“Read/Write 720K Disks Too”

Nothing illustrates the frenetic pace of technological change like past/present price comparisons. As seen in this group ad by JDR Microdevices, a 1.44MB 3.5″ floppy disk drive sold for US $99.95 in 1990 ($164.69 in 2009 dollars). But that’s just for the generic model — for a name brand Misubishi, you had to pay $129.95 ($214.12 in 2009).

That’s quite a price for a now-obsolete commodity device that sells for $7.99 today (or $4.85 in 1990 dollars, interestingly enough). Of course, in 1990, a high density drive like this was cutting-edge.

As an aside, notice that the 3.5″ floppy drive pictured occupies a 5.25″ half-height form factor. That shows you how old this is — at the time, most owners slid 3.5″ upgrade drives into computer cases that only shipped with 5.25″ half-height bays (this bay size commonly holds desktop DVD-R drives today). To do so, many 3.5″ floppy drives needed a special face plate and brackets to fill the gaps between the smaller drive and the larger bay around it.

Discussion topic of the week: What’s the most you’ve ever paid for a computer peripheral or upgrade component?

In early June, I conducted a lengthy telephone interview with Scott Miller, founder of Apogee Software (now known as 3D Realms). Today, the interview is up on Gamasutra. This is sort of a companion interview to my earlier talk with Tim Sweeney of Epic Games (another shareware heavyweight), although both stand alone quite well.

Apogee is best known for publishing dozens of episodic shareware games, including Kingdom of Kroz, Duke Nukem, the Commander Keen Series, Wolfenstein 3D, and Rise of the Triad. The company later changed its name to 3D Realms and scored a monster hit with Duke Nukem 3D.

Through Apogee, Miller revitalized and dominated the shareware game industry, invented episodic gaming, pioneered the use of the freely distributable game demo, and provided the spark that inspired id Software’s founding.

During the interview, Scott and I went through his early days in programming, the founding of Apogee, the transition from simple shareware to 3D games, his interactions with id Software, his thoughts on shareware game competition in the early 1990s (including Epic MegaGames and Tim Sweeney), and much more. If you’re a fan of BBS or shareware history, you won’t want to miss it.

Giving Shareware the Attention It Deserves

The concept of shareware has for too long been seen as the red-headed stepchild of the computer game industry. It has oft been relegated to the metaphorical back pages and footnotes of the history books — if it shows up at all — and frequently looked down upon by “serious” publishers who never deigned to give away any version of their work for free (until Apogee came along, anyway). I’d like to change that, and I’m hoping that my recent interviews with Miller and Sweeney will lay the foundation for a deeper understanding of shareware’s importance for future generations.

Although it might be a philosophy whose place in the sun has come and gone, shareware has not been an idea without merit or influence. As you’re about to read, the story of Scott Miller, his partner George Broussard, and their company firmly prove otherwise.

The time? Half-past dagger.

Does anybody know more about this interesting looking watch? I don’t recall seeing or hearing anything about it beyond this tiny profile in Popular Science’s “What’s New” section back in 1995.

Casio’s Infraceptor watch functions as a game machine, a phone book, an infrared message sender, and a stopwatch. Its IR beam lets you play a “dungeons and demons” adventure against other Infraceptor users. You prepare the phone book information — for as many as ten people — or canned questions and replies for the message-sending function on a JD-6000 Digital Diary before storing it in the watch. Price: $100.

I wonder how the so-called “dungeons and demons” game worked. I’m completely guessing here, but I suspect it wasn’t very fun. It’s still a neat concept that I would have killed for as a kid (I can imagine surreptitiously playing it at school).

Check out this neat Japanese page with pictures of other super-nerdy watches on it.

Discussion topic of the week: Tell us about the geekiest watch you’ve ever owned. (i.e. Calculator? Digital address book? Built-in camera? Dick Tracy-style radio?)

Up now on Technologizer is my latest VC&G-related freelance work: 15 Classic Game Console Design Mistakes, a non-exhaustive analysis of various hardware and design goofs in video game consoles. In it, I discuss the Intellivision, Sega Saturn, NES, Atari Jaguar, and more.

This latest article is a follow-up of an earlier Technologizer piece I wrote back in June: 15 Classic PC Design Mistakes.

Interestingly, this latest piece is proving to be far more controversial. I suspect it’s because people have had more up-close experiences with video game systems than with semi-obscure computers, and because game consoles inspire quite a bit of unflinching loyalty in the general populace.

I came up with many more flaws than I listed, but I couldn’t keep writing forever. So feel free to share your ideas for game console design flaws either here or over at Technologizer.

Finally. A respectable computer. Took long enough.

The Compucolor II was one of the world’s first personal computers with color display capabilities. It’s now quite rare. Does anybody out there have one that they don’t want?

Discussion topic of the week: Have you ever regularly used a computer without a color display? If so, tell us about it.

Sega Saturn’s Polyhedral Bodies: Too Real

Discussion topic of the week: What’s the most underrated Sega Saturn game?

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Just your typical late-1970s scene — a poofy-haired car salesman at home in a tie with a huge sandwich, a glass of milk, a large set of keys, a generic S-100 bus computer with a TV terminal, and a book called “Trout” behind him.

He likes to fish.

Of course, the whole purpose of this scene is to push the use of “genuine” Shugart mini-floppies in the home. Shugart, if you didn’t know, invented the mini-floppy. And mini-floppies, if you didn’t know, are commonly known as 5 1/4″ diskettes today. They replaced the giant 8″ clown disks people used before that (read your comments about 8″ floppies here). Sadly, these smaller disks held less data at the time, but that was a small price to pay for not knocking over your friends while swapping storage media.

Discussion topic of the week: Do you still use 5 1/4″ floppies to store new or recent data? If so, what are you using them for?

MegaWars: “The Ultimate Computer Conflict”

I betcha Neil Armstrong didn’t do this while he was on the moon.

…or did he?

P.S. You can read more about MegaWars, an early online multiplayer computer game, here.

Discussion topic of the week: If you were a half naked combat-astronaut on an artificial planetoid, what would you do for fun?

Forty years ago today, man set foot on the moon for the first time. To celebrate the anniversary, I decided to take a look at the history of that old computer game stalwart, Lunar Lander.

Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that Lunar Lander itself turns 40 this year as well: a few months after Armstrong’s first stroll on the moon, a high school student named Jim Storer wrote the first version — all text — on a DEC PDP-8 computer. Yep, in 1969.

Up today on Technologizer is the world’s first in-depth history of Lunar Lander, one of the earliest computer games ever written. The article tells the story of the first text version, the first graphical version for the DEC GT40, and Atari’s 1979 arcade game of the same title (now turning 30, interestingly enough) through information from the men who created them. It then examines notable versions of Lunar Lander through the years, bringing us up to the present.

I’d especially like to thank Jim Storer, Jack Burness, Howard Delman, and David Ahl for their help in writing my article. I couldn’t have done it without them.

So without further ado, here’s the history of Lunar Lander. I hope you enjoy it.

Just yesterday, PC World published my slide-filled list of The 10 Worst Video Game Systems of All Time on their site. You might not agree with the list, but that’s almost the point — who agrees with Internet top 10 lists anyway?

I do have to say that I don’t think I could have found any worse video game consoles than those listed. Already, a few commenters at PCWorld.com have noticed that the standard Internet whipping boys (i.e. Virtual Boy, Sega 32X, Atari Jaguar, etc.) aren’t on the list. Well, believe me, those systems are downright wonderful compared to the dreck examined in my article. Instead of going for the “worst popular systems,” I just decided to shoot for straight-out worst, period.

And honestly, the Virtual Boy is not that bad. It has good games, and it’s a great concept (albeit with a few major flaws) — it mostly just failed in the marketplace. The Jaguar has a handful of genuinely good games that are unique to the system, and in my book that disqualifies it from the list. The 32X is a little iffy, but it’s still not as bad as what you’ll see in my piece.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, for what it’s worth. I’d love to hear your nominations for the worst video game systems of all time, so comment away.