Didn't have the energy for anything exciting Thursday night and therefore spodded out with computer games, particularly as the fairly straightforward creating of a thin client Unix box turned out to be a bit of a hassle.

Despite the shininess of Oblivion hanging around, I decided to boot up the retro box and play Ultima Underworld 2. Fear a pentium with Soundblaster Pro and Roland MT-32 sound..

Generally I can't be bothered playing anything much earlier than Ultima 7 these days, and preferably not a game with flick scrolling such as Eye of the Beholder 2. Whilst some people think gameplay hasn't advanced this is only really true in a limited sense. Perhaps Baldurs Gate wasn't as complex and interactive as Ultima 7/7 part 2 were, but the technology was more advanced with plenty of engaging quests - overall it was on par. Oblivion may have lost a very minor amount of subtlety to Morrowind but it's generally easier to figure out what to do and the plots are well written.

It is also absolutely true that modern interfaces are orders of magnitude better. Just look at the Ultima Underworld interface - it was quite advanced for 1992. It had a 3D texture mapped interface with curved walls in age where Wolfenstein 3D was 'state of the art' and Doom came out a year later (and didn't allow looking up or down, and wasn't 3D).

However, in comparison to a modern interface : oh dear. Buttons for looking, using *and* picking up/dropping? Eeep.

I'm pondering why I find it difficult to get around to finishing some games and then replay years old (but excellent) games such as Planescape:Torment
( wibble about outstanding unfinished games )

On a happier note, I am going to shamelessly nick the link from 36's journal to an academic paper about Adventure, the first adventure game - includes an accurate timeline, discussion of how the game developed and lots of pictures of the real cave system the game was based on!

(annoyingly the link runs on a non standard web server port, so some people may have difficulty reaching it)

On the train to and from Manchester on Saturday I played more of Dreamhold on my Handera 330. Old tech is good - 4 AAA batteries last for weeks, I can pick it up without wondering if the batteries have run down, and save the entire state of the system to CF or SD card :).