Department of Death, Sutter Street, SF

(Originally posted on Google+, Mar 24 2016.)

If you've played the classic point-and-click adventure Grim Fandango, you probably remember the Department of Death building where the game starts out. But did you know that it was based on a real building? The place is 450 Sutter Street, San Francisco, and it is covered in Aztec Art Deco, for real. On my recent trip to SF, I had the opportunity to check it out. Was not disappointed. Would have been nice to be able to go up to a skybar or similar though. Preferably with the option to go onto the roof and feed the pigeons while carrying a balloon animal looking like Robert Frost.

For more details, see http://grim-fandango.wikia.com/wiki/Department_of_Death

Also, I always thought that the hidden elevator (spoiler warning) in the pavement in the alley behind the DoD was a contrived idea that someone made up just for the game. But these are actually common in San Francisco - see the last picture. They are used to bring stuff in from delivery trucks in the street directly to the basement level of buildings (e.g. hotels), take out garbage, etc.

Now go play the game again. What are you waiting for? https://www.gog.com/game/grim_fandango_remastered

And while you're at it, go get Day Of The Tentacle (Remastered) as well! https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered














Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Hobbit (1982 game) graphics engine in Javascript

Tunnel like hall Great river Trolls' path Narrow place Dragon's desolation Straight smooth passage Dale valley Trolls' cave Forest gate Lake town Goblins' dungeon Dark dungeon Trolls' clearing Elvish clearing Lonelands Elvenking's cellar Goblins' big cavern Gloomy bewitched place Running river Lower halls Spider place Front gate One of the first computer games that really fascinated me was the 1982 text adventure based on The Hobbit, for the ZX Spectrum. I was 12 years old when I first played it, and it was immediately clear that this was different from any other game I'd seen. It was a text adventure, but some locations had illustrations in brightly coloured graphics, which although crude by today's standards really helped transport you to another world back in those days of mostly monochrome screens and text-only adventure games. There is much more to be said about what made the game so special - in fact, the graphics
Read more

Recreated ZX Spectrum (Bluetooth Keyboard)

Image
(Originally posted on Google+, Sep 30 2015.) So I got myself what has to be the nerdiest bluetooth keyboard in the world: http://sinclair.recreatedzxspectrum.com/ Quite expensive too, for a bluetooth keyboard. But build-wise, it's a perfect replica of the ZX Spectrum we know and love. Feels exactly right and has the correct key labels. Which means that used with a decent emulator, it recreates the feeling of typing on a real Speccy (without resorting to blind hunt-and-peck which is generally the case if you use a PC keyboard). And after some fiddling with figuring out how to unlock the full bluetooth QWERTY mode as well as the Speccy-specific mapping, I can confirm that it works as advertised as a generic keyboard for Android, iOS or Windows. I only had to ask myself, "can I think of anyone who's a more suitable target for this product" to realize that I really had to get it. It's certainly not for fast touch typing, but programming on a Speccy was more
Read more

The times they are a-changin'

Recently I got a call from my dad, who was having some problems with his computer, along the lines of "there's something wrong with the damn internet again". Since I was the one who set it up for him, I don't mind fixing problems when they occur, but I find that the hardest thing with these debugging sessions over the phone is to get him to quote the exact messages he is seeing. It's kind of interesting, as if the words and concepts are so alien to him that he zones out after only a second, and is actually unable to read them aloud. A typical exchange goes like this: -So, dad, what does the error message say? -Oh, something about the Internet. -OK, but what does the text say, precisely? -I dunno, Microsoft and Internet something. -Dad, can you please tell me exactly what the text says? -I just told you, it says it can't find the Internet. -Where is the message, I mean, what program does it come from? -Well, dammit, it's right here, on the screen! And so on
Read more