A little history here. If you make it past board No. 255 (I forget which key this is). a subroutine error crashes the game, splitting its screen into one-half playable and the other garbled. Its algorithm is looking to draw a fruit that doesn't exist. This creates a perhaps unintentionally finite gameplay experience. It probably was a good thing. Every pattern has a hiding space where Pac-Man can pause, untouched, while the gamer takes a pee (or, snicker, a dump), eats, or does whatever. That's been a part of Pac-Marathons since day one. A truly infinite Pac-Man could lead to world records limited only by hardware integrity, probably going nonstop for months at a time.

Hodges fixes that, and offers proof of his work. Assuming you know how to go in and apply the patch yourself, voila, unlimited Pac-Man. (I guess he didn't include the ROM to avoid the copyright hassle). Of course, to get there you either have to use a MAME warp cheat — or know the patterns up to the 9th Key, memorably invoked in Buckner & Garcia's hit "Pac-Man Fever" and included with the liner notes.

Pac-Man's Split Screen Level Analyzed and Fixed

Course director Dr. Steven Collins detailed the program's lofty goals.

"If we can continue to grow the skills and knowledge available in Ireland in key areas, building on our research strengths, we have the ability to make Ireland a specialized hub for this business."

Just really wish they had programs like this back in my day. Then again, I failed bowling.

Masters in gaming at university [BBC via Gamasutra]

Retro Remakes is sponsoring a huge honking contest to create the best remake of a classic video game. There's 3692 worth of prizes to be won for "Good remakes of good games that anyone can play, regardless of their ability."

We're puzzled by that last qualification: certainly, developing a game for people with, say, amniotic banding syndrome in mind is a rather large requirement to win a copy of a 2D scroller programming book. We assume, then, that what they really mean is "Good remakes of good games that even the stupid and incompetent can play." A lofty, if perhaps equally out of reach, goal.

So if you're a dev who has just always wanted to give birth to a Frogger clone but never could justify the time, head on over and check it out. The prizes look quite good and the world could always use some more retro clones. FLORIAN ECKHARDT

Retro Remakes: The Big 2006 Compo [Retro Remakes]

Here's some actual source code from the new system:

The warning sign is scenery in the Entrance Hall. The description of the warning sign is "You know the words by heart, having heard them first from your father, and then studied them yourself on many more recent occasions." The printing of the sign is "Those who seek to leave the castle depart at peril of their lives and souls, unless another servant be provided in exchange, or a fixed term of absence be granted by their master." Understand "old" or "familiar" as the sign

At first blush, that looks a lot easier to understand than the more standardly esoteric variety of source code. Still, once you get over the fact that you can understand it even without programming knowledge, it starts looking pretty clunky — it may be "natural language," but that doesn't change the fact that people just don't write like that. Longer blocks of source code are even more convolutedly phrased.

Ultimately, it's still pretty cool. Almost enough to make us write that IF game we always dreamed about, before discarding our ambitions because IF games suck.

Inform 7

Check out this entry on the Guardian's always brilliant Gamesblog. The author, Keith Stuart, spoke with developers who've been slaving over games for the PlayStation 3. They told Stuart that, contrary to popular belief, it's not that difficult to program the PS3. In fact, it's not all that different from writing games for the PC, since the machine uses a version of OpenGL

Key quote:

"... It's going to be much easier than the PS2 to get something up and running — there are hundreds of books out there for it, so you can do your background reading. All the documentation is there. This ... won't be a massive leap from what you're seeing on PCs with high-end graphics cards. But obviously on PS3, you've got eight chips to spread the processing cost over — the main PowerPC chip and seven SPE chips. In a PC, there's just one CPU, two in a dual processor machine. Having an eight CPU multi-processor system in your living room is pretty flash.

Frankly, I hope more developers step forward to talk—in detail—about what it's like to develop for the PS3. We've been seeing a lot of people staking positions strongly without giving evidence, which just amounts to trash talk.

Possession and the art of PS3 programming [Gamesblog]