And you thought video game controllers were over-complicated these days; this one requires five (slightly-pudgy child) hands just to use it properly.

Take a look at this bad boy: four trigger buttons on the pistol-like grip (one per finger), twelve buttons in the overlay-friendly numeric keypad matrix on top, a one-dimensional “speed roller” wheel near the back, and an extremely flaccid red-knobbed joystick crowning it all. Combine this with the futuristic look of a gaudy black space gauntlet that literally engulfs your hand, and you’ve got the ColecoVision Super Action Controller. This marvel of controlling technology came in sets of two with a “Super Action Game” included — in my case, “Super Action Baseball.” I’m lucky enough to have a pair essentially “new in box,” so I grabbed these scans off the box itself.

It’s no secret that the ColecoVision’s original controllers were absolutely horrible. In fact, they could only be surpassed by those of the earlier Intellivision in terms of “least ergonomic controller design ever.” Obviously someone within Coleco noticed this fact and set out to design a super-ergonomic controller with a vengeance. But it seems they went a little overboard in the process: on the box it claims that the Super Action Controller is “the first video game [controller] that [gives] you individual control of 4 or more onscreen players.” Sounds really simple and easy to use, doesn’t it? With this amazing controller, you can control an entire baseball team with only one hand! Coleco was obviously way ahead of its time in this respect, as it seems the rest of the video game industry has still not caught up with their incredible insight into control of on-screen characters. Had Coleco gotten their way, we’d probably be playing five-on-five video basketball against ourselves (using one finger for each player) on a controller with twenty-five buttons. The extra fifteen are for the refs and the cheerleaders, of course.

I’ve long wanted to archive personal stories related to computers. Aside from being wonderful nostalgic reads, such a collection will likely be an important source of first-hand accounts for future historians. That’s why I’m creating the BBS Stories Archive. I’ll eventually have a site or section on VC&G dedicated to this (and other, non-BBS stories), but for now, I obviously need material for the archive first.

I’m looking for any personal, true written account about Bulletin Board Systems, whatsoever. The account can be about any topic (as long as it’s BBS-related and non-fiction) you’d like to recount for us, and can cover any age, any time (even up to the present), any software, or any experience. The longer and more detailed the story, the better. You might have only called a BBS once in your life, but if you’d like to write down the experience, that’s completely fine with me. The stories don’t have to be incredible or especially unique; any account of even the most seemingly boring activities will provide immense value to people of the future looking back on how BBS technology was used. On the other hand, unique stories are, of course, welcome as well. Did you meet your wife on a BBS? Lose your job over a BBS? Save the world through a BBS? I want to know about it.

So if you’d like to participate in this grand historical project, either email me your accounts here, or if you prefer, you can even post them as comments on this entry. If they’re relevant, they will be added to the archive. You will retain all rights and credit (unless you wish to remain anonymous) for your story and writing, by the way.

And yes, I know that no discussion of BBS historical efforts online can transpire without mentioning Jason Scott’s incredible work with both his BBS Documentary and Textfiles.com. I’m sure he has a wonderful collection of BBS stories himself, but there’s no harm in having two BBS historians out there.

Most BBS enthusiasts know that the last outpost for BBSes has been, for some time now, through telnet on the Internet. There was a time, however, when when dial-up BBSes over analog phone lines were the rule, not the exception. And believe it or not, there are still a handful of BBSes out there that have not modernized and switched over to the ‘Net. The only way you can get to them, though, is through an old fashioned analog phone modem, regular ole Ma Bell lines, and a little patience.

Visiting such old BBSes is incredible — it’s like traveling back in time to the early-mid 1990s. Each BBS is a unique a time capsule, stocked with trinkets and ephemera from the period. On message boards, you’ll find posts from 1994 about the O.J. Simpson trial and which player-made Doom levels are best. In file transfer sections you’ll run across large archives of long-forgotten Windows 3.1 screen savers. In door sections (online games), you’ll find abandoned TradeWars 2002 games, still in progress, that haven’t been touched in eight years. And of course, the Ferrengi have completely taken over.

[ Continue reading The Dial-Up BBS Revisited » ]

[ In this article, I’m testing a new image preview method. You can see a larger version of most images by hovering your mouse cursor over an image. Please let me know if you encounter any problems with this. — The Editor ]

Breakthrough technology. Innovative gameplay. Revolutionary features. It seems that every new game claims to incorporate some aspect that players have never seen before. From a marketing standpoint, that’s understandable. We all want value for our money, and what better hook is there than offering a fresh experience? What better enticement is there than a style of game we’ve never seen before?

Wolfenstein 3D and Doom reshaped the gaming market almost overnight by giving players a chance to step into the skin of their character. When Diablo first hit the shelves, one of its biggest selling points was the nearly-unlimited replayability afforded by its randomly-generated maps and quests. And Neverwinter Nights boasts one of the strongest online communities around, due in part to the extremely powerful editing tools that allow users to create adventures every bit as polished as what the game shipped with.

These titles are all examples of truly unique, one-of-a-kind ideas dominating, and changing, the gaming world. Or at least, they would be, if the ideas behind them really were unique. But how many gamers remember titles like Ultima Underworld, Castle of the Winds, Mordor, and Shattered Light?

[ Continue reading Eric’s Look at Recycled PC Game Ideas » ]

Deep down in the murky depths of an ancient and musty box of Commodore paraphernalia that I’d never before sorted through, I recently discovered a somewhat stained and mildly discolored promotional C64 pamphlet. Who knows how many years it spent rotting in someone’s extra-dank basement before it eventually came into my possession. This particular scan is one set of pages from that very pamphlet, detailing various expansion options for a Commodore 64 computer system.

The 1701 monitor and it’s successor, the 1702, were (and still are) real workhorse displays. I can’t even begin to fathom how many hours of usage my 1702 has seen over the years (not just from the last ten-plus years of my usage, but from someone else for ten years before that!), but it has held up incredibly well. The picture is bright, steady, and easily adjustable, making it the favorite and most frequently utilized composite video monitor in my collection. With a flat top and steady bottom, it’s highly stackable too, which is a great bonus.

I particularly like the description of the stylish “1600 Modem,” a 300 bps screamer that apparently came with a “free password and one-hour subscription to the CompuServe system.” Wow, did they say one whole hour? You mean I can stay online for sixty (count ’em, 6-0) minutes!? Well wax me with a grasshopper and call me St. Jocephus.

Actually, now that I think about it, this pamphlet is from when CompuServe cost around $30/hour (in 1982-83 dollars) for connection time, so I guess it was actually a good deal.

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Just yesterday I was browsing through the wonderful video and computer game resource that is MobyGames.com, and I noticed something very peculiar. All of the top 25 most highly rated games of all time on MobyGames were adventure or RPG games, and many of them were just straight up adventure games. All of the RPGs on the list are typically considered “adventure/RPG games” — in other words, RPGs with strong adventure elements. Upon checking again earlier today, a lone exception — Super Mario Bros. — had creeped into 25th place (see screenshot to the side), and as of this writing, it’s risen to rank 22, so the list is fairly dynamic. Still, the clear dominance of adventure/RPGs remains.

Conspicuously absent from the list are the usual game pundit “all time” favorites like Tetris, Super Metroid, Castlevania: SOTN, and Super Mario 64. Adventure, a genre that is supposedly “dead” in modern PC gaming, reigns supreme. So what gives?

[ Continue reading MobyGames: “Adventure” the Best Game Genre of All Time? » ]