It’s interesting that Epic Games and 3D Realms (formerly Apogee) were made by Tim Sweeney and Scott Miller respectively who each started out by making the very similar ASCII DOS games ZZT and Kroz respectively.
Too bad for 3D Realms that they diverged so much later (mainly thanks to George Broussard’s unrestrained OCD).
When I was a child, I remember going to the Ontario Science Center in Toronto. It was exciting to go to the big city, and to go to a museum. I don’t remember too many specific things from the visit, but I do remember two.
One was the big funnel exhibit that “simulates” a black-hole where the balls roll around the funnel for a very long time until they eventually fall down the hole to be cycled back up.
The other thing I distinctly remember were the banks of microscopes that lined the wall right at the start at the entrance-doors (inside the foyer). I’m sure we looked through several of them to see various microscopic things, but there’s only one that I actually remember: the sperm. I remember looking through the microscope to see the sperm wriggling around. While I already knew about sperm (my mother had given us the birds-and-bees talk by then), it was interesting to actually see them.
What’s more interesting is that many (maybe 30) years later, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder where they SOURCED the sperm. It suddenly dawned on me that sperm don’t last very long, so they’d have to replace them at lease once per day. Whose job was that? I doubt they’d have a supplier, they likely just had one of the employees provide it. Was that in the job description? Would HR be involved? So many questions. 🤔
The Weeping Angels from the “Blink” episode of Doctor Who (June 9, 2007) instantly became one of the most iconic characters on the show, almost on par with the Daleks and Cybermen. They’ve been pretty popular and referenced in all kinds of other media since then. However, the game Condemned: Criminal Origins did that same concept two years earlier (November 22, 2005). At one point in the game, you investigate a derelict store and come across a bunch of mannequins which move when you turn your back on them.
For the record, SCP-173 was first posted to the /x board on 4chan on June 22, 2007, a couple of weeks after “Blink” aired, clearly inspired by it.
No doubt there have been other similar creatures imagined before the mannequins in Condemned. The concept is hardly unique or extraordinary. Feel free to mention some older ones in the comments.
