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Discussion topic of the week: What’s your favorite classic (say, pre-1996) Konami game of all time?

“It’s as easy as a floppy.”

The Sony Digital Mavica FD-7 seemed so exciting back when it was new, and I wanted one. Its attractiveness stemmed from the cheap and familiar media it used for image storage: standard 3.5″ floppy disks. Most digital cameras of the day required expensive, obscure flash cards for storage and proprietary software to extract photos from the camera (through a painfully slow serial cable). With the FD-7, one needed only to insert the image disk into one’s computer floppy drive and copy the pictures off. But the technological price of this convenience was high: the camera’s maximum image resolution was 640×480 — anything bigger, and you’d only be able to fit a couple photos on a single 1.4 megabyte disk.

Funny enough, I recall ghost enthusiasts on the Internet circa 1998 picking the FD-7 as their camera of choice for its uncanny ability to capture vast flurries of out-of-focus dust (aka “ghost orbs”). That endorsement alone speaks volumes about the camera’s lackluster optical qualities. Also, this new breed of digital ghost hunters didn’t have to feel guilty about taking endless rolls of 35mm dust photos, which can get quite expensive to develop.

Discussion topic of the week: Tell us about the first digital camera you ever used. What brand was it, and what image resolution could it capture?

Rambo you are not.

Here’s another rare Atari 7800 video game ad from 1990, this time for Ikari Warriors. Previously, we’ve seen one for Alien Brigade. I’ve heard that the 7800 version of Ikari Warriors is pretty good, but I’ve never played it myself (well, maybe once on an emulator). Can anyone out there tell us what it’s like?

Trivia Alert: According to Wikipedia, Ikari Warriors’ theme and name were inspired by the film Rambo: First Blood Part II. The Japanese title of that movie contained the word “ikari,” which means “anger” in Japanese.

Discussion topic of the week: What’s your pick for the best movie in the Rambo series: First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rambo III, or Rambo (the 2008 movie)?

Up now on Harry McCracken’s Technologizer is my latest VC&G-related freelance work: “15 Classic PC Design Mistakes,” a non-exhaustive analysis of various hardware and software design goofs in vintage computers. In it, I discuss the Apple III, Coleco Adam, TI-99/4A, Macintosh, and more. Feel free to take a look.

Through science, we’ve discovered ways of levitating our floppy diskettes.

Discussion topic of the week: Have you ever spilled a drink or any other liquid on your computer? How did you clean it up?