Jason Compton

@jasoncompton.bsky.social

Writer, tech podcaster, actor, would-be heir to Richard Dawson. madisonshakespeare.org retroadventurers.com thisweekinretro.com

Some very tight deadlines for a very old genre in this month's edition of >OPEN MAILBOX, where you GET TEXT ADVENTURE NEWS AND LISTEN TO IT. Contest voting, (scary) Visible Zorker updates, lost games and a lost development environment, and much more. retroadventurers.podbean.com/e/46/

OPEN MAILBOX August 2026 | The Retro Adventurers

No rest for retro adventuring news this summer as Tim and Jason bring you lots of news: contest developments (don't delay, some deadlines are very very very soon!), Visible Zorker updates which aren't...

retroadventurers.podbean.com

After nearly 25 years, we forgot some of the quirks of the original Microsoft Xbox, like that it wouldn't actually play a DVD movie out of the box. Xbox makes a return for modern gamers and other special features are unlocked after additional purchase in This Week in Retro 279, arriving Saturday!

🎧 The one that emphasises human written, human researched, human everything! 🚫🤖 😆 Meanwhile, @jasoncompton.bsky.social waits patiently for his new Speccy 😈😁 and learns about sleeping policeman in the 🇬🇧 corner of the 🌍😊 🎮 #VideoGames 🕹️ #RetroGaming #RetroComputing ⌨️ #Podcasts 📻

This Week in Retro@thisweekinretro.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Washington Post named Doom the top cultural event of its decade. With retro blogger @stonetoolsblog.bsky.social we ask: was the television game show just as important to culture as Doom? Is buying arcade cabs ever sensible? And what happened to the Web and the browser? youtu.be/vOceobwqx3s

High noon. Light guns at the chemist. Draw! Jason and Chris discuss a hotly contested story about NES nostalgia in the UK. Special guest Christopher Drum of Stone Tools watches politely (check out that to-do list, though) and will have more to say when the full episode hits on Saturday!

THEA1200 sparks THEDiscussion of THEFilesystem challenges! Retro Games Ltd. put out a helpful Q&A video recently. But does it raise more questions than it answers? Chris and Jason grapple with decades-old Fast File System limitations and more this Saturday!

With Sony apparently accelerating the death of physical game media, what will the future of throwback-media nostalgia look like? Jason has one idea, involving a (hypothetical) very successful second date with (checks notes) Marguerite. Subscribe now and don't miss This Week in Retro 276 on Saturday!

Is the pace of operating system upgrades increasing? Or are we just too old to conform? (You already know the answer.) Sega and Amiga features plus more operating system discourse, and more, when This Week in Retro 275 arrives Saturday!

A look at the planned C64 Ultimate Game Engine (a dev system for the enhanced FPGA model of the Commodore 64) prompts the questions: will users accept C64 Ultimate-only titles? And how's that been going for the Spectrum Next (assuming that yours has shipped, that is)? All this and more Saturday!

🎧 The extra long one that talks retro history, including the Computer Literacy Project which “was so great, you’re still explaining computer buying 15 years later.” A spicy @jasoncompton.bsky.social at a terrible hour this week! 👏😆 🎮 #VideoGames 🕹️ #RetroGaming #RetroComputing ⌨️ #Podcasts 📻

This Week in Retro@thisweekinretro.bsky.social · 2mo ago

World-first reveal! Tony Smales (ex-Melbourne House) gives a tour of never-released pinball Arcade Wizzard for Commodore 64! Plus: definitive overview of the Sega Dreamcast, and home PC shopping in 1998. youtu.be/ThWzhOzD8BI and be sure to check @gamesthatwerent.com for more on Tony's attic disks!

To accommodate Melbourne (House) guest Tony Smales and the usual international crew, one of us got up extra-early. It may have impacted his patience with a condescending BBC computer buying guide. All this, an exclusive game reveal after decades in an attic, and more crabbiness coming Saturday!

Jason Timmons of VCF Midwest and Chicago Classic Computing show-and-tell: a rare Quazon Quik-Link 300 home teletext terminal and last-minute product engineering. (Atari 400 catches a stray for good measure as well!) Just a sample of Saturday's latest news for the oldest tech!