If I were riding a flying ostrich, I’d probably be smiling too.

I don’t normally take scans out of context, but I made an exception for this amazing illustration. It comes from the instruction manual for Joust for the Atari 2600. I isolated the image years ago for possible use in one of my Halloween costume ideas posts, and I’ve been staring at it in my scans folder ever since.

Joust is one of my favorite arcade titles, and I’m particularly fond of the Atari 7800 home version.

I’d like to find out who created this glorious piece of video game art. I’ll do some digging in a bit, but if you know already, please leave a comment and I’ll update this post. (The illustrator may be referenced in the manual itself, but it’s packed where I can’t get to it.)

By the way, I think this illustration would look awesome on a t-shirt. Anybody want to make one?

Discussion Topic of the Week: Which is better: Joust or Balloon Fight?

Ah, the beige box era.

What could $6,410.55 buy you 19 years ago? (That’s $4099 adjusted for inflation.) Well, if you picked a Micron Millennia, you could get a 120 MHz Pentium CPU, 32 MB of RAM, a 1.6 GB hard drive, a 17-inch monitor, a 4X CD-ROM Drive, a SoundBlaster 16 sound card, 2MB 2D graphics card, a minitower or desktop case, a Microsoft mouse and keyboard, Microsoft Office, and Windows 95.

That’s a lot of stuff. And yet most people’s smartphones today pack far, far more power and functionality than that in a pocket form factor with a 10 hour battery life. It’s all about integration, baby. More functions in fewer, smaller chips. I love it.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Tell us about one of your beige box PCs from the 1990s. Who made it, and what did it have inside?

Well blow me down

Discussion Topic of the Week: Of the systems listed in the ad above, which is your favorite?

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See Also: Eight Ways to Play Q*Bert (RSOTW, 2007)
See Also: Multi-Platform Mania (RSOTW, 2009)

Where’s Eve? Oh wait.

This ad is actually for an Apple II-themed creative writing contest, but you’d never know it. That’s because the gobs of tiny, hard-to-read text are completely overshadowed by the nude man in a jungle holding an Apple II over his crotch.

And that man happens to be Adam from Genesis.

Oh boy.

So there you have it, folks. The Apple II was responsible for the fall of man. You know — that time Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, casting all of humanity into sin. Here’s a tasty quote from Wikipedia:

For many Christian denominations the doctrine of the fall is closely related to that of original sin. They believe that the fall brought sin into the world, corrupting the entire natural world, including human nature, causing all humans to be born into original sin, a state from which they cannot attain eternal life without the grace of God.

You probably won’t see me discussing theology on this blog ever again, but I find this ad quite funny because, despite its tongue-in-cheek cuteness, the biblical interpretations stemming from it are myriad and potentially wildly unexpected, making this a complete failure of marketing. But that failure was likely overlooked. This was 1979 — early in the life of Apple — and it was also before the Great Masses of the Offended had a strong enough voice (i.e. The Internet) with which to share and froth over everything that displeased them.

Discussion Topic of the Week: How do you think people would react if Apple published an ad like this today?

…in which Nintendo begs, “Please, PLEASE, buy a Virtual Boy.”

Oh how times change. Back in January, I posted a scan of an early, cocky Nintendo Virtual Boy advertisement from 1995 (the year the Virtual Boy launched). Here’s an ad for the Virtual Boy just one year later in which Nintendo advertises the console’s new low price of $99 (its original MSRP was US $179.99, which is $275.26 today when adjusted for inflation).

As you probably know, things didn’t go so well for the Virtual Boy. I bought one new for $30 from Toys ‘R’ Us in either late 1996 or early 1997.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Imagine a world in which the Virtual Boy had a full color display but cost twice as much (say, $399.99) new. Do you think the Virtual Boy would have fared better in the marketplace?

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See Also: Virtual Boy Wasteland (RSOTW, 2014)
See Also: Virtual Boy Vortex (RSOTW, 2012)
See Also: The History of Stereoscopic 3D Gaming (PC World, 2011)

You can’t see her other hand, but it’s holding a gun!

It’s a Prodigy-y week around here thanks to my recent article on The Atlantic. So I poked around my scans directory for something Prodigy related, and ka-pow!

I have yet to see an ad for the pre-ISP Prodigy in any of the magazines in my sizable archive (but then again, most of my computer magazines date from before and after Prodigy’s heyday, with a gap in the middle), but I did find this “New Prodigy” ad from an old issue of Internet World, which I proudly subscribed to for a few years in the mid-1990s.

Ads like this one represented a new marketing push at time when the company sought to find a new corporate parent and shifted its focus to being an ISP (its legacy NAPLPS-flavored content was soon re-branded “Prodigy Classic”).

By the way, the “original” Prodigy had a wholesome, family-safe, squeaky clean image, with an army of moderators eager to censor any bulletin board postings or even emails (yes, they read, or at least filtered, everyone’s emails) that contained a hint of sexuality, so I find it humorously ironic that the company ultimately resorted to a sexually-charged ad like this one.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Did you meet a romantic partner online prior to the year 2000? (Including those that didn’t involve physical relationships.) Tell us about it.

I may not be an expert on desks, but this looks a little dangerous.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever bought a desk specifically to hold a computer?

A convincing illustration of a migraine headache

After seeing this ad, am I the only one who has the urge to play Lucasfilm’s Koronis Rift on the Oculus Rift? Retro stereo 3D action!

See Also: The Eidolon (RSOTW, 2013)

Discussion Topic of the Week: Can you think of any vintage games that would translate well to the Oculus Rift?

I still love my dad’s handwriting.

Here it is, folks: My CompuServe Information Service password that I used from 1993 until the late 1990s: “Needy-Sacred”.

Feel free to log in as me the next time you get a chance. (I kid.)

“Needy-Sacred” is an almost magical combination of words for me — probably because it bounced around my mind so often in the 1990s. It has a tension to it; a phrase at odds with itself.

I didn’t make it up, though. CompuServe assigned random combinations of two words (with a dash in the middle) as user passwords, and this is the hand I was dealt.

Well, “we were dealt” would be more accurate. This is the original note paper my dad used on February 21st, 1993 to write down the password to our new CompuServe account, which he set up for use with his business.

Heavily into BBSes at the time, I became the primary user of the account (surprise surprise). Soon his company often asked me — even as a young teenager — to relay international emails to and from Germany for them since I knew how to use it. Ah, those were the days.

The Encounters Forum was my favorite place to hang out. That, and the Atari Forum. GO ATARI.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Tell us your best CompuServe stories.

The Saturn: No Connectors Required

Why am I showing you the cover of the Sega Saturn manual but not the manual itself? Because I can — ha ha ha!

Such power.

That, and I like the photo.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the best Saturn-exclusive title?