Last Sunday, PC World published my last slideshow of the year, The Ghosts of Christmas Games Past. It examines twelve retro Christmas video/computer games from the dawn of time right up to ten years before the present.
Sorry I didn’t tell you guys about the article earlier this week; it slipped past me and I didn’t know it was up yet.
Once again, Merry Christmas!
Thirty years ago this fall, Atari shipped its first entries in the personal computer market, the Atari 800 and 400 computers. I’m particularly fond of the Atari 8-bit series because I grew up with an 800 as my first computer and video game machine — it was especially potent and impressive in the pre-NES days.
Sadly, no publication I queried was interested in a full in-depth history of the computer (although I was poised to do one), so you’ll have to settle for my latest slideshow on PCWorld.com.
In “Inside the Atari 800,” I dissect my family’s beloved Atari 800 unit and explore what makes it tick. This article is the eighth entry in my “workbench series” of tech teardowns, and it might be my best. If nothing else, it sports my favorite self-designed introduction slide yet (seen above) — I should turn that into a poster.
By the way, PC World drastically improved its slide show system, so if you weren’t a fan of it in the past, check this one out. I think they’ve retrofitted all my old slide shows to the new system as well. (Even so, I’m not too happy they made my sharp photos look terrible with extreme JPG compression.)
So give it a look-over; I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to share your Atari 8-bit memories and well-wishes here. I’d love to know how many Atari 8-bit fans we have out there.
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Here are my previous teardowns, if you’re interested: Commodore 64, Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo Famicom, Apple IIc, IBM Model M Keyboard, TRS-80 Model 100, and Macintosh Portable.
Yep, it’s that time of year again: time for VC&G‘s famous Video Game Halloween Costume Ideas — 2009 edition.
This article series is almost an institution now, as we enter our fourth year of providing last-minute costume suggestions to desperate video game nerds everywhere. Each of these costumes is guaranteed to get you candy, or your money back. After you’re done reading, feel free to post your own costume suggestions in the comments below.
[ Continue reading VC&G’s Halloween Video Game Costume Ideas (2009) » ]
The Avatar: crushing gargoyles like roaches since 1985.
Discussion Topic of the Week: I’ve already asked you what your favorite Ultima game was. What’s your least favorite game in the Ultima series? Which one do you think is the worst?
Where’s Waldo in the Land of Blur?
Discussion topic of the week: What’s your favorite pre-1995 Capcom game? And, if applicable, what’s your favorite pre-1995 Capcom game that’s not a member of the Mega Man franchise?
In early June, I conducted a lengthy telephone interview with Scott Miller, founder of Apogee Software (now known as 3D Realms). Today, the interview is up on Gamasutra. This is sort of a companion interview to my earlier talk with Tim Sweeney of Epic Games (another shareware heavyweight), although both stand alone quite well.
Apogee is best known for publishing dozens of episodic shareware games, including Kingdom of Kroz, Duke Nukem, the Commander Keen Series, Wolfenstein 3D, and Rise of the Triad. The company later changed its name to 3D Realms and scored a monster hit with Duke Nukem 3D.
Through Apogee, Miller revitalized and dominated the shareware game industry, invented episodic gaming, pioneered the use of the freely distributable game demo, and provided the spark that inspired id Software’s founding.
During the interview, Scott and I went through his early days in programming, the founding of Apogee, the transition from simple shareware to 3D games, his interactions with id Software, his thoughts on shareware game competition in the early 1990s (including Epic MegaGames and Tim Sweeney), and much more. If you’re a fan of BBS or shareware history, you won’t want to miss it.
The concept of shareware has for too long been seen as the red-headed stepchild of the computer game industry. It has oft been relegated to the metaphorical back pages and footnotes of the history books — if it shows up at all — and frequently looked down upon by “serious” publishers who never deigned to give away any version of their work for free (until Apogee came along, anyway). I’d like to change that, and I’m hoping that my recent interviews with Miller and Sweeney will lay the foundation for a deeper understanding of shareware’s importance for future generations.
Although it might be a philosophy whose place in the sun has come and gone, shareware has not been an idea without merit or influence. As you’re about to read, the story of Scott Miller, his partner George Broussard, and their company firmly prove otherwise.
The time? Half-past dagger.
Does anybody know more about this interesting looking watch? I don’t recall seeing or hearing anything about it beyond this tiny profile in Popular Science’s “What’s New” section back in 1995.
Casio’s Infraceptor watch functions as a game machine, a phone book, an infrared message sender, and a stopwatch. Its IR beam lets you play a “dungeons and demons” adventure against other Infraceptor users. You prepare the phone book information — for as many as ten people — or canned questions and replies for the message-sending function on a JD-6000 Digital Diary before storing it in the watch. Price: $100.
I wonder how the so-called “dungeons and demons” game worked. I’m completely guessing here, but I suspect it wasn’t very fun. It’s still a neat concept that I would have killed for as a kid (I can imagine surreptitiously playing it at school).
Check out this neat Japanese page with pictures of other super-nerdy watches on it.
Discussion topic of the week: Tell us about the geekiest watch you’ve ever owned. (i.e. Calculator? Digital address book? Built-in camera? Dick Tracy-style radio?)
Forty years ago today, man set foot on the moon for the first time. To celebrate the anniversary, I decided to take a look at the history of that old computer game stalwart, Lunar Lander.
Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that Lunar Lander itself turns 40 this year as well: a few months after Armstrong’s first stroll on the moon, a high school student named Jim Storer wrote the first version — all text — on a DEC PDP-8 computer. Yep, in 1969.
Up today on Technologizer is the world’s first in-depth history of Lunar Lander, one of the earliest computer games ever written. The article tells the story of the first text version, the first graphical version for the DEC GT40, and Atari’s 1979 arcade game of the same title (now turning 30, interestingly enough) through information from the men who created them. It then examines notable versions of Lunar Lander through the years, bringing us up to the present.
I’d especially like to thank Jim Storer, Jack Burness, Howard Delman, and David Ahl for their help in writing my article. I couldn’t have done it without them.
So without further ado, here’s the history of Lunar Lander. I hope you enjoy it.
“8 Ways You Can Play Frogger at Your Pad.”
These days, big name games usually come out on a couple different platforms: Xbox 360 and PS3, and sometimes PC or Nintendo DS. But imagine a time when a standard multi-platform game release included eight computers and video game systems: Atari 5200, TI-99/4A, Atari 400/800/600XL, Intellivision, Commodore VIC-20, Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and Colecovision.
That time was 1983, as seen in the ad for Frogger above. Thanks to the lack of a common standard in home computers at the time, there were actually far more than eight computer platforms available in the early 1980s, but some of the most major are listed above (along with the main video game consoles of the day). I bet it was an enormous effort to coordinate the development and release of all those different versions within a short window of time.
Discussion topic of the week: For those who were there: How many computers/consoles did you own simultaneously around 1983?
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Discussion topic of the week: What’s your favorite classic (say, pre-1996) Konami game of all time?
