Ghost Manor and Dead Moon on a Zombie Console

Discussion Topic: What’s the scariest 16-bit era game you’ve ever played?

Watch out for that jungle crude oil pit

As a kid, we had an Atari 2600, and before the NES era, Pitfall! was very popular in our household. Unlike most Atari VCS games, it felt like a real adventure, and it was thrilling to directly control a tiny jumping human on the screen while avoiding crazy jungle hazards like alligators and, well, huge pits that led to nowhere.

By the way, this is the largest single-page Retro Scan I’ve ever scanned — it comes from a large format LIFE magazine ad. I found the magazine in my grandparents’ washhouse in Texas back in the 1990s and saved it because of this ad.

If you’re curious, here is the full scan jumbo size at 600 dpi (it’s a 5919 x 7761 pixel 38 MB JPEG, so watch out).

Discussion Topic: Which is better: Pitfall! or Pitfall II: Lost Caverns?

ULAF SAY, “MIND SCRAPE”

I believe this Mindscape flier came packed with Days of Thunder for the NES. I am not a huge fan of the games depicted here aside from 720 and Gauntlet II, both of which are pretty good Atari Games arcade ports.

And while M.U.L.E. is a favorite of mine on the Atari 800, I am not a big fan of the NES version. It’s nice that it uses the Four Score / Satellite four player adapter though (Gauntlet II does as well).

Discussion Topic: What’s the best four-player game for the NES?

Is somebody gonna clean this mess up?

Here we have a biggole two-page IBM PC 5150 advertisement spread from 1982 — published not long after the launch of IBM’s first PC in August 1981.

It looks like IBM is trying to play up the bare-metal technical angle for Byte readers, who likely were building their own PCs from kit parts just a few years prior (and some still were doing it then).

The result, quite frankly, is a huge mess (looks like my workbench). And the advertisement didn’t come out too well in the magazine print run, which makes the image dark and muddy. It’s not my fault, I swear!

I particularly like the phrase “the RS232C interface that gives you the world” in the advertising copy. It implies using the serial port for networking — that is, in connecting to remote computers. It’s funny because back then, that statement was a hyperbolic boast that was not meant literally. Online services were limited to a teeny-tiny fraction of the world population and their capabilities were limited. Today, networking does really give you the world.

Discussion Topic: Have you ever broken a computer while you were taking it apart? Tell us about it.

IT”SSSS AWEESSSOOOMME

I was a big fan of Vectorman back when it first came out. Around that time, I bought a used Sega Genesis from a friend (my first), and I rented a copy from Vectorman from Blockbuster (or did I rent an entire Genesis itself first — my memory is hazy on that point). I was blown away by Vectorman’s fluid animations, great sound effects and music, and tight overall feel of the game. I still think Vectorman is one of the best games on the Genesis.

This ad comes from Wizard (the comic book magazine), and in a two-page spread, it took up one whole page on the left and about a third of the page on the right. I have cropped out the remaining 2/3 of the right page which was unrelated to the ad.

That right portion, by the way, describes Sega’s “Play to Win” contest that tied into the game. Apparently, certain randomly distributed Vectorman cartridges contained in-game messages that advised the player to call a phone number and claim a prize. The top prize was $25,000 and some other perks, which you can read about on Wikipedia. The contest was a clever way to entice people to play the game at a time when 16-bit systems were on the way out.

Discussion Topic: In your opinion, which Sega Genesis game had the best graphics?

If it’s as easy to use as it is to pronounce, then I want it.

I was so excited about PC-based virtual reality back in the 1990s. I remember reading the early Web (circa 1995-96) about how people would build their own HMD goggles and modify a NES Power Glove to use as input for certain VR software packages. I wanted to do that too, but never did.

I also played some shareware 3D world demos where you could walk around a polygonal-3D town (and prior to that, I had vivid dreams about jumping into a 3D computer-generated world that looked like the Money for Nothing Dire Straits video).

Apparently, VREAM made some of those 1990s VR demos possible. It was a PC-based virtual reality development system created by VREAM, Inc. of Chicago. I have never used it, but it looks neat.

This ad comes from the back cover of an issue of PCVR magazine that I got from a relative. You can read more about that in this Retro Scan from 2014.

Discussion Topic: Did you use any 3D modeling software in the 1990s? Tell us about it.

—

See Also:

“A VAST RPG WORLD IN STUNNING GRAPHICS!”

Discussion Topic: What’s your favorite RPG on the Super NES?

The only winning move is not to play

Here’s an oldie but goodie — the IMSAI 8080, a 1975 clone of the pioneering Altair 8800. Like the Altair, it used an S-100 bus, an Intel 8080 CPU, and a blue, boxy sheet metal case with front panel lights. Unlike the Altair, the IMSAI 8080 featured prominently in the 1983 movie WarGames. The machine apparently greatly annoyed Ed Roberts, the inventor of the Altair.

Discussion Topic: Have you ever used an IMSAI 8080 or Altair 8800? Tell us about it.

I just got a craving for The Spice

Dune II is to the real-time strategy genre as Wolfenstein 3D is to first-person shooters. Like Wolf-3D, Dune II wasn’t the absolute first example of its genre, but it was the first game to bring together all the distinctive elements of its respective genre into one title — in this case, those elements would later be copied and expanded upon over and over again by games like Command & Conquer and Warcraft.

That being said, I’ve only played Dune II a few times — only many years after its release. I never got into it, but I can see why it is a historically important game. Warcraft was my first modern RTS game.

Discussion Topic: What’s your favorite Real-Time Strategy game of all time?

Now you’ll have more time to spend with your dog

I’ve previously featured a later-model IBM PS/1 that also happened to be my brother’s college computer, circa ’94. But here we see an ad for an early — if not the first — model of the PS/1. This is back when PS/1 systems had the OS and a nifty mouse-based GUI program launcher built into ROM. They also shipped with Prodigy on the hard disk. I’m starting to really want one of these for my collection.

Discussion Topic: Has a pet ever done damage to your computer or game system? Tell us about it.