A scene from “Zork: Brick Collector”

This is it, folks: an early ad (maybe the first) for the original commercial release of Zork, the famous Infocom text adventure, published by Personal Software ca. 1980 for the TRS-80 Model I and III home computers.

(This site has some wonderful background history on this release.)

I love the artwork featured in this ad. It is excised from the full cover art for the Personal Software version, which captures a great deal of the majesty and wonder of the seminal adventure title — plus a hefty dose of out-of-place machismo.

The mere mention of Zork takes me back to the mid-1980s when my older brother delved into the Great Underground Empire with the aid of photocopied maps and worn out InvisiClues on our family’s Atari 800. Warm, fuzzy memories. Of course, by then, Infocom published the title directly.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite text adventure game of all time? (Modern ones count.)

SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT IN A DINOSAUR SHOE

I’ve owned a TRS-80 MC-10 since at least 1996 (according to this photo), so it holds a nostalgic place in my collection. It’s a really neat little machine despite its limitations (chief among those problems? Tiny chiclet keyboard). But Radio Shack designed this machine as a low-cost entry-level PC for the home, so most of of those issues can easily be overlooked.

The MC-10’s price at the time of this catalog printing had slipped to just $79 (about $178 today when adjusted for inflation). For comparison, the Apple IIc (a far more sophisticated machine, but typical for a home PC at the time) retailed for $1295 upon its introduction that same year (that’s a whopping $3,688 today). Price wise, that’s similar to the difference between buying a low-end Windows 8 tablet and a Mac Pro. The technological difference was not nearly that dramatic, however.

Perhaps the coolest thing about the MC-10 is that you can now download software for it over the Internet in the form of audio files and load them into the MC-10 via its cassette port. Check out this site for an awesome array of homebrew MC-10 games.

Discussion Topic of the Week: If you were stuck on a desert island and you could only use a TRS-80 MC-10 or a Sinclair ZX81, which would you pick?

Biggest Lemming I Ever Seen

My brother received the IBM PC port of Lemmings as a gift (probably for Christmas) in the early 1990s. It made a distinct impression in my young mind, with its vivid VGA graphics, a playful MIDI soundtrack, and charismatic little creatures that you could bid to do your every whim.

I have never played the Game Boy version, but this ad caught my eye.

When I wrote a feature about the most ported games of all time for 1UP.com back in 2007, Lemmings featured prominently with ports to 28 systems up to that point in time. What can I say — Lemmings is a classic.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the best Lemmings-like or Lemmings clone game? (Other than Lemmings, of course — The Humans and Baldies come to mind.)

Outsource your sex educations needs to Datachem

“Mommy, where do babies come from?”

“Well, after a wild night of CTRL-ALT-DELETE, your father hit my CTRL-C then pressed CTRL-V, and nine months later, you came out from LPT1.”

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever played any sex-related computer games? (Or heck, even educational software.)

Marvel should turn this into a movie

In 1983, comic book giant Marvel experimented with publishing a video game magazine called Blip. Here is the cover of the premiere issue, which features Little House on the Prairie star Matthew Laborteaux.

Wikipedia says this about Laborteaux, who was apparently a dedicated video game fan:

Laborteaux is a skilled video game player. In October 1981 he finished in tenth place for Centipede at the Atari, Inc. world championships, and in April 1982 became the United States Pac-Man champion at a People-sponsored tournament, with a score of 1,200,000.

Celebrities are people too.

Regarding the magazine itself: Blip retained the size, shape, weight, and thickness of a typical 1980s Marvel comic book. It was even printed on the same type of paper, likely using the same presses Marvel used for its superhero books at the time.

I haven’t thumbed through this magazine in years — it’s currently in storage — but I remember being sadly underwhelmed by its content when I bought this copy off eBay about a decade ago. I recall thinking that the printing technology did not reproduce photos very well, which did not lend itself to splashy, colorful video game ads or screenshots. Perhaps partly because of this, the mag only lasted seven issues.

The Internet Archive currently hosts scans of all seven issues of Blip.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever read any comics (strips or books) based on video games? What are your favorites?

I just looked at the calendar and realized that Vintage Computing and Gaming is turning 10 this year. I started this blog in November 2005.

I’m not quite ready to break out the party hats yet, but I’m wondering if you guys had any ideas of what I could (or should) do to celebrate this milestone.

I’ve considered possibly compiling some of the site material into a book of some kind, but I’m not sure how well any of the VC&G content will translate to book format. Of course, 99% of the posts on this site over the past 7-8 years have been Retro Scans, so maybe there isn’t much to celebrate. There are a lot of stories buried in there, however — maybe I could pull them out into some kind of collection (although I am loathe to be responsible for yet another crappy eBook or print-on-demand tech memoir).

So…any ideas? Contests? Retrospectives? Or just sit back and do business as usual? (Not a bad option.) I’m all ears!

Leeloo Dallas Multiplan

Discussion Topic of the Week: What was the first electronic spreadsheet program you ever used?

The Ultimate Helicopter Eclipse Simulator

Discussion Topic of the Week: Other than Civilization, what is the best MicroProse title of the 1980s and 1990s?

Paid for by SwyftCard Veterans for Truth

From the land of exotic Apple II accessories comes the Information Appliance SwyftCard, a plug-in peripheral card that gave the Apple IIe a built-in suite of ROM-based productivity tools, all unified around a novel scroll-based [PDF] user environment called SWYFT.

SWYFT was the brainchild of former Apple employee Jef Raskin, who originally spearheaded the Macintosh project. After disagreements with Steve Jobs over the direction of that project, Raskin left Apple and founded Information Appliance, Inc. (consequently, Jobs took the Mac project in a completely new direction).

The SwyftCard originated as an Apple IIe-based prototype for a dedicated machine centered around Raskin’s SWYFT environment, but it proved so effective and compelling that it became its own product. The dedicated concept would later emerge as the Canon Cat in 1987.

SwyftCards are very rare (I’ve never seen one in person over 20 years of collecting Apple II hardware), so Apple enthusiast Mike Willegal has provided instructions for building your own. Pretty neat!

P.S. I emailed this ad to Steve Wozniak (who is featured in the ad) and he said, “Cool reminder!”

Discussion Topic of the Week: Jef Raskin vs. Steve Jobs: Who do you identify with the most?

Every once and a while, I receive emails from people looking for a certain game, electronic toy, or computer from their distant past. I then pass it on to intrepid VC&G readers to crack the case.

The Clues

Marko writes:

I need help identifying adventure game for Amstrad CPC. I remember playing the game in the late 80’s (possibly ’88 – ’89, but the game itself could be older). I didn’t play it much though, possibly due to difficulty, but I do remember that I liked “mystery” feeling about the game.

Now for what I remember (and hopefully all this is correct). It is a text based (possibly had list of options / actions to select) and the story revolves around a group of people (possibly family?) being shipwrecked / having an accident at sea due to a storm. The game begins with telling the story about the incident. Now this is the part that I could be wrong about, but I think the player is tasked with either finding the people that were on the ship or finding about their history. Again, it is possible that that group of people is a family and possibly player’s ancestors.

In terms of graphics, game had black background, and I remember a lot of red colour / shades of red being used for drawings. At the beginning of the game, when the story is being told, I remember a picture of the ship which was drawn in red pen / outline.

This is all I can remember, I know its not much, and hopefully most of the facts above are correct – my memory of this game is very very hazy.

If your readers could possibly help with identifying the game in question, I would be really grateful – would love to try it again in an emulator.

Kind regards,
Marko

The Search Begins

It’s up to you to find the object of Marko’s fuzzy memory. Post any thoughts or suggestions in the comments section below. Marko will be monitoring the comments, so if you need to clarify something with him, ask away. Good luck!

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Have a memory of a computer, video game, computer software, or electronic toy you need help identifying? Send me an email describing your memories in detail. Hopefully, the collective genius of the VC&G readership can help solve your mystery.