This month, we are discussing local scenes and themes, on both sides of the Tasman. To kick things off, I figured the New Zealanders might enjoy a laugh at some cringeworthy Australiana…
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Run 5 Magazine – How SSG joined the Dragon, White Dwarf and the General
Do you remember SSG’s magazine “Run5”? In the 1980s when gamers wanted to get more out their games, to learn strategies to take their gaming to the next level or play new scenarios they relied on old fashioned print.
SSG Interview on Good Morning Australia, August 1985
It was Friday the 16th, August 1985, and our first interview on television. Unfortunately the computer was not hooked up and as a programmer I was the closest thing they had to a hardware expert. At the moment it was working I had time to get to the couch, sit down, and the interview started.
Australian Pioneers: Shocking Tape Loading Stories…
Remember the maddening process of waiting thirty-minutes for a tape to load?
Australian Pioneers: John De Margheriti on Learning from the US
Micro Forté co-founder and CEO John De Margheriti reflects on how, when Micro Forté was established in the mids 1980s, despite the US ‘crash’, they looked to America. They didn’t know of any other Australian games companies. They knew nothing of the UK games scene...
Home Coders – Matthew Hall 15 Commodore 64 Games Rescued from Decaying Cassettes
Thanks to the wonders of Aldi stores’ increasingly strange bargains, Matthew Hall of KlickTock has just saved a bundle of his early games for the Commodore 64 from impending demise. Popping into Aldi for some supplies there amongst the groceries was Aldi’s...
Australian Pioneers: Did Britain’s bad weather breed a culture of tinkerers and crackers?
Melbourne House and Beam Software Director Alfred Milgrom sees “Vast cultural, societal difference in what consumers wanted from electronic games” between the mass markets for games in American and UK in the early days. “American consumers were happy to pay for...
Australian Pioneers: SSG’s American Strategy
Sydney based games designers and publishers Strategic Studies Group (SSG) founded their Australian studio in 1982. SSG belong to the world of strategy wargames, a popular hobby with its origins in military history and mathematics, and its home (at this time) in America.
Australian Pioneers – Melbourne House and the Tyranny of Distance
The ‘tyranny of distance’ was the famous phrase historian Geoffrey Blainey used in 1966 to describe his thesis on how Australia’s geographical remoteness shaped the nation’s history, with the country generally viewed as a British colonial outpost on the far side of the planet. Whilst such a legacy would seem hardly germane in the 1980s it is curious that Australia’s colonial roots do play a seminal role in the beginnings of the Australian games industry.
Australian Pioneers
For the next few weeks the The Popular Memory Archive will focus on Australia’s Videogame Pioneers, looking at the stories of some of Australia’s earliest game designers. How they got started, how they went about inventing an industry and making the games they...
Welcome to the Popular Memory Archive blog
Welcome to our blog. A part of the Play It Again project, this is a space where we’ll be hosting monthly blog discussions on themes related to 1980s games, game history in Australia and New Zealand, preservation, cultural heritage, intellectual property, and more besides.
Videogames History Museum @Digital NationzNATION
Collector of New Zealand digital games, Michael Davidson, has been busy packing up his collection for the exhibition he is helping to mount at Digital Nationz this weekend in Auckland. Alongside the chance to play the next generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft,...