There’s been a bit of a legend going through the games industry for about 30 years now: that at the peak of the video game crash in 1983, Atari was laden with an overabundance of video game products, particularly the truckloads of copies of E.T. The game had been produced in excess, as they had assumed it would sell gangbusters, but instead they were stuck with warehouses full of them. So what did they do? Dump them all in a landfill, and never see them again. Now, as part of a documentary, the games have been dug up from the landfill, proving the urban legend to be true. Kind of crazy! Let’s hope the documentary is good, too. Read more…
Remember these? The classic Atari 2600 joystick — I’m feeling nostalgic just looking at it. It brings back fond memories of classics like Defender and Frogger. Trying to gator infested chasms in Pitfall! or defending my cities from the constant barrage of missiles in Missile Command. Even thoughmy old Atari is broken and sitting in my closet collecting dust, I still enjoy playing those classic games via modern emulation. I’ve had to settle for whatever controller I’ve had on hand, be it an Xbox 360 wireless, or some piece of Logitech hardware, but fortunately, the guys over at ThinkGeek finally have a solution to that problem. Someone decided to finally create a replica of the original Atari 2600 joystick with a USB input. Amazing, right? If you want one of these one-button bad boys, they’ll run you about $25. That’s pretty reasonable if you ask me. Read more…
The world of personal electronics is currently in an arms race to see who can come up with the smallest, coolest-looking entertainment devices, but there was a time when the mere concept of a “home computer”was almost unbelievable. Atari may not have had decades of staying power in the PC market, but the Atari name will always be synonymous with early efforts in home computing and video gaming, and these amazing technical drawings and pieces of concept art drawn up by Atari industrial designer Regan Cheng in 1981 show why. Read more…
Apple fanboys always love Jobs, however engineering fanboys will always love Woz. In this video Steve Wozniak recounts his creative process of bringing colors to personal computers. While I love the story what’s interesting to be as a videogame fanboy is hearing how he and Jobs were working on designing games at Atari. What’s fascinating is that Woz describes creating the games not as a software programming exercise but as a hardware project! Read more…
This trailer for the Star Trek Online MMO gives you a pretty good flavor of the universe that Cryptic Studios has been working on. The game is set to launch in early February and is set 30 years after the events in the film Star Trek Nemesis which was the last film with the Next Generation cast from back in 2002. Read more…
Introduced in 1976 Atari Breakout was a breakthrough game — it’s interesting to note to that future Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak worked on the prototype (who was hired by Steve Jobs). This Japanese piggy bank celebrates this legendary arcade game — and what’s cool about it is that you can actually play a function version of the game on it. I also rather like the fact that all the decals on the piggy bank are in Japanese: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 2, 2009 in Videogames
What’s great about this 1982 advert for Demon Attack is that the commercial seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the content of the videogame that’s being advertised. Although that disconnect wasn’t too uncommon in that era as the games were rather abstract looking and the box art often told a different (and more detailed) story: Read more…
The year is 1982 and Howard Scott Warshaw has been picked to design the Raiders Of The Lost Ark game for the Atari 2600. This game actually did pretty well, but the next game Warshaw designed for Spielberg was the infamous E.T. video game which was one of the worst failures in the industry. But a year before that things were so good that Vestron even produced a home video on how to do well while playing the the Raiders Of The Lost Ark game: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 8, 2009 in Videogames
That old Jesuit quote of “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man” always comes back to haunt me when I see old commercials like this for Nestle Quick from 1983. Years later as a elder fanboy I find myself addicted to mocha flavored coffee drinks and still playing with computers day and night. By the way the bunny is playing with an Atari 2600 VCS: Read more…
