You are in a warm, dark, comfortable place. This has been your place since you became aware that you are alive. It's almost time to enter a different world now.
In 1986, Activision published a roleplaying computer game called
Alter Ego. Unlike the action and fantasy titles that ruled the day, this game simulated the course of a single ordinary life. Beginning at birth, players navigated a series of vignettes: learning to crawl, reacting to strangers, getting a first haircut. The outcome of each scenario subtly influenced one's path, and with every choice players slowly progressed through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age.
Graphically minimalist -- one's lifestream is represented by simple icons, and the scenarios are all text -- the game was nevertheless engaging, describing the world in a playful, good-natured tone tinged by darkness and melancholy. And it had quite a pedigree; developer and psychology PhD
Peter Favaro interviewed hundreds of people on their most memorable life experiences to generate the game's 1,200 pages of material. Unfortunately for Dr. Favaro, the game didn't sell very well. But it lives on through the web --
PlayAlterEgo.com offers a full copy of the game free to play in your browser, and the same port is available as a $5 app for
iPhone and
Android.
More: Port discussion group -
Wishlist -
Vintage review - Original game manual (
text or
scans)
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 31, 2010 -
46 comments
In honor of the 8th Anniversary of MetaFilter, here are 8 YouTube links to...
CAT SCANS
Oh, what heck, here are 8 more...
LOL SCANS
posted by wendell
on Jul 14, 2007 -
23 comments
Greg Lindahl presents scans and transcriptions of several early modern texts at his
website: for example, there are partly-searchable facsmilies of John Florio's
New World of Words, an Italian-English dictionary published in 1611, and, from the same year, Randle Cotgrave's
Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. Also, there are manuals on
swordsmanship,
dance,
cookery,
brewing and
needlework.
posted by misteraitch
on Sep 16, 2004 -
7 comments