Lazily revisiting Retro Fever

January 5th, 2015 11:25 AM
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Last March, I followed up my unboxing and Let’s Play of Zéphyr with a video about Retro Fever. This game by Brian Picchi might be better called a metagame, as players assume the role of a retrocomputing enthusiast charged with adding as many classic computers to their collection as possible — a game most of us already play every day.

I’m no Internet celebrity, and my video did little to bring attention to Picchi’s work. Finally, Retro Fever is getting the spotlight it deserves: Lazy Game Reviews (whose website looks quite familiar!) has nearly a quarter million YouTube users who were recently exposed to founder Clint Basinger’s own unboxing and Let’s Play of Retro Fever.

Amazing what someone with actual talent can do, no? For more Apple II goodness from Basinger, catch his Moon Patrol unboxing.

Want to learn how Picchi makes such great software? He took Juiced.GS readers behind the scenes of Retro Fever and his previous game, Lamb Chops, in Volume 19, Issue 1. Or you can download the Lamb Chops source code, released just last week.

(Hat tip to Tony DiCola)

Unboxing & Let’s Play Retro Fever

March 10th, 2014 1:01 PM
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In November 2012, I stumbled into success on YouTube when I posted an unboxing video. It’s a genre I discovered during my six years at Computerworld: point the camera at a new tech product and narrate as you open its packaging and dissect its contents. A month later, I delved into another genre, this one introduced to me by the narrator of Open Apple: Let’s Play videos, in which gameplay footage is captured and combined with running commentary.

Yes — people actually watch me open boxes and play video games on YouTube, such that humanity has spent an aggregate of fifty years on my channel.

I don’t understand it, but if the interest is there, I’m happy to bring it to bear on the Apple II. I applied these two video styles last year to Zéphyr, the 1987 action game recently published by Brutal Deluxe. Today, I bring my attention to Retro Fever, a new game from budding programmer Brian Picchi.

An unboxing video of a new Apple II product may be even more pointless than the average unboxing. Says PBS of the genre, "[Unboxing] videos show what the products ARE, without the annoying filter of marketing." Yet almost no Apple II product has a marketing budget to begin with, allowing for a more WYSIWYG experience from conception to purchase.

Nonetheless, there you have it: my first experience with the first Apple II game to be published in 2014. Get your own copy for free or in hardcopy, or play it online, at Brian Picchi’s website — and learn more about how he became the programmer he is today in the March 2014 issue of Juiced.GS.