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Emulators and Fantasy Villains: Case Study on GATE (Bright Software 1991) #2

by Eugen Pfister, Aurelia Brandenburg, Adrian Demleitner, Arno Görgen, Addrich Mauch, and Kevin Negele. Additional research and editing by Corinne Hirter

GATE (Bright Software 1991 / Apple IIgs) is a Gauntlet-inspired action game that was developed by the Swiss studio Bright Software for the Apple IIgs in 1991, towards the very end of the platform’s lifespan. In this part two of our case study, we analyse the story, audio-visual aesthetics and game mechanics of the  game as a historical source, its reception and conclude our case study.

This is the second part of our two-part case study on the game GATE. You can find the first part here.

Continue reading Emulators and Fantasy Villains: Case Study on GATE (Bright Software 1991) #2

Curiosity and Computer Stores: Case Study on GATE (Bright Software 1991) #1

by Eugen Pfister, Aurelia Brandenburg, Adrian Demleitner, Arno Görgen, Addrich Mauch, and Kevin Negele. Additional research and editing by Corinne Hirter

At the end of the 1980s, four young people met in the Basel area and started developing a game called GATE for the Apple IIg in their free time. They came together partly through ice skating, a computer store and an early fascination with computers. The result was an unlikely reinterpretation of Gauntlet for the Apple IIgs, unlikely because the computer was already fourteen years old at the time of programming. The game itself even found a publisher, first in France and then in the USA, but it failed to achieve great success.

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What does it mean for a game to be a source?

by Tobias Winnerling

In June 2025, the CH Ludens team had the pleasure to welcome Tobias Winnerling (Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf) for a guest lecture at the University of Bern as part of our yearly workshop. This year’s workshop, organized by the Bern team of CH Ludens, focused on historical source criticism and the problems and possibilities of historical sources such as games, gaming magazines, and oral history interviews, and we started with said guest lecture, titled “Digital Games, Digital Born Sources, Discourses and Dispositifs”, and with this blogpost, we are publishing the written version of the first part of this talk.

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From Zero to Kilo: Status report on the Bern GameLab

by Aurelia Brandenburg, Addrich Mauch, and Kevin Negele

In April 2024, the Bern Team of CH Ludens announced that we were starting to collect gaming magazines  relevant to our research as part of our GameLab, which in turn is a collaboration between the Bern Academy of the Arts and the University of Bern at the Swiss Center for Game Design Studies. Since then, over a year has passed and much has happened. So much that we want to use this opportunity to reflect on the current status of our collection, the challenges we faced in first starting it, and what we have learned from this process so far. This blog post will go over our first steps in the making of the GameLab, our current magazine and game collections and, finally, our visions for the GameLab.

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Where we stand: Our scientific mid-term report

by the CH Ludens Team

Anyone who has already worked on a scientific project knows that an interim scientific report has to be written for the funding body halfway through the project. This is probably one of the less popular text genres. You are under time pressure and the number of readers is very limited. In most cases, such interim reports are probably only read by two or three employees of the funding body in order to hopefully be approved. This is actually a shame, because we realized that writing the scientific report together was extremely beneficial for our project. On the one hand, it helped us to realize how much we have already achieved and on the other, it pointed out problems (mostly concerning the communication in between four universities) that we could tackle accordingly.

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Diving into Early Swiss Player Cultures with Swiss Gamescapes Plus – Methodological Approach and Early Phase Report

by Arno Görgen, Addrich Mauch & Kevin Negele

 “I think I’ll be holding a controller in my hand until I drop dead. And you can’t take this from me anymore. It’s a bit of a way of life, all these cultures.” (Sascha Böhme, I29, 19.07.2024, 01:26:43)1

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Call for Paper: Historicizing G.A.M.E.S. 2025 – Gaming, Artifacts, Memory, Experience and Society

by Confoederatio Ludens

Bern, Switzerland, September 11-12, 2025

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=histgames2025

Submission deadline: March 14, 2025

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Foto-Wettbewerb: Gewinne einen von fünf Orell Füssli-Gutscheinen im Wert von je 100.- CHF

von Swiss Gamescapes+

Hast du Bilder oder Videos von dir aus dem Wohnzimmer vor dem Fernseher mit Spielkonsole oder in einem anderen Zusammenhang mit digitaler Spielkultur aus der Schweiz vor dem Jahr 2000? Teile sie mit uns!

Continue reading Foto-Wettbewerb: Gewinne einen von fünf Orell Füssli-Gutscheinen im Wert von je 100.- CHF

Fallstudie: Ball Raider (Golden Gate Crew/Diamond Software/Robtek, 1987, Amiga)

von Aurelia Brandenburg, Adrian Demleitner, Arno Görgen, Addrich Mauch und Eugen Pfister

Einleitung

Die Fallstudie von Necronom (Lunatic Software/Linel, 1991, Amiga) erschien zwar diesen März als erste Fallstudie auf unserem Blog1, aber sie war nicht die erste, an der wir gemeinsam in unserem Projekt gearbeitet haben. Bereits ein Jahr zuvor, im März 2023 und kurz nach Beginn unseres Forschungsprojektes, haben wir uns gemeinsam ans Spielen und Analysieren von Ball Raider (Golden Gate Crew/Diamond Software/Robtek, 1987, Amiga) gesetzt. Das Spiel ist eine Breakout-Variante für den Amiga aus dem Jahr 1987. Es war in vielerlei Hinsicht ein erstes Kennenlernen für uns. Es war das erste Mal, dass wir gemeinsam an einem Text arbeiteten. Es war das erste Mal, dass wir gemeinsam spielten. Es war das erste Mal, dass wir vor der Herausforderung standen, wie wir uns am besten ein Amigaspiel aus den 1980er Jahren erfahrbar machen könnten. (Zu dem Zeitpunkt hatten wir noch keinen Amiga in unserem Gamelab). Nun, aller Anfang ist schwer und wir lernten aus unseren Fehlern. Unsere ersten Spielerfahrungen mit Ball Raider sammelten wir auf unseren modernen Windows PCs und MacBooks mittels des sehr zugänglichen FS-UAE Amiga Emulators. Es war eine harte Schule. Nur kurz darauf beschafften wir uns unsere Joysticks. Das Spiel erschien uns unnachgiebig schwer. Nun, das ist es auch bis zu einem gewissen Grad. Allerdings lernten wir auch, was für einen Unterschied es machte, Ball Raider über den Emulator zu spielen oder auf einem Amiga.

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  1. Brandenburg, Aurelia / Demleitner, Adrian / Görgen, Arno  / Mauch, Addrich / Pfister, Eugen. “Case Study: Necronom (Lunatic Software/Linel, 1991, Amiga)”. Confoederatio Ludens. 28.03.2024. https://doi.org/10.58079/w4dm. []

“The Feel of Sweaty Fingers” – The CH LUDENS Team’s First Memories of Digital Games

by the CH Ludens Team

How did we as scientists become what we are today? Where does our interest in digital games come from? Join us on a short autobiographical journey to the ludic beginnings of the CH LUDENS team.

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