In Memoriam: Satoru Iwata (1959-2015), President, Nintendo of Japan
CEO, Nintendo of America

What a horrible thing. Iwata will be sorely missed.

These days, few large company CEOs rise up through engineering (in this case, software engineering) to take the top spot at the firm. Iwata did exactly that, and that likely contributed a great deal to his success at leading Nintendo.

Nintendo needs a new rudder now. Who they choose to replace Iwata will make or break the company at this point — Nintendo is in a fragile position, poised at the edge of a transition to a new console business model designed to ensure its survival in a mobile/tablet/smartphone dominated world.

What will happen next is anybody’s guess.

What happened under Iwata was amazing.

Few people know this, but that’s actually strawberry jelly

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the best Atari ST-exclusive game you can think of?

It’s not a grill, but it’ll do.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite boxing video game of all time?

“This is it, boys. Over the anthill.”

Discussion Topic of the Week: How many insect-themed computer or video games can you name off the top of your head?

It burns your disks

I know nothing about this dual removable hard disk device — called “The Toaster” — by XCOMP. The only time I’ve ever seen it is in this ad. But judging by the lightning, it was completely awesome.

It was also completely expensive — about US $6,639.50 when adjusted for inflation.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever used a removable hard disk system?

WHAM! POW! ZAP!

I’ve been intrigued by this Sega Electronic Comics System prototype since I first saw it in Popular Science’s What’s New section back in April 1995. Here is an excerpt from that very magazine.

As far as I know, this device never made it into production — in fact, the only mention I can find of it on the Internet as of this writing is this post on the Collectors Society forums.

Apparently, the Sega Electronic Comics device worked in conjunction with a tailor-made paper comic book that one would place onto the device. A series of pressure-sensitive buttons beneath the comic book could be pressed to somehow direct the narrative of the book. (Perhaps like Choose Your Own Adventure — i.e. if you do this, turn to page 3.)

This reminds me of the comic book device Tom Hanks’ character outlines in the film Big (1988), albeit without any type of electronic screen. The crazy thing is that 15 years after this Sega Prototype, you could buy an iPad that could store and display thousands of entirely digital comics in a much thinner form factor.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Do you use an electronic device to read comic books? Tell us about it.

A scene from “Zork: Brick Collector”

This is it, folks: an early ad (maybe the first) for the original commercial release of Zork, the famous Infocom text adventure, published by Personal Software ca. 1980 for the TRS-80 Model I and III home computers.

(This site has some wonderful background history on this release.)

I love the artwork featured in this ad. It is excised from the full cover art for the Personal Software version, which captures a great deal of the majesty and wonder of the seminal adventure title — plus a hefty dose of out-of-place machismo.

The mere mention of Zork takes me back to the mid-1980s when my older brother delved into the Great Underground Empire with the aid of photocopied maps and worn out InvisiClues on our family’s Atari 800. Warm, fuzzy memories. Of course, by then, Infocom published the title directly.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite text adventure game of all time? (Modern ones count.)

Biggest Lemming I Ever Seen

My brother received the IBM PC port of Lemmings as a gift (probably for Christmas) in the early 1990s. It made a distinct impression in my young mind, with its vivid VGA graphics, a playful MIDI soundtrack, and charismatic little creatures that you could bid to do your every whim.

I have never played the Game Boy version, but this ad caught my eye.

When I wrote a feature about the most ported games of all time for 1UP.com back in 2007, Lemmings featured prominently with ports to 28 systems up to that point in time. What can I say — Lemmings is a classic.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the best Lemmings-like or Lemmings clone game? (Other than Lemmings, of course — The Humans and Baldies come to mind.)

Marvel should turn this into a movie

In 1983, comic book giant Marvel experimented with publishing a video game magazine called Blip. Here is the cover of the premiere issue, which features Little House on the Prairie star Matthew Laborteaux.

Wikipedia says this about Laborteaux, who was apparently a dedicated video game fan:

Laborteaux is a skilled video game player. In October 1981 he finished in tenth place for Centipede at the Atari, Inc. world championships, and in April 1982 became the United States Pac-Man champion at a People-sponsored tournament, with a score of 1,200,000.

Celebrities are people too.

Regarding the magazine itself: Blip retained the size, shape, weight, and thickness of a typical 1980s Marvel comic book. It was even printed on the same type of paper, likely using the same presses Marvel used for its superhero books at the time.

I haven’t thumbed through this magazine in years — it’s currently in storage — but I remember being sadly underwhelmed by its content when I bought this copy off eBay about a decade ago. I recall thinking that the printing technology did not reproduce photos very well, which did not lend itself to splashy, colorful video game ads or screenshots. Perhaps partly because of this, the mag only lasted seven issues.

The Internet Archive currently hosts scans of all seven issues of Blip.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever read any comics (strips or books) based on video games? What are your favorites?

The Ultimate Helicopter Eclipse Simulator

Discussion Topic of the Week: Other than Civilization, what is the best MicroProse title of the 1980s and 1990s?