Blog of independent video game developer and digital media artist Matt Sephton. Featuring vintage Macintosh, game development, digital artwork, Japanese esoterica, video game reviews, hacks and tips, and much more.| blog.gingerbeardman.com
Surprise! My latest game, Wormhole, is included in the Comet web browser from Perplexity. It started as an idea to replace the Chrome Dino game and grew into...| blog.gingerbeardman.com
I’ve started work on the next in my 1-bit Woodblocks series: “Tekagami” (Ito Shinsui’s “Hand Mirror”). So it’s a good time to talk about how I turned an iPad...| blog.gingerbeardman.com
My favourite DÉ DÉ MOUSE tracks seamlessly mixed together with great pleasure! Also featuring hitomitoi, AZK, TANUKI, DENONBU, Aki Shirokane, Yuka Nagase, Shin-ski, Kakeru, and more. High-energy feel-good vibes to fill even the rainiest day with rays of sunshine. ✌️ Listen on MixCloud. --- TimeArtistReleaseSongYear 00:00w/ Milk TalksingleBeautiful Criminal2024 04:11w/ Yumenokessho ROSEsingleDarling of Shooting Star2025 07:04soloJust Brokenhearted EPI Want You2025 10:44soloJust Brokenhea...| Get Info
An interesting side-effect of iOS Low Data Mode is that it shows you the exact size of an app update for your device, often a tiny fraction of the listed app size. This is because (delta) updates contain only the files that have changed. Even a first-time install is smaller due to app slicing/thinning containing only what is needed for that device. The larger size is the universal app size containing assets for all devices. It’s simpler and less confusing for everybody to see the same size....| Get Info
I’ve decided to donate all of my Playdate earnings (my personal take-home, after Panic and payment processor fees) to The Cybersmile Foundation, starting Jul...| blog.gingerbeardman.com
My latest mix comprises Japanese ambient music.| blog.gingerbeardman.com
An hour of songs with “Moai” somewhere in the title …for no reason other than it sounded like a fun challenge. And because Moai are cool. Why? Why not? ✨🗿✨| blog.gingerbeardman.com
There are many ways to do automatic build version number incrementing in Xcode. I don’t know of any really easy universal way of doing it, so this is simply ...| blog.gingerbeardman.com
After years of unsuccessful attempts to find the name of a long-forgotten app through Google, I tried pasting my query into Gemini: “Back in my teens I saw a software demo for a Mac/Windows app that tracked what you were doing and offered to complete repetitive tasks for you. Like renaming all files in a folder it would interrupt after a few and offer to do the rest. Maybe late 80s or early 90s.” Gemini instantly responded with the app by name and with references. (out of all the services...| Get Info
Here’s a 30 minute vocal drum’n’bass DJ Mix, all but one tracks are from Jan to May 2025. Plus a few little surprise samples for you, the listener. Photo of Sean Young as Rachael in Blade Runner (1982). Listen on MixCloud or via the alternatives below. --- TimestampArtistSong (Video) 00:00MameyudoufuLiterally 1998 03:45Fred V & Nu-LaSparks 06:50MallratHideaway 09:35London Elektricity, BCee & Ruth RoyallDiamonds in the Rain 12:10London ElektricityLife Is But A Dream 17:13London Elektrici...| Get Info
I was looking through Comptiq, Vol. 41, April 1988 and spotted an illustration showing the relative size of 2” floppy disks—used in some word processors at the time—compared to more common floppy disk sizes at the time: 8”, 5”, and 3.5”. Which got me thinking about the ever decreasing size of storage and how it might make for a nice illustration on a T-shirt. So I created technical drawings of the following media in decreasing size: 5.25” floppy disk 3.5” floppy disk MiniDisc ...| Get Info
I neglected to blog about this in October 2024, so here it is now. Monokai Pro Vibrant is my fork of the unofficial Monokai Pro theme for Nova editor, by Tony Keiser. My fork has a few quality of life changes: Theme Vibrancy is enabled, making focused and unfocused windows more distinguishable Colour tweaks improve contrast when highlighting found instances of search terms Comments are now italicised I use the Spectrum variation of the theme with the IBM Plex Mono font to great effect. --- Mo...| Get Info
Back in November 2020 I was exploring the PC-98 back catalog, and stumbled across a strange game called Band-kun. Strange in that it’s a 1-bit black and white game on a platform that was capable of colour, and also because it’s a hybrid adventure/management/music/rhythm game. I was smitten. --- The Idea I was already developing for the Playdate, a modern 1-bit platform, and it struck me as the perfect opportunity to create a remaster of the game. So, I set my sights on securing the licenc...| Get Info
I order weird old stuff from Japan a few times a year: old magazines, CD-ROMs, digital watches, strategy guides, video games, playing cards, books, artwork and any other old tat that takes my fancy. The way this is usually done is by ordering through a proxy service that receives the goods on your behalf and combines and ships them to you at your convenience. There are many such proxy services, each with their own website, fee structure, shipping costs, and other pros and cons. I grew tired o...| Get Info
So, my game HERD NERD is a winner in the “I, REBEL” game jam, hosted by Atari and Jeff Minter. We are delighted to let you know after hours of play and deliberation - Jeff Minter himself chose your game as THIRD PLACE WINNER Your game stood out in all the right ways: creative, clever, weird and totally nailing the theme. The team (and the judges!) were blown away by your take on the theme and your execution. ✨ What an honour! ✨ All three winners receive the same prize, but honestly I ...| Get Info
On September 30th, 2023, I was sitting in the cinema waiting for an anniversary screening of Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense” to begin when I got a message from Panic. They asked if I was familiar with Sensible Soccer. Naturally, I was—I’ve played it since its release in 1992, as man and boy. Back in 2000, I’d even made my own arcade-style take on it called Simple Soccer, and in 2002 I designed an official Sensible Soccer T-shirt that was sold on the high street. Panic had no idea ...| Get Info
I plan to occasionally list abandoned projects that I’ve decided not to take any further. This one is a prototype for a “firework builder” puzzle game. I was calling it Hanabi, the Japanese word for firework, but I’m not sure I would have stuck with that for the final name. It’s a visual programming-based puzzle video game along the lines of Human Resource Machine and influenced by block-based visual programming language Scratch. I submitted it to the Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant...| Get Info
You may or may not know that I run the website moai.games which features a catalogue of screenshots showing Moai appearances in video games. At the time of writing there are over 1000 games listed going all the way back to the early 1980s. ✨👋🗿✨ Tokyo Game Life reached out and I chatted to them a bit about all of that cool and nerdy stuff. Listen in your usual podcast app or using the embedded player below.| Get Info
For almost six years, Playdate (a little handheld gaming device with a crank input and 1-bit screen) was a space where I did some of my most creative and personal work. I embraced its quirks, shipped over twenty releases, and explored what a tiny, constrained device could do. It brought me joy, challenge, and a sense of purpose. But over time, that feeling changed. Following a difficult incident in October 2024 involving targeted harassment—admitted to by the developer responsible, but met ...| Get Info
I recently wanted to track my heart rate and sleeping patterns, but do not want an Apple Watch. So I ended up buying a cheap Amazfit Band 7 from Decathlon sports store. The one I bought was reduced because of a damaged box—I love a good bargain! It’s a cool little thing and goes for an unbelievable 18 days on a single charge with default settings. Since I bought it I’ve had to charge it once! Even more amazing is that this little thing runs apps and watch faces powered by JavaScript, ha...| Get Info
I’m releasing an expanded version of my game Shark Turtle for macOS and Windows. Grab it at itch: gingerbeardman.itch.io/shark-turtle-desktop/ The result is a feature-rich, native desktop version of SameGame with fast calculation, animated block removal, mouse/keyboard control, incremental scoring, variable grid sizes each with their own high score table, multi-level undo, lots of options, and great music. It’s a lot of fun and ideal to play little-by-little when you have a spare moment, ...| Get Info
After reaching 1 million files in my Macintosh Magazine Media project, I thought it would be cool to post about something I found recently in those discs. I get a real buzz rediscovering something like this after more than 30 years have passed. It’s a sweet little point and click adventure game for Classic Macintosh called “Station: Travel Through the Four Seasons” by Mitsuo Isaka, about taking train rides through the Japanese countryside. You meet and interact with a variety of people ...| Get Info
I am proud to announce that my Macintosh Magazine Media project has surpassed my self-imposed goal of 1 million files, an achievement that fills me with both immense satisfaction and slight bewilderment. If you’ve never heard of it before: it’s an archive of vintage media containing mostly Macintosh files sourced from Japanese magazines, but featuring content from all over the world. A treasure trove time capsule for vintage computer nerds like myself. Many thanks to my Patreon subscriber...| Get Info
This is an expanded version of a post I made to the MPU Talk forum. Visible Those I often need to interact with: Bartender (menu bar item manager; old version) Dato (alt clock and calendar with timezones; old version) iStat Menus (network speed; old version) xBar (custom menu items powered by my own shell scripts) Proxy Status Software Sales Stats GitHub Issues Eject Volumes Caffeine (used to set Mac not to sleep) Hidden Those I infrequently need to interact with: Bookmark manager hotkey app ...| Get Info
DiscMaster is an alternative interface for collections of software that have been uploaded to Internet Archive. It allows you to drill into disk images at the file level and preview the contents in-place, download individual folders, zips, images, or whatever you like. It’s been around for a while but has become bigger and better with the introduction of DiscMaster 2, which is ingesting huge amounts of new files daily. But how to keep up with this firehose!? Automated Searching One of the g...| Get Info
I’ve made a bunch of usability and quality of life changes to the sfxr.lua demo app. fix: getDirectoryItems (from a PR) fix: off by one sample length error (from a PR) fix: space bar was not playing the sound fix: selected wave form was being ignored (sounds were always square wave) fix: loaded wave form not updating the interface (but sound was playing correctly) add: clone method added to sfxr.lua add: history form with list of previous sounds, save current, and undo/redo add: “play on ...| Get Info
As I sadly move away from game dev on Playdate, I’ve released a couple of interesting old things… --- SHARK TURTLE This is a version of SameGame (さめがめ) originally released under the name CHAIN SHOT in 1985 by Kuniaki “Morisuke” Moribe for Fujitsu FM-8 home computer. The concept is as old as Tetris, perhaps even older, and at one time SameGame in its many guises was more popular than Tetris in Japan. One version had an active modding scene and some had strategy guide books. It ...| Get Info
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of an almost forgotten WiiWare game called MaBoShi. I’ve posted a review, the staff roll/credits (for the first time in English), written an FAQ strategy guide, managed to score 1 million in its “circle” game on my Nintendo DS, created a way for you to play it more easily on your iPhone, and even finally succeeded to make my own version of the “circle” game over the course of many years. I never miss an opportunity to wax lyrical about its genius, s...| Get Info
You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off! The Italian Job is based on the 1969 cult classic movie of the same name, and released very late into the life of PlayStation in fact over a year into the life of PlayStation 2. It reviewed well and charted at number one for a good amount of time, even winning a “Best PlayStation Game of 2002” award from the Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of it let alone played it. It was o...| Get Info
I wondered how feasible it is to make Love2D games “on the go” (on a train, in bed, etc). Often I want to try a quick sketch, work up a prototype, or simply verify an algorithm. I’m happy to say it’s possible! --- Runners Love2D Studio Available since Jan 2024 Free apps.apple.com/gb/app/love2d-studio/id6474188075 this allows you to manage love files and run them on iPhone Love2D errors can even be copied to the clipboard! Love2D Game Maker Available since March 2024 Paid apps.apple.co...| Get Info
Dot underscore ._ and .DS_Store files are macOS-specific metadata cruft generated for foreign filesystems (like FAT32 or exFAT) that are not usually needed for disks that are mainly used on other platforms. Digital cameras, music players, e-book readers, and handheld gaming devices can get confused when they encounter these odd files during file system parsing and directory listing. The problem is compounded if the devices naïvely process files by looking only at the file extension as they w...| Get Info
I was rooting around and stumbled across my old Collins Gem Basic Facts: Computers, a glossary or dictionary of computing terms. This “New Edition” is the Third edition, published in 1991, so at this point in time almost 35 years old. That year I read it cover to cover, multiple times. It was around the time my family got an Atari ST. I consumed everything I could get my hands on regarding computers. Naturally, this being 1991 the “world wide web” was but a twinkle in the eye of Tim B...| Get Info
Given the ongoing discussion about whether or not TETRIS turns 40 years old in 2024 or 2025, I keep my eye out for early mentions of the game. As a bonus, this is an item that at the time of me posting it to social media a couple of days ago had not been covered in English anywhere else on the internet. As far as I’m aware this is the earliest printed reference mentioning the conception date of Tetris. It’s a short interview with Alexey Pajitnov in Japanese PC magazine, Oh! X, conducted m...| Get Info
I just added a bunch of backdated posts to the blog, mostly to do with my early games and apps: 2022-04-23Wire Hang Redux for 64-bit macOS 2015-03-14Boom Matt 2011-12-12Wire Hang Redux: update 2004-06-20Wire Hang Redux 2002-08-23Terra Firma 2002-03-27Yaking 2001-02-14Bendertron 2000-09-29Simple Soccer 1998-12-01My old Atari ST software 1998-11-16My old Windows software| Get Info
Japhy Riddle makes art, music, films, and animations. He’s also a retro technology enthusiast. Naturally, he combines all these skills and interests into wonderful creative output! I follow Japhy on social media and love his high quality videos and animations. Check him out on YouTube! Voxel slugs traversing an invisible cube’s edges A few of days ago a new animation of his popped up: it shows three coloured slugs moving around the edge of an invisible cube, positioned and directed so tha...| Get Info
Some time in 2020 I started collecting CD-ROMs from old Macintosh magazines. Whilst the discs are of Japanese origin—because the supply was plentiful during the extended spring clean of lockdown—they contain a great deal of software from all over the world and a lot of it is therefore in English. They’re an amazing source of old gold: sofware, images, demos, documentation, and many other files. As of today I have 460+ discs totalling almost 1 million files. After the collection was well...| Get Info
Over the Christmas break I had a spare week after a trip to Ireland was cancelled. What should I do with the time? I was already aware of the upcoming DreamDisc ‘24 game jam and had done some reading a couple of months back scoping out a Lua-based SDK called ANTIRUINS Engine that looked familiar enough to me with my experience of LÖVE (love2d) and Playdate SDK. But what should I make with it? If I could get something fun up and running as quickly as possible it would prove the point and ke...| Get Info
2024 was a bit of meh year for me. A lot of time away from working, which was necessary but a process that I find difficult as I’m at my best when I’m creating. Here’s to 2025! Two viral blog posts dwarfed all other writing: Emoji history: the missing years (10 May, 15K views) and Stapler: I remade a 32 year old classic Macintosh app (10 Aug, 14K views) which heralded the start of me trying other things development-wise. I’ve created macOS and iOS apps using Swift and SwiftUI, tools u...| Get Info
Initially I had thought this year wasn’t as good as last year in terms of music, but listening again to the best tracks from the first 40-something weeks of the year proved otherwise. It was a great year. Most music I was sent by the Apple Music algorithm continued to be Japanese, thanks to my ongoing deep dive. During the initial playlist curation I was struck by a fairly clean divide of dance and not-dance. I was also still listening to Soichi Terada’s Essential Mix from 2022. All of th...| Get Info
Golf video games are one of my passions, ever since World Class Leader Board and Microprose Golf on Atari ST. These days my favourite golf games are still the old ones. In particular I have a soft spot for T&E SOFT’s New 3D Golf Simulation series with its blue skies, bright colours, and FM synth tunes. This series has a long history so I thought I’d do my best to recap and share some little-known knowledge. --- Translation Guides To make it easier for you to play the Japanese games mentio...| Get Info
So the Macro extension and a bunch of smaller extensions were supposed to be it, but it’s so much fun to create these that whenever I get an idea for an extension I can’t help making it. This time I wanted to keep track of how many times I’m calling certain functions in my code. That’s quite a niche requirement so I made a more general purpose word counter with sidebar, thresholds and coloured blobs! You can configure a list of words to count, and the thesholds that will trigger the g...| Get Info
After creating a bunch of smaller Nova Extensions quite quickly I wondered how far I could push things, just as a personal challenge. I had the idea of implementing a Macro text recording and playback system. There was something similar in TextMate editor, and whilst the Nova API doesn’t currently allow as sophisticated a system I thought it was something still worth exploring. Design of the system was incremental, with improvements and simplifications that came about through using it. It t...| Get Info
I’m a big believer in solving problems yourself if it’s possible rather than waiting for app updates that might never arrive. Making extensions for the Nova editor that I do most of my programming and blogging in is so much fun! So, here are some of my own creation: View all: extensions.panic.com/extensions/com.gingerbeardman/ --- YAML Tag Picker Allows you to easily select tags for the front matter in your blog posts. It scans your existing posts for tags and presents them in a Choice P...| Get Info
Back in 2021 I had a look around and decided to base this incarnation of my blog on an open-source Jekyll theme called “Type”, though I’ve changed and added so much it’s quite some distance from the original as it stands today. As I added blog posts the performance became much worse. Initially I blamed Jekyll for this, until I took a closer look. What I learned was that the blog theme did some things in sub-optimal ways, so over the course of 2024 I have corrected as many of them as I...| Get Info
Back in 2012 I wanted to make a quick game for the AGBIC game jam (A Game By Its Cover; make a game inspired by the imaginary cover art from the Famicase exhibition). There’s only one rule for this game jam, which is taken very seriously: respect the wishes of the original artists, and don’t appropriate their designs without consent. Otherwise you’re free to do what you want. And you can choose a cover as inspiration for your game from the entire archive of Famicase entries, so every ye...| Get Info
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I had to give an impromptu presentation about something I didn’t know much about. The goal of the task was to see how well we could ad-lib a presentation under pressure. Everybody in the room had to think of a topic whilst waiting for our turn. The person next to me couldn’t think of anything and asked me what I had thought of, I said “the off-side rule” (it’s a football/soccer thing, don’t worry about it). Then that person was called befo...| Get Info
Let’s celebrate! we just hit 1000 games at my database of moai in video games 🗿 today is Fiestas Patrias (Independence Day) in Chile 🇨🇱 So here’s some “Moai-chan-dise” ✨ t-shirts and stickers in both silly and serious styles special “relaxing” sticker by @Vxcl --- T-shirts Various sizes and colours. gingerbeardman.creator-spring.com/listing/moai-serious-tee gingerbeardman.creator-spring.com/listing/moai-silly-tee --- Stickers 3-inch longest side, on clear vinyl. gingerb...| Get Info
Back in the mid-1990s I was using Windows 95/98 and running up against bugs, problems, driver issues, unexpected things happening. I would often end up on the Microsoft Knowledge Base support web pages, where the issue would often be accompanied by the line “This behavior is by design”, which remains in use to this very day. This mantra has stuck with me over the years, and it came to light in a recent discussion about the design of Lucas Pope’s Mars After Midnight for the Playdate hand...| Get Info
A couple of days ago I was reading on Hacker News about a feature in some Linux window managers where they allow collections of tabs from different apps. This reminded me of BeOS, but at the same time it reminded me of an app from 1992 for classic Macintosh called Stapler, and how I’d talked about that and it’s one-time spiritual successor, LaunchList, in the past. These were both similar apps that allowed you to collect and launch all the apps, files, folders, documents, related to a spe...| Get Info
Sharp’s Denshi Techō (電子手帳) were a range of electronic notebooks or organisers, marketed as Bware in Japan and Wizard or IQ elsewhere. In Japan they won a prestigious G-mark Good Design Award in 1988 and in the USA an episode of Seinfeld was the prize. As well as being home to some of the earliest emoji these devices could run software from IC cards (solid state storage). There were about 30 games released in this format, everything from classics like Sokoban, Shanghai, Lode Runner...| Get Info
Earlier this year I made a workflow for Alfred app to allow easy searching of Moby Games. Earlier this week it was released on Alfred Gallery. --- Download alfred.app/workflows/gingerbeardman/moby-games/ The workflow requires an API key that you can get instantly via your Moby Games profile page. If you’d like access to the free API (not-for-profit use), create a MobyGames account and then visit your profile page. Click the ‘API’ link under your user name to sign up for an API key. If y...| Get Info
Recently at Internet Archive a “glitch” (their choice of word) deleted a great many accounts, including my account that had been at archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman since 2015. Somewhat surprisingly, they are not reaching out to affected users but rather waiting for them to create new accounts and silently relinking their old uploads only if the new account has same email as the old account. Otherwise, all profile metadata, favourites, lists, reviews, posts, collections, web archives, ...| Get Info
Yesterday on Twitter the inimitable Morten Just posted a preview of a tool he’s created that wrap ffmpeg to allow movies, such screen recordings but pretty much anything, to be re-encoded to a smaller filesize. I responded with a trick I use to do the same on “right-click” context menu using a macOS app called ContextMenu, and others said it was possible to do it using Automator (with some caveats). In this blog post I’ll compare the two. But first… let’s talk about how we will ma...| Get Info
For June and July of 2024 the Shibuya Pixel Art Contest has been running, a welcome return after it not happening in 2023. Entries are open all over the world, but can only be submitted to Twitter using the hashtag #shibuyapixelart2024. You have to include a name for the artwork and its original pixel dimensions (though it’s OK to rescale small artwork so it can be seen more easily). There are special categories for 16×16px and 32×32px artwork, and then a category for anything bigger up t...| Get Info
Given the ongoing discussion about whether or not TETRIS is 40 years old in 2024 (I say not), I thought it would be cool to add something interesting and relevant to the conversation. As a bonus, this is an item that at the time of writing is not covered in English anywhere else on the internet. A Japanese book about TETRIS, written in the first year the game was available outside of the USSR: テトリス10万点への解法 (天の巻) TETRIS: The Solution to 100,000 Points (Heavenly Scrol...| Get Info
A little over a year ago I wrote a screenplay/pitch for a video game based on an animated short film created by THE LINE Animation Studio: the opening film from the CICLOPE Festival in 2016. I’d like to make this game but I need support to do so. Until then I figured I’d post it here for all to read. --- CICLOPE Think of this as the game trailer. Watch it before or after reading. More information on the making of the animation at thelineanimation.com/work/ciclope/ --- Game Overview Our ta...| Get Info
I use an Android tablet for reading ebooks. My favourite ebook reader is the Sony PRS-650 which was ahead of its time in a lot of ways. But these days I like to have internet connectivity whilst reading so I can do both dictionary lookups, Wikipedia lookups, and quick Google searches. But at the same time I don’t really want the total distraction of an iPad, or Android tablet, so the ideal solution for me was to use KOReader - an ebook reading app heavily inspired by the Sony Reader interfa...| Get Info
Emigre magazine was a highly influential graphic design publication. It was known for its innovative and experimental approach to typography and graphic design, pushing the boundaries of traditional design norms—for better or worse. The magazine was published from 1984 (year of the Macintosh launch) until 2005, and during its run it played a critical role in shaping the discourse around digital design and typography. It was founded by Rudy VanderLans and his wife Zuzana Licko. --- Tell me a...| Get Info
During my research into vintage Japanese drawing software, I came across some devices that had built in sketch or handwritten memo functions. I bought a couple of them to see if they did anything cool or interesting. These sorts of devices are pre-internet, so there’s not much about them online, and they can’t be emulated, so the only way to find out what they do is to get first hand experience by reading the manual or, better, using one yourself. It’s difficult to find these devices in...| Get Info
I’m really enjoying Dolby Atmos, “spatial audio”, or “surround sound” as we used to call it. There is so much music in this format on streaming platforms, both new albums and classic albums. I wanted to listen to Björk’s first four albums in “spatial audio”, but they don’t currently exist in that format on streaming platforms. But I was reminded about DVD-Audio versions of these from back in the day, and I could find most of mine, so I figured I’d have a go of converting ...| Get Info
Apple recently changed the App Store rules to allow emulators, which means we’re now seeing emulators for classic video game consoles available for download! This is great news for a retro gamer like myself. Delta is one such emulator that currently focuses on Nintendo platforms: NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, SNES, N64 and DS. I thought it would be fun to play my favourite Nintendo DS game: MaBoShi. This is an odd choice of game for a few reasons, but it really tests what Delta and the mel...| Get Info
First, a little bit of Macintosh History. You probably know that on modern macOS you can select a file in Finder, on your Desktop, or in an app, and send it to the Trash by choosing the Move to Trash menu item, or by pressing Cmd+Backspace/Delete. This keyboard shortcut was added in System 7.5.3 where it was largely unadvertised and somewhat of a secret feature, but quickly became indispensable for those who knew. Of course, these days it is proudly displayed in macOS Finder menu. Fast forwar...| Get Info
I use some software called Huginn to do various automated web searching and scraping. One use case is checking the status of all the institutions where The Great Wave is currently on view, or not. I also have it do automatic auction searches for various items I’m looking for, that would otherwise take up a bunch of my time. And much more. Huginn, we have a problem Huginn is installed on one of my web servers and does its thing on hourly, every day of the week without fail. Well, that’s n...| Get Info
--- 1984 In early 1984 Scottish band The Blue Nile released their debut album “A Walk Across The Rooftops” including the single Tinseltown in the Rain. After 40 years the album is still regarded as a classic, and in all that time the band have released only three other albums. 2010 A user called XTC343 uploaded some files to a USENET newsgroup: a fan-made multi-channel version of The Blue Nile’s “A Walk Across The Rooftops” album. The .nfo file said only: This is an upmix from stere...| Get Info
At the end of 2023 I bought a one-in-a-million find from Japan: it’s a postcard from Barbara Nessim’s residency at The Ginza Art Space, September 26 thru October 19 1986. This residency came on the back of her breakthrough early computer art that was done on a Telidon system, a type of Teletext graphics system that displayed rudimentary vector graphics. The postcard artwork is not digital and is dated 6-86. The details on the rear are set in the Chicago typeface designed by Susan Kare for...| Get Info
Kenta Cho is a Japanese indie game developer, who has been active since the 1980s. He became well-known in the West in the early 2000s with a series of bullet hell shoot-em-ups. In 2021 he created a total 139 games, which is one hell of a lockdown project. In early 2024 his game Paku Paku went viral, as “1D Pac-Man”, a year after it was made. I reached out to him with some questions and he was gracious enough to answer them candidly, from one game developer to another. --- I’ve been fol...| Get Info
It’s 2024 and for some years now Apple have stopped supporting non-retina displays. From their perspective it makes sense given that all of their devices run retina displays, but from the user’s perspective it’s annoying given that so many of us are still using non-retina displays as either an external main display or as a secondary display. Not all of us are capable or comfortable buying multi-thousand dollar 5K displays. My personal situation is that I run a portrait display so that I...| Get Info
At my core I’m a software guy. I don’t really get attached to hardware: in my mind it exists only as a conduit to software. I use emulation whenever I can to benefit from the increased convenience and reliability. But when I can’t… I buy old devices, and with old devices come old problems. I’m fascinated by vintage digital art software, from my beginnings on Atari ST, though classic Macintosh and vintage Japanese PCs, to handhelds like Palm devices or, in this case, a PocketPC runni...| Get Info
In April 2023, after I’d been listening to a bit of Japanese music during the last stretch of making the game Sparrow Solitaire for Playdate, Apple Music started recommending me Japanese music in the weekly #NewMusicMix playlists. Every week I post my favourite track to social media, keeping the best of each week as curated playlists. You can follow me on Apple Music @mattsephton. So I thought it would be nice to make a summary playlist of the best of the best! It consists of the tracks I...| Get Info
2023 was a year where I feel my blogging really hit its stride. I’ve spent most of the year trying to comprehend 2022’s traumatic events, the lingering impact of which continues to affect me daily. Positive outcomes are that it gave me a little more time to write, and I developed some small games that might not have existed otherwise. And one of those, YOYOZO, has received a Game Of The Year accolade! How many posts? 40 posts (up from 18 in 2022) Most popular posts According to Google Ana...| Get Info
Recently I’ve been following a trend in macro-pads, specialised/bespoke keyboards that provide an easy way to trigger keyboard shortcuts. A host of small companies have flooded the market with modified Bluetooth numeric pads that target Procreate, and Figma have teamed up with Work Louder to create a branded keypad with additional jog and rotary dials. But none of these seem quite right for me. I have so many controllers and devices already it felt better to make use of what I have to hand....| Get Info
Thoru Yamamoto (Japanese: 山本徹 or とーるやまもと), born 1955, is a Japanese multimedia artist. Over the years he has released work in many formats including, but not limited to: magazine illustrations, HyperCard decks, interactive CD-ROMs, printed books, websites, digital stickers, and videos. He is perhaps best known for his story books distributed as HyperCard stacks and his unique 1-bit art taking advantage of the limitation imposed by early Apple Macintosh computers. See the s...| Get Info
The only aspect of game development I’ve not attempted myself is the music. I mostly use royalty free music of Japanese origin (just because I dig their vibe, man) as in the case of Sparrow Solitaire or Fore! Track or in rare cases I pay friends (like the amazing Jamie Hamshere) to write music specifically for a game as in the case of YOYOZO. Maybe one day that will change, but until then I’m enjoying gaining more understanding and control of the music in my games. Whilst I develop games ...| Get Info
I’m fascinated with Moai so I always try to squeeze an appearance into my games. Moai in video games is a meme, or easter egg, going all the way back to 1983. But my game YOYOZO (out now for the Playdate handheld) is about capturing stars in space using a yoyo, so how could I get a Moai in it? The source of my inspiration was a trip to Japan back in 2004 (my only one, so far). Visiting in August meant that one of the things we did was go to an annual hanabi fireworks festival, where I saw k...| Get Info
2023-12-27 — Ars Technica: YOYOZO wins GOTY accolade! almost unbelievable to be listed alongside such games as: Chants of Sennaar, Cocoon, Dave the Diver, Humanity, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Pikmin 4, Puzzmo, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Venba and Viewfinder. A game I made for the Playdate handheld was released today! Go buy it and then come back to read this blog post. It’s called YOYOZO and in it you control a space yo-yo and have to collect stars in a sort of cosmic balle...| Get Info
Whilst searching for something else entirely I stumbled across these images and was struck by just how beautiful they are. The September 1984 (Vol 9, No 10) issue of BYTE magazine features cover artwork by Barbara Nessim and section pages by Liz Gutowski under direction of Barbara Nessim. Larger versions are at the bottom of this blog post. They were drawn during a residency at Time Life in NYC, simply because that was the easiest way Barbara could gain access to a colour computer with suitab...| Get Info
Collecting Japanese Macintosh Magazine Media was not without its challenges. After buying those discs, and figuring out a way to index the content, I wanted to run some of that software! So I needed a way to work with Japanese files and display them correctly in a real Classic Macintosh environment. For the reasons outlined below I decided to use only System J7.5.3 and Mac OS 9. System 6 You’d install a third party solution like SweetJAM or GomTalk. This method only for the truly hardcore! ...| Get Info
For a while now I’ve been collecting references to old Japanese pixel/dot art software. My main sources of information are the treasure trove of scanned magazines on Internet Archive, Twitter archives, YouTube videos, Yahoo! Japan Auctions listings, and Google search. I’ve been keeping this list for a while, and the release of 16bit Sensation: Another Layer and its inclusion of Multi Paint System made me realise I should make the list public. A long term goal would be to find files for ea...| Get Info
From LOGiN Magazine (1987, No 5) comes the story of 篠原賢一 (Kenichi Shinohara), a “cheerful uncle” from Hyogo Prefecture, who at the age of 60 years old began using an NEC PC-98 to draw pixel art reproductions of Ukiyo-e. He also printed them and made folding screens and kites! Just “for something to do”. I like his style! What a guy. His process involved pasting copies of artwork from books and magazines to his monitor screen and then tracing them using the mouse. After that he...| Get Info
I just released the “OpenSCAD to Spritesheet” workflow I created for Daily Driver: github.com/gingerbeardman/openscad-spritesheet It’s a Frankenstein mish-mash of a Makefile and several shell scripts that evolved over many months/years. Initial rendering is done using OpenSCAD, and post-processing is done using ImageMagick. Model poses and rendering variations are controlled by variables in either the shell script or passed through to the model. The whole process is optimised to do as m...| Get Info
I like to think everybody collects something odd. Me? I collect hanafuda video games: digital implementations of traditional physical Japanese card games. Mostly that means physical copies of games for consoles and computers both new and old, for handhelds like Game Boy Advance, WonderSwan, digital versions for computers, handhelds and smart phones, and sometimes versions for platforms nobody has ever heard of. Down the rabbit hole At some point last year (shortly before I began writing this ...| Get Info
This interview is reproduced from the January 1976 “Disco” issue of Black Music magazine. TOM MOULTON is the behind-the-scenes figure of disco music. His name has appeared on the credits of discs by Gloria Gaynor, B.T. Express, Bobby Moore, Al Downing, Peoples Choice, South Shore Commission and many others. Yet Moulton’s vital contributions to the hits of a dozen soul acts is in a manner new to an industry increasingly immersed in the complexities of a technological age. For Tom Moulton...| Get Info
On 9th August 2006, “Fake Steve (Jobs)” started blogging at The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. The blog featured scathing criticism of Silicon Valley and the tech industry at large, a pinch of political satire, along with many in-jokes and pandering to the zeitgeist. It was, above all else, very funny. A year or so after it began the identity of the ghost writer was revealed as journalist Dan Lyons. The blogging eventually stopped as the (real) Steve Jobs’ health deteriorated, and a single...| Get Info
There are two main ways to do this. As of 2025 I recommend the first one, using a tweaked app, but I’ll leave the second one up for the sake of history as it still works, albeit more limited in use. --- Using a tweaked app My current recommended way of doing this to sideload a tweaked version of the Twitter/X app. You’ll need a tweaked Twitter.ipa and the version I use is a version by ghl3m0n that also replaces all X branding with the bird. Tweaked apps have additional plugins and extensi...| Get Info
Following on from yesterday’s extraction of old sound effects, I quickly realised I needed an easier way to search them as they came out of Director as unlabelled, numbered files. I can use QuickLook or a media player to quickly audition them, but how could I easily find the sample that contains the sound of running water or a horse trotting? I wondered if there was a way of using Machine Learning (ML) to automatically categorise sounds. It seemed like something that should be possible, esp...| Get Info
For my latest “quick” Playdate project—a remaster of a ~1997 web game by Thoru Yamamoto—I decided to add sound effects. In order to keep it as authentic as possible I decided to use only sound effects created by Thoru Yamamoto that were used in his other productions. The largest collection of sounds I could think of were those included in his Macromedia Director web experiments which include everything from short animations, through games and interactive toys, to abstract slideshows. ...| Get Info
I was looking through some old Macintosh CD-ROMs, searching for my usual things that I do whenever I add new discs to my collection: hanafuda, specific artists, favourite software, plugins for said favourite software, and so on. Whilst I was deep in the filesystem I stumbled across some old sample files from Deneba Canvas and noticed how they were all credited to the artist. Intrigue got the better of me so I did a quick google and came up with a post on the Canvas GFX website (yes, the softw...| Get Info
This blog post assumes some familiarity with Playdate (a handheld game console with a cool crank control scheme), Playdate SDK and the Lua programming language. During the development of my forthcoming Playdate game Ball und Panzer Golf (tentative title), I wanted to be able to draw to the debug layer from anywhere in my code. The SDK allows you to draw to the debug layer only from the drawDebug function. After filing a feature request I thought about it some more and came up with a workaroun...| Get Info
I’ve had a pair of Beyerdynamic Blue Byrd 1st generation bluetooth earbud headphones since June 2020. They are great Bluetooth headphones but were recalled just after I bought them. Somebody got too sweaty and managed to somehow burn themselves on the headphone wire. Given that no replacement was being offered I refused to send mine back in the recall. I don’t exercise with mine so I figured I’d be safe enough and I have been. Warning: I’d like to take the opportunity to mention how b...| Get Info
I’ve been following the X68000 Z mini computer since it’s announcement in the hope that it will bring new activity to the X68000 scene and it seems to be having that effect. In one video from the recent 「68の日」(“68 Day”, named after the date written in Japanese order, 6-8, that’s 8th June the most special day of the year for X68000 fans) I spotted a interesting looking single screen golf game: Hello kata68k It was Ball und Panzer Golf an indie/doujin game by @kata68k for the ...| Get Info
Marguerite is a defunct Japanese website, previously at marguerite.jp (dead link) that hosted HTML5 implementations of Hanafuda and Mahjong. Their Hanafuda in particular was very well done, offering a variety of rulesets some of which are difficult to find in video game form and impossible to find in a browser game. The experience was single player versus one or two CPU players. The complete list of rules offered: 2-player Koi-Koi Mushi (aka “Insect”) Roppyakken (aka “600”) Hachi-Hach...| Get Info
I recently played through COMPILE’s うさ雀外伝 俺が切り札！ “Usajong gaiden ore ga kirifuda!” (a ninja-themed Hanafuda Koi-Koi game for PC-98 featured on Disc Station Vol. 10) and took the liberty of recording its great soundtrack as I went along. Soundtrack download archive.org/details/usa-suzume-gaiden-ore-ga-kirifuda-pc-98-unofficial-soundtrack Track listing: Logo (SFX) 00:02 Intro 03:00 Start (SFX) 00:06 World Ninja Atlas 03:06 Deal (SFX) 00:10 Normal Round 03:07 Final Ro...| Get Info
Some things you probably didn’t realise about the design of the original Sony PlayStation: it was inspired by Apple’s Macintosh Plus the colour is grey with a hint of violet to counteract plastic ageing/yellowing Sony acquired the PlayStation name from Yamaha it led to the VAIO range of PCs Bonus fact: VAIO was originally an acronym for Video Audio Input Output Photo reference Taken from Digital Dreams: The Work of the Sony Design Center (1999, Paul Kunkel) Some things you probably didn...| Get Info
The ultimate hot hatch. Most people are familiar with the first game in the GTi Club series due to its prevalence in arcades throughout the later half of the 1990s. The second game in the series is very hard to find in the wild, whilst the third is perhaps least known but a little easier to find and play today. The PlayStation 3 received a loose port of the first arcade game, as GTi Club+, though it takes a lot of liberties. You may not notice if you’re going from 20-something year old memo...| Get Info
Recently I have been looking for a specific issue of an old 1985 Japanese PC magazine, but there are non currently for sale, nor have there been any sold for some time judging by sold listings. Over the past several years what I would normally do in this scenario is play the waiting game and hope one pops up for sale and that I can win it. But this time I decided to play things a little different, after finding a detailed table of contents for the magazine at Japan’s National Diet Library (...| Get Info
IntelligentPad was a drag-and-drop software creator based on the concept of reusable components. Pads could be reused on other pads. There was no programming language so software could be created by anybody, including those without programming experience. It was generally referred to as IP, and often “iPad” which resulted in some users reminiscing on Twitter after the launch of Apple’s iPad device. History IntelligentPad was proposed in 1987 by Professor Yuzuru Tanaka 田中譲 of Knowl...| Get Info
For the past month or so Apple Music has been suggesting new music from Japan in my weekly “New Music” playlist. I’m not quite sure what flipped the bit in their recommendation engine, but I’m happy it did. If I had to guess I’d say it was the music I was listening to whilst finishing off Sparrow Solitaire for Playdate which has an excellent soundtrack by young Japanese musician Yuyake Monster. It’s so great to receive tailored recommendations of music that I enjoy, and occasional...| Get Info
This is version 2.1 of F-MIN INFINITY, a sprite-scaler 2D/3D racing game by mpulip for Windows 95. You could describe it as Power Drift meets F-Zero. The copy of its homepage in Wayback Machine was incomplete, as were direct links from an old feature on Vector, so it took a long time to find a copy of the .lzh archive file. Eventually I managed to locate it in an archive of an obscure old type of listing page on Vector. To run the game correctly it’s best to use DxWnd, which will allow you ...| Get Info
一筆 (“Hitofude” = Single Stroke) aka “Ippitsu” is a puzzle game by H.Hirabayashi. Released in 1995, a decade before Mitchell Corp & Nintendo’s Polarium 直感ヒトフデ (“Chokkan Hitofude” = Intuitive Single Stroke) & Polarium Advance 通勤ヒトフデ (“Tsūkin Hitofude” = Commuting Single Stroke). As huge fan of the Polarium games this discovery has rocked my world. You can read about it in this 1997 feature at Vector and download it from its listing page. The author...| Get Info