Game-On at ACMI in Melbourne closes this Sunday, and ACMI have told the Herald Sun that they’re close to reaching the high score attendance record for the exhibit.

So do go along if you’ve been considering it. We liked it so much I took the kids twice.

Show a valid Metcard on Thursday nights (open until 9pm) for concession rate entry.

Space Invaders is thirty years old this month. 1Up has done an article on ten things you didn’t know about it.

(via Vintage Computing and Gaming).

But have you heard the song/seen the video clip?

No way will this be as good as the original.

WarGames: The Dead Code

From the looks of it, they’ve taken the original plot and just substituted different teenagers, a different city, a new computer and… well, not much else. It’s more of a remake than a sequel.

No wonder it’s going straight to DVD. Release is expected in July.

And if that’s not to your taste, how about this rumour: Leonardo Dicaprio to play Nolan Bushell in a movie about the creator of Pong.

I was amused to see this Donkey Kong reference in a cartoon by Andrew Dyson in last Friday’s Age, commenting on the current Australian political stoush over petrol prices. It features opposition leader Brendan Nelson as Donkey Kong, and PM Kevin Rudd as Mario.

Ever wonder how they fitted an entire computer language into just a few kilobytes, back in the 80s? Documented disassembly of BBC Basic 4.

How to highlight author comments in Wordpress … but it relies on the author being user ID 1, so it won’t work here, where we have several people posting. Could easily be customised to look for other user IDs though.

Some developers are throwing in the towel and running Vista as Admin.

The excellent Secret Life of Machines not only has a web site, but is available freely (and legally) via BitTorrent. And the theme tune is available on iTunes.

Are you keeping up with the Commodore?

And check this Australian 1980s Apple Mac advert

For those of you who owned or used BBC Micros, a couple of articles just popped up on BBC Online:

Creators of the BBC Micro re-unite to look at the micro and its legacy — Acorn were working on the Arm chip as a result of the BBC Micro and BBC Master project. It’s a wonderful British success story; Arm chips are in practically every small mobile device that are in the world today.

David Braben (co-author of Elite) looks back at the BBC Micro — It would be great to see the spirit of the BBC Micro live on today; perhaps the excitement of being part of perhaps the most important entertainment sector of the future can be used to entice students into Computer Science, Physics and Maths?

Update: More memories, from those who designed and built the Beeb.

The Australian Computer Museum Society is looking for benefactors to help them keep their collection intact. They had moved to an empty warehouse a couple of years ago, but now need to find somewhere else to store all their gear, some of which is a century old. Evidently they need about 400 square metres.

From the ACM SIGGRAPH, Vol.32 No.2 May 1998: Game Graphics During the 8-bit Computer Era - a look at what was possible when all you had for graphics hardware was a large rock and a piece of chalk operating at 2MHz, some of the hacks that were used to squeeze the very last drop of functionality out of those systems and some of the more notable games insofar as their graphics.

CNN: Commodore 64 still loved after all these years

See also:

• Play C64 games online
• Review of Brian Bagnall’s On The Edge — The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore

Back in the day, we couldn’t just jump online to find out what was happening in the geek world. No, we had to go down to the newsagent and buy a magazine.

Along with emulators for many old platforms, increasing numbers of old mags from the 80s and 90s are now available online.

Commodore: Australian Commodore and Amiga Review (via Dan). ZZap! 64. Lots more at the Amiga Magazine Rack

But the ultimate in technical mags for Commodore machines would have to have been The Transactor.

Acorn: The Micro User, Acorn User

Sinclair: Crash

There’s plenty more out there (including some sites that just index the old magazines, rather than provide actual scans). Well worth an explore to nostalgically relive your favourite computer platform.

Why did nobody tell me about this before?

Play Commodore 64 games online, using Java

One issue though: I haven’t figured out yet what simulates the Run/Stop key, which some games use to start.

(via Pete)