Tag: nostalgia

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Ninth Award: Black Secret Technology by A Guy Called Gerald

I listened to this album yesterday and it just about moved me to tears for all the wasted potential of my youth.

The music is very beautiful and it threw me strongly into involuntary reflection of my past. The sense of naive promise and ambition, along with all of what I don’t like to think about because it’s upsetting to recall.

The tears welled up, but they never grew large enough to roll down my face.

It’s twenty years since I heard this music. I used to own a copy on CD, but I lent it to someone back in 1997 or 98 and never got it back.

Listening to it now because I wanted to recommend to my nineteen year old nephew some of the electronic music which I used to like when I was his kind of age.

Black Secret Technology (1995) by A Guy Called Gerald

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Third Award: Andrew Broad, for Manic Miner: Neighbours – Allana Truman

This is another retrospective award which I have been meaning to do for some time!

Manic Miner: Neighbours – Allana Truman is a 2004 game for the obsolete but formerly very popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer.

It is a new version of Matthew Smith’s classic 1983 early platform game Manic Miner. In fact, more technically it is a re-definition of the rooms of Manic Miner – the original game is still underneath, but the graphics and level designs have been altered. This means that it is can still be played on original hardware, or (more likely) via an emulator. This is also absolutely fundamental to the nature of Andrew Broad’s practice. He has a special genius for designing extremely challenging and interesting rooms, which can sometimes only be completed by exploiting quirks and glitches of the original game engine – in fact, you are unlikely to get very far with any of his more challenging MM games unless you carefully read the tips and suggestions provided in his extensive README files. The README files also provide context for the level designs and gameplay and form an intrinsic part of the full experience – hints to aid your imagination in building the strange world of Ramsay Street as filtered through Manic Miner and Andrew Broad.

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