XF5700 Mantis Experimental Fighter (Paragon Software/Microplay Software, 1992) #DOSGaming

When a game drops sick euro-beats mixed with lore drops about the sunken 3DFX Voodoo-rendered world you're in as you play.

“They call it… Aqua.” 🎶

📺: Archimedean Dynasty, Blue Byte, 1996 (PC DOS)

I wrote a free, browser-based Moon simulator game. You're welcome to play.

(I don't recommend trying it on mobile.)

mooncraft2000.com

(More info on developing it: engineersneedart.com/mooncraft200...)

Japanese TV commercial for Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story II: Ao wo Uketsugu Mono on Sega Saturn in 1996. What a mouthful, but pretty neat

Part of a trilogy of first-person Gundam mech action. And it's compatible with a twin-stick controller, used Virtual-On and stuff

#gaming #retro #mecha 🎮

9 panel comic Panel 1: The view from the cockpit of a spacecraft. Two green alien hands grip the controls. A planet can be seen in front of the ship. Panel 2: One of the alien hands move to the left and presses a red button. Two laser beams fire from the ship directing into the centre of the planet below. Panel 3: The planet begins to rupture under the force of the lasers. Panel 4: The planet completely explodes. The ship and the pilot are bathed in a blood-red glow. Panels 5, 6, and 7: The alien pilot turns the ship 180 degrees so he is facing empty space and the dying planet is behind him. Panels 8 and 9: The alien presses a green button and the space craft accelerates to warp speed. A dimensional rift opens in the distance. The viewing window fills with white light.

9 panel comic Panel 1: The alien space craft is travelling through a dimensional rift and is surrounded by white light. Panel 2: The ship comes out of warp drive. Through the viewing window we now see a reddish purple planet with rings around it. The alien’s home world. Panels 3 and 4: The space craft draws nearer to the planet. Panels 5 and 6: The craft drops down through the planets atmosphere. Through the dust of the rings and past the clouds. Panels 7, 8, and 9: The planet’s surface is revealed. It is jagged and harsh with a poisonous looking lake cutting through the landscape. The ship touches down, kicking up a cloud of dust.

8 panel comic Panel 1: We look down at the alien’s body as he removes his seat belt. Panels 2 and 3: The alien gets up and makes his way towards the large circular door at the back of the ship. Panels 4 and 5: The alien releases the door mechanism. He is home. He has destroyed an entire planet and population and he will face no consequences. Or so he thinks. Unfortunately for him, the door to his ship opens to reveal… Panel 6: Lieutenant Columbo standing on the planet’s surface. The detective is looking at a small black rift hovering in the air in front of him. He addresses the alien directly and says “Sir, is this a window into an endless void?” Panel 7: Columbo takes a closer look at the rift and continues, “Mrs Columbo wants one of these things” Panel 8: Tossing up his hands in mock exasperation, he adds “I said to her, why do you wanna stare into an abyss? We gotta tv!”

POV: You are an interdimensional alien warlord. You destroy an entire planet and its inhabitants then slip back into your own dimension, where you think you’ll be safe from consequences. But no. One man will make you pay for your crimes.

Volvo Tundra concept (1979)

Any excuse for a Macross Plus HUD supercut

youtu.be/XtdQOEm2M5Q?...

Screenshot of Silent Service (Atari 8-bit, 1985, MicroProse) from MobyGames user LepricahnsGold. Looking down periscope at a distant naval target; bearing, range, speed, angle, and course are simply written beneath the view. Sonar reports distant explosions.

Screenshot of Silent Service 2 (DOS, 1990, MicroProse) from MobyGames user Dietmar Uschkoreit. A view down periscope; the handles (and surrounding submarine interior) are visible around the eyepiece, and the numerical values are displayed as a series of mechanical rollers. In front of us appears to be a cargo freighter or aircraft carrier.

Screenshot of Aces of the Deep (DOS, 1994, Dynamix) from MobyGames user Neville. A view down periscope at night; unlike Silent Service, this one is only monocular, with bearing displayed inside the lens, which seems logically intuitive. The horizon appears clear.

Screenshot of Silent Hunter (DOS, 1996, Strategic Simulations Inc.) from MobyGames user JimmyA. A view through a monocular periscope at dusk; bearing is visible in the column above the lens, while indicators of depth, velocity, course, and the current speed order are visible as analog dials on either side. There is a battleship in our sights.

The view from below, in submarine simulations Silent Service 1 and 2, Aces of the Deep, and Silent Hunter. Screenshots via MobyGames.

Chrontendo Episode 38 (00:32:59)

Brazil (GT Racing 97, DOS, Blue Sphere, 1997)

Stellar 7 (Apple II, 1983, Dynamix).

Stellar 7 (Commodore 64, 1984, Dynamix, European version).

Stellar 7 (DOS, 1990, Dynamix). ...Say, Regulus looks slightly different in this shot.

Stellar 7: Draxon's Revenge (3DO, 1994, Dynamix).

Evolution of Stellar 7 from 1983-1993; Apple II, C64, DOS, and 3DO. All screenshots from MobyGames.

Stellar 7 (DOS, 1990, Dynamix); a remake of the Apple II game of the same name from 1983.

Lancia Medusa (1980)

Screenshot of Need for Speed 3, from MobyGames user Trixter. We are in the driver's seat of a Lamborghini Diablo SV; everything on the dashboard is wrapped in an almost denim-like leather, and the steering wheel is cranked halfway to the left to avoid the Corvette that is about to be a problem.

The raw dashboard bitmap from GameData/CarModel/Diab/car.viv/dash.qfs; without the steering wheel bitmap being drawn over it, the dashboard actually includes a fully drawn bare steering column.

While sifting through Discmaster, I discovered that dexvert understands Need for Speed 3's .VIV data files and internal graphics. And in so doing, I found that all of NFS3's dashboards are fully drawn beneath the wheel, with visible steering columns that the wheel bitmap is drawn over in-game.

First-person shot from the POV of a humanoid alien of some kind, in the cockpit of an advanced sci-fi spaceship. Instruments and heads-up display occupy an oval-shaped monitor directly below the windshield; the functions of them are unclear. We are flying over the surface of an Earth-like planet, banked left and bearing towards a snow-capped mountain range. The alien's arms and legs are visible, with tentacle-like appendages coming out of the sleeves.

UFO2.PCX - Artist unknown, presumed 1995. Sourced from sZeNE CliparTs, 1998, pub. mediaGlobe, via Discmaster: discmaster.textfiles.com/view/16456/s...

A cover scan with an illustration of a red classic western dragon seen from the cockpit of a fighter jet with lit instrument panels

One of my favourite Dragon magazine covers - March 1989's. Always makes me think of Shadowrun's Awakening and what it would have been like for the pilots encountering dragons in the sky for the first time.

The Duel: Test Drive II
Data disks:
The Supercars
The Muscle Cars

Your job is to maintain inter-settlement communications towers at various airports and outposts in the Megastructure.

Land, fix, go on to the next one.

What could go wrong?

An astronaut in a purple and yellow suit is seen from behind, in the cockpit of their spaceship, surrounded on three sides by control panels. In the computer screen and also through the giant bay window, an asteroid floats in front of the ship.

It's Control Panel Sunday because I forgot yesterday; here’s a fantastic undated Fred Gambino artwork.

#retro #godot #gamedev #indiedev #FPS #solodev #sci-fi
Flying enemy, Chapter 2 boss

Chrontendo Episode 55 (00:16:13)

Chrontendo Episode 14 (00:20:09)

SCI_FI/SFLIGHT.GIF

Chrontendo Episode 52 (01:06:35)

The dash, and especially the steering wheel, look super, super cool.

This kind of thing is the antithesis of the sleek, smooth, touchscreen-everything approach of Muskist design.

A photo of an ad for the Phillips 8833/II monitor, with an offer for F-19 Stealth Fighter free with it. It has an illustration of someone playing the game on the screen back to back with a futuristic pilot in a cockpit.

"Land the F-19 Stealth Fighter - Free with the No1 Games Monitor."

From what I've heard from enthusiasts in the past and seen in YouTube vids, the Phillips CM8833/II was an excellent monitor and still prized today for their clarity and stereo sound.

📖: Amiga Action, December 1991

Chrontendo Episode 36 (00:13:59)

One of my big "they don't make anime like they used to" old fan complaints is that Cool Computer screens are a dying art

R-Type III: The Third Lightning (SNES, 1993, Irem). GIF from Tumblr user atari5200controller.

Screenshot of F-16 Fighting Falcon (MSX, 1984, Nexa Corporation) by MobyGames contributor Mario Hendriks. The MSX hardware is being pushed to its limits, drawing a dotted-line ground plane with a silhouette of an enemy fighter approaching us. The rectangular "cockpit" status bar shows displays of the current armaments, various warning lights, a simple radar, and a mission map.

Screenshot of Strike Commander (DOS, 1993, Origin Systems) from MobyGames contributor Neville. We're flying over a desert, dialing in a missile lock. The instrument displays are rather small at this distance; the game has sets of alternate views that zoom in on them to see in more detail, but most of the essential info is in the reflector HUD anyway.

Screenshot of iF-16 (Windows, 1997, Digital Integration) from MobyGames contributor Yearman. A higher resolution display means the instruments do not need to be zoomed in to read; we are on the runway awaiting take-off. Armaments, radar, and satellite map are visible in the digital displays, along with a reading of the selected waypoint and distance, and analog gauges for airspeed, altitude, and artificial horizon, with most pertinent information also being echoed into the reflector HUD.

Screenshot of Falcon 4.0: Allied Force (Windows, 2005, Lead Pursuit), from MobyGames contributor Yearman. One of Falcon 4.0's more realistic touches is carried over from civilian flight sims: the cockpit switches and buttons can be interacted with using the mouse. The cockpit is extremely detailed and photo-realistic. Properly reading and configuring the gauges and displays probably entails actual training - or at least, reading the several-hundred-page manual.

Various incarnations of the American F-16 "Fighting Falcon" fighter jet. Screenshot credits in the alt-texts.