Category: Tech

Videogaming Illustrated (Issue 4, Feb 1983)

  • April 8, 2018

At a convention a few weeks ago for the princely sum of $5 I bought this:

It’s one of the very earliest video game magazines, dating to before the ‘crash of 1983’. It’s from the same publisher of the old sci-fi magazine Omni, and the format is very similar (silver pages, yellow pages with fiction, somewhat pretentious tone).

This was very much a magazine without an audience. The inclusion of fiction, the monthly news round up heavy on business content and the (repulsive) interview with Don Imus suggests they were going for the Playboy approach. So much so I’m surprised there’s no cheesecake photos!

That said it’s also an interesting curio from the earliest days of my favourite hobby! For instance I was surprised by the lavish adverts for Atari 2600 games:

(By the way I’m ripping off Ashens here and taking photos of the magazine on a couch rather than scanning it. Hey I’m lazy!)

And the lengthy strategy sections – which take up a decent amount of the magazine and cover arcade and 2600 games – are charmingly low-tech:

The middle one is a four page guide to the arcade game Kangaroo which was probably mostly forgotten even when this issue shipped!

There’s also a guide to third-party 2600 joysticks, a lengthy but superficial article about pinball machines, too much fiction and a lot of uninteresting (even then I suspect) ‘monthly news’.

What isn’t well-represented though are advertisements. I’ve shown some above, but there are very few in total and many of them are clearly there as part of some paid-content promotion:

That’s just one of two ads for Cosmic Creeps, an Atari 2600 game profiled and given a strategy guide in this very issue…

The other element common to today’s magazines that is almost entirely absent are screenshots! In fact, in the entire issue, there is a grand total on one real shot (as opposed to drawings of the screen) and this is it:

Can you name the game? (And yes, I suspect it may also be fake…)

Anyway this mag was sold at the con by a guy who flogs old magazines of many kinds, and at the same time I got some very old Dr Who magazines as well as a bunch of cheesecake horror mags. Why was he selling this one issue of a 35 year old gaming magazine? The cover!! It features a preview of sorts of Revenge Of The Jedi (tied to an article about the 2600 Jedi Arena) which includes this gem:

It was all mostly true, if a bit off with the date estimates!

Anyway a curio from the dawn of gaming time. This magazine would run another year and change names twice before becoming another victim of the crash that almost sunk the US industry, but from what I see here I struggle to wonder who bought it even then?

The Tiny Arcade

  • February 11, 2018

Bernard gave me this for Christmas:

It’s a tiny arcade machine. Better yet it’s a kit that needs to be assembled! Here’s what it looked like out of the box:

The critical components are indeed tiny, and fit easily into the palm of my hand:

Here’s the screen being tested:

Assembly of the case was tricky but not difficult, and I actually had more trouble affixing the super-adhesive ‘cabinet art’. Once finished, it’s tiny (about 8 cm tall) and very impressive:

The back is open to access the electronics, which include on/off switches, a plug to charge the battery and a micro SD card port:

The unit runs off an arduino-derived chip (I believe), and supports a tiny OLED screen that is very sharp and bright. There’s several basic games included but to be honest most are little more than tech demos. Amongst clones of Flappy Bird, Tetris, Space Invaders and even R-Type there is however a charming little roguelike by a Japanese dev:

Bernard has one too and wanted to compete on some games. Like a cur he hasn’t submitted scores yet so here’s some for him to aim at:

(To be honest these were just my scores for one game of each)

Anyway I’m very impressed with this thing. It’s completely open so I could in theory write my own game for it. Wouldn’t that be fun?

2017 In Games

  • December 19, 2017

You know you’ve been waiting for it, and here it is: the annual summary of my game purchases!

I won’t dance around the facts: 2017 was a ‘down year’ for game spending. I bought only 40 games in 2017, spending a total of $1291. This is the smallest amount of total purchases since 2012, and the smallest amount spend since 1994! Results like this threaten an existential crisis: am I still a gamer?

Of course I am! And we’ll get to that in a little bit, but first here are the pie charts everyone loves. First the games purchased; % by system:

And next the % breakdown by dollars spent:

(Yes I know the fonts are illegibly tiny; click on each for a bigger version.)

The pertinent points:
– I bought games for a few ‘dead systems’ this year: the DS, PSP and NES
– While I still bought Vita games, I bought less than half last year (10 vs 28). This is unsurprising; Sony declared this a ‘legacy system’ a couple of years ago now…
– The Nintendo Switch enter the charts! I bought one game….. but don’t have a Switch yet 😉

As far as overall gaming comments I don’t feel like I’m playing less than ever. I still play Puzzle & Dragons (and am coming up on 1700 consecutive days of logging in) and still enjoy it, and I still have a backlog of (good!) Vita RPGs that are unopened and should last me for years. But I have been playing less console gaming, and certainly spending less on consoles overall. The switch appeals to me for this reason, since I envisage myself more likely to play the games on the system in portable mode than on the TV.

On to my top games of the year, as usual sorted by system. Given the scant purchases for some systems I’ll only tackle the three major ones this time:

Toukiden 2 (PS Vita)

This is a Monster Hunter clone set in feudal Japan with crazy bosses and an emphasis on over-the-top attacks and destructible body parts (on the beasts). It’s an improvement on the already-great Vita original and I played it to death for a couple of months back in late Spring this year. In my opinion, one of the all-time best Vita games.

Monster Hunter Stories (3DS)

This is a pokemon-like game set in the MH world that was much, much better than I thought it would be. I played it like a fiend, only putting it down about 120 hours later. It had fantastic graphics and a great story but above all the gameplay loop was loads of fun and as a (insane) MH fan the appeal of the world was top-notch. Recommended.

The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild (Wii U)

You know how you’ve read/seen countless times that this game is one of (if not THE) best ever made and it’s so good it’s better than real life? Yep, it’s all true. This is the definition of a magnum opus, and a game that will be spoken about for generations to come. Easily the game of the year for me, and worth buying a Wii U/Switch just to play. (This is also likely the last Wii U game I will ever buy, and it’s certainly a worthy title for the system to retire on.)

I’m doing this a little early this year, especially since I have a inkling what’s under the tree for me and specifically that one of those ‘whats’ may even give Zelda a run for it’s money in the masterpiece stakes. Oh well, you’ll have to wait until this time next year to find out 🙂