Quit fiddling around with your nancy-boy software, pansy. It’s time to get Hardcore. With Microsoft.

They want you on their team. They’ll give you a door. They’ll give you Windows. And you’ll get a health club membership, access to workout facilities, and an array of benefits like health, dental, vision, and retirement packages. If that doesn’t sound totally hardcore, then I don’t know what is.

But seriously — once you sign up to work at Microsoft, they’re so hardcore that, on your first day on the job, they lock you stark naked in a ten-foot-square, windowless, blank white room with two cans of spray paint. Your next move will determine your position in the company. This Kobayashi Maru-like “no-win scenario” originates from an incident in 1981 when Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was painting their new office space over the weekend and somehow locked himself inside a closet. Thinking quickly, he fashioned a makeshift air horn out of a spray paint can and some cardboard. Of course, no one ever heard him, and that’s probably why we’ve not seen Paul Allen since.

When they ran the same test on Steve Ballmer a year later, he immediately ate both cans of paint and had to be revived with fifteen minutes of intensive CPR. Although he lived, he has still never fully recovered from the incident. Bill Gates took the challenge last, and by day two, he was so bored that he spray painted a window on the wall and tried to climb through. A couple hundred bruises later, Bill Gates emerged from the room bloody, but victorious. Since he is the only man to have ever won the “no-win scenario,” he became president of Microsoft, and the rest is history.

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What was the first computer you ever used? Was it a mainframe? A hobby kit? An early consumer PC? An IBM clone? I’ve heard numerous neat stories of people’s first experiences with computers since starting Vintage Computing and Gaming, but here’s your turn to share one of your own. Tell us about your “first time” with a computer. What kind of computer was it? Where were you when it happened? Was it the first computer you ever owned? Post a comment telling your story, and let us know. I’d love to read them.

I think the first computer I ever used was an Atari 800. My father bought one as our first family computer, but it ended up mostly being used to play games (but some great games). My brother learned to program BASIC on the machine, and he’s a professional programmer today, so it was definitely a valuable experience for him. Aside from playing games on it, my use of the 800 was limited to loading game binaries off of disks in Atari DOS, or perhaps even loading a BASIC program my brother had written. To this day, the Atari 800 is my favorite vintage computer because of the nostalgia it evokes for me personally.

[ Continue reading What Was the First Computer You Ever Used? » ]

Way back in the land before time (1995), when a little ole company you might have heard of called “Nintendo” was tinkering with its worst gaming experiment ever (Virtual Boy), another company called Tiger Electronics (famous for its handheld LCD games, if you’ll recall), possibly tried [citation needed] to capitalize on the hoopla surrounding Nintendo’s red-headed stepchild. Tiger introduced the R-Zone, a LCD-based gaming system that used red-tinted game cartridges and projected them onto a HUD mirror strapped over the player’s pimply forehead (see picture). An extremely uncomfortable-to-hold detached controller held the batteries, and the player plugged the cartridge — each containing its own LCD screen — into the headset. It worked very poorly, as you might imagine; but what more could you expect for $30 (US) MSRP?

(The main scan above is of the paper insert from the blister package that my original R-Zone came in back in 1995.)

[ Continue reading Retro Scan of the Week: Tiger’s R-Zone — the Ultimate Eye Strain Device » ]

[ Hacksterpiece Theatre is a regular column devoted to fun, odd, and interesting retro game hacks. ]

When I first played Super Metroid in April 1994, it was the most incredible gaming experience I’d ever had up to that point. Period. The atmosphere created by its top-notch graphics, music, and gameplay was palpable, enveloping me deeply into an incredible world of sci-fi fantasy and exploration.

There was only one problem with this otherwise excellent game: once you had finished it — exploring every nook, finding every secret, and collecting every power-up along the way — you had squeezed nearly every ounce of replay value out of the game. For years I wished so badly for a new Super Metroid, even if it were the exact same engine with a completely new world to explore. Well, my friends…in 2006, that wish was granted. Fans of this seminal work can explore the planet Zebes all over again in a new hack by Drewseph and crew called, quite simply, Super Metroid Redesign.

[ Continue reading Hacksterpiece Theatre: Return to Zebes with Super Metroid Redesign » ]

And you thought video game controllers were over-complicated these days; this one requires five (slightly-pudgy child) hands just to use it properly.

Take a look at this bad boy: four trigger buttons on the pistol-like grip (one per finger), twelve buttons in the overlay-friendly numeric keypad matrix on top, a one-dimensional “speed roller” wheel near the back, and an extremely flaccid red-knobbed joystick crowning it all. Combine this with the futuristic look of a gaudy black space gauntlet that literally engulfs your hand, and you’ve got the ColecoVision Super Action Controller. This marvel of controlling technology came in sets of two with a “Super Action Game” included — in my case, “Super Action Baseball.” I’m lucky enough to have a pair essentially “new in box,” so I grabbed these scans off the box itself.

It’s no secret that the ColecoVision’s original controllers were absolutely horrible. In fact, they could only be surpassed by those of the earlier Intellivision in terms of “least ergonomic controller design ever.” Obviously someone within Coleco noticed this fact and set out to design a super-ergonomic controller with a vengeance. But it seems they went a little overboard in the process: on the box it claims that the Super Action Controller is “the first video game [controller] that [gives] you individual control of 4 or more onscreen players.” Sounds really simple and easy to use, doesn’t it? With this amazing controller, you can control an entire baseball team with only one hand! Coleco was obviously way ahead of its time in this respect, as it seems the rest of the video game industry has still not caught up with their incredible insight into control of on-screen characters. Had Coleco gotten their way, we’d probably be playing five-on-five video basketball against ourselves (using one finger for each player) on a controller with twenty-five buttons. The extra fifteen are for the refs and the cheerleaders, of course.

I’ve long wanted to archive personal stories related to computers. Aside from being wonderful nostalgic reads, such a collection will likely be an important source of first-hand accounts for future historians. That’s why I’m creating the BBS Stories Archive. I’ll eventually have a site or section on VC&G dedicated to this (and other, non-BBS stories), but for now, I obviously need material for the archive first.

I’m looking for any personal, true written account about Bulletin Board Systems, whatsoever. The account can be about any topic (as long as it’s BBS-related and non-fiction) you’d like to recount for us, and can cover any age, any time (even up to the present), any software, or any experience. The longer and more detailed the story, the better. You might have only called a BBS once in your life, but if you’d like to write down the experience, that’s completely fine with me. The stories don’t have to be incredible or especially unique; any account of even the most seemingly boring activities will provide immense value to people of the future looking back on how BBS technology was used. On the other hand, unique stories are, of course, welcome as well. Did you meet your wife on a BBS? Lose your job over a BBS? Save the world through a BBS? I want to know about it.

So if you’d like to participate in this grand historical project, either email me your accounts here, or if you prefer, you can even post them as comments on this entry. If they’re relevant, they will be added to the archive. You will retain all rights and credit (unless you wish to remain anonymous) for your story and writing, by the way.

And yes, I know that no discussion of BBS historical efforts online can transpire without mentioning Jason Scott’s incredible work with both his BBS Documentary and Textfiles.com. I’m sure he has a wonderful collection of BBS stories himself, but there’s no harm in having two BBS historians out there.

Most BBS enthusiasts know that the last outpost for BBSes has been, for some time now, through telnet on the Internet. There was a time, however, when when dial-up BBSes over analog phone lines were the rule, not the exception. And believe it or not, there are still a handful of BBSes out there that have not modernized and switched over to the ‘Net. The only way you can get to them, though, is through an old fashioned analog phone modem, regular ole Ma Bell lines, and a little patience.

Visiting such old BBSes is incredible — it’s like traveling back in time to the early-mid 1990s. Each BBS is a unique a time capsule, stocked with trinkets and ephemera from the period. On message boards, you’ll find posts from 1994 about the O.J. Simpson trial and which player-made Doom levels are best. In file transfer sections you’ll run across large archives of long-forgotten Windows 3.1 screen savers. In door sections (online games), you’ll find abandoned TradeWars 2002 games, still in progress, that haven’t been touched in eight years. And of course, the Ferrengi have completely taken over.

[ Continue reading The Dial-Up BBS Revisited » ]

Deep down in the murky depths of an ancient and musty box of Commodore paraphernalia that I’d never before sorted through, I recently discovered a somewhat stained and mildly discolored promotional C64 pamphlet. Who knows how many years it spent rotting in someone’s extra-dank basement before it eventually came into my possession. This particular scan is one set of pages from that very pamphlet, detailing various expansion options for a Commodore 64 computer system.

The 1701 monitor and it’s successor, the 1702, were (and still are) real workhorse displays. I can’t even begin to fathom how many hours of usage my 1702 has seen over the years (not just from the last ten-plus years of my usage, but from someone else for ten years before that!), but it has held up incredibly well. The picture is bright, steady, and easily adjustable, making it the favorite and most frequently utilized composite video monitor in my collection. With a flat top and steady bottom, it’s highly stackable too, which is a great bonus.

I particularly like the description of the stylish “1600 Modem,” a 300 bps screamer that apparently came with a “free password and one-hour subscription to the CompuServe system.” Wow, did they say one whole hour? You mean I can stay online for sixty (count ’em, 6-0) minutes!? Well wax me with a grasshopper and call me St. Jocephus.

Actually, now that I think about it, this pamphlet is from when CompuServe cost around $30/hour (in 1982-83 dollars) for connection time, so I guess it was actually a good deal.

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