and factually untrue. The vast majority of game designers from that time were either self-taught, didn't finish their college degree or had one in a completely unrelated field. Geoff Crammond -- physics degree, totally unrelated to programming/gaming. Will Wright -- Attended college (studying architecture, mechanical engineering, etc.) for about five years but never completed a degree. Roberta Williams -- No prior coding or design experience and no college education when she created her first game in 1980. John Romero -- Completely self-taught programmer and designer who began coding on an Apple II around age 11–13 with no formal higher education in the field. Richard Garriott -- Attended the University of Texas but dropped out before finishing any degree. He was self-taught in programming from high school onward and built his early games as a hobby.

@The_Dark_Herald @SandyofCthulhu @CorpseKings @dLsd_25 I think you’ll find it’s click-bait which hasn’t been around long. Some of us have been on the internet since the ‘90s.

I recently wrote about this very subject. "Why J.R.R. Tolkien is No Longer Relevant" Why yes, the title is in fact click-bait, (welcome to the internet, have you been here long?) But the substance is not. arkhaven.substack.com/p/why-jrr-tolk… When I was in college the Lord of the Rings had been around since before I was born, and it was generally viewed as the kind of thing that would still be read alongside Shakespeare in a hundred years. The problem is a lot of the stuff in Appendix N felt the same way at the time. But today Appendix N is slowly becoming a literary graveyard: 65% of Appendix N is easily obtainable - that’s good but that number should be higher 20% is niche - but findable! 15% is becoming genuinely obscure – Don’t say the internet never forgets, it absolutely does forget. A lot of appendix N is moving from actively read and discussed to archival presence.

Remember: Game designers in the 80s and 90s were computer science majors who loved literature, classic fantasy and AD&D. There is a very obvious reason the AAA market had been declining for so long. I don't need to spell it out.