“Is your personal computer TOO personal?”
Facetious 1980s computer manual quote: “Never operate a computer with the monitor sitting directly in front of you. Neck torsion increases muscle tone and blood flow to the brain, resulting in higher computing performance.”
Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever been forced to share a PC with someone else? Tell us about it.
Meanwhile, the cover remained a one-fist affair.
I love Ultima VI, so it’s excellent that Origin made two spin-off games using the same engine. I’ve played Martian Dreams, the other Worlds of Ultima game, but never The Savage Empire. Is anybody out there a fan?
Discussion Topic of the Week: Which is best: The Savage Empire or Martian Dreams?
The Euro-American family in its native habitat.
Just in time for Thanksgiving — and the ritual practice of family togetherness — comes this wonderful vintage photo from the back of the NES Action Set box. In it, we see a four-person white American nuclear family utterly consumed by a game of Super Mario Bros.
This scene looks nice at first glance, but imagine having to play through a whole game with mom and dad hanging off of your shoulders.
“Hey son.”
(Father gets in close, whispering into son’s ear.)
“Want to play some Super Mario Brothers?”
“I’m already playing, Dad.”
(Father squeezes son’s shoulder tighter.)
“My uncle’s name is Mario.”
Luckily, the scenario I’ve concocted above appears nowhere on the box. Still, a few amusing things about this photo jump out at me:
I’ve included an extra-large scan this time (when you click on the image), so you might be able to turn it into a desktop background.
For more vintage family madness, check out my latest slideshow on Technologizer.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever played a video game with your entire immediate family rapturously engaged in the action on screen?
“The kind of game rating systems were invented for.”
Splatterhouse 3 is by far my favorite entry in the Splatterhouse series. The other two just don’t cut it for some reason. I prefer Splatterhouse 3’s room-based approach to the game, and its controls are pretty good. It incorporates an on-screen map too, which makes it feel more like an adventure game.
Happy Halloween, by the way!
Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the goriest video game you’ve ever played?
The Avatar: crushing gargoyles like roaches since 1985.
Discussion Topic of the Week: I’ve already asked you what your favorite Ultima game was. What’s your least favorite game in the Ultima series? Which one do you think is the worst?
“He goes all over the place (and we don’t mean Number Two.)”
Here’s a classic advertisement for Super Mario World 2 from the “Play it Loud” era. Baby Mario looks quite destructive.
In the mid-1990s, Nintendo tried to downplay its kiddie image and appeal to the “I’m-awesome-because-I-huff-Easy-Cheese” teenage set. The company’s American branch formulated a new “Play it Loud” ad campaign to directly counter aggressive advertising from Sega.
Nintendo’s new marketing theme focused on the stereotypical angsty “attitude” of youth in transition, which, in print, mostly translated to grungy fonts, eye-gougingly garish design, and scatological humor. Surprisingly to some, the campaign actually worked — Nintendo regained the lead in the 16-bit market right as that era was ending.
On another note, Super Mario World 2 is one of the best Super NES games, and definitely one of the most underrated. If you haven’t played it yet, you’re missing out on a platforming masterpiece. Drop everything and get yourself a copy. And don’t forget to play it loud(ly).
Discussion topic of the week: What’s the most underrated Super NES game?
“Just pop it in your pocket and pull it out any time.”
Twenty years ago tomorrow, the Game Boy went on sale for the first time in Japan. It retailed for Â¥12,500 (about $94 US at 1989 rates), and Nintendo offered four games at Game Boy’s initial launch: Super Mario Land, Baseball, Alleyway, and Yakuman (a Mahjong game). Four months later, Game Boy reached American shores with a retail price of $89.99 and a powerful pack-in game — Tetris.
Nintendo’s inclusion of Tetris as the US pack-in was a stroke of absolute genius. The handheld version of Alexey Pajitnov’s addictive puzzler made such waves in US that its release will long be remembered not just as a defining moment in video game history, but as a major cultural event for an entire generation.
As we now know, Game Boy’s long and successful run created an immense legacy, far beyond just Tetris. Overall, publishers released 1246 licensed games for the Game Boy in Japan and 952 in the US. To date, Nintendo has sold 118.69 million units of the original Game Boy line (including Game Boy Color) worldwide.
Above, we see an original Toys ‘R’ Us newspaper advertisement announcing the arrival of the Game Boy and its launch games in the United States. (Gotta love that line art.) It really brings back memories of my excitement regarding Nintendo’s first handheld system.
In your opinion, what factors made the Game Boy so successful?
On the other hand, what mistakes, if any, did Nintendo make with the Game Boy over its twenty year run?
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Resistance is futile. (click for full advertisement)
Long-time readers of VC&G may recall me talking about my adventures on CompuServe from time to time. Needless to say, they never looked like this. But I did have a few nightmares featuring enormous floating hive-mind spaceships hooked up to my computer when I was 12.
On second thought, maybe this thing is the machine God uses to create snow — if snow indeed exists.
Discussion topic of the week: Star Trek or Star Wars? Better yet: Han Solo vs. William T. Riker in a knife fight — who would win?
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It’s the software Vikings!
Heh. And you thought digital piracy was a new problem. It’s actually as old as the PC software business itself. Some of the earliest evidence of this comes from a famous February 1976 open letter to the Homebrew Computer Club in which Bill Gates (then “General Partner” of a small company called Micro-Soft) protested the rampant “theft” of his company’s popular Altair BASIC.
Reflect on that date for a moment: February 1976 — less than a year after the Altair 8800 launched the personal computer revolution, people were already illegally copying Microsoft products with great abandon. (Some things never change.) Of course, selling pre-programmed software for personal computers was a new concept back then. And heck, personal computers were a new concept back then.
But as time passed and PCs grew in influence, the piracy problem didn’t go away. In fact, it continued as a hot-button topic throughout most of the 1980s. BYTE magazine devoted its May 1981 issue to the subject, commissioning its regular cover artist, Robert Tinney, to provide a visual hook for the monthly theme. Meditating on “software piracy,” Tinney concocted a potent and iconographic image of a fierce viking ship cutting through rough seas, its massive floppy disk sail standing at full mast. To this day, the image (seen above) remains Tinney’s most famous illustration from the BYTE years.
If his prints of this image hadn’t sold out long ago, I’d buy one in a heartbeat.
Discussion topic of the week: Do you pirate commercial software? Why or why not?
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(click to see full scan)
Discussion topic of the week: What’s your favorite entry in the Ultima computer game series?
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.
