Hello! I'm Sasha, aka Sharka. I'm a self-employed freelance writer, trans-f furrified #retrogaming and #Retrocomputing nerd, and amateur VG and popular culture historian and enthusiast from the UK.
Here in my little corner of Mastodon, you'll find me tooting frequently about one of my geeky passions as I love to bring nostalgic joy and cool stuff to peeps!
These passions include #C64, #Amiga and #DOSGaming, #PS1, #PS2, and #Wii, #TTRPGs, #FFXIV, and VG magazines and ads.
| Youtube | https://www.youtube.com/c/SharkaBytes |
| Blog | https://scanlineartifacts.wordpress.com/ |
| Fanzine | https://sharkabytes.itch.io/between-the-scanlines |
| Toss a coin | https://ko-fi.com/retrosharka |
The kind of character portraits that write their own stories.
A motley crew of NPCs you'll run into in 'Beast City', one of the last cities remaining on Earth after WWIII, where 'screamers' descend into the depths of the bio-monster infested BIAS zone to hunt them for credits and score.
One of the earlier sci-fi/cyberpunk dungeon crawlers I've played.
📺: The Screamer, MagicalZoo, 1985 (PC-88/98)
#PC88 #PC98 #scifi #rpg #retrogaming #retrcomputing #pixelart
Twinkling away in the 8-bit night across the Fediverse: an Apple II rooftop cityscape.
This is from the 1989 prototype of the original Apple II version of one of my favourite games on Amiga, ST, and DOS: D/Generation.
Pretty neat version in its own right, all the core concepts of the game are there, and a fun prototype to tinker around with.
Snapped with a Sony Mavica CD-400 and running on our ZX Speccy +2: 'Kaneda' by Groogy from 2024.
Loving digging deeper into the artwork scene for the ZX Spectrum and seeing what peeps are managing to do with the base hardware.
#anime #zxspectrum #akira #retrocomputing #retrogaming #art #pixelart #crt
"Now entering standard orbit."
I picked up some older digital cameras last year, with a Sony CD Mavica 400 from 2002 being my favourite of them.
In addition to nature and urban photography, I use them for taking CRT screen photos. This is a favourite of the ones I've taken so far, from Star Trek: The Rebel Universe, C64 version. A Mike Singleton epic adventure through Star Trek space from 1987.
Electrifying Software for Today's PC! (from a 1988 perspective)
I know some OldByters and others will get a kick out of seeing this magazine ad for two of my favourite MicroProse games: Gunship and Pirates!
Gunship';s C64 version was the first flight sim I ever got to grips with as a kid and was my gateway to a good half decade and change of fierce MicroProse love.
Pirates' Amiga version is a particularly special game to me and would have been one of the first open-world games I ever played.
#PC #DOS #MicroProse #Flightsim #simulation #retrogaming #retrogames #retrocomputing
Fire in the sky: one awesome cover for a lovely issue of Dragon magazine.
This is easily my favourite cover of all the ones I've seen of the sadly long-departed Dragon. March 1989's spectacular cover always evokes images of Shadowrun's Awakening event, especially of the air battles with Fierschwinge as she appeared over Germany.
But yeah, gorgeous stuff from artist Denis Beauvais.
There's also a bit of a landmark article on Pools of Radiance, with AD&D video games truly coming of age to the mag's delight.
"Scanned on the Almighty A1200"
A fine bit of Eric W Schwartz's Amy the Squirrel from a Productions archive CD.
Fierce love for the Amiga burning bright in '94, much as it did then for me and still today. 💜
From a December 1998 NEWTYPE - a pleasantly blue and swish desktop: A Sony VAIO.
Look how tiny that tower is! Very compact for the time and just as elegant as the other components.
From what I gather, it was mainly aimed at photo and video editing and packs some beefy specs for the time.
I managed to find the manual on the Sony website so can see the specs:
Pentium II 400mhz
64MB RAM
11.9GB HDD
8MB Matrox 200 AGP
Not bad! No idea about the pricing, but it's bound not to be cheap.
On a galactic patrol today with Palace Software's Rimrunner from 1988.
Cool little Defender-ish game and one of my C64 faves. Ride left to right and keep the generators charged while fending off waves of arachnids!
Haven't yet completed the first stage, but I'm having fun trying ;o;