8-bit – it was git!

8-bit – was it git?

We spent three hot days between June 3 and 5 on pleasant corporate duties at the Pixel Heaven event in Warsaw. What did we do there? The usual: we provided the best quality T-shirts for gamers and fans of geek & nerd culture.

If your childhood passed under the sign of Atari, Commodore, Amiga, broken joysicks, uploading games on cassettes (“quiet because they won’t upload”), pinballs and repeatedly reading from cover to cover Top Secret, Secret Service, Bajtek, Gambler, Reset, World of Computer Games, PC World Komputer… then in all probability, one can say that at Pixel Heaven you would feel like in a long-unvisited home.

The impression of being transported to the late ’80s and early ’90s was heightened by the chosen location of this nationally unique event formally described as a “retro & indie gaming fest.” These were not, as one would expect, sterile exhibition halls, but the halls of the Municipal Bus Works in Warsaw, permeated with the smell of grease and fuel. Despite some controversy and differing opinions among exhibitors and visitors, in my opinion the choice of venue proved to be a hit. What, if not a smelly bus depot smelling of grease, could better convey the atmosphere of a justly named era? I suppose that the scale of this epic could only be matched by the PKP railway stations still awaiting renovation, but fortunately the organizer of Pixel Heaven (Robert “Lapusz” Lapinski) did not show such a high degree of sadism.

For me personally, Pixel Heaven was first and foremost a trip back to my childhood days. However, it is worth noting that an important part of the event was currently released indie games.

From field observations conducted by the undersigned, it appears that the age profile of most visitors can be described as 30+, with that + tending towards infinity. In light of such facts, it might seem that Pixel Heaven is an event aimed mainly at grandparents. Somewhat, yes, but not entirely. It turns out that the latest generation of 20+ is discovering the charms of 8-bit and 16-bit. What totally blew my mind is the release of new games for the Atari 65/XE/XL and Commodore 64 within the indie scene these days. Once you see this with your own eyes, you’ll recognize that the world has no secrets from you.

Walking through the corridors of Pixel Heaven and going out for a little something to eat, more than once I heard and participated in dialogues native to Silicon Valley. For a fan of the series, this is an unforgettable experience – it turns out that this amazing world of start-ups really exists, and without it, for example, we wouldn’t have the extra Facebook icons so necessary for survival.

Speaking of interesting dialogues, their king was undoubtedly the gentleman from the beer tent, whose sense of political (and any other) correctness has remained consistently unchanged since the days when thequestion “Atari or Commodore?!” defined friendships.

It is precisely such forgotten wars as Top Secret vs. Secret Service that have lost their significance over time. This, by the way, is what Borek writes about in the newly released 16th issue of Pixel, to which I refer you with pleasure. I haven’t been in touch with this title since, let’s say diplomatically, its “bumpy launch,” but now I was positively surprised by its level and choice of topics. The watchword “gaming culture” fits Pixel like a glove, and even (or maybe even especially) without being a super-active gamer you can find interesting content there (currently referred to as “content”).

And speaking of the printed press, a special issue of Bytek was published on the occasion of Pixel Heaven 2016, printed, of course, on the worst paper available at the printing house. I will write with pleasure – the editors of the special issue managed to capture the atmosphere of those times brilliantly, and the proverbial tear turned in the eye of even the biggest hardcore gamers.

Thanks to such an event, it also turned out that Borek, Micz, and other greats, are not Gods, but pleasant people with whom you can talk normally. I last exchanged some pleasantries with Borek in 1995 at the first Gambleriad. Yes, that was 22 years ago. At that time I purchased the first part of ever Need for Speed and a T-shirt with the Top Secret logo. It was only recently that my wife forced me to throw it away.

Regardless of what you’re doing now, if you have fond memories of that time, Pixel Heaven is definitely a vehicle that can take you back there. And if you weren’t around back then, you can find an easy way to travel back in time. Who knows, maybe the byproduct of such a trip, will be some kind of cosmic paradox, straight out of Back to the Future….

Bio box in the third person

In the years of elementary and high school 100% GRACE. He knew (almost) everything about all the games coming out in Poland. He wrote for “Departures” in Reset magazine, and edited with Krooger a corner about mordobics on Reset CD (modeled, of course, on Gulash’s legendary “Kombat Korner”). The unfortunate owner of one of Poland’s three Sega Saturn consoles (because Gulash wrote that he minimally prefers Virtua Figher to Tekken and naively believed him). He also scribbled something in the Valhalla website and probably some more magazines, but due to the passage of time he no longer remembers. He doesn’t know why he still keeps a stack of magazines from that era in his basement. He took the editor-in-chief of the Reset Forever zine as a witness (fortunately, not because he was the editor-in-chief, but for other reasons – not that nerd!). He can’t play consoles anymore, but he’ll probably buy some for the kids. Co-founder of starwars.co .uk. Now he occasionally snaps at Starcraft II or Star Wars Battlefront.