{"id":1328,"date":"2017-12-16T16:45:33","date_gmt":"2017-12-16T16:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2017-12-16T17:06:40","modified_gmt":"2017-12-16T17:06:40","slug":"john-oneill-artgame-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/john-oneill-artgame-author\/","title":{"rendered":"John O&#8217;Neill, Artgame Author"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"lyte-wrapper\" style=\"width:853px;max-width:100%;margin:5px;\"><div class=\"lyMe hidef\" id=\"WYL_-WSuNkG-Zq8\"><div id=\"lyte_-WSuNkG-Zq8\" data-src=\"\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/-WSuNkG-Zq8\/maxresdefault.jpg\" class=\"pL\"><div class=\"tC\"><div class=\"tT\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"play\"><\/div><div class=\"ctrl\"><div class=\"Lctrl\"><\/div><div class=\"Rctrl\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/-WSuNkG-Zq8\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/-WSuNkG-Zq8\/0.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"853\" height=\"460\" \/><br \/>Watch this video on YouTube<\/a><\/noscript><\/div><\/div><div class=\"lL\" style=\"max-width:100%;width:853px;margin:5px;\"><\/div><\/p>\n<p>I made a short documentary\/Let&#8217;s Play about one of the first artgame makers: John O&#8217;Neill who, in the early &#8217;80s, created strange videogames about the meaning of life and dolphin communication. It contains material that has never been recorded or put together before.<\/p>\n<p>I was doing some research for one of my classes when I stumbled upon O&#8217;Neill&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJohn_O%2527Neill_%28video_game_designer&amp;redir_token=UodFilozUbLJDuydb8ZeA0HCbRd8MTUxMzUyODg4MkAxNTEzNDQyNDgy&amp;event=video_description&amp;v=-WSuNkG-Zq8\" target=\"_blank\">wikipedia page<\/a>.\u00a0It was well documented, and his <a href=\"https:\/\/gamewhys.com\" target=\"_blank\">tabletop game company<\/a> is active, but I could find very little information about his early digital games, except for a couple of screenshots and two incomplete videos. So I went down a retrogaming rabbit hole and I even ended up interviewing him.<\/p>\n<p>The great game industry crash of 1983 pretty much wiped out all the opportunities for game experimentation in North America, and several of John&#8217;s personal projects were cancelled or obtained limited release; but it&#8217;s remarkable how despite everything, both Lifespan and The Dolphin&#8217;s Rune are still playable today via emulators.<\/p>\n<p>The games are quite cryptic but if you feel like trying them, in this zip you&#8217;ll find everything you need to emulate them on Windows, plus a scan of The Dolphin&#8217;s Rune manual:<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/files\/Lifespan-The-Dolphin-Rune.zip\">Lifespan-The-Dolphin-Rune.zip<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In this zip you can find the interviews quoted in the video and a very detailed account of John O&#8217;Neill&#8217;s involvement with the video game industry. It was written by the man himself a few years ago in response to an inquiry from a game historian:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/molleindustria.org\/files\/John-Oneill-bonus.zip\">John-Oneill-bonus.zip<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I made a short documentary\/Let&#8217;s Play about one of the first artgame makers: John O&#8217;Neill who, in the early &#8217;80s, created strange videogames about the meaning of life and dolphin communication. It contains material that has never been recorded or put together before. I was doing some research for one of my classes when I &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/john-oneill-artgame-author\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;John O&#8217;Neill, Artgame Author&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-games","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1333,"href":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molleindustria.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}