Frozen whipped gelatin on a stick.

I recently found this cardboard tip sheet for Crystalis in a pile of my old stuff at my parents’ house. As you can see, I cut it out of a JELLO Gelatin Pops box in or around 1990.

The tip sheet seems to serve a triple marketing purpose: 1) to promote NES games (specifically Crystalis, in this case), 2) to promote the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, and 3) to promote Nintendo Power magazine.

I love finding tie-in marketing artifacts like this — I’m glad I saved it all those years ago.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Do you remember cutting video game tips out of boxes, magazines, or other paper publications? Tell us about it.

Electronic Arts turned 30 on May 28th, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to check in with its founder, Trip Hawkins, on how he feels about Electronic Arts today. It’s no secret that EA, while a massively successful company, takes a lot of heat from gamers on a number of issues (see this Retro Scan and its comments for more on that).

In an interview published at Edge Online, Hawkins and I spoke at length about Electronic Arts, including the founding of EA, finding early EA developers, his time at Apple, his friendship with Steve Jobs, and yes, how he feels about Electronic Arts today.

The resulting interview was so long that Edge decided to split it into five parts. It just published the last part today, so I thought I’d collect all the links here so you can read it.

Interestingly, there has been no mention of the company’s 30th anniversary from Electronic Arts itself. Its staff was probably too busy revising its own history to notice.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Friendster, and the 15th anniversary of the launch of SixDegrees.com, the first social networking website.

Up now on PCWorld.com is a slideshow (created by yours truly) to celebrate these anniversaries by examining the world of computerized social networking in the pre-Web era. It covers the usual suspects like Usenet, CompuServe, and BBSes, plus some surprising early services of which you may not have heard. I hope you enjoy it.

As a side note, I’d like to add that this will be my last slideshow edited by Ed Albro, my long-time PC World editor whom I have worked with since 2008. It’s been a pleasure working with Ed, and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

Two out of three doctors recommend Osborne 1 for muscle fatigue.

We’ve come a long way from what many consider to be the first commercial portable PC, the Osborne 1 (seen here), and the recently announced Microsoft Surface tablet.

Here’s a brain twister for you. If you packed a case the size of the Osborne 1 (think small suitcase) with Surface-sized portable tech, how powerful would the machine be?

Discussion Topic of the Week: What was your first portable computer? When did you get it?

I think they have it backwards.

Amid the recent media hullabaloo that modern video games are sexist and overly fixated on violence, I give you this ad for Deathtrap Dungeon from 1998. That is all.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Graphics quality aside, do you think today’s video games are more sexist and violent than games from earlier eras?

A similar phrase adorns a plaque inside the base of the Statue of Liberty.

In this ad for Polaroid PerfectData disks, Polaroid mentions a free data recovery service for damaged floppies. I wonder what tools they used to recover the data; that would be very interesting to look into. Also, I wonder whether anyone ever took Polaroid up on the company’s offer to rescue their data. If anyone out there knows more about this, by all means, leave a comment.

Make sure you take note of the “20-year guarantee” mentioned in this ad — then read Why History Needs Software Piracy.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the worst thing that has ever happened to your computer storage media?

25 years ago this March (1987), Apple released the Macintosh II, the first open architecture Macintosh. Naturally, I’ve written a short feature about this pioneering machine over at Macworld.

While speaking with Michael Dhuey, the Apple engineer that conceived the Mac II, I learned that Apple patterned the Mac II after the 1977 Apple II, which sported the same sort of flexibility and expandability as the Mac II. That self-referential influence amazed me — especially coming from a company that recently institutionalized the practice of ignoring its own history.

But only two years after Steve Jobs resigned from Apple, the company had no problem making the un-Jobs move of both looking backward and opening up the Macintosh. The result changed the course of Macintosh history.

[ Continue reading Macintosh II 25th Anniversary » ]

AOL Keyword: Rotating Nintendo Cubes

If you haven’t noticed, E3 2012 is taking place this week in Los Angeles, CA. Here’s a Nintendo Power teaser announcement for the Nintendo’s E3 event that launched the Nintendo 64 in 1996.

When I see this, I can’t help but reflect on what a different press environment we live in today. In 1996 there were no blogs and the public’s adoption of the web was limited. Today, we get our news by-the-second from dozens, if not hundreds, of media outlets online.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite E3 memory?

Believe it or not, it’s been almost two years since I did my last tech teardown slideshow for PC World. After 11 visual disassemblies with my haggard workbench as a backdrop, I figured I’d give the series a rest until an interesting new venue came along.

Fast forward to April 2012 — it was a beautiful spring day outside, and I had decided to take apart a 1972 Magnavox Odyssey (the first commercial video game console) in honor of its 40th anniversary. I walked out to my back yard, sat down on the moss, and the result is now up on PCWorld.com.

I hope you enjoy it.

—

Here are my previous tech teardowns: Nintendo NES, Atari 1040STf, Atari 800, Commodore Amiga 1000, Commodore 64, Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo Famicom, Apple IIc, IBM Model M Keyboard, TRS-80 Model 100, and Macintosh Portable.

“We’ve got a lot of space here, Fred, and I’m tired.” [stamps 7 times] “Fixed.”

Forty years ago, Magnavox lifted the veil on the world’s first commercial video game console, the Odyssey. Designed to work with a home TV set, the Odyssey blazed a trail that every game console follows today.

While the Odyssey had first been revealed to the press in April 1972, the Odyssey reached the market at $99.99 (about $548 in today’s dollars) in August of that year.

Magnavox’s console relied on technology originally developed by Ralph Baer, Bill Harrison, and Bill Rusch at Sanders Associates in the mid- to late 1960s. Baer’s invention, together with Atari’s work during the same period, founded an industry.

Even though I’ve been writing about the work of Ralph Baer for over five years now, I still am amazed that the commercial video game console is now 40 years old. But 40 years is a long time in technology, and it’s easy to see how we’ve come so far if you keep that time scale in mind.

By the way — in honor of this anniversary, I recently took apart an Odyssey console for PC World. You can read about that adventure in another post.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever played an original Magnavox Odyssey console? Describe how you felt about the experience.