Last weekend was the first edition of the Geek Life Festival, so I thought that sharing the vibes and the discoveries I made was a nice and apropriate way to start my blog!
I was delighted to be part of Retrotaku’s staff once more!
We had a dozen of consoles playable and a few micro-computers along with a Minitel connected to a real phone server (click here for technical details). We could even take photos with a webcam and display them on the screen!
Fun fact : the first game that was run on the Amiga that weekend was Prehistorik, one of the first games made by Erik Geslin, the creator of my training. You can play the DOS version in your browser here : https://js-dos.com/games/prehisto.com.html
The Exelvision EXL 100 is an interesting 1984 french micro-computer I discovered this weekend. It features wireless keyboard and gamepads. You can even store your gamepads inside of the computer when you’re done. The monitor pictured here is monochrome but color monitors existed. The game I tried on it, Wizord, was a clone of Space Invaders using the built-in speech synthetizer wich is actualy quite good. As the peripherals work thanks to infrared a single input can be sent at once, so it changes the gameplay of Space Invaders : if you move and shoot it turns on “auto move” otherwise you would have to stop to shoot.
Antoine Gohin, the programmer from Broke Studio who made the recent homebrew Twin Dragons for NES was there, on Retrotaku’s space. I didn’t play a lot on the NES but I have to say that I feel like Twin Dragons is the best experience I had so far with that console! The game is just amazing, the controls are really good! He explained us some programmation tricks he did to get the best of the Entertainment System. He worked on having a game that plays at the same speed no matter if it’s a 50 or 60Hz console and that’s really dope! We were able to test the game on JVC professional CRT monitors manufactured in 2007/2008. This was the first time that I used a professional CRT monitor and wow, now I want one. Thank you Antoine for the amazing game and the beer mats!
A visitor named Thomas talked with me about 3D, PBR, photogrammetry, Unity, and more! I did not expect that! On sunday he came back with an amazing MagaDrive game to show me : Ranger X! I fell in love with it immediately, the game is just gorgeous with all its parallax effects, perfect palette swaps, and fake 3D along with plenty of good gameplay ideas.
Because I’m in search of an internship I had the chance to be introduced to Florent Gorges, one of the main french writers when it comes to the video game subject, by Matthias Czinober, who founded Retrotaku back in 2008! Then I attended a conference about the story of the GameBoy by Florent Gorges where I learnt some exclusive infos about its development like where the name of the console comes from and that the Game Gear is actually kind of a Nintendo console!
The collectors’ stand was great! Manu came with Nintendo cards (we always hear about them but never see them) and toys released before the NES. Matthias showed some nice drawings he collects, and Christophe (A.K.A. Estariol) was there with a good load of cool Sega stuff and introduced me to the Nemcoshow association for my internship.
I’m glad I met the audio-video journalist PP Garcia! I spent some time with him, had my share of laughters. He helped me catch Marcus so I could have a chance to talk to him about my internship, they were both very nice! PP shot some nice stuff in a DeLorean modified like the one of Back to the Future, whe should see it in his next video!
Thank you to everyone for this amazing weekend!
PS: Did I mention that I’m looking for an internship?
Two more photos…
Augustin Liglet 