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Got an email this week from the CEO of Genesis Interactive, which runs GotGame, a social portal for gamers. Asserting that “PC gamers spend a quarter of their time in game waiting for either teammates to log in or games to load,” they’ve developed a browser — called Rogue — that allows you to look at porn surf the web, without leaving your game and potentially missing out on the action.
Fans of pre-graphical RPGs like Nethack and Rogue might occasionally wander out from their UNIX labs and find themselves confronted with a modern web browser.
Once the initial shock of daylight and antialiased fonts has worn off, they will probably need to chill out with a quick dungeon hack. Tombs Of Asciiroth is a labour of love — recreating the look and feel of an ASCII roguelike in Firefox.
There is full-length quest to be had wandering the titular Tombs, and the usually obscure keyboard commands are illustrated with a nice tutorial level with pop-up tip windows.
It can be a bit slow, and you will need to install Google Gears if you want to save your game, but there is plenty of old school fun to be had. You can’t not like a game that includes the phrase “Use the sword against hostile Ampersands”.
The Tombs Of Asciiroth [Icculus.org]
We have no interest in the 80′s RPG remakes, little love for the bulky Sega Genesis controller and very limited fondness in the overwhelming scent of cinnamon. But mix the three components together, and you have a fascinating little console we’d spend at least one of our three nuts on.
Greg Sanders is the modder behind this Dungeons of Doom-playing machine. Running off just a 9V battery, the Cinnamonlution (we just made that up but like it alot) can power one Sega controller and video-only RCA out to a television (all audio is through a headphone port).
For those who are feeling crafty, the project was built from just $US21.50 in parts. It will also probably cost you any future in hand modelling, as soldering burns don’t make for good TV.
