Having recently fallen upon hard times (I’m saving up for a new Mac), I found it necessary to trim some fat from my monthly budget. Naturally, funds for groceries took precedence over gaming luxuries like GameTap .

I first tried the GameTap service last year as part of a review for VC&G and I found it somewhat lacking. I canceled my account after my free trial expired.

Earlier this year, I thought I’d check out Uru Live, so I reinstated my GameTap account. The service is much better than before, but alas: money is money, and GameTap had to go. As I mentioned in my 2006 review, canceling GameTap is quite a hassle, requiring a phone call to GameTap support, a long wait on hold, and an annoying chat with a customer service representative who tries to tell you what you are really thinking. And according to the numerous comments from unhappy Tappers on my review, GameTap’s practice in this regard has not changed. (By the way, thousands of people find this site each month through keyword searches featuring variations on how to cancel GameTap. Check out this entry, at the bottom, for examples.)

[ Continue reading The Glacial Pace of GameTap Customer Chat » ]

It’s true: in 1967, Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison created the world’s first television video game hardware. And forty years ago today (May 15th, 1967), the first television video game took place. Who won? Mosey on over to 1UP.com and check out the full feature I wrote about it. You’ll find out that answer and a lot more.

Also check out the interviews I’ve conducted with the two participants in the monumental contest, Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison. I just published the Bill Harrison one today.

As an extra treat, here’s a video of Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison demonstrating their Ping-Pong game on the “brown box” prototype at Sanders in 1969. Ping-Pong would later form the basis for Atari’s famous Pong.

I would like to extend a special thank-you to Ralph Baer, Bill Harrison, and the family of Bill Rusch for their generous and invaluable help with this story. I could not have written it without them.

Happy birthday, video games.

Forty years ago today, the world’s first television video game contest took place in a small lab in Nashua, NH. The place was Sanders Associates, a large defense contractor, and the contestants were Ralph Baer and his technician, Bill Harrison. The inventions of these two men and a third, Bill Rusch, would later appear commercially as the Magnavox Odyssey console in 1972.

History has heard quite a bit from Baer recently, including an interview I conducted with him back in January. But most often overlooked is perspective of the second player in that monumental game, Bill Harrison, who built all of the original Sanders video game hardware by hand. Now 73 years old and retired, William L. Harrison finally gives his side of the story in his first ever interview, and it’s exclusive to Vintage Computing and Gaming.

[ For more information on this important anniversary, read my feature, “Video Games Turn Forty,” at 1UP.com. ]

[ Continue reading VC&G Interview: Bill Harrison, The First Video Game Hardware Guru » ]

[ Ulaf Silchov is an expert in video games and computers. He also writes for “Svadlost Weekly” and “The Aquarian Underworld Circular” ]

GREETINGS MY THE VIDEO GAME FRIENDS. THIS WORDS MARK THE STARTING OF A NEW WRITINGS BY ULAF WHERE YOUR MINDS ASK THE QUESTIONS OF YOUR MINDS TO ULAF AND MY MINDS ANSWERS THE QUESTIONS OF YOUR MINDS. LET US START THE FUN MACHINE AND TRAVEL.

[ Continue reading ASKING ULAF #1 » ]

Back in February, I conducted a nice interview with Steve Wozniak (“Woz”), co-founder of Apple Computer, that mostly focused on video and computer games. The piece is now on Gamasutra for all to read. Woz talks about how the Apple II design was inspired by video games, his love of Tetris, Steve Jobs as a gamer, and more.

You might remember that I previously did a Ralph Baer interview for Gamasutra. This Woz interview is only the latest in a series. There are more to come, so stay tuned.

There was a time in the early 1990s when “Virtual Reality” via bulky goggles strapped to your head seemed like the promise of the future. Video game console manufacturers like Atari, Sega, and Nintendo all dipped their toes into the virtual reality waters, but none devised a practical and cost-effective solution. Those attempting to create affordable consumer VR headsets encountered common problems: a true stereo display using two high resolution color LCD screens and motion tracking was too expensive, and even high quality goggles caused serious motion sickness and disorientation with many users.

Apparently VictorMaxx knew something that companies with multi-million dollar R&D budgets didn’t. They released the StuntMaster VR, a “3-D interactive virtual reality” headset with seemingly impressive motion tracking capability (“point-of-view instantly scrolls or rotates with the turn of your head!”). But alas, I own one, and I know that VictorMaxx only surpassed the competition in hyperbole and false advertising. The StuntMaster VR is a terrible piece of junk.

Imagine that: reality for the masses.

Dare you step forward, cheeze ball? Despite what the box says, the StuntMaster VR is not a 3D display. It contains one extremely grainy low resolution LCD screen in the center of the goggles. If you put it on, it hurts your face. The display singes your retinas with an intensely fuzzy, hard-to-focus-on image. The head tracking mechanism is nothing more than a stick you clip to your shoulder (see picture above) which slides through a loop on the side of the headset. When you turn your head, the StuntMaster detects the stick sliding in the loop and translates this into a left or right button press on a control pad, assuming you’ve actually hooked it up to the controller port of your SNES or Genesis. Remember the “point-of-view instantly scrolls or rotates with the turn of your head” quote? I’d love to see that happen in Super Mario World. Obviously, it couldn’t actually work unless the game were programmed for that functionality in advance. Unless, of course, you’re playing Doom and you want to turn left or right by moving your head.

A disturbing, tragic world, yours? Then please, do not buy the StuntMaster VR headset. Mine was so useless that I took it apart about four years ago and wired up some connectors to use it as a tiny LCD monitor. Even then, the LCD screen’s extremely low resolution makes it nearly useless. So now it spends most of its days sitting in its box, partially disassembled, reflecting on the good old days when plants were still green and the Lawnmower Man played out like a guaranteed guide to the future. I still want one of those springy mid-air virtual reality harnesses, by the way.

The StuntMaster headset makes me wonder how long VictorMaxx stayed in business. Who knows, we might hear from a former employee in time. Did anybody else have one of these, or any other VictorMaxx products? Leave a comment and we’ll talk.

If you use these images on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks.

Flying is not just for birds anymore. This week’s theme is “flying creatures.” Each of these three pixel blocks are from 8-bit games. Can you guess which ones? The first block is to the right, the other two are below. As always, post your guesses in the comments section of this entry, and don’t be bashful.

    

The answers to the last challenge are after the break.

[ Continue reading Name Those Pixels: Flying Creatures » ]