The film High Rise is set in the 1970s and based on JG Ballard’s 1975 book. That’s roughly two decades before Tim Berners-Lee would “create” the web. Heck, you were lucky then to have a colour TV, never mind a phone in your house. Yet, High Rise provides a vision of what was to come: the internet community. That is, an …

Antique Code Show It was 1986, and the world went bonkers for Top Gun: that film about pleasant young chaps learning the flight ropes of F-14 Tomcats. New-wave synth poppers Berlin sang Take My Breath Away while straddling decommissioned aircraft; Tom Cruise apparently began a longstanding attempt to disguise his diminutive stature; and …

Antique Code Show The last couple of months have seen the release of MotoGP and F1 2015. Just round the corner is the new Xbox exclusive Forza 6, so there are plenty of driving games around if you feel the need for speed. Micro Machines Beat the machine or challenge a mate My driving skills were honed in simpler times on the Codemasters …

After Lenovo bought IBM's ThinkPad business, the Chinese giant has slowly but surely changed the iconic laptop design to look a bit more modern – but now that may be about to change. In a blog post Lenovo design veep David Hill speculated about taking the old-style ThinkPad form-factor, and cramming it full of the latest and …

Antique Code Show Let’s state one fact clearly from the start: for all its virtues, Shadow of the Beast did not play especially well. Its often half-baked platform action appeared promising at first, but was let down ultimately by having no game-save positions, a frustratingly high difficulty level and a general lack of fair and progressive …

Antique Code Show So as Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt stakes its claim as RPG of the millennium, I figured it’s time to look back on a turn-based fantasy questing classic of yesteryear, which definitely doesn’t feature any stuffed unicorn sex. New World Computing Inc, King's Bounty Hunt the sceptre: King's Bounty makes a splash King’s Bounty is …

Antique Code Show This month sees the release of the tenth (yes tenth) major Mortal Kombat reboot, Mortal Kombat X. Along with my favourite X-ray bone crunching moves, NetherRealm is promoting new features, such as some bound-to-shock brand new fatalities and, wait for it... LESS flesh on display for the female characters. With these enticements …

Feature This month, the fabulously wealthy owners of houses with curved walls will be delighted to know that the world's largest curved TV arrives at the Knightsbridge tat-palace Harrods. With a 105-inch screen, LG's new set, the snappily named 105UC9V boasts a 21:9 aspect ratio, and all the latest technology. LG 105UC9 105-inch 21:9 …

Antique Code Show So just as everyone is coming to the end of their January Dryathalon, I find the only thing I have on my mind is more beer. Indeed, I'm reminded of Tapper, which incorporates two of my favourite pastimes: drinking and gaming. Tapper (1983) Pour substitute? Tapper is an arcade classic and so iconic it’s even lovingly …

Product Roundup It's fairly well accepted that events and things from our past help to make us the twisted, misanthropic people we are today. Or perhaps that's just Team Register. It being the season of festive excess, we wondered if there were perhaps some geeky gifts that, as a kid, helped you explore science, tech, and similar areas, and …

Antique Code Show Given the choice, which 80s videogame star would you choose to have a friendly seasonal pint and chin-wag with? Pacman’s obviously got a personality defect, Mario’s breath probably stinks, and that bloke from Jet Set Willy is no doubt a pervert. But Q*bert? Well he’s one interesting individual – full of mumbled swear-word …

Antique Code Show As The Dark Portal opens in the new World of Warcraft expansion Warlords of Draenor, and all manner of beasties descend upon Orgrimmar, Stormwind and Ashran, I think it’s about time to revisit the RTS game that spawned the franchise, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. World of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans Prepared to be WoWed New …

Antique Code Show In the build-up to the Halloween of 1985, Capcom lobbed this little box of horrors into the unsuspecting crowd of arcade dwellers. With mid-'80s goggles on, it’s easy to see why Ghosts ‘n Goblins gathered attention with its spooky but colourful visuals, alongside some memorably atmospheric ditties and effects. Ghosts 'n …

Antique Code Show My Japanese friends suggest the new American Godzilla looks too fat and bloated. Maybe it’s something to do with MacDonald’s Japan now serving churros. Godzilla, the movie: hopefully a decent game will appear, eventually Toho would not approve. I would like to suggest that now, just like the state of Gojira’s teeth, there’s …

Antique Code Show During the finale of this season’s King of the Nerds, one of the nerd challenges was to complete the first level of Pac-Man in a set time. I was delighted to see they were playing the original arcade version, albeit on an iPad. Pac-Man: original and best? Pac-Man: original and best? Pac-Man is 34 years old this year. With …

Archaeologic We all know about the ZX80, the ZX81, the ZX Spectrum and its successors, and the QL. But these weren’t the only microcomputers Sinclair Research worked on during its brief life between 1979, when it emerged as the renamed Science of Cambridge, and 1986, the year its brand and products were bought by Amstrad and it was shut down …

Monitor is an occasional column written at the crossroads where the arts, popular culture and technology intersect. Here we look back at the BBC TV movie Micro Men, a retro-tech fan favourite which tells the story of the rivalry between former colleagues Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry, and how the two men kickstarted the British …

Archaeologic It was a home computer that embodied so many contradictions. It was launched months after the British microcomputer boom of the early 1980s had peaked. It was a rush job: the machine that was revealed to the press in the Spring of 1984 hadn’t even existed nine months previously. It was one of the best-produced British micros of …