Q*bert is one of the first games I can actually remember purchasing with my own money. It was released in 1983, having been out in the arcades a year earlier, though I must have bought it at least 3 or 4 years later. It was and still is a very strange game. Just try describing its gameplay. It’s almost impossible to do it in a way that would be comprehensible to a person who is unfamiliar with the game.
Nintendo has released a couple of treats this week for what it’s calling the “8-bit Summer”. This week sees the release of NES Open Tournament Golf as well as some game called The Legend of Zelda. Check the break afterwards to see if they’re worth your time and hard earned cash after the break.
There is an up-and-coming gaming video producer on YouTube on the GirlBandicoot channel that is beginning to find a nice niche. She specializes in Let’s Play videos that show her live-reaction facial expressions as she plays and provides commentary, including series such as GameTerrors and Retro Girl, which would be the one I discovered her by. This is a Let’s Player with a unique style to her clips, which we will elaborate on, and it turns out that she has a fondness for the older games and classics.
Although she has only been uploading videos for a month, at press time she has already gathered over 20,000 views and a whopping 885 subscribers. I wanted to ask her some questions before she got too famous, and she was kind enough to answer.
In the 1990’s, PC gaming was dominated by a company called Apogee Software Ltd. Creators and publishers of such series as Duke Nukem, Commander Keen, DOOM, and Death Rally, Apogee dominated with an innovative varied shareware distribution method from the late 1980’s, and into the 1990’s.
So what happened to Apogee games? What are they doing now? Read on dear readers, for the answers lie below!
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Hello and welcome to The Gaming Historian!
Last week I discussed Mega Man on the Game Gear, a ridiculously challenging game that combined Mega Man IV and V. This week we are diving into Mega Man: The Wily Wars.
Drivers, start your engines. The Fair Shake 500 is about to begin. Carl is setting the pace. Can you keep up? This week we’ll be discussing Turbo the arcade driving game as released for the Colecovision. Originally released in 1981 by Sega, the arcade game set many milestones with it’s development, such as being the first racing game to feature changing weather. There was an, until recently, unfinished and unreleased conversion for the Atari 2600. (It has since been completed). Also released were ports to the Intellivision, and the topic of this week, the Colecovision.
You knew this was coming, with The Amazing Spider-Man coming out this week and all…
Believe it or not, growing up I played very few Spider-Man games. It’s not like there weren’t loads of them but somehow I only ended up trying out one game per console.
The one I remember particularly well is The Amazing Spider-Man vs The Kingpin on the Genesis which pretty much revived my faith in there ever being a good Spider-Man game. Before that, I’d played The Amazing Spider-Man on Game Boy and Spider-Man vs The Kingpin on the Sega Master System. Both of which failed to really interest me.
I don’t feel that enough video game writers have a real grasp on the history of the industry, and it shows. Just recently, I read one of them rant about how the industry licenses other entertainment properties a lot of the time now, raving about games from Game of Thrones to Family Guy to South Park to Spider-Man all over E3.
Last week’s Character RETROspect dealt with the incredibly well-crafted character of Psycho Mantis, but this time we will focus on the legend of the Metal Gear franchise himself, Solid Snake. We’re going to take a look at Snake’s origins and his career up through the phenomenal conclusion of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of Atari, I wanted to pick a really important game. I then found out that Donkey Kong Jr. was celebrating its 30th anniversary on the June 30th. At that point it was settled: I was going to review one of the most controversial 2600 games, a game that almost wasn’t released.
This week on Retro Lookback, Chris reviews everyone’s favourite mini putt game that features a pink sphere that absorbs the abilities of monsters: Kirby’s Dream Course!
In my opinion, Redwood Games was one of the best education game development houses in the early nineties. With classic such as Math Rescue and Word Rescue challenging children to learn in exciting and engaging ways, their games were mainstays of my childhood. Developed by Karen Crowther (now Karen Chun), the games were published by Apogee and went on to be nominated for, and win, many awards in the educational gaming category.
So what happened to Redwood Games, and Karen Chun? Is she still making games? Is she retired? Continue on good readers, for the answers lie in the interview below!
Hello and welcome to The Gaming Historian!
I have said before that my favorite gaming console is probably the Game Boy. It was the first system I owned that actually belonged to me, and it had so many good games. Not to mention, it was portable! When you are a kid, long car rides become nothing thanks to the Game Boy. Not to be outdone, my brother had a Game Gear. It had a few solid titles, but it really paled in comparison to its Nintendo rival. One game I played religiously on my Game Boy was Mega Man. It’s probably my brother’s favorite game series as well, so he would constantly ask to play. Little did we know, that Mega Man was available for him on the Game Gear.
Greetings readers! Welcome to this weeks reading of “The Fair Shake.” Carl asks you to turn off your pagers and cell phones while inside. Back to the Atari 2600 this week for a fun if often overlooked action game involving airplanes, airports, and in some cases, terrorists.
Abraham Lincoln may very well have been a vampire hunter but it’s unlikely he’d be a match for Dracula. Especially not Bram Stoker’s Dracula, you don’t want to get on Gary Oldman’s bad side: crazy things happen.
Yes today we’re looking at a vampiric entry: Bram Stoker’s Dracula on the Sega Master System, a console I knew all too well growing up. Francis Ford Coppola’s film too “scary” for me to really watch all the way through, this game was my only shot at getting a taste of Bram Stoker’s vision… except for the book, which I would have read as a kid if it had been made of candy or had controllers attached to it.
My pet project over the past year has been the Registry of Historic Gaming Locations, an online database of sites important to the world of video gaming. Some sites are famous for their impact on video gaming in pop culture, others are former game company headquarters, testing sites for early arcade games and others.
The sites of video gaming scenes from various films have proved the most popular. Retrogaming fans in Japan went nuts when I inducted the location that appeared in WarGames as the 20 Grand Palace and I recently visited another movie location, the Hull Building in Culver City, CA, which was Flynn’s Arcade in the original Tron film.
For the next couple of weeks, we’re going to take a look at two of the most memorable characters from Metal Gear Solid: Psycho Mantis and Solid Snake.
In this week’s edition of Character RETROspect, the spotlight will be shining on Psycho Mantis, FOXHOUND’s gas mask wearing psychic expert and psychological warfare specialist.
This week in Retro Lookback, we check out Blast Corps, the explosive N64 title where you drive a bulldozer, dump truck, or gigantic robot to destroy the town to save it.
Hey folks, before we get started, I’d just like to bring your attention to the title: Atari Poop. Eric Bailey suggested I come up with a title for this here series, so I took to Twitter seeking out ideas. Eric then replied with several great titles, but only one contained the word “poop”. As soon as I read it, I was sold. We finally have a title to associate to the nonsense I contribute to this otherwise excellent site. So now you know and should tell your friends, come to 1 More Castle to get the inside scoop with Atari Poop.
Anyway, on with the poop…
Imagine that you’re taking a roadtrip into uncharted territory. Your best friend is getting married three states away, and you figured a vehicular excursion would be an excellent excuse to get a taste of the open road.
But what happens if you get lost? In the age of smartphones, you’d just bust out your capable device, pinpoint your exact location, and be on your way without missing a beat.
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