Santa Claus enjoys some hot CoCo on Christmas Eve
Discussion Topic of the Week: If you could go back in time and give yourself one Christmas present, any year, what would it be?
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the Sony PlayStation’s release in Japan. To celebrate, my old friend Harry McCracken (who now works at FastCompany) asked me if I wanted to bring my long-running Oddities series out of retirement. In short, I said “heck yes,” and the result can be seen over on the FastCompany website.
This latest entry marks a change in format for the series: it is the first that is not a page-by-page slideshow. I made a bajillion slideshows between 2007 and 2012, and while they were fun to make, I am thankful that I have moved on.
So if you’re a fan of the PlayStation, click through and check out some weird variations, accessories, and tributes to one of the most successful game consoles of all time.
It’s that time of year again: the Yuletide. Over the past few years, I’ve been posting an annual collection of all the Christmas-related material I’ve written (both for this site and for others) into one place for easy reading. Below, you’ll find list of off-site Christmas slideshows, other features, and of course, plenty of Retro Scans of the Week.
I have a soft spot for Christmas, having been raised with the tradition, so this list is for me as much as it is for everyone else. After going through these things again, it’s amazing to see how much Christmas stuff I’ve posted over the years. I hope you enjoy it.
[ Continue reading The VC&G Christmas Collection (2014 Edition) » ]
With great portable power comes great portable responsibility.
The box art for Game Boy’s launch titles was brilliant. So distinctive, playful, and irresistible. Even though the games themselves were blurry messes on the original Game Boy screen, the art makes me want to go back and buy those games all over again.
Discussion Topic of the Week: How many items on this flyer do you own?
In Memoriam: Ralph Baer (1922-2014),
co-inventor of TV video games and the home video game console
Our dear Ralph. What a man. 92 years old. A life full of technology, audacity, and gumption (with equal measures wise prudence). He died on December 6, 2014 at his home in Manchester, New Hampshire. May he rest in peace.
Just summarizing Baer’s biography with keywords sounds impressive: Germany, Kristallnacht, WWII Service, small arms expert, Lee De Forest, TV technician, Sanders, engineering, Apollo, inventor of TV video games, game console, Odyssey, cable TV, patents, Simon, toy inventor. The list could go on and on. He achieved quite a bit and lived a very full, very fulfilling long life.
Of course, he is most well known for inventing the concept of television video games and co-inventing, with William Rusch and William Harrison, the world’s first video game console during his time at Sanders in the mid-late 1960s. The prototype console that the trio finished in 1968 later became the Magnavox Odyssey (1972), the world’s first commercial video game console.
But there was much more to the man, and I count myself fortunate to have known him.
“Whoa…what’s in these brownies, Grandma?â€
Thanksgiving is almost upon us again, so it’s time to gather around your home PC for a game of…Quizagon?
Yes, Quizagon. A game I’ve never played, nor will I for the foreseeable future. It looks like a hexagon-themed family trivia game, which is not my bag, man. But what a great photo.
Instead, I’m going to host a The Seven Cities of Gold marathon on an Atari 800XL with my brother. We plan on exploring a completely new continent while interacting vigorously with the natives. Meanwhile, my brothers- and sisters-in-law will be playing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed on my dedicated gaming PC that is hooked to the flat-screen living room TV. It’s a great kart game to play on Steam with four Xbox 360 controllers that’s easy to set up and jump into. Fun times shall be had by all.
By the way, I first used this amusing scan in a 2009 Thanksgiving-related slideshow I did for Technologizer (hoping I’m not repeating it on VC&G). If you’re in the mood, here’s some other Thanksgiving-related material from the VC&G archives.
Discussion Topic of the Week: Do you have any family video gaming planned for this Thanksgiving? If so, what are you going to play?
Even polygons get mad sometimes
Discussion Topic of the Week: If you’re old enough to remember it in the arcade, what did you think of Virtua Fighter the first time you saw it?
MEAT IS NEAT
I thought I had some Halloween-themed scans saved up for this year, but it looks like I don’t. My magazines are in cold storage at the moment (buried somewhere under the Arctic tundra), so I can’t get to them to scan a new one.
Time to fall back on some old scans. This looks pretty scary, right? I wouldn’t like to run into that zombie warrior in person.
Thinking back, I recall that I scanned this particular ad for Seika’s Legend in 2006 while working on my Game Ads A-Go-Go column (Simon Carless thought of that name, by the way) for the now defunct GameSetWatch. Back then, I didn’t keep track of which issue each scan came from, so I’ll have to come back later and update the post when I run across the ad in a magazine again.
[Update: 09/07/2015 – I found the source for this scan and updated the info below.]
As for the game this page advertises, I know very little about it. I just now played Legend in a Super NES emulator to refresh my memory. It is a fantasy-themed arcade beat-em-up similar to Golden Axe. It controls like sludge (your guy moves with the speed and agility of a slug) but has two-player co-op (always a winning feature) and is fairly fun if you have the patience to stick with it.
Me? I don’t like walking at 0.3 miles per hour in a game, so I only played it for two minutes.
Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite beat-em-up game?
That is one dangerous and sexy construction site
When it comes to vintage 1980s puzzles, few can beat the sheer cultural nostalgia value of this 200-piece Milton-Bradley Donkey Kong puzzle, which comes straight from my childhood. This is a scan of the front of the box.
It’s not often that I find a true surprise lurking in our old family toys, but I had completely forgotten about this puzzle until I ran across it in the back corner of my mom’s attic a few months ago. Memories of poring over the lush, vibrant artwork on the box rushed back to me as I pulled it from where it had lay, dusty and neglected, for 25 years.
Look at the highlights, the curves, the gradients. The richness.
Luckily for me, all the pieces were still in the box, so I have now re-assembled the puzzle and framed it. It will never be lost again.
The artwork for this puzzle no doubt echoes the side cabinet art of the Donkey Kong arcade machine, but with added detail and an airbrushed vividness. I think it would make an awesome poster — does anyone know who the artist was?
By the way — even though I find it insanely difficult at times, the original Donkey Kong is one of my favorite arcade games. It was also one of the first video games I ever played, courtesy of a port to the Atari 800.
P.S. Pauline is way hotter than Princess Peach.
Discussion Topic of the Week: In your opinion, which is better: Donkey Kong Jr. or Donkey Kong 3?
Push your friends to the edge — literally.
There is a certain irony to this pair of products by STD: one of them, the Handy Gear, makes your portable game console more rugged and less likely to break. The other, the Handy Boy, makes your console less rugged and more likely to break.
And both of them make you want to kill your friends, as this ad shows.
But seriously. One of my friends as a kid (who is amazingly still living) owned the Handy Boy accessory that snapped onto and around your Game Boy. The controller extension part looked cool but was useless and made playing games more difficult. But the magnifying glass and light were genuinely useful (especially the light part), since the Game Boy was notoriously difficult to play in low light conditions — which meant just about anywhere indoors.
By the way, long, long, long time readers of VC&G might remember that I lampooned this ad eight years ago in a column for GameSetWatch. But I just realized that I never featured it as a proper Retro Scan, so here it is.
Discussion Topic of the Week: Did you (or do you) own any notable Game Boy or Game Gear accessories? Tell us about them.
