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Blue Prince (1989)

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Re: Blue Prince (1989)

#2
This is blowing my mind. I didn't know Blue Prince was a remake. I've read several interviews with Tonda Ros. He mentions some of his inspirations, including the 80s game Maze, but never mentions the original Blue Prince game. I wonder if he omitted that because there could be spoilers or hints there he didn't want to draw attention to?

Re: Blue Prince (1989)

#3

This is blowing my mind. I didn't know Blue Prince was a remake. I've read several interviews with Tonda Ros. He mentions some of his inspirations, including the 80s game Maze, but never mentions the original Blue Prince game. I wonder if he omitted that because there could be spoilers or hints there he didn't want to draw attention to?

> This is blowing my mind.

I assume that was the goal of the post. Because such a game does not exist :)

But I also believed it for a moment.

Re: Blue Prince (1989)

#6
Ok, so this post is a joke of some kind (there was no 1989 version of Blue Prince).

But it raises an interesting question: would it have been possible to implement that upside down floppy disk puzzle in a game?

1. Was it even possible to insert floppy disks upside down? I lived through the floppy disk era in my childhood, but I have to admit I can't remember if the drives would even let you do this.

2. If the answer to #1 is yes, would there be any way of programmatically detecting the floppy-disk-was-inserted-the-wrong-way state?

Re: Blue Prince (1989)

#7

Ok, so this post is a joke of some kind (there was no 1989 version of Blue Prince). But it raises an interesting question: would it have been possible to implement that upside down floppy disk puzzle in a game? 1. Was it even possible to insert floppy disks upside down? I lived through the floppy disk era in my childhood, but I have to admit I can't remember if the drives would even let you do this. 2. If the answer…

1. No. For an obvious and good reason.

Re: Blue Prince (1989)

#9

Ok, so this post is a joke of some kind (there was no 1989 version of Blue Prince). But it raises an interesting question: would it have been possible to implement that upside down floppy disk puzzle in a game? 1. Was it even possible to insert floppy disks upside down? I lived through the floppy disk era in my childhood, but I have to admit I can't remember if the drives would even let you do this. 2. If the answer…

There are in fact two sided floppies! IIRC they behave a lot like the two sides of a cassette tape, the floppy reader only reads from one side at a time.

A fun fact in that regard: the game Karateka (an actual game for the Apple II) had an easter egg, where the team realized that their game entirely fit in the capacity of one side of a floppy, so they put a second copy of the game on the other side, but set up so that it would render upside-down.

I'd not be surprised if the inclusion of that detail in this post was directly inspired by Karateka.

Re: Blue Prince (1989)

#10
This is making me wonder if it is actually possible to capture everything that is in blue prince in a text based game, and I think the answer is no, because the affordances are different. I am trying to explain this without spoiling too much, but beyond the original stated goal of the game, there is an entire _second game_ layered on top of it, which is largely about _noticing things_, and I don't think there is a way to really capture that with pure text that evokes the same feeling of discovery. Text by it's very nature draws attention to itself, while a graphical representation allows a surplus of information that allows interesting things to hide within uninteresting things. I think the core drafting mechanics work fine as text but that is like 10% of the game.
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