The Void – a Virtual Reality Theme Park?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 12, 2015

When I was a kid, I read the science fiction novel “Dream Park” by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. This was after Dungeons & Dragons had become something of a cult hit. The story followed sort of a live-action role-playing experience inside a virtual reality amusement park. As life imitates art (which imitated life…), people started trying […]

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How to Deal With The Game Backlog

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 5, 2015

In a very good year, I’d get maybe 12 – 13 new games. That was back in the 1990s, and I’d end up paying full price or maybe a 25% or 50% discount for something older. Every once in a while I’d score a major bargain and pick up an old title like The Magic […]

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Killing aliens by my daughter’s crib

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 1, 2015

When my daughter was an infant, I played X-Com. That’s a weird way to phrase it. I’d graduated from college around six months earlier, and had just started my career as a game developer. My wife and I had worked out a schedule that unfortunately didn’t leave us much time to see each other during […]

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1.21 GIGAWATTS!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 14, 2015

A friend ordered me a book for my birthday. Unfortunately, it hadn’t arrived on time, but they’d given her a PDF of the book in the meantime. So to tide me over until the hard-copy’s arrival, she gave me a thumb drive with the PDF on it. “Do you want the thumb drive back?” “No, it’s […]

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Geek, Game Developer, Author, Dancer (!!!)…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 13, 2015

When I was a kid, I dreaded growing up. As far as I could tell, once I grew up and had to become a responsible adult, life would be boring. Yeah. About that. Not so much. If anything, the opposite. Granted, some of the things which I consider kind of fun now would have seemed a […]

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Why I love science fiction

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 10, 2015

I have never known the moon upon which man has never set foot. I realize that most of my audience here is in the same boat. In my case, technically I predate the Apollo 11 moon landing by just a few weeks. It changed in my lifetime, although I was far too young to recognize […]

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Play Pac-Man in Google Maps

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 1, 2015

In case you haven’t heard…  in what is probably the BEST Google April Fool’s Stunt of all time… you can go to Google Maps and play Pac-Man out in the center of your street map. You need a relatively dense selection of streets in your map for it to work, but the tool will generate […]

Filed Under: Free Games, Geek Life - Comments: Comments are off for this article

The “Totally True” Story of Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 10, 2015

Mega64 did their traditional roast of this year’s winner of the lifetime achievement award at GDC. This time, it was Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series. He gamely played along. I guess if you are totally unfamiliar with the Final Fantasy games (and their big-screen movie… um, attempt), then this […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Retro - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Answering the Important Questions… Apache vs. Dragon

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 11, 2015

You know, we didn’t have documentaries like this when I was a kid. Instead, we had to research the material ourselves, the hard way, and turn it into an RPG or a wargame. Then we’d discover that the ol’ M-230 chain gun needs a critical hit to damage Smaug in a vital area, like his […]

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FanX Report – 2015

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 2, 2015

I spent the weekend at the Salt Lake Comic Con FanXperience – sort of an offshoot of Salt Lake Comic Con. As far as the differences between this and the full-fledged Comic Con, it felt like there were fewer panels, and the celebrities were pulled from media outside of traditional geek fandom. I guess it’s […]

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Volume Control

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 30, 2015

Okay, I’m not an expert on polishing games. I wish I was. Maybe after I have another dozen games under my belt, I’ll know more. We’ll see. But here’s something to me that appears obvious, but maybe that’s just because I haven’t made a game for Android yet: When a game runs, it should respect […]

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When Radio Shack was cool…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 13, 2015

It’s funny. As mush as I might embrace change and improvements, there’s still a part of me that still expects the world to be exactly the same as it was when I was fifteen. At least the parts I interact with. When I walk into a mall, a part of me still wants to seek out […]

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Twenty Years of Kicking Butt and Making Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 4, 2014

The original Sony Playstation is twenty years old now. At least if you count its Japanese release. I suddenly feel old. I got my first professional game development job in October 1994. My studio, SingleTrac, was a new startup (I was employee #16!) under contract with Sony to produce a couple of new games for […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Geek Life, Retro - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 27, 2014

For readers in the U.S., Happy Thanksgiving! For everyone else, Happy Thursday! This one will be a little weird, as it’s the first time in almost twenty years our eldest daughter won’t be with us. She’s serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in South Carolina. It’ll be weirder […]

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The arcade games of my dreams. Literally.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 25, 2014

I had another dream about a “lost” arcade game the other night. I have these dreams periodically. I don’t know why, especially since the whole “age of the arcades” was a relatively brief chapter of my life by this point. Maybe they are repressed memories of my playing Polybius that are trying to break to […]

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KHAN! I mean, CON! Come play Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath at SL Comic Con

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 2, 2014

I seem to be making up for my lack of convention-going as a kid later in life. This sprint / summer, we’ve been to the Salt Lake Comic Con “Fan Xperience” convention, Steamfest, the Fantasy & Renaissance Festival. We went down to Cedar City to hit a play during the annual Shakespearean Festival. Last weekend […]

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