For this second entry in the ongoing series, I've taken photos of Cartels & Cutthroat$ for the Apple II, Micro Illustrator for the Commodore Plus/4 and C-64, and Deathkeep (AD&D) for the 3DO. Enjoy:

This week launches a new series of interviews with Interplay programmer and designer Peter Oliphant. Peter has an amazing history as a child actor, math whiz, and finally game designer, with boatloads of interesting stories about all of it. In this first part of the interview, we focus on Peter's work for Mattel, creating some of the early handheld electronic games like World Championship Football and Gravity. Then we get into his work as an actor, working alongside such notables as Dick Van Dyke and Jimmy Stewart, as well as some cult classics like Hotrods to Hell.

You can download the mp4 here.

If you regularly enjoy Matt Chat, why not do your part to keep it going strong? I know it may look like nothing but fun, but believe me, I put a lot of real work into making these shows each week. Why not help me out by making a small donation or setting up a subscription today? It only takes a minute, and you'll be doing YOUR part to keep these interviews and retrospectives coming. Thanks!

BillWhile casual photos and videos are fine for posting something quickly, sometimes readers want a bit more quality. While I'm not going to put a lot of effort into these per se, i.e., you won't mistake these for studio quality, I will take a bit more care in taking and posting anything in this particular series. For this first entry, I focused on three of the most recent additions to my collection, Tomy's electro-mechanical tabletop, Daring Driver, Commodore's Gorf for the C-64, and the 2012 Ultima Collector's Guide. Enjoy:

Just a quick update, mostly to put to rest concerns that I've given up. First off, I have to thank TripHamer for pointing me to a series of videos on Unity called 3D Buzz. My initial impression of the site wasn't good; there are a LOT of videos there; so much, in fact, that it's easy simply to get overwhelmed and leave immediately. Eventually, though, I took the time to explore the site a bit, and found a series there called creating a simple 2D shooter in Unity with C#. I figured that project didn't sound too bad, and if I couldn't even figure out how to create a 2D shooter in Unity (something I can do in my sleep with Gamemaker), I was out of my league.

Woot! recently had a deal on an 8GB Eye-Fi memory card that I took advantage of for the express purpose of no-brainer automatic photo uploads from my digital camera directly to my Flickr account, which I thought would provide a smoother and higher quality workflow than using my iPhone 4. As such, I set the Eye-Fi up last night and took some very casual photos. While the transfer process really didn't go well (I'll need to experiment a bit more), transferring only two photos correctly and requiring me to manually transfer the rest, the end result was still some photos of recent items in my collection that also happened to be in my staging area, which I decided to share below with some minor commentary so the initial work wouldn't be totally wasted. Enjoy:

Hi, folks! Probably not the best time given the recent public flogging I've been getting over my Gothic retrospective, but what the heck. Here's my seventh podcast. This one is admittedly a ramble, but generally focused on making games with Gamemaker and the trials and tribulations of becoming an indie game developer. Is making a "serious" indie game worth the effort if you know your work will make little to no money--and, worse--may only be seen by a dozen or so people, tops? Is the love of making games enough in and of itself to keep you motivated all the way through a year or more of development? In my case, the answer is no.

Download the podcast here.

It's Gothic time! Yes, finally, after countless requests, Matt Chat covers the 2001 German CRPG Gothic. Of course, this game launched a trilogy, and apparently Risen is keeping the lineage alive. Lots of fun stuff in this game, and some pioneering stuff like the ability to skin animals (you can even get their teeth and claws!), cook food (grilled chicken!), and much more. Plagued by one of the slowest starts in any CRPG, though, it hasn't attracted the attention that it really deserves. If you can get through the first 3-4 hours of it, you'll be hooked. Just don't blow all your ore at the swamp weed stand!

Download the mp4 here.