Master Floppy

Cliff Bleszinski’s discovery of his first game (a sequel, no less) on a floppy disc a couple of weeks ago provides the grist for this week’s Photoshop challenge. Your instructions are inside.

Once upon a time, games came on discs. Not optical discs like CD or DVD-ROMs, I mean good ole 1.44-megabyte floppies, such as the one above. Although a lot of games shipped on multiple discs, this wasn’t much of a performance issue because space hogs like digital soundtracks and cinematics weren’t yet a feature of games.

Well, now we’re going to envision a past where games’ graphical power well outstripped the capacity of the media of the day. This can go in a couple of directions. Obviously, the first is to give some kind of representation of how many discs it would take to accommodate a 6-gigabyte game. This could be in piles of discs, in the packaging such a game would require, or in a humorous loading screen. The Normandy would be nothing but elevators in Mass Effect on a floppy.

The other direction, take a game and fit it into 1.44 MB. This could be a de-make ‘Shop, or it could just be the best 1.44 MB clipped from an entire game. Again. The more absurd, the more funny, the more better. This below ought to get you started, but you may take it in any direction.

Source Material: Google Image Search for ‘floppy disks”

Source Image: Cliff Bleszinski’s first video game.

You know the rules: The 20 best will get rounded up and published at the end of next Saturday. Meantime, I and the rest of the starred commentariat will approve and promote as many as we can so folks can see them and pass judgment.

And now the Pope shall read his latest encyclical, “How to participate in the ‘Shop Contest.”

1. Create your ‘Shop.

2. Upload it to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. It’s stupid simple. No account is necessary.

3. This is very important: You must use the URL of the image itself. In imgur, this is the second URL it gives you after you upload the image. It’s under “Direct Link (email & IM)”

4. At the beginning of the comments roll, click “Start a New Thread”

5. To the right of your name, select “Image.”

6. Paste the imgur URL in the image URL field. It’s the field that says “Image URL.”

7. You can add editorial commentary if you want, but then just hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn’t, paste the image URL as a comment.

8. This is important: Keep your image size under 1 MB. It will not upload to comments if it is over that size. What’s more, we’re getting reports that if your ‘Shop is more than 1000px tall (vertical), it won’t upload. If you’re getting the broken-image icon, try resizing to a smaller dimension.

As an added inducement, I want to let you know I do star commenters who send in worthy/funny submissions – whether or not they’re chosen for the final 20. This may not happen immediately. I usually start rounding up a gallery by the middle of the week. This is my subjective call, but I do want to recognize as many contributors as possible, and show gratitude for making this such a popular feature on weekends.

Alright, start ‘shopping!

You can contact Owen Good, the author of this post, at [email protected]. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.