There was a time in the late 1980s when Nintendo was so powerful that they could unleash whole hoards of Nintendo Power Cyborg Zombies (NPCZ), like the one pictured above, without so much as even a muffled cough from local law enforcement. These days, one half of a NPCZ couldn’t even step an inch outside a replication plant without a swarm of submachine gun-wielding feds swooping on him.

Man, how times have changed.

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This incredible Apple II-themed painting was scanned from the cover of a small 1982 brochure titled, “Your Guide To Apple Service And Support.” I personally think it’s an excellent piece of art, apparently by an artist named “Weller.” Weller, if you find this, please drop me a line and let me know if you did any more computer-related paintings.

Great stuff. It reminds me of Peter Max.

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WANTED: People of ethnicity to fill out pandering, tangentially video-game-related comic book “superhero” team. Must be comfortable wearing skin-tight crotch-grabbing uniforms and fixing ridiculously unrealistic spaceships. Extremely perky breasts and indelible toothy smiles a big plus.

Today we’ll be looking at Atari Force #1, which is a mini comic book (5″x7″) that came as a free pack-in with the game Defender for the Atari 2600 in 1982. Much more after the jump!

Here we have a handy BASIC-slanted guide to computer terminology (circa 1983) from an “educational” comic book titled Electronics, compliments of Tandy-Radio Shack (the “TRS” in “TRS-80”). Considering the source of this publication, I have a strange feeling that the definition for “Information Retrieval System” might be a little suspect…

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Sure, you’ve probably seen this picture before — it’s the cover of the Atari 2600 version of Galaxian.

But look again. Have you really seen this picture? Have you ever stopped and thought about what’s actually going on here?

No, I’m not going to tell you, because I have no idea either. But the commenter with the best description wins a free chocolate donut.

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Every Sunday morning, it’s a family tradition in Senator John Kerry’s household to have breakfast in bed with the kids…and his Apple IIe computer system. After a few heated rounds of Karateka over who will get the last piece of bacon, it’s back work for Mr. Kerry — plotting his next political victory without ever having to put on slippers.

Seriously; I thought I was the only one who set up heavy computer equipment on unsturdy, impermanent places like couches and beds. After all, nothing screams out “computer desk” like an imitation goose down comforter.

[Scanned from from a 1982 Apple IIe Sales Brochure]

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This form/envelope combo was included in numerous Atari 2600 game boxes in the early 1980s. If you sent Atari one whole dollar, you’d supposedly get a year’s subscription to “AtariAge” magazine, as well as “club benefits and privileges available nowhere else.” Sounds like a great deal to me (you pay them $1, and they get permission to send you pure marketing propaganda!). But seriously, if I could subscribe to this today, I definitely would. Then again, one 1982 dollar is roughly equivalent to, say, twenty 2006 dollars.

…Ok, so I exaggerated a bit on the inflation thing.

Did anybody out there ever send this form in and become a member? Free free to share your memories and let us know how you exercised your Exclusive Atari Privileges. Bonus points for flashing your membership card!

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Proving once again that there are indeed morons in the world is this scan from a 1982 Apple IIe sales brochure:

[Interior. Well-lit office building.] Larry Anderson, Executive Comptroller of B.G. Enterprises, Inc. (stage right), has spent all morning meticulously entering eleven months of raw sales data into AppleWorks on the firm’s new Apple IIe to plot next year’s business projections. Enter Bob R. Stevens III, VP of Corporate Sales (stage left), strolling carefree through the office while humming a tune…

“Dum-dee doo doo…hey, what does this button do?”

*Click* [BEEEEP] *CHUNKA CHUNKA CHUNKA*…

“Holy mother of $%&*balls, Bob. I just spent six hours on that!”

… “So I take it that wasn’t a good sound?”

[Camera cuts away as we hear the normally reserved Larry punching Bob violently in the face.]

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Here’s an interesting segment scanned from a 1983 Atari Game Catalog. In it we see various peripherals for Atari home game consoles — most of them obscure, and some never even released.

Highlights include the prototype-only “2600 Keyboard” (at the top, which turns the Atari 2600 into a “real computer”) and “2600 Voice Commander” peripherals. Then there’s the VCS Cartridge Adapter, which was released but is relatively uncommon as far as I know.

Then we move to the bottom of the scan, which shows the 2600 Trak-Ball Controller, the bulky 2600 Remote Control Joysticks (anybody ever used these?), then a curiosity in the form of the 2600 “Pro-Line” joystick (which, in 1983, predates the release, but not the design of the 7800). Then we move onto the ray-gun-looking “Space Age” joystick and the numeric-keypadish “Kid’s Controller” (you know how kids love their numbers!), neither of which I have ever seen in person and don’t know if they were actually released. Finally, we come to the 5200 Trak-Ball controller, which was probably the largest, bulkiest console controller devised until the great Steel Battalion fiasco of 2004. Fittingly, this Trak-Ball controller matches the largest, bulkiest console of its day (the Atari 5200) quite nicely.

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