ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories
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ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories
@romchip.bsky.social
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ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories // www.romchip.org

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@lainenooney.bsky.social
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@liebenwalde.bsky.social‬
Soraya Murray
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If you made it to the end of this thread and like what you saw, join us SATURDAY FEB 21 for the 3rd annual ROMchip Fundraiser on Twitch! We'll have fun streams and historical hijinks all day long.

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ROMchip: a Journal of Game Histories
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January 7, 2026 at 7:23 PM
romchip.bsky.social
⚔️ And in our Materials section (ft long reads on game objects) Niklas Nyland’s “Contemporary War as Entertainment” examines how the 1918 Finnish Civil War was transformed into a contemporaneous historical war game, Punaisten ja valkoisten taistelu Suomessa 1918 🎲
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A historical board game map titled Punaisten ja valkoisten taistelu Suomessa 1918 (The Reds and the Whites' Battle in Finland 1918), depicting southern Finland during the Finnish Civil War. The map is marked with a dense network of black lines and nodes representing railways and towns. The southern region is shaded orange to indicate contested territory. Red and white wooden playing pieces are placed across various nodes, symbolizing opposing factions. A white six-sided die lies in the lower left corner.
January 7, 2026 at 6:51 PM
romchip.bsky.social
🗣️ Pierre-Yves Hurel and Adrian Demleitner interviewed Swiss game dev and demomaker Paolo Baerlocher, creator of Piozone and Alderbaran 🚀🌱 We're dropping this in:

FRENCH (original)
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ENGLISH (translation)
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Scan of the Poizone (1991) game floppy disk, showing the contributors, the game title, and the distributor’s logo. (Paolo Baerlocher’s GitHub)
January 7, 2026 at 6:48 PM
romchip.bsky.social
💻 ROMchip editor @lainenooney.bsky.social drops Part 1 in a 2-part interview series with narrative designer and former US game journalist @leighalexander.bsky.social in "Actor, Writer, Technology Spirit" ✍️💬 encounter the strange, heady time of 2010s game journalism
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Screenshot of Alexander’s article “‘Gamers’ Don’t Have to Be Your Audience,” published at Gamasutra (now Game Developer). The article image depicts an angry, screaming white man in a gamer headset. Screenshot sourced using The Wayback Machine, snapshot dated August 28, 2014,
January 7, 2026 at 6:46 PM
romchip.bsky.social
🗾 First up, in our peer reviewed articles, explore how Japanese hobbyists built their own “at-home” superguns from 1980s and 90s magazine articles in Hanae Kramer’s "From Print to Play" ⚡🔫 plus, the author even builds their own!
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Japanese print advertisement. Kyowa International regularly advertised on the rear cover of Technique of Backup magazine. This particular example comes from the March 1989 issue. The fully assembled KIC-045DX supergun cost ¥5,000 ($39) more than the unassembled kit. According to the advertisement, “this kit includes a case with precut holes and assembly instructions. Position the parts, solder the pieces, and tighten the bolts. An optional color VHF video converter [RF modulator] is available for purchase. Assembly time requires approximately two hours. Assembly requires tools such as a soldering iron, nipper, pliers, and multimeter. This project is recommended for people who possess skills in electronics, such as those who may have previously built a transistor radio.” (Courtesy of Sansai Books)
January 7, 2026 at 6:44 PM