Does anybody out there remember VCR games? They were typically board games that integrated a pseudo-interactive VHS video tape into the game play. The first two to be released were the Clue VCR Mystery Game and Rich Little’s VCR Charades Game, both by Parker Brothers in 1985.

They weren’t video games, per se, but you could call them “video tape games,” or VCR games, as I preferred in the recent slideshow of 1980s and ’90s VCR game classics I assembled for TechHive. Here’s an excerpt from the intro:

The rise of the home VCR in the early 1980s brought about that last innovation, which resulted in dozens of board games (and eventually toys as well) that shipped with VHS tapes designed to be played at certain points in the game. Players had to follow cues in the game in order to call up the right segment to play on the videocassette—all in all, a tedious business.

Personally, I remember playing the Clue VCR game at a friend’s house as a kid not long after it came out. It seemed pretty amazing at the time. I also vaguely remember playing some beach-themed game, and maybe one based on Trivial Pursuit.

Oh, and I also had the white Captain Power ship and some tapes. Loved that stuff.

The same sort of pseudo-interactive game format later made its way to DVDs, but the rise of multimedia video games (and ever-better graphics) essentially killed whatever chance they had of becoming a classic game genre.

I just noticed recently that the volume of reader comments on this blog has gone way down in the past year or so.

Does anybody have any theories about why that is? (Ironically, you’ll have to comment to tell me.)

It’s unfortunate, because reader feedback is the currency that makes this site run. I like hearing from readers; it encourages me to keep updating this blog, as I have been doing since 2005 — almost 8 years now.

Traffic seems to be just about as strong as it has ever been. Is there some change in modern reader behavior that is discouraging people from commenting on this old style blog? Are people are moving away from RSS feed readers? Do I need a Twitter feed that tweets every new post onto there? Do people just hate filling out forms with email addresses, etc. every time they comment?

Maybe I’m just not posting stuff that people are interested in commenting on. Perhaps it’s time to retire the ‘ole beast. If I only get 2 responses to this, I think I will.

Epic MegaGames purchase invoice in January 1996.

You’re looking at a rare physical artifact from the twilight of shareware’s golden age.

Way back in 1996, when Gears of War maker Epic Games still went by “Epic MegaGames,” I ordered a few registered copies of its shareware games through CompuServe.

Since it was a special buy-and-download deal (very unusual in 1996), I didn’t receive copies of the games themselves on disk. Instead, Epic mailed an invoice, copies of the games’ instruction manuals (which have been displaced from this set, or else I would have scanned them too) and a shareware demo disk from Epic partner Safari Software.

[ Continue reading [ Retro Scan Special ] Buying from Epic Games in 1996 » ]

Just up on The Atlantic.com is an op-ed I wrote that argues for repealing the anti-circumvention section of the DMCA because it threatens the preservation of our cultural heritage.

Perhaps by now you’ve heard about the campaign to repeal the anti-circumvention section (1201) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This most recent challenge to the DMCA arose from a recent decision by the Librarian of Congress to discontinue a three-year exemption that made cell phone unlocking legal.

Opponents of the DMCA anti-circumvention provision claim that the law threatens consumer control over the electronic devices we buy, and they’re right. But the stakes are much higher than that. Our cultural history is in jeopardy. If the DMCA remains unaltered, cultural scholarship will soon be conducted only at the behest of corporations, and public libraries may disappear entirely.

That’s because the DMCA attacks one of the of the fundamental pillars of human civilization: the sharing of knowledge and culture between generations. Under the DMCA, manmade mechanisms that prevent the sharing of information are backed with the force of law. And sharing is vital for the survival of information. Take that away, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Share my article. Spread the word. It’s time to fix the DMCA.

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“DRM is a problem like mold is a problem, like fire is a problem. What distinguishes it, of course, is that it’s a man-made construct, which makes it seem really sad.” – Jason Scott, Archivist at The Internet Archive

“‘The Tolkien estate finally made the right choice with Interplay.'”

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the best Lord of the Rings- or Hobbit-themed video/computer game ever made?

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In ye olden days, BBS sysops often tagged image files that came within their possession with makeshift ads for their BBSes, as can be seen here on this image of Marvel’s Colossus. The BBS in this case is “The Users’s Choice BBS,” which sysop Martin Scolero ran in Indianapolis, Indiana between 1990 and 1996. (That info is courtesy a historical BBS list created by Jason Scott.)

[ Continue reading [ Retro GIF of the Week ] X-Men’s Colossus BBS Ad » ]

“Pardon me, m’am, but your wall is glowing.”

The cover of this October 1987 issue of Family & Home Office Computing is so sociologically charged that you could interpret it in dozens of ways — some of them seemingly contradictory.

The cover story and art are reflective of the 1970s women’s movement in the US that empowered women to more freely seek careers outside of the home. And yet it’s referring to a woman working from home — while wearing semi-formal business attire, nonetheless. (I’m not particularly equipped to critique women’s fashion, but I can imagine that some women today would find the idea of working at home in this kind of outfit to be amusing.)

Plenty of people do office-style work from home these days, but in 1987, that was a very new concept. It was all made possible by advances in telecommunications and personal computers. But the concept brought with it many new challenges.

The lady seen here is a mom (see mug), and she has to worry about “juggling career and family,” as the cover states — a tricky issue that will never fully be resolved in any decade. Does she care for her children during the day, or are they at school? Is she an employee or a business owner? Why did she choose an Epson-brand PC compatible machine?

While these are all very real concerns, in this case we can answer every question quite easily: she’s just a model in a magazine cover shoot.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Do any women read this blog? [echo, echo…] What do you think of this cover image?

Every once and a while, I receive emails from people looking for a certain game, electronic toy, or computer from their distant past. I then pass it on to intrepid VC&G readers to crack the case.

The Clues

Matt V writes:

I forget whether it was on Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, but I remember Windows coming with a CGI video that was something like a ball going through a Rube Goldberg machine… at the very end, the ball rolls up to a guy (maybe Bill Gates?) who looks at the camera and says “Cool!”

I don’t remember it being shown anywhere specifically; I seem to remember finding it by looking through random directories for *.mid files (back when hearing music from a computer was fascinating) …

It’s possible that it wasn’t specifically a Windows video, I suppose it could have been installed when I got my sound card as well.

Anyone else remember this?

The Search Begins

It’s up to you to find the object of Matt’s fuzzy memory. Post any thoughts or suggestions in the comments section below. Matt will be monitoring the comments, so if you need to clarify something with him, ask away. Good luck!

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Have a memory of a computer, video game, computer software, or electronic toy you need help identifying? Send me an email describing your memories in detail. Hopefully, the collective genius of the VC&G readership can help solve your mystery.

Click to see other views of this image: [ Original Size ] [ 2X Zoom ] [ 4:3 Ratio ]

It’s hard to believe that an artist created this delectable representation of a strawberry using only tiny digital squares in a mere 16 different shades. Whomever made it did so in 1986 on a Commodore Amiga: the signature date, image dimensions, color depth, and color resolution all point to those facts.

Obviously, due to its age, this image did not originate as a GIF. CompuServe introduced the first GIF standard in 1987.

I know of three other works by this same artist (all signed with the same signature), and they’re all amazing. I’ll probably post them in the future, but for reference, those other works depict a stylized lion head, a pair of feminine human lips, and a “Liquid Light” logo.

But I can’t quite read the signature. It looks like it starts with a “K.” Can anybody out there help me find this artists’ name?

[ Update: 03/06/2013 – Gino in the comments identified this image as the work of Kara Blohm, a well-known Amiga font and graphics artist who is now sadly deceased. Thanks, Gino! ]

Disney now owns this game.

In 1985, LucasFilm Games released one of the earliest first-person shooters, although they didn’t know it at the time. In The Eidolon, players fluidly navigate corridors from a first-person viewpoint, shooting monsters that they encounter along the way.

The Eidolon utilizes a novel and technically impressive vector graphics engine to dynamically generate tunnel interiors from various angles as players maneuver through them. The engine also served as the basis of other LucasFilm titles like Rescue on Fractalus! (1984) and Koronis Rift (1985).

Although this game appeared on the Atari 8-bit computer platform (which I grew up with), I never got a chance to play it until about ten years ago. If I had seen it in the 1980s, it would have immediately become a favorite.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite pre-1996 first-person shooter?