kirk.is|videogames
introduction
I've been playing (and sometimes trying to make) videogames for a long time. I enjoy exploring the microcosms they create, and socializing with friends and my younger cousins over games that allow 3 or 4 people to play at the same time. I've also cultivated an interest in "classic" gaming, including the games made before the "great crash" of 1984.
classic games
Gazette Galore!
I reviewed 318 type-in games published in COMPUTE's Gazette (a computer magazine for the Commodore 8-bits), from July 1983 until February 1995. You can go straight to my collection of disk images of the 4- and 5-star games.

Crossroads Interview
An interview I conducted with Steve Harter, author of Crossroads and Crossroads II, two brilliant unknown gems for the C=64 (since they were released through the magazine Compute's Gazette) that are to Wizard of Wor what Robotron is to Berzerk. I reviewed the games for ClassicGaming.com.

Martin Amis' Invasion of the Space Invaders (excerpts)
How to Win at Video Games (excerpts)
I scanned both of these colorful 80s-era game guides from my private collection, and full copies appear at ANNARCHIVE. These excerpts are some of the most (visually) interesting bits I gleaned from the books.

Interview: Jon Freeman & Anne Westfall (Archon, Archon II)
An article grabbed off of Usenet with 2/3 of Freefall Associates, the makers of "Archon" and its sequel.

Klik & Play
Glorious Trainwrecks is a site dedicated to the use of Klik & Play, a mid-90s game design tool. I'm assembling the stuff I make in association with that site here. Moments of entertainment!

Kirk's BestOf Series
On a lot of message boards, the question "what are the best games for System X?" comes up a lot, so I thought I'd think and try to come up with my answers to that for easy cutting and pasting.

EGM's "Top 100" Study
I'm a huge geek, so I wrote up some scripts to summarize the results of two EGM "Best 100 Games Ever" lists along with two from IGN.com.

Multiplayer Games I Own
Making an online list of the games you own is about as nerdy as you can get, but the fact is I thought it would be convenient to have a list of multiplayer games for people to browse when I have a bunch of people over...

why i like classic games
I wrote an essay justifying some of my game playing, the result of trying to figure out why I was very interested in Classic Games, though I didn't play them all that much.

Christian Video Arcade
I copied this in from a 1982 Christian satire magazine "The Wittenburg Door"...videogames for the fundamentalist set.

For the Love of the Atari 2600
I recreated the set of Atari Games I grew up with and then told the stories of why so many remain significant to me...

tools and faqs
power stone 2 mix-o-matic
Power Stone 2 is a mayhem-filled brawler of a Dreamcast game, with up to four players slugging out in playfields ranging from a collapsing airship to a pharoah's tomb. It has over 100 items that the players can try to mash each other with, but to get all of the items you need to mix items you already have to make new ones. I put together a web-based tool to help people do that.

mario party minigame island guide
Mario Party is a 4 player electronic board game for N64, but at the end of every turn, the 4 players (picked from the core Nintendo group: Mario, Luigi, Wario, Princess, Yoshi, and Donkey Kong) duke it out in one of the 50 minigames present. This is a guide I wrote to the one player mode that hits all the minigames in the system.

DK64 Boss Guide
A guide to the bosses in Donkey Kong 64.

Bangai-O Level Guide
From the FAQ: What a great game! The level exploration and enemy generators of Gauntlet combined with the action of Smash TV, all in a veneer of Metroid with a touch of the control of Joust...sounds like a mess but it's brilliant. A 2D game where level design really really matters, that throws hoards and hoards of enemies at you and gives you the hardware you need to take it all on...plus, a huge heap of Japanese weirdness. This is a guide to all 44 levels.

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