6 ms·

It's a little disappointing these types of games have become known as "Flappy Bird clones" when Flappy Bird itself was just a clone of many other games before i

It's a little disappointing these types of games have become known as "Flappy Bird clones" when Flappy Bird itself was just a clone of many other games before it. Any old Palm users remember SFCave?

ewmailing 10y ago
I made this video in defense of Flappy Bird back when people were piling on the game and the author. There are multiple points, but it starts with my belief that people overstate the similarities to other semi-recent games and simultaneously forget much older games. The video includes clips of video games from the early 80s and even Space War! from 1962. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-W5CWj7Ic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-W5CWj7Ic
- partycoder 10y ago
  This is very accurate, thanks for doing this.
sopooneo 10y ago
I hear you, but in my memory, most of those old games allowed you to maintain vertical thrust. Flappy Bird has the twist that you can only apply up-thrust in taps.
daniel_iversen 10y ago
Sure do!!! And do you know you can now get SFCave for free on iOS? The most addictive game ever! :)
Kiro 10y ago
If you think Flappy Bird is a clone of SFCave or any prior title you have completely misunderstood the game. Have you played it?
pmarreck 10y ago
I had a Palm and never played that! Ever play Space Trader? That was probably my favorite Palm game... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Trader_(Palm_OS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Trader_(Palm_OS) On that note, is there a Palm emulator anywhere?
- throwanem 10y ago
  There are several, but none currently available for iOS, at least not through the app store. (I don't know if you care about iOS, but it's the platform I jumped to when Palm ceased to be sustainable.) The Palm OS emulator for Windows and Linux can probably still be made to work, although in the latter case, good luck getting it to run in the absence of suitably decrepit shared library versions which your distro's package manager probably no longer provides - your best bet might be to find a DVD image of a distribution from 2003 or so, and install that in a VM to support the emulator. Linux RPMs can be had via Sourceforge [1]. Windows binaries are apparently available from several sources; the one provided by download.cnet.com [2] appears to be free of social diseases and reasonably functional. (It'll complain about a missing skins directory, but there's a generic skin packaged with the application which will work for your purposes.) You'll also need a ROM image. To my outright astonishment, some of these appear still to be available on the web! [3] "Palm OS 3.5-en-color.rom" boots successfully in the Windows emulator. And, finally, you'll need the Space Trader application itself. If you don't still have a copy, it remains available for download on the developer's site [4]. Once you have it, extract the version of your choice from the zipfile - the color version works fine with the ROM I mentioned. Then (at least on Windows) right-click the emulator chrome and choose "Install Application/Database", then "Other...", and navigate to the extracted .prc file. The emulator will load the app into the virtual Palm's memory, and then you can just click the icon to run it. It seems to work quite well! There are also several variably crummy knockoffs of Space Trader available for iOS, none of which does a good job capturing what made the Palm version fun. I keep meaning to reimplement it as a browser app or something, but... [1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/pose/files/pose/3.5-2/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/pose/files/pose/3.5-2/ [2] http://download.cnet.com/Palm-OS-Emulator/3000-2212_4-10111408.html http://download.cnet.com/Palm-OS-Emulator/3000-2212_4-101114... [3] http://artnetweb.com/gh/palm_emulator/roms%20Folder/Popular%20ROM%20Downloads/ http://artnetweb.com/gh/palm_emulator/roms%20Folder/Popular%... [4] http://ticc.uvt.nl/~pspronck/spacetrader/STDownload.html http://ticc.uvt.nl/~pspronck/spacetrader/STDownload.html
  - pmarreck 10y ago
    If only we could just recompile Space Trader to Emscripten. Great response!

It's a little disappointing these types of games have become known as "Flappy Bird clones" when Flappy Bird itself was just a clone of many other games before it. Any old Palm users remember SFCave?

ewmailing 10y ago

I made this video in defense of Flappy Bird back when people were piling on the game and the author. There are multiple points, but it starts with my belief that people overstate the similarities to other semi-recent games and simultaneously forget much older games. The video includes clips of video games from the early 80s and even Space War! from 1962. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-W5CWj7Ic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-W5CWj7Ic

partycoder 10y ago
This is very accurate, thanks for doing this.

sopooneo 10y ago

I hear you, but in my memory, most of those old games allowed you to maintain vertical thrust. Flappy Bird has the twist that you can only apply up-thrust in taps.

daniel_iversen 10y ago

Sure do!!! And do you know you can now get SFCave for free on iOS? The most addictive game ever! :)

Kiro 10y ago

If you think Flappy Bird is a clone of SFCave or any prior title you have completely misunderstood the game. Have you played it?

pmarreck 10y ago

I had a Palm and never played that! Ever play Space Trader? That was probably my favorite Palm game... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Trader_(Palm_OS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Trader_(Palm_OS) On that note, is there a Palm emulator anywhere?

throwanem 10y ago
There are several, but none currently available for iOS, at least not through the app store. (I don't know if you care about iOS, but it's the platform I jumped to when Palm ceased to be sustainable.) The Palm OS emulator for Windows and Linux can probably still be made to work, although in the latter case, good luck getting it to run in the absence of suitably decrepit shared library versions which your distro's package manager probably no longer provides - your best bet might be to find a DVD image of a distribution from 2003 or so, and install that in a VM to support the emulator. Linux RPMs can be had via Sourceforge [1]. Windows binaries are apparently available from several sources; the one provided by download.cnet.com [2] appears to be free of social diseases and reasonably functional. (It'll complain about a missing skins directory, but there's a generic skin packaged with the application which will work for your purposes.) You'll also need a ROM image. To my outright astonishment, some of these appear still to be available on the web! [3] "Palm OS 3.5-en-color.rom" boots successfully in the Windows emulator. And, finally, you'll need the Space Trader application itself. If you don't still have a copy, it remains available for download on the developer's site [4]. Once you have it, extract the version of your choice from the zipfile - the color version works fine with the ROM I mentioned. Then (at least on Windows) right-click the emulator chrome and choose "Install Application/Database", then "Other...", and navigate to the extracted .prc file. The emulator will load the app into the virtual Palm's memory, and then you can just click the icon to run it. It seems to work quite well! There are also several variably crummy knockoffs of Space Trader available for iOS, none of which does a good job capturing what made the Palm version fun. I keep meaning to reimplement it as a browser app or something, but... [1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/pose/files/pose/3.5-2/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/pose/files/pose/3.5-2/ [2] http://download.cnet.com/Palm-OS-Emulator/3000-2212_4-10111408.html http://download.cnet.com/Palm-OS-Emulator/3000-2212_4-101114... [3] http://artnetweb.com/gh/palm_emulator/roms%20Folder/Popular%20ROM%20Downloads/ http://artnetweb.com/gh/palm_emulator/roms%20Folder/Popular%... [4] http://ticc.uvt.nl/~pspronck/spacetrader/STDownload.html http://ticc.uvt.nl/~pspronck/spacetrader/STDownload.html
- pmarreck 10y ago
  If only we could just recompile Space Trader to Emscripten. Great response!