Published 2 November 2026
e573 with Michael M and Andy: stories about Ikea’s Wall of Sound, LEGO’s collab with Daft Punk, decomp and recomp retro games, persuasive games and a whole lot more!
Andy and Michael start things off in a Swedish way, celebrating the fact that Andy was in Sweden just last week, is sporting the blue and yellow colors of the flag, and lean right into the first story from Ikea, whose bluetooth KALLSUP speakers have a feature to link up with one another. If you want to create a wall of sound with up to 150 of these cubes, you could do so.
The cohosts then shift to the “first computer-generated TV presenter” from 1985: Max Headroom. You can experience this over at headroom.channel. Michael accidentally nerd snipes Andy into downloading the Veilamp visualizer.
Then, the team turns to LEGO (as they frequently do) and talk about the collaboration between LEGO and Daft Punk™. There is a newly approved LEGO Ideas fan creation for a Daft Punk concert, which also sparks an illuminating conversation on the third party light kits available for many of the LEGO builds.
After taking a quick look at the Overgrown browser extension, Andy and Michael turn to the decompilation/recompilation story from the Verge. With the team’s interest in long term preservation of games – Andy points out that there are specific bugs and behavior that are in the game precisely because of the then-prevalent hardware capabilities. And is the game the same game, if you “fix” these problems in a new recompiled version of the retro code? Michael makes a link between these kinds of retro game preservation to business process differentiation while updating to the current level on ERP or other business software.
Then, the cohosts take a look at Permit Pending – a SimCity style building game with a twist. The twist deals with the player as mayor of the city dealing with all of the zoning, eminent domain, filing fees and more that are all part of construction and development.
Wrapping up the episode, Andy and Michael look at the Tiny Computers app – which is an excellent example to prove the point they both made earlier.
Does the preservation of software through decomp/recomp a net good even if it changes some of the gameplay restrictions from the hardware? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!
These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot. All rights reserved. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
Selected Links
Music
Wired article: We Linked 150 of Ikea’s $10 Speakers to Make a Wall of Sound
Ikea’s KALLSUP speaker
Wikipedia article: Wall of Sound
benbrown.com post: Headroom.Channel
Wikipedia article: Max Headroom
kottke.org post: Short video teasing a new collab between Daft Punk and Lego
Wallpaper article: Lego gets lucky with its latest creative collaboration, a long-term link with Daft Punk
LEGO Ideas post: Exciting update on the DAFT PUNK™ Concert submission!
Computers / Data
CharlieGerard.dev post: Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs
GitHub: charliegerard / Overgrown
The Verge article: Retro gaming is being overrun with AI
Games at Work e562: Field Notes (for Pigs in Space game for the EMF Camp badge)
Games at Work e292: Elite British Gaming (for Mark Moxon’s work & documentation for Elite)
Complete BBC Micro Games Archive: Great Britain Ltd
Persuasive Games: Jetset: A Game for Airports
Games at Work e26: Business Process Management and Immortality (for process decomposition through games)
The Verge article: This open-source project lets you sync Withings data to other apps without a subscription
Kottke post: The Tiny Computers app lets you play with old computers on the iPhone Duo
Wikipedia article: EMate_300
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