PC Pro’s favourite videogame theme tunes

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

A heated office discussion a couple of days ago has led to the PC Pro team coming up with our favourite video game theme tunes – but, as with any good list, it’s entirely subjective and open to debate. The resulting list is full of both obvious classics and hidden gems, and we’ve also grouped a few games from the same system or publisher together just to cram a few more tunes into our countdown.

So, take a look at our suggestions, tell us what you think, and post your own – and bear in mind that these are in no particular order.

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The joy of interfacing

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

So anyway, get yourself into your time machine and set it for sometime around 1986. Once you get there, pop on your invisibility cloak, find someone who looks spoddy and follow them into the dining room. See that BBC Micro in the corner? Pop over and give the top a quick tug. Chances are it’s not screwed down.

That’s because, in the old days, computers were for hobbyists with soldering irons, and they were forever taking the tops off to install new circuit boards they’d made.

Doesn’t happen much anymore, of course – you might pop the side off once a year to install a new graphics card, but most people wouldn’t consider actually building new hardware to go inside their computer. And for very good reason: the insides of a modern PC are massively more complex and to build an add-on part yourself that would actually be any use is more or less impossible.

Thing is though, designing and connecting your own hardware to a PC, while unlikely to win you admiring glances from the opposite sex, is bloody good fun. Fact. I’ve been tinkering with the whole area again for the past year or so – for reasons I may document at some point – and it turns out that there’s a massive array of components that are relatively easy to interface to a PC and do interesting things with. (more…)