The NABU was a Z80-based PC designed and sold in Ottawa in the early 80s. Instead of storing software on tape or floppy disk, it connected to the cable TV network in Ottawa, which was continuously broadcasting all available NABU software in a continuous loop, and was continuously being updated with the day's news, recipes, etc, as well as a bunch of games. Many were ports, but there were a number of original titles as well that never appeared for any other platform. NABU hired a bunch of local programmers to write games for it, including a teenage Leo Binkowski, who saved everything he had access to when the company went under. Last year a bunch of these machines surfaced on eBay, curious retro computer enthusiasts snapped them up, and Leo worked with a quickly growing community to bring them back online with the original software. Today you can buy an inexpensive USB serial adapter, build or buy a simple cable with a standard DIN-5 connector, plug it into your PC or a Raspberry Pi running NABU "internet adapter" software, and the machine will come to life as though it's still 1983.

Leo recently announced that he's rounded up a few more NABU alumni to do a livestream on December 16. Feels like it may be worth checking out.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QoZTBNz47co

Is there a canonical definition of what makes a game fringe for this forum's purposes

My main focus has generally been digging into the stories around games that are outside the normal scope of a "games industry" history. Freeware, homebrew, and fangame stuff most obviously, but with enough vague wiggle room to dig into basically anything that doesn't get written about enough. (For example, I have a strong desire to really dig into the guts of how the shareware industry actually worked, despite, you know, Doom being among the most well-documented games of all time. But most shareware games weren't Doom!)

Above all my interest is in the people whose stories get ignored, and the communities that supported them in their work. I wouldn't be interested in making a podcast episode that was a deep dive into the development history of UT2004, and the hype cycle surrounding it on release, but I'd definitely consider talking about the fan community that surrounds it now, keeping it alive long after the industry has moved on, well within the scope of my project.

That said, that's just how I think of it. It's not like anyone else was using this forum for anything, so if you're excited to talk about a thing with the folks here, I'm sure not gonna stop you.

I have a list of potential episodes / interviewees as long as my arm and have been consistently saying for years that I will bring it back. Just gotta... actually start reaching out to people. We'll see how life goes in the next little bit.

I think part of it is that @candle just is really into making tools, haha. They talk about their motivations for bipsi in their blog:

i'm renaming this page to "makers study" to better reflect how it has progressed from simply copying flickgame to deriving and refining a tool template by studying and copying multiple tools--flickgame, picrew, and now: bitsy

i've wanted to make my own bitsy-like for various reasons over the years, but now i'm doing it for primarily three reasons: to push the limits of the tool model/template this page is about, and to create a bitsy-like that feels streamlined and pared down in the same way bitsy once seemed compared to kooltool

I loved this video about Nocturnal Nightmares, a shareware game that this person made with a friend in QuickBasic when they were 13 years old, and how he found joy in revisiting it as an adult in a bunch of different ways.
Youtube Video

I'm surprised I haven't mentioned this book here yet! Gaming the Iron Curtain is a book which details how game development took place in Soviet Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. It's a vital history of an area of computer games which is almost entirely disconnected from the gaming industry. @coleoptera recently recorded an interview with the author, Jaroslav Švelch, about the book for the Critical Distance: Keywords in Play podcast, which I am enjoying listening to very much.

If you like, you can play an English translation of The Adventures of Indiana Jones in Wenceslas Square in Prague on January 16, 1989 where you, as Indiana Jones, kill a cop with an axe on like the fourth turn.

Just saw a Tumblr post go by talking about a bunch of weird amateur games made with BYOND (short for "Build Your Own Net Dream"), and I felt compelled to add my own account of my time with BYOND in the notes.

Now I wanna do a BYOND episode for the podcast...

Friend of the Fringe Game History Podcast Phil Salvador just posted a lovely article about Battle of the Eras, a Mortal Kombat-esque fighting game made by some teenagers in Belleville, Ontario. Worth a read, as well as this interview with its lead developer from Brandon Cobb.

Shareware Heroes is now on Kickstarter for one final big push to raise the rest of the money and get the work going in earnest. Seems to be off to a strong start already! Hopefully the funding will finally come through and Richard is finally able to really dig in - since hearing about this project, I've been listening to his podcasts Ludiphilia and The Life And Times of Videogames, and he does good work.

Just noticed that the rpg2knet.com Facebook page shared this episode and added a note or two:

Ed note: the heavily hyped game with pixel art nudity he could not recall the name of was Destiny's Call Complete. Also he thought Don Miguel was Spanish and not Russian but I'll forgive him this one time...