Thursday, 5 August 2010

The Retro Gaming Pixel Art Skills of Mark Richards

I stumbled across Mark Richards whilst reading one of my favourite blogs by Frills'n'Spills where some of his handiwork was featured as a badge on their blog. I contacted him and he made me this absolutely brilliant badge for my blog! I am a bit of a retro gaming fan: I have my Sega Megadrive rigged up in my house, and the most advanced gaming console I own is a Playstation (the original one). So naturally I adore my new pixel art self, and blog badge! Mark is a thoroughly nice chap and if you like what he does I suggest you check out his Twitter and the game he is developing (links below).

My lovely new blog badge!

I absolutely love point and click adventure games from the early 90's, TheMonkey Island games starring Guybrush Threepwood (a mighty pirate!) are still some of my all-time favourite games, along with Loom, Broken Sword, the Dig, Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle. There has been a bit of a resurgence of this style of gaming in recent years, especially in the amateur scene (though it is still under-appreciated in my opinion!) and I recently bought 'Ben There, Dan That' and 'Time Gentlemen, Please' and loved them both for their retro feel.

Mark is currently working on a new retro style sci-fi adventure game called The longevity Gene. The basic plot: you find yourself completely unaware of your identity, trapped on a damaged cargo ship hurtling towards the surface of an industrial world. Flung into a dystopian world of corrupt corporations and a society divided by technology, you must find out who you are and why you were hidden as cargo... cue puzzle-solving, adventure, midi music, and old-school graphics! I am in no doubt that I am going to love his game when he releases it (in two parts) over the next few months. Until then, here are some tantalising screen-shots for you to feast your eyes on...






2 comments:

Mark said...

Thanks for the kind words! :D

I didn't know you'd played Ben There, Dan That! Dan and Ben have been quite heavily involved with testing and advising on The Longevity Gene. I've been in touch with them both for years...

They are on Twitter too: Ben: @TimeGentleman and Dan: @thezombiecow

Dan is developing a sex education game with Channel 4 at the moment called Privates, which, with some luck is being released today!

Abbie said...

That's alright! thanks again for the badge, it's brilliant!

Ooh, I didn't realise you knew them! that's fantastic, I'm going to go and check it out now... :)