“The pee cee ate mah leeeegs!”

Thirty years ago this week, IBM released the very first entry in its Personal Computer line, the IBM PC 5150. To celebrate, I dug up this very early IBM PC advertisement you see above. It hails from the tender year of 1982 — a time when corrective lenses made giant squid eyeballs jealous.

I’ve also wrangled up a list of previous IBM PC-related Retro Scans of the Week for you to enjoy (links below). The first you’ll see is a sister ad to this one.

• The IBM PC Kid
• Presenting the IBM of Personal Computers
• IBM Taught Me How to Read
• Stunning IBM PC Paper Art
• Introducing the IBM 5110 Computing System

The 30th anniversary of a machine that started a 30-year computing paradigm is a very big deal (Well, as far as anniversaries go, anyway), so expect to hear more about the IBM PC from me soon.

Discussion Topic of the Week: When did you first use an IBM PC or compatible machine? What did you think at the time?

I think he’s going to miss the dragon.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite martial arts-themed video or computer game?

Atari 810 Disk Drive Receipt

Thirty years ago this month, my father ordered an Atari 810 disk drive for our family’s Atari 800 from a place called “Omega Sales Co., Inc.” in Rhode Island. Thirty years ago yesterday, Omega filled out the invoice you see here and shipped the order to my dad.

From the invoice, you can see that my father also ordered a copy of Star Raiders for the 800 and a set of joysticks. Unfortunately, the joysticks were out of stock and had to be backordered.

I still have our family Atari 810, and I still love the unique sound it makes when reading disks. That device composed the soundtrack to my computing childhood.

Price Check

• The Atari 810 sold for US $449 from this vendor, which is equivalent to $1,114.95 in 2011 dollars. To translate, the thing was expensive. The 810 could read 88 kilobytes of data per disk side (one side at a time), which makes for a whopping $12.66 per kilobyte in today’s dollars. Right now, you can buy a 2 terabyte (~2,000,000,000 kilobyte) hard disk for $80, which works out to $.00000004 dollars per kilobyte.
• A Star Raiders cartridge sold for $32, which is equivalent to $79.46 in 2011 dollars.
• A pair of joysticks (I assume official Atari brand) went for $15, which is equivalent to $37.25 today.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the most memorable computer or video game item your parents have ever purchased for you?

The Tandy 2800 HD, Tandy 1100FD, Tandy 102, and Tandy 1500 HD

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever owned a Tandy brand computer? What model(s)?

Digital Jawbreaker

I don’t think I’ve ever played Tetrisphere. I’m sure I’ll try it some day. But the game itself is almost beside the point here. Egad on the broken teeth, man. That is my worst nightmare.

Nintendo crafted this ad to be perfectly in line with the prevailing advertising style of the mid-late 1990s. Look back at a game magazine from that time and you’ll see that almost every ad shows someone getting hurt, dismembered, or flagellated in some manner. And if not that, then they were too busy distributing boogers / urine / feces / something gross all over the place to feel left out. The edgy advertising trend started when Sega began purposely assaulting Nintendo’s kiddie image in the early 1990s. And it spread. By 1996, even Mario games were advertised this way. Did you Play it Loud?

I covered this phenomenon to some extent back in my Game Ads A-Go-Go column on GameSetWatch in 2006 (especially “Proof that Video Game Companies Want You to Die“). The 90s were a time of growing pains — a sort of “teenage years” for the medium — when the game industry, gamers, press, and lawmakers alike embarked on an entirely new cultural exploration of mature themes in video games. I’m sure I could write a whole article on the subject, so I’ll stop now and let you count your teeth.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your all-time favorite version of Tetris?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created floppy…no, wait.”
(click above to see the full advertisement)


10 REM DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE TEST BY THOMAS JEFFERSON
15 REM IN HIS BASEMENT, JULY 4TH, 1776, 14K FREE
20 PRINT "WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE ____"; INPUT I
30 IF I = "SELF-EVIDENT" THEN GOTO 100
40 IF I = "TURKEY FLAVORED" THEN GOTO 200
50 IF I = "ONLY TRUE IF YOU ARE MARTHA" THEN GOTO 300
60 IF I = "COMPLETELY FALSE" THEN GOTO 400
70 GOTO 20
100 PRINT "EXCELLENT! I LIKE YOU."; GOTO 500
200 PRINT "TRY AGAIN, FRANKLIN."; GOTO 20
300 PRINT "GO BRUSH YOUR WOODEN TEETH."; GOTO 20
400 PRINT "HOW DID THIS MAKE IT TO ENGLAND?"; GOTO 20
500 END


Happy Independence Day from Vintage Computing and Gaming

Discussion Topic of the Week: If most computers were manufactured in the USA today, would you be more or less likely to buy them?

Don’t forget to pack your high-jump goggles and night vision boots.

As a young NES fan, I absolutely loved this ad. I remember studying it from top to bottom many times, excited by large amount of fancy equipment lavishly depicted in this ad for Ultra’s Metal Gear on the NES. I was never a huge fan of playing Metal Gear myself (I found it too hard as a kid), but I loved to watch my brother play through this depthy stealth-action title.

Fans and critics considered the first NES Metal Gear a classic in its own time, so perhaps I should dust off my cartridge and give it another shot.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite title in the Metal Gear series?

As Mary does payroll, Frank gets to know his Model III a little better.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Do you work in an office? What kind of computer do you currently use there?

Retail price? $7.99. For you? Fifty cents.

In the early-mid 1990s, I regularly made trips to Toys ‘R’ Us to pick through their video game clearance section. It was then that I built up the foundations of my fast-growing vintage game collection.

I had a blast when they started clearing out their NES items — for example, I picked up Kirby’s Adventure for $10 and a whole bunch of unopened NES accessories like controllers and cleaning kits from that time for a mere pittance (I still have about four new-in-box NES Advantages from that time that I bought for $2 a piece). This is the same place where I bought the Virtual Boy and Sega 32X new in their boxes for about $30 a piece. Man, those were the days.

One day while browsing the store’s video game strategy guide rack, I noticed this forlorn and chronically passed-over hint book for Ultima: Exodus, a poorly received port of the PC classic Ultima III for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The copyright date in the back said 1989, and by the look of the discount stickers on the front, it appeared the booklet had been sitting on the shelf since that time. After five years of neglect, its cover had become scuffed, dirty, and mysteriously ink-stained on one corner.

The book’s binding was off-kilter when I bought it for the low low price of 50-cents, which may be why consumers passed it up in favor of non-defective printings of the same book. On the other hand, they may have simply passed it up because the associated game wasn’t too popular.

Discussion Topic of the Week: When’s the last time you bought a physical paper hint book for a video game?

GET INTO THE GAME. YEEEEAAAAHHH

By golly. Has it really been 11 years since the PlayStation 2 came out? Sony launched the massively successful console in Japan on March 4th, 2000, making the platform one of the longest-lived in history. Games are still being made for it (one of its most recent releases, WWE All Stars, landed in March of this year), and the console hardware is still in production.

During this week of E3, which will include a new console announcement, it’s interesting to look back a decade to the launch of this massively successful machine. The early ad for the PS2 you see above was published not by Sony, but by Target to promote its availability in its stores. It just goes to show how closely hardware vendors and retailers must work together to make every new video game console launch a success.

Discussion Topic of the Week: When did you first get a PlayStation 2? What was the first game you bought for it?