Carol Shaw likes to stress that she isn’t your average American woman. Growing up in a world of technology and science traditionally guided by men, she ignored implicit gender barriers and pursued what came to her naturally.

She says she had little interest in dolls as a kid, instead preferring to tinker with her brothers’ model railroad layout. In school, she proudly excelled in math and found herself gravitating toward computer science in college, a field of study populated by few women in the 1970s.

Two degrees later, Shaw landed a job at Atari programming games for the company’s new VCS console. She didn’t know it at the time, but she had just become one of the world’s first female professional video game designers.

Shaw enjoyed a short but fruitful career in video games that lasted from 1978 to 1984, stretching between two prominent California companies: Atari, of course, which all but founded the video game industry; and Activision, a firm most notable as the very first third-party video game software publisher.

During her time at Activision, Carol Shaw created River Raid, a title almost universally regarded as a masterpiece of game design for the Atari 2600 console.

For decades, Shaw downplayed her role in video game history. Now 56, she seems ready to embrace that part of her life, although she does not actively seek attention or fame. In that regard, we are fortunate that she accepted my request for an interview.

In May of this year, Shaw and I spoke for nearly two hours over the telephone in a career-spanning discussion that touched on her educational background, her time at Atari, Activision, and Tandem Computers, and her reflections on being a woman in a historically male-dominated industry. She also generously provided many of the rare photos you’ll see below.

It’s a long piece, but I think you’ll enjoy reading the extended thoughts of this pioneering software engineer.

[ Continue reading VC&G Interview: Carol Shaw, Atari’s First Female Video Game Developer » ]

The iBook: a minimalist scan in honor of Steve Jobs.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What did you think of the original iMac when you first saw it?

In Memoriam: Steve Jobs (1955-2011), co-founder and ex-CEO of Apple, Inc.

“Introducing 3DO Blaster — the ultimate game platform for your PC.”

Of all the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer devices made in the 1990s, the Creative Labs 3DO Blaster was perhaps the most unique. Retailing for $399.95 in 1994, the full set contained an ISA expansion card for an IBM-PC Compatible computer, a special CD-ROM drive, a game pad, and a couple games.

With the 3DO Blaster, 3DO software didn’t run on the PC’s computing hardware itself (as would be the case with a software emulator). Instead, the Blaster’s expansion board contained a nearly complete set of 3DO console circuitry that merely used its PC host for power, video output, and as an optical media reader with the included CD-ROM drive. To get sound, you had to have a Creative Labs Sound Blaster card already in your PC.

Once installed in your PC, you could use the 3DO blaster to play 3DO games loaded from official 3DO game CDs that displayed on your computer’s monitor. 3DO Blaster supported a windowed graphics mode in Windows 3.1 and full-screen in MS-DOS.

The 3DO Blaster did not fare well in the marketplace due to its high price, impractical nature, and the fact that the 3DO platform never really took off. If you happen to own one of these, treat it kindly, as it is most assuredly a rare gaming artifact from the early 1990s.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever owned a 3DO console? What are your favorite games for the platform?

“It’s so small I nearly swallowed it.”

The TRS-80 Pocket Computer was an amazing little gadget. This 1980 calculator-sized computer packed a full QWERTY keyboard and the BASIC programming language built in. The ability to program BASIC on such a tiny pocket machine was incredible in an age when few calculators were programmable at all, and the ones that were required arcane rituals to program.

I used this exact model myself in high school on some math tests to perform some trigonometry equations in a BASIC program I wrote. Even though that was in the mid-late 1990s, the Pocket Computer seemed so futuristic that the teacher had no idea it was possible. Even today, the Pocket Computer remains incredibly useful for certain tasks. That’s an amazing thing to say about a device released in 1980.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the smallest computing device you owned prior to the year 2000?

An Apple IIgs on Benj’s garage workbench (May 2010)

The Full Coverage page of Yahoo News on 9/11/2001 at 2:03 PM EDT.

A special terrorism page of Yahoo news on 9/11/2001 at 2:03 PM EDT.

I took these screenshots of the Yahoo News website ten years ago today — on the afternoon of September 11th, 2001. I had recently driven home from the campus of NC State University, which I attended at the time, and checked online for more details about the attacks.

The headlines seen here, with their blunt assessment of the dramatic and unprecedented events that unfolded earlier that morning, were very hard to mentally grasp. I felt like I was witnessing a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie made horribly real.

That’s why I took these screenshots. I thought I’d never believe myself, in recounting the events of that day, if I didn’t grab some evidence of what it was like to witness it at the time. I’m glad I did. I also filled four VHS tapes with TV news coverage of the event so I could show my future children what it was like. I’m not sure I will be able to summon the courage to watch them for quite some time.

“Safety is a pilot’s first and foremost concern.”

The most defining cultural, political, and national moment of my generation happened ten years ago next Sunday. You know what it is. The pain from that day is still fresh enough in my mind that I barely want to talk about it.

I recently ran across this advertisement for Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.1 in a 1995 issue of ComputerLife magazine. It gave me chills when I first saw it — as almost anything involving airplanes and the World Trade Center does for most Americans. The ad encourages the reader to fly safely when navigating close to the Twin Towers.

The fact that Microsoft designed an ad like this means nothing, of course — I’m not implying any kind of supernatural foresight embedded into a 1995 computer game advertisement. It’s just creepy in retrospect. The World Trade Center’s stature as one of the world’s tallest and most famous landmark buildings inevitably teased human minds to make dramatic juxtapositions like this — sometimes harmlessly, and sometimes — one time — with devastating results.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Where were you when you first heard about the September 11th, 2001 attacks? Did they change your computer or video game habits in any way?

As a commercial game download service, Good Old Games (GOG) has been bringing classic PC titles back to life for a few years now. Just today, GOG announced that the IBM PC version of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar is now available as a free download over at their site.

Ultima IV has been available on the ‘Net as an authorized free download off and on over the years, but it’s always nice to have a trustworthy place to get it.

While you’re over at GOG, check out the site’s other offerings. I personally love GOG because they distribute original, full games without DRM. That is very important.

When printing this sticker, Apple refused to stay within the lines.

Apple included corporate logo stickers like this with just about every computer sold by the company from the Apple II era (late 1970s) up to at least the iMac G4 (2002) — the last time I noticed one. This particular sticker came packaged with a 1983 Apple IIe.

The stickers changed over time, of course. At first, the font switched from Motter Tektura (seen here) to Apple Garamond in the mid-1980s. The last Apple sticker I own, from 2002, simply consists of a solid white Apple logo, no text.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Steve Jobs resigned as Apple’s CEO last Wednesday. What do you think will happen to Apple without him?