Back in January, I had the wonderful opportunity to conduct an extensive telephone interview with the inventor of home video games, Ralph Baer (I’ll be writing more on him soon, so stay tuned). That epic interview, in a much shorter form, appears in the March 2007 edition of Game Developer magazine, which is available on newsstands now. (Just to note, there is a slight factual error in the introduction of the interview about Spacewar in the print version, not written by me, but there will be a correction published next issue.)

The good news for you is that there is a much longer version of the interview up on Gamasutra right now that you can read through online. Check it out, and look for more of my interviews with computer and video game industry pioneers in the coming months.

In Memoriam: John Backus (1924-2007), inventor of FORTRAN.

For a little change of pace, I’d be fun to focus on some non-game pixels in this edition. This week’s theme and hint is “GUIs” — that is, Graphical User Interfaces (ala “Windows”). Name the GUI and the computer it ran on. The first block is to the right, the other two are below. As always, post your guesses in the comments section of this entry, and don’t be bashful. Good luck!

    

The answers to the last challenge are after the break.

[ Continue reading Name Those Pixels: GUI Edition » ]

So tell me, Pac-Friends. How many of these Pac-Man items do you have? (Check the scans below to get a full description of all the items.)

Pac-Man this, Pac-Man that. It seems like they made a Pac-Man version of everything in the early 1980s. My brother’s friend had a metal Pac-Man trashcan that I was always jealous of (and to think that he wouldn’t give it to me!). Unfortunately, that item is not in the picture. My family bought a second-hand copy of the marblelicious Pac-Man board game you see on the floor there. It was pretty dumb, if I recall — nothing could compare to playing the actual video game on our Atari 800 at the time. And another of my brother’s friends had the Pac-Man Fever album, but they never let me listen to it. I still hold it against them to this day.

Anyway, check out the other full scans below and behold the power of merchandising! Warning — the full images are pretty big. Enjoy!

[ Scanned by VC&G from Popular Computing Magazine, December 1982 ]

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I was thinking recently. This site is supposed to be a blog, right? Well, it’s not really very bloggy. I’ve been getting around that by calling VC&G a “blogazine” — that is, half-blog, half-magazine — and it works pretty well. But still, I think this place has been severely lacking in blogatude recently. I’ve become too serious, too obsessed with writing only thoroughly-researched pieces that take ages to finish. Everything I start writing turns into some kind of research paper, as if I have some compulsive need for incredibly documented detail in everything I do. That kind of obsession is something of a good habit for feature writers (as long as you can make a deadline), but a bad one for bloggers. Luckily, I’m having success in freelance work, where detail and accuracy is king. And if I want to keep getting writing jobs, I obviously want all my output to be as professional as possible. That kind of attitude leaves little room for silliness in case they catch me on a bad day. Am I being too uptight? Yes, I am. But consider this: If I wanted to interview the Pope about the first computer he ever used, and VC&G’s leading article at the time was titled “Five Ways I Wipe My Butt With Computers,” do you think he’d grant me the interview? (Hell yes, because the Pope loves that tingling feelin’ as much as anyone else. But that’s beside the point.)

Despite all the professional anxiety I just expressed (this sounds more and more like a real blog all the time, doesn’t it?), I still need to remember to have a little fun. So let’s have some. This entry marks the beginning of a new column about the current hectic happenings in my happenin’ hip-hop VC&G lifestyle. I don’t expect to be whining much (a perennial blog favorite), so bear with me. It’ll try to find a suitably compelling and dramatic replacement. And have no fear, my loyal VC&G friends: aside from this blog-like column, you can continue to expect the same professionalish blogazine standard from Vintage Computing and Gaming as usual.

But for now, it’s bloggerin’ time.

[ Continue reading Tales From the Benjside: Attack of the Blog! » ]

Wow. The last challenge was supposed to be hard, but you guys got them all in the first day! I’ve pulled a couple obscure games out of my hat this time to test your pixel recognition engines. This week’s theme and hint is “Color Titles.” Think color, my friends. That should help you pin them down. The first block is to the right, the other two are below. As always, post your guesses in the comments section of this entry, and don’t be bashful. Good luck!

    

The answers to the last challenge are after the break.

[ Continue reading Name Those Pixels: Challenge #10 » ]

Haven’t you always wanted your very own personal desktop information terminal? With a 9″ monochrome monitor? That requires a $15-an-hour text-only information service to use to its fullest? For the same price as a full-fledged PC? Neither did anybody else, and that’s why it was on clearance in 1986.

The XT300 ActionStation came with “$15.00 of free usage” for CompuServe, which, according to the catalog, “will vary between 1 and 2 hours” of connect time “depending on when it’s used.” This makes the old “100 Hours Free!” AOL offer look like a bargain!

Here’s some more info on the GTE XT300, from Communication News, February 1985:

GTE’s XT300 ActionStation combines an ASCII terminal with build-in modem and nine-inch high-resolution screen with a full-feature electronic telephone, speaker phone and large-capacity speed dialer. The ActionStation’s two-line capability allows simultaneously voice and data transmission, and the unit provides access to a wide range of data transmission and retrieval services, including GTE’s Telemail electronic mail service and online public data-base services. A personal directory permits storage of 50 names and telephone numbers, and eight computer sign-on procedures. It also stores 12 frequently used commands, report names and data file names of up to 36 characters.

[ Scanned from a COMB Catalog, ca. 1986 ]

If you use this image on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks.