One last thing about episode 2

It occurs to me that my last post about the Gameshelf made it look entirely not worth the download, since without any context I made the show seem to involve 52 minutes of taskboy and myself sitting in chairs while I gesticulated. While this is technically true it is also so much more as the following show notes (ripped off from the show's homepage) will attest.

Episode 2

Jmac and guest host Joe Johnston take a look at space-themed games.

• Space Station Assault, a simple and fast-paced card game of interstellar violence.


• The Awful Green Things From Outer Space, a B-movie inspired board game almost as old as I am. Designed by the legendary Tom Wham and most recently published by Steve Jackson Games.


• The Ur-Quan Masters, which is what the open-source port of Star Control 2 is called for legal reasons. I forgot to ever mention the correct name in the show, but it's actually not all that important. Anyway: an excellent free port of a classic space adventure game from the early 1990s. The player's guide I mention on the air is over on my weblog.


• SpaceWar! is seen only briefly, when I use it to illustrate a point I make about SC2. But it really is one of the first video games, and you can play a Java version of it in your Web browser.

This episode looks a lot better than the previous one, don't you think? It was entirely shot in the SCAT studio with an excellent crew. It actually doesn't make use of a "board-cam" we rigged up to continuously film an overhead shot of the table during games. Maybe I'll edit some of those shots in later, but Joe Constantine did such a good job directing the player-cameras that I didn't really feel the need to do the extra work.