“Look over the Rainbow”

In the early 1980s, mainframe giant Digital Equipment Corporation (aka DEC for short) tried its hand in the personal computer market with the DEC Rainbow (1982). Since the market had not settled on an industry-wide PC standard at that time, DEC decided to support the two major operating system platforms of the day: Z80-based CP/M and 8088-based MS-DOS. The Rainbow contained both these processors and was capable of booting both OSes. Interestingly, despite the machine’s use of the 8088 and MS-DOS, the computer remained largely incompatible with the IBM PC from a hardware standpoint.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Imagine a world in which Digital Research CP/M, rather than MS-DOS, became the standard operating system for PCs worldwide in the 1980s. (That is, far beyond CP/M’s market share of the 1970s.) How might PCs today be different?

“Get Pocket Power!”

I scored my first Neo Geo Pocket Color (NGPC) along with Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure and SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium for my birthday in 1999. It was an amazing little machine — in my opinion, the only US market competitor that stood a chance against the Game Boy in the long run.

SNK clearly studied Nintendo’s winning handheld strategy and succeeded where previous Game Boy competitors failed by keeping the Neo Geo Pocket Color’s technical specifications minimal and omitting a backlight, allowing for low retail cost and long battery life.

The NGPC even sported an innovative and satisfyingly clicky thumb stick that in some ways surpassed the traditional D-pad in functionality. Still, SNK couldn’t keep up with Nintendo’s first party franchises and voluminous third party support, and the NGPC died on the vine, never to realize its full potential.

Along with the Sega Dreamcast, the NGPG lives on in gamer memory as one of those rare consoles that failed due to commercial reasons alone, not technical ones. The NGPC hardware is currently cheap and plentiful, so if you don’t have one, I highly recommend picking up a unit and a handful of games.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What are your favorite Neo Geo Pocket Color Games? What game you think was best, over all, for the system?

Atari’s best 8-bit keyboard?

The Atari 1200XL (1982) is something of a cult favorite among Atari 8-bit computer fans due to its keyboard, which probably has the nicest feel of the entire 8-bit line. 1980s critics, while appreciating the unit’s keyboard, simultaneously derided the 1200XL for minor incompatibilities with existing software created for the earlier Atari 400/800 computers. I personally don’t like its recessed cartridge slot, but if you have an AtariMax MaxFlash multi-cart, you don’t need to change cartridges very often.

Over the past decade, I’ve often used my Atari 1200XL as an ideal machine for Atari text adventure games. Whenever I encounter software incompatibilities, I just break out the Atari 800XL or 130XE. Each Atari model has a flavor of its own, and it’s a pleasure to use most of them — if you choose the right machine for the right task (hint: don’t try to write a term paper on an Atari 400’s membrane keyboard).

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite model in the Atari 8-bit computer series? To recap, you’ve got the Atari 400, 800, 1200XL, 600XL, 800XL, 65XE, 130XE, and XEGS.

“You are the weapon!”

I was a big fan of the original NES Renegade back in the day, but I seem to recall the sequel, Target: Renegade, being a major letdown. Did anyone out there actually like it?

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite Taito game of all time?

“Computers designed with kids in mind.”

Discussion Topic of the Week: Would you ever buy a PC with a themed case? If so, what would be the theme?