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Actually, it wasn't a standard sidescroller. You start out in a top down overview and switch to the detailed side scrolling for interactions.

I'm not sure how this could be cited as one of the worst games ever. I can see how you might not have liked it but it wasn't poorly conceived or executed? I loved this game.

challenge - excellent
graphics - excellent
innovation - overview to sidescroller was a cool idea that built on Zelda I

Here's a link that defends Zelda II.

Although nothing probably beats Custer's Revenge, there's a list of best/worst awards sites here. (don't mind the MSN stuff, the ODP is pulling a 4/1 joke).

This might be a little OT, but I found this link which has all the Sierra games and when they were released. Just in case anyone else was interested.

Download the Lemonade stand rom from here

At my highschool, where the entire school had 1 x Apple ][ Classic, players who entered my name had a 50% chance of a heatwave, and a 0% chance of rain.

Noone ever caught that as far as I know

Download the Lemonade stand rom from here

At my highschool, where the entire school had 1 x Apple ][ Classic, players who entered my name had a 50% chance of a heatwave, and a 0% chance of rain.

Noone ever caught that as far as I know

Why spend $1500 for this, when a computer would more than suffice?

Granted having a tower crammed into your average entertainment system would be ugly as hell.. not to mention unwieldly.

Personally, i got a Book-PC. it fits perfectly in with the rest of my system, plus with its svideo output, it gives the added value of allowing me to play my MAME games through the rest of the system. simply throw in a wireless keyboard and mouse. and your all set. and i paid less than $700 for the system.

i suppose i could use the extra $800 to buy beer or something.

just my 2 cents

For those who don't know, Karate Champ was the first 1-vs-1 martial arts competitive fighting game.

Oh yeah?

Spacewar! is one of the grand-daddies of modern videogames, and a much deeper deathmatch than Pong. (I was amazed at how developed its deathmatch became when I read this old Rolling Stones article.) Written by MIT Hackers who were inspired by the space opera Fiction of E.E. "Doc" Smith. Someone has an the original game running on a PDP-1 emulator. There's a decent funny introduction at classicgaming.com and a more comprehensive set of Spacewar! links as well. (Possibly the most obvious sequal to Spacewar! was the brilliant Star Control series. The first game added 12 new types of ships, each with 2 unique weapons systems, and the second created a whole universe to support it. Brilliant, brilliant stuff.)

from my blog at kisrael.com

Spacewar! is one of the grand-daddies of modern videogames, and a much deeper deathmatch than Pong. (I was amazed at how developed its deathmatch became when I read this old Rolling Stones article.) Written by MIT Hackers who were inspired by the space opera Fiction of E.E. "Doc" Smith. Someone has an the original game running on a PDP-1 emulator. There's a decent funny introduction at classicgaming.com and a more comprehensive set of Spacewar! links as well. (Possibly the most obvious sequal to Spacewar! was the brilliant Star Control series. The first game added 12 new types of ships, each with 2 unique weapons systems, and the second created a whole universe to support it. Brilliant, brilliant stuff.)

from my blog at kisrael.com

They also have some remixes. Mostly it's ripped stuff, though.
Also, if you're willing to wade through tons of "inspired by" shit, MP3.com's electronic section has lots of good remixes...many are also on other sites like remix.overclocked.org, though.

It has been done:
Somari.

for the most part, the GBA is the only portable game system available now. When was the last time Nintendo had a true competitor in the portable game market?

Texas Instruments graphing calculators pose serious competition to Nintendo products. They have the advantage that a large portion of Nintendo's target audience (students aged 12-18) can bring calculators to school, but most school systems have non-negotiable regulations banning all products produced by Nintendo of America Inc. from the premises.

Palm OS and WinCE devices also pose a threat because they pretty much own the market for cheap games for traveling businesspeople.

I'm surprised that Sony hasn't pushed their PSone more as a portable of late, especially since you can attach a screen to it.

PSone can't be made handheld because a 12cm disc is just too clunky for a handheld unless you either make a two-piece system (controller and screen connected to a Discman-looking device) or expose the CD (done in the PlayStation Portable) which might incur action from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

If you want something really crazy, try Somari - Sonic the Hedgehog with characters from Super Mario Brothers on the NES.

The oldest video game I know of with advertisements in it has to be the classicly horrible "Kool-Aid Man" for the Atari 2600. The game itself was technically just an ad for Kool-Aid, and it was generally unplayable. I'm glad they don't make games like this anymore.

The greatest video game ever, Custer's Revenge!

then make sequels exclusive to the SonyBoy Advance

There is no mass-produced handheld PlayStation product (this doesn't count), and Sony has not officially released plans to make one. Sony needs to get off its collective @$$ and produce a PSOne Discman. I'm pretty sure that a PSOne Discman would keep the PSOne platform alive, and it may be Sony's ace in the hole to compete with Nintendo's GBA. (I've read that GBA is twice as powerful as Super NES but half as powerful as PSOne.)

[Sony] owes its success to it's hard ass CEO. Do you think Sony's CEO is a creampuff?

"Creampuff" and "hard-ass" are not always mutually exclusive. See also Kirby.

Just for kicks, what kind of daily schedule could you push for a channel devoted to gaming? I think we could come up with some interesting shows if the industry of software producers as well as console producers were willing to work with them. So, I have spent two minutes thinking and thus propose a daily schedule for these channels. (Note all times are in Eastern Standard Time)

6am - 10am - Cartoons for the kiddies. And not just pokemon. Let's bring back those old Pac-man cartoons. And Transformers, I'd love to see the original Transformers series again.
10am - 12pm - Anime, movie, etc.
12pm - 1pm Rebroadcast of last night's Gaming News Show
1pm - 2pm Rebroadcast of last night's Console Gaming show
2pm - 3pm Rebroadcast of last night's PC Gaming Show
3pm - 4pm Retro Gaming Show
4pm - 4:30pm Benjamin J. Heckendorn's world.
4:30pm - 5pm Gaming Music Show
5pm - 6pm Gaming News Show
6pm - 7pm Meet the Developers
7pm - 8pm Console Gaming Show
8pm - 9pm PC Gaming Show
9pm - 11pm Tournament!!!
11pm - 12am Arcade Gaming Show
12am - 2am Movie, anime, etc...
2am - 3am Meet the Developers rebroadcast
3am - 6am Infomercials (Yeah I know, but they pay the bills, right?)

I'd be interested in a show like Meet the Developers or something, it'd be interesting. But like I said, they would need a lot of support from game and console manufacturers, without the bickering that goes on between the console people.

Of course, I could be smoking crack.

I've read quite a bit about the nintendo/square controversy. I said there were rumors, and there were. There was a (semi) recent press release here that the Square prez put out. Basically confirming your remark about what squaresoft did after they left Nintendo. However, if you had read my post, you might notice I was referring to rumors why Square left Nintendo. Here's one:

"Squaresoft staffers complained that their unique culture and traditions were being largely ignored by the predominantly anglo Nintendo employees. In 1994, Squaresoft elected a fiery separatist Premier. The Premier promised that within a year, a referendum would be held, giving Square employees the chance to decide if they wanted to separate from Nintendo. The Prime Minister of Nintendo pleaded for Square to stay, and promised his administration would be willing to grant Square "distinct society" or "sovereign-association" status in return. The PM's pleas fell on deaf ears, however. In 1996 the referendum was unanimously passed, and Square finally separated from the Confederation of Nintendo, and became its own company."

from this site.

Others suggest Square didn't want to be constrained by a cartridge. I've also heard it said that Square left Nintendo because they felt Nintendo was preventing them from making games as they wanted to - because of Nintendos strict rules about game content, implemented to preserve Nintendos Kiddie Friendly Image. Nintendo and Squaresoft aren't really speaking up on the issue, so its just another rumor. Nintendos does strictly monitor content, though they are definately relaxing their strictures nowadays. Have you heard the suggestion that Square was eager to develop for both systems, but Nintendo didnt want to release them from their "exclusive" contract and let them develop for a competitor? And how Square rushed production of the middle Final Fantasy games because they wanted to finish their contract with Nintendo as soon as possible?

So I've provided reference for the information you used to somehow "prove" that I know nothing about Nintendo/Square, which had NOTHING to do with my post anyway.

Sorry, Original article here.

The PCAE is probably the best of the 2600 emulators.

See here: http://www.classicgaming.com/vault/roms/o2roms.Que stfortheRings11624.shtml

The name is actually "Erdrick". And the gravestone actually says "Here lies Erdrick". And that's only in the American version. In the Japanese version, it reads "Here lies Link".

http://www.classicgaming.com/ff1/secrets.htm

I was going to post a story on Ben Heckendorn's SNES portable, but I decided to wait until he is finished with something far more interesting.

The Gamecube is already a very much portable unit, considering it's external and internal size, carrying handle, and detachable screen. This is Ben's next un/confirmed project over at his site. I found his comment on this in the forums. While the portable aspect of the Gamecube is nifty, Ben focuses on making consoles into handheld units (so yes it is portable already, but not handheld). The SNES is interesting, but I'm waiting to see how this turns out.

Here is a picture of the SNESp since you seem to have such a hard time finding it.

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Here is a picture of the SNESp since you seem to have such a hard time finding it.

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Well, you could actually follow the links until you come till the end where it leads to home. Right there on the front page is a high res image of the front of the system with a link to an even HIGHER res image... but I guess that's too much effort for you so just click here.

Put Baldur's Gate and Rogue side by side, and you see that Bioware has done more than just computerize D&D. They've greatly enhanced the user experience with sophisticated interaction, simulation, and non-player character engine. And they've also created a story that is sophisticated enough to engage but simple enough to be managed by a "Dungeon Master" that's just a piece of software, and thus has no ability to improvise. That last is not technically sophisticated, but it's what impresses me the most.

I mean... Osama wars???

The link is already slashdotted. I couldn't find a cache on Google. Here is an alternative link to another gutting of the Gamecube. All this Gamecube gutting reminds me of Ben Heckendorn's next project at VCSp to make the Gamecube into a portable... watch for it.

You're forgetting Star Control II. The Slylandro fit the bill perfectly.

Uhm, hold on a sec, perhaps it was before your day but Wolfenstein 3D was NOT the original! The original was "Castle Wolfenstein" for the Apple (not Macintosh here, we're talking Apple II IIc kind of Apple).

Check the link from the front page to see what the real Castle Wolfenstein looked like.

Man, I loved that game... :)

With a price this low for a decent console, making portable units is a very economical hack. We might be seeing this very soon over at Ben Heckendorn's Atari 2600 Portables Site, although his next confirmed project is a Gamecube portable.

MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator)

(To the culturally deprived, its an emulator for arcade machine ROMS. You can play thousands of games from Donkey Kong to Bubble Bobble to Mortal Kombat. And you're not even limited to x86 platforms.)

Can't install games onto your work PC? Just run/boot off of your portable game cdrom.

Try these links:

MAME Homepage

MAME32 Homepage (MAME with a GUI menu)

An Arcade ROM Repository

Use Google to get you more ROM websites.

I really need to cook up one for myself. I like the idea of booting Linux and going straight to MAME, but it would eat CD-R space that could be used for more ROMs. Then again, booting Linux would let me setup a RAMdisk, which may help MAME deal with disk write issues. (There may be a M$ Windows utility that will create a RAMdisk without rebooting the OS.)

Last of all, a tip. Do your configuring on a CD-RW disk, get the written size under 50MB, and then burn the final ISO onto the business card CD-R.

Have fun.

My real reason for posting this is not so much the linux ref, but rather the sense of satisfaction one can get from using so called obsolete hardware and software to accomplish real work.

ELKS and DOS 5.0 both run on my old Toshiba T1100 plus. Why bother? This machine originally retailed for $2500 U.S., I picked it up for $10 CAN. At some point in time when the buck was worth more, people paid a considerable amount for this hardware. Has that value disappeared? I don't think so. I can still run word processing software (WP5) and play games (Ancient Art of War, ZZT, and Rogue). The machine still does what it was designed for. Do you really need a massive OS and hardware to write a letter or bash a few bats? No.

Some will question this thinking. Why play Rogue or use WP5 when you can play Quake (or whatever the trendy fps is right now) or use MS office / Star Office. Even though we have Civilization and Free Civ some people still sit down around a Risk or Diplomacy board. Even though we can send email across the world in a few seconds, there is still something satifying about getting a real letter.

&lt Ducking the obvious anthrax posts. Email virii have probably caused more economic damage, and no, the loss of life is NOT funny in the least &gt

Finally, New may have more features, more functionality and in fact be "better" than Old, that does not make Old bad.

Star Control 2 is another all-time great computer game, and it too has a community trying to bring the game back (it never died in my opinion). These guys are making a sequal to the Star Control 2 universe... the game that Star Control should have been. There is also Freeciv, an open source Civilization clone. Anyway, the early Ultimas are classics, but I had to throw in a link about Star Con revival efforts. Its slightly on topic ;-)

I'm surprised no one mentioned his portable atari project, which was also featured on here a while back. Those are actually being mass produced, and look quite nice. It's about time someone made a portable playstation, the PSOne as it stands right now just doesnt count. I think everyone is just cringing at the open air cd spinning away and 2 hour battery life. I still think its cool. I'm dissapointed Sony didnt do something like this themselves.

If it costs them nothing to sell it, why wouldn't they?

Costs aren't always monentary.

Take for example Super Mario Brothers Advance. SMB Advance is essentially just SMB2 with some new stuff thrown in. It will now make for a really nice hand-held title, but do you honstly think Nintendo could resell the title as an N64 remake, or a Gamecube remake? It can sell as a handheld title, simply because at the moment not everybody has a handheld PDA that will effectively emulate the GBA.

Do you honestly think Nintenod could sell SMB1, SMB2, and SMB3 all on one disc as a collection for the Gamecube? No, probably not. Most likely not, due to the fact that a large percent of the market that still loves those games already has them illegally on their PCs.

If Nintendo COULD get away with doing it, it's only because there isn't a larger number of people pirating roms. The number of ROMZ pirates grows ever day. For the moment, it's still not nearly as mainstream as MP3 piracy. If we're lucky, it'll stay fairly obscure and won't draw any real legal attention.

Also one must consider that games aren't like music. People consume them like food and move on. Someone can very easily justify buying a CD when they already have the MP3s, just to have the physical medium. Video games, for whatever reason, haven't felt like "physical medium" since the first ROM image got pulled off of a Cartrige and uploaded to the 'net.

I still buy my video games. I still spend more money on video games than any other expense I have, and one could say that's almost obsessive. (I wonder sometimes myself). But I also know that not everybody buys their PC titles, fewer still buy old games, and even less go out looking for rare SNES, GENESIS, or N64 carts to add to their collections.

As much as I enjoy going to Classic Gaming and snatching down a rom image or two, I fully understand why some companies such as Nintendo and Sega don't want their ROMS being distributed. I also understand why they make a good point in "some cases".

And that's just the thing. "Some Cases". Some games have much higher replay/resell/remarketability value than others. Some of the publishers are gone, others strive on today. But it's those few gems that could resurface as modern products that set the argument for Copyright holders keeping a tight grip on their titles. Nintendo is about to show exactly what they "want to do" with those old titles" when they re-release them on the GBA.

I was all over Super Mario All Stars when it came out on the SNES. Do you think such a thing is ever going to surface on the Gamecube with piracy all but having destroyed the marketability of older titles? Dream on.

I think THAT alone should answer the question "why wouldn't they"?

HA!

I've personally submited MANY patches to xmame/xmess (see: http://x.mame.net/download/changes.unix) tho I havent checked it in awhile I assume it should be good.

I'm also mantaining the official port of MAME for QNX; PhMAME. Download it here or see an old screenshot here.

HA!

I've personally submited MANY patches to xmame/xmess (see: http://x.mame.net/download/changes.unix) tho I havent checked it in awhile I assume it should be good.

I'm also mantaining the official port of MAME for QNX; PhMAME. Download it here or see an old screenshot here.

(Pinocchio, however... why?!)

First of all, Di$neyCo doesn't own the copyright on Pinocchio.

Toad's real name is Kinopio (scroll down to Player Select). If Kinopio made it in, why not rival Pinocchio? Pinocchio was expected to make it into Super Mario RPG (I have the Nintendo Power back issues to prove it) but was replaced at the last minute.

Games are not the reason to upgrade that they once were.

At the end of may I wrote up spacewar for my kisrael.com quote/link blog:

Spacewar! is one of the grand-daddies of modern videogames, and a much deeper deathmatch than Pong. (I was amazed at how developed its deathmatch became when I read this old Rolling Stones article.) Written by MIT Hackers who were inspired by the space opera Fiction of E.E. "Doc" Smith. Someone has an the original game running on a PDP-1 emulator. There's a decent funny introduction at classicgaming.com and a more comprehensive set of Spacewar! links as well. (Possibly the most obvious sequal to Spacewar! was the brilliant Star Control series. The first game added 12 new types of ships, each with 2 unique weapons systems, and the second created a whole universe to support it. Brilliant, brilliant stuff.)
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At the end of may I wrote up spacewar for my kisrael.com quote/link blog:

Spacewar! is one of the grand-daddies of modern videogames, and a much deeper deathmatch than Pong. (I was amazed at how developed its deathmatch became when I read this old Rolling Stones article.) Written by MIT Hackers who were inspired by the space opera Fiction of E.E. "Doc" Smith. Someone has an the original game running on a PDP-1 emulator. There's a decent funny introduction at classicgaming.com and a more comprehensive set of Spacewar! links as well. (Possibly the most obvious sequal to Spacewar! was the brilliant Star Control series. The first game added 12 new types of ships, each with 2 unique weapons systems, and the second created a whole universe to support it. Brilliant, brilliant stuff.)
--

Pong Was the first, making it's debut in 1958 according to this article. I also saw the little History Channel's Lost and Found episode over the weekend, and while the guy that invented Pong, as a previous poster mentioned, didn't intend to do anything more than amuse the public, it does stand as the first publicly playable electronic game. Of course, no one charged money to play it, which may mean it doesn't count as the first 'arcade' game per se.

This thing is weak. Back in the day there was a controller called "The Activator" for the Genesis that set up as a large, nearly flat hexagon on the floor. The hexagon would send up a grid of infrared beams, and could detect when beams were broken.

Of course, making it affordable meant that the technology was not up to snuff, so it never really worked worth a damn.

There is a short description of the Activator in the classic gaming museum. I ripped the text and posted it below:

1. In 1996, John Dondzila released a new Vectrex Game, Vector Vaders, and since then has been joined by others in doing so. The limitations of the system itself forces the games to be straightforward and uncluttered, with emphasis on gameplay, helping many of the games become instant classics.

On another note, unlike many other commercially abandoned consoles, all Vectrex games have been released for public, non-commercial, use.

The Mame and XMame packages now include Mess, so a general emulator is readilly available to run the old classics, and the new one that you just need to make. (Go ahead, get coding!)

They're already losing money from people who buy the PS2 to use mainly as a DVD player. Why would they encourage people to put a Free OS on it, then never buy anything else from Sony to accessorize it? To make this profitable, they'd have to double the price of the box. As the 3DO proved, even the coolest game consoles don't sell well at $700.

The only company making any profit with personal computers right now is Dell, and they are cutting themselves to the bone to do so. Don't expect Sony to do the same with the PS2.

What about Full-geeks? They'll want real PSX programming docs. Because they're not five year old kids.