Oh Tammy Sue, How I Adore You

How do you make a handheld controller into a non-handheld controller? By strapping on a giant block of unwieldy plastic, of course.

The Stick Station (subject of a RSOTW in 2006) achieved the same feat by using a large poplar board. The result was far more stylish than the Video Rack, but equally useless.

While there may be a handful of games that benefit from an immovable joystick base (like an arcade machine), they’re in such a minority that they don’t warrant a special peripheral. I back up this observation by the fact that the Video Rack and Stick Station are exceedingly rare peripherals. If everybody had wanted one, they’d be common today.

There is one one notable case, however, where a joystick stabilizer really helps. Atari shipped a special dual-joystick mount with every copy of Robotron 2084 for the Atari 8-bit computer line. I have one, and it is awesome.

Discussion Topic of the Week: In your opinion, what video games would benefit from using the Video Rack?

Up now on PCMag is a slideshow I made showcasing 10 unreleased video game consoles. I hope you enjoy it.

Do you know of any cool unreleased game systems that I didn’t mention? Tell us about them in the comments below.

There are about 730 hours in a month.

You may remember getting one of these in the mail in the 1990s.

Ok, ok…you may remember getting dozens and dozens of these CDs in the mail. Some people used them as coasters, some as Frisbees. Some put them in the microwave to watch them sparkle. (To any kids reading: please don’t try this.) Me? I collected them.

I saved just about every CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online floppy disk or CD I ever received back then, and I amassed quite a collection. Some day I plan to write about these promotional disks more, but for now you’ll have to be satisfied with this shiny blue AOL Titanium 5.0 CD from way back in ’99.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What did you do with all the promotional CDs and floppy disks you received in the mail?

“Lets You Use Your Game Boy In The Dark.” (see back)

Discussion Topic of the Week: Did you use any accessories with your Game Boy back in the day? Which ones?

The Talos Digi-Kit-Izer digitizer tablet

Digitizer tablets were a popular way of digitizing graphical information in the 1970s and 1980s — an era before cheap optical scanners (and the memory to store those scanned images) became available.

To use a digitizer, you would place an image you wanted “digitized” (translated into the computer) onto the tablet and mark the key points of the illustration with a special stylus or cursor (a handheld mouse-like device with a small targeting window) hooked to a computer. Through this process, the stylus/tablet combination would interpret the spacial relationship between the points you marked into a series of graphical dots on the computer screen. Those dots, in turn, could be turned into a 2D computer image (think connect-the-dots) if desired.

With some tablets, it was also possible to trace lines of an illustration with continuous strokes of the stylus. These tablets evolved into the modern Wacom-style graphics tablet we know today.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever used a graphics tablet (of any kind)? Tell us about it.

It’s just about that time of year again. Vintage Computer Festival East is coming to a New Jersey near you. Evan Koblentz, who organizes the show, wanted me to remind VC&G readers that the seventh annual incarnation of the show will taking place on May 14-15 in Wall, NJ. Here are more details pulled from the VCF website:

The 7th annual Vintage Computer Festival East will be held on Saturday, May 14th and Sunday, May 15th, at the InfoAge Science Center at Wall, New Jersey. The event is sponsored by MARCH and VintageTech.

The doors open at 10:00am each day. Speakers begin at 10:15am and end at 2:00pm. The Exhibit and Marketplace open at 2:00pm. VCF runs to 7:00pm Saturday and 5:00pm Sunday.

VCF is (mostly) indoors and is held rain or shine. Admission is $10 for one day, $15 for both days, and free for ages 17 and younger. Parking is free.

For more details, check out the VCF website.

I attended VCF 9.0 (the original western edition of the show) back in 2006 and had a great time. I’ve never been to a VCF East, but I hear they’re just as fun as the ones they hold in California. If you live on the east coast, this is your best chance to meet and greet with other VC&G-type enthusiasts.

Sadly, I can’t make the show physically this year — I will be attending via time-shifted remote telepresence from my non-mobile command center down in NC. (In other words, I’ll read about it on the web after it happens.)

Last month I said that I had created my last epic slideshow. Well, I guess I changed my mind.

Up now on PCWorld.com is a decidedly epic History of Atari Computers. This visually-rich slideshow covers just about every model of Atari computer ever released — the only exceptions are some minor revisions and generally-equivalent European variations (the 260ST comes to mind).

It’s comprehensive enough that I will probably be using it as a quick reference when the need arises in the future. I hope you enjoy it.

I have a secret: computer history didn’t stop at the end of the 1980s.

This fact may seem obvious to long-time VC&G readers, because this site’s working definition of “vintage” in the computer and video game realm is 10 years old or older.

But many vintage computer sites you’ll find out there don’t bother to cover PCs made in the 1990s — that era of utter and almost absolute IBM PC-clone dominance — mostly out of disgust for the bland uniformity of that decade’s computer offerings.

Well, It’s time to look beyond that self-imposed glass wall and peer into a decade that was not nearly as devoid of interesting alternative machines as some people think.

My most recent slideshow on Technologizer, “15 Amazing Computing Rarities of the 1990s,” is dedicated to that task. It takes a good look at 15 rare and unusual machines that the 1990s made. I hope you enjoy it.

A scene from Benj’s recent birthday party (April 2011)

They came out of the blue of the black sky.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite 2D space shooter of all time?