Nick Arcade Title

Shortly after I started college, the kids’ cable network Nickelodeon premiered a game with a similar premise. Called Nick Arcade, the game was the perfect melding of the “kids game show” aesthetic that Nickelodeon had established with games like Double Dare, Finders Keepers, and Get the Picture, and the home arcade scene, which had moved into fourth-generation systems. It really seemed like a worthy successor to the classic Starcade game show, with a modern (for the time) twist. Needless to say, even though I was a few years older than the target audience at that point, I was hooked from day one.

Two teams of two players each competed during the game. Each round started with a face-off game, a simple two-player video game in which each player attempted to achieve the highest score within 30 seconds. The first season featured a variety of pong-style and shooting-gallery games, while the second season mixed in a side-scrolling racing game, with players on foot, on ATVs, or on jet skis. The winner’s team was given control of the game board. This was an overview map split into squares. The players controlled “Mikey”, a mascot-style character, usually dressed in an outfit that reflected the map’s location (a neighborhood, an alien planet, the Old West, etc.). Landing on a square would reveal what was underneath. They would fall into one of three categories: Points, Puzzles, or Prizes (as host Phil Moore would state at the beginning of the game). The squares could also reveal the enemy on the map, causing the team to lose its turn. Or they could reveal a Video Challenge.

Nick Arcade Games

This was one of the two core draws for the show. The team that triggered the Video Challenge would move over to a section of the studio with a number of home console games set up. The games would change from time to time, with a number of them being recently released titles. While there were always SNES and Genesis games, other options often included the TurboGrafx-16, the Neo Geo AES, and even the original 8-bit NES. The team would choose one player to play the game. The other would write down how many of their existing points they were willing to risk on the outcome of the challenge. It was up to the player to successfully complete the challenge in 30 seconds. Quite often, the players would be dropped into a later level of the game, so even if they were familiar with the game, they may still be playing something they hadn’t played before. If the player beats the challenge, the team gets the points risked. If they lose the challenge, they lose those points from their current score.

After two rounds of gameplay, the team with the most points moves on to face the Game Wizard for the day in The Video Zone. This was the other core draw for the game. The Video Zone actually placed players inside the video game using a combination of blue-screen technology and technology developed for the gameshow. It consisted of three levels that had to be completed within 60 seconds. Each of the first two levels was played by a single player from the team. These were usually some sort of flying or driving side-scrolling level, with the player staying stationary as the background, enemies, and items to collect came at them. They would generally have to jump and duck things coming at them. Assuming they complete their levels before the time expires, both players would then move on to the final level to face the Game Wizard.

Nick Arcade Final Level

The boss characters were Merlock, Scorchia, and Mongo. While each Game Wizard did have a unique design for their final level, the method for beating them was essentially the same. The players would have to climb up and down ladders, avoid traps and projectiles from the boss, and attempt to touch four floating orbs on the screen. If they managed to do so within the 60 seconds, they would win the grand prize.

The Video Zone levels were a particular challenge, not only physically for the competitors but also because they couldn’t directly see what they were doing. Sort of like the weatherman with the green screen has to look at a separate monitor to know what he’s pointing at on the map, the kids had to look at monitors on the set to see what they were interacting with on screen. While most would quickly get the hang of it, some kids just couldn’t translate it, and you could see the frustration.

Nick Arcade ran for two seasons and 84 episodes on Nickelodeon. After its cancellation, it played in reruns on the channel for many years, and moved to Nick GAS in 1999, where it stayed until 2007, when the channel was retired.

Nick Arcade Face-Off

It is interesting to note that major publishers like Capcom, Sega, SNK, and Nintendo had their products shown side by side, in direct competition, in a manner that would never fly in the corporate world today. Modern video game companies hold a tight rein over how their products relate to competitors’ products. On Nick Arcade, they took a much looser view of this. The way the show was set up meant that, although the same games would appear on multiple episodes, a particular game might go for many episodes before it was ever played, if at all. There were no corporate mandates for a certain amount of screen time for their games.

The production is also interesting given its use of the Commodore Amiga computer system. Video Toaster-equipped Amigas had become embedded in the production workflow at Nickelodeon Studios by that time, with their use in many programs. The face-off games at the beginning of each round were played on an Amiga. In the second season, some of the face-off games were actually developed by popular Amiga publisher Psygnosis. The Amiga was also used for the Video Zone. The graphics were generated on an Amiga, and a specialized Amiga was used for hit detection for each human player. As a huge Amiga fan, I found this a fun behind-the-scenes tidbit.

Though it’s long since disappeared from broadcast, episodes can be purchased on Amazon Prime Video, and if you look hard enough, you can find episodes on YouTube and Internet Archive. Give it a watch. It’s a great window into the state of gaming in the early 90s.

The post Nick Arcade: When Nickelodeon Went 16-Bit appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Super Mario Bros (NES)

Super Mario Bros. This game single-handedly changed how platform games were approached after it stormed onto the scene in 1985. It established so many conventions that people now expect in side-scrolling platform games. When you approach a new platformer, what is the first thing that you try to do to dispatch the enemies? You jump on them. And you are shocked if that doesn’t work, scrambling for the instructions to figure out why they programmed their game incorrectly. See something that looks like a gold coin? Collect them all. See a brick that doesn’t look the same as the rest of the bricks on a platform? Get below it and try to smash it with your head.

Even as the series progressed, and new features were added, such as more advanced moves and different costumes, the key principles of the game never changed.

But there’s a whole generation of platform games released before Super Mario Bros was even a twinkle in Miyamoto-san’s eye (maybe). And the game owes as much to the history of those who came before as current platformers owe to SMB. Let’s take a look at a handful of important platformers popular before the Super Plumbers came to the NES.

Donkey Kong (Arcade)

Donkey Kong

We can’t really do this without at least acknowledging where Mario came from. Donkey Kong was a 1981 arcade release from Nintendo. At the time, Nintendo’s North American arm was in desperate need of a hit after the release of Radar Scope, which had seriously underperformed in US arcades. Junior employee Shigeru Miyamoto came up with the concept for the game, giving it something that platformers lacked at the time: a story. A giant ape has kidnapped a construction worker’s girlfriend, and you must help him rescue her.

Of course, our protagonist isn’t Mario yet. Here he’s known as “Jumpman” for obvious reasons. The early concepts for the modern platformer are taking shape. Jump over the obstacles. Take the ladders as you progress to the goal. Use the power-ups you are offered along the way (the hammers). Donkey Kong even offered different levels with a variety of mechanisms to reach your goal. It’s no surprise that this game became an instant success, and it was ported to pretty much every console and computer of the time. We even got versions as LCD Game & Watch-style games and a tabletop VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display) game from Coleco.

Pitfall! (Atari 2600)

Pitfall!

The Atari 2600 was a major success for the company, as the home console market began to move away from simple pong-style television games and toward cartridge-based systems that offered a world of different experiences, attempting to emulate the arcade at home. While Atari would release a slew of first-party titles for the system, some of the most successful games would come from third-party developers and publishers.  One of the most prolific of those publishers was Activision. They were notable not only for the amount, but more for the consistent quality of their releases. One of their early hits was the multi-screen platformer Pitfall!.

As a game, it was a simple concept. Travel from screen to screen,  jumping over rolling logs, coiled vipers, and scorpions, and catch vines to swing Tarzan-style across ponds and pits. Make sure to collect the treasure along the way, and try to get as many points as possible before the 22-minute timer reaches zero.

Pitfall! added a sense of adventure to the platforming formula, as you explored the jungle, always proceeding to the next screen to face whatever the game would throw at you. Adding the timer to the mix gave your quest a sense of urgency. It also gave the game an ending, where other games at the time would go on nearly infinitely, as long as you could stay alive.

Lode Runner (Commodore 64)

Lode Runner

In 1983, Broderbund published a new puzzle-platform game from developer Doug Smith, Lode Runner. Sharing similarities with the classic arcade game Space Panic, Lode Runner was a single-screen platformer set across 150 levels. The basic goal of each level was to collect all of the gold on each level while avoiding the roaming guards. Once all of the gold was collected, a ladder would appear at the top of the screen, allowing the player to exit to the next level.

There were a number of complexities to the gameplay formula that set Lode Runner apart from other puzzle games. The guards on the levels have the ability to pick up the gold you are trying to collect. You have the ability to temporarily create a hole next to you in the floor. You can drop through the hole to whatever lies below, or you can use the hole to capture one of the guards, and if he’s carrying gold, he will drop it. You can then walk over the guard and collect the gold. Your hole will eventually fill back in. Though the guards can eventually climb out of the holes, if they are unable to do so before the hole fills in, they will be forced to respawn at a random position at the top of the level.

The levels themselves are populated with ladders, hand-over-hand bars, and sections of floor that you will not be able to create a hole in. You cannot jump, but you can fall any distance without taking any damage, assuming, of course, that you don’t land on a guard. On some levels, the gold you need to obtain will be located deep beneath multiple layers of floor, forcing you to quickly create and drop through holes, all the while avoiding the ever-present guards. As you progress later into the game, the level puzzles become truly diabolical, but it’s so much fun that you just keep coming back for more.

Jet Set Willy (ZX Spectrum)

Jet Set Willy

Over on this side of the pond, we didn’t really get the ZX Spectrum. Though we did receive a version of the machine, released as the Timex Sinclair 2068, it never reached a fraction of the popularity that the Spectrum line achieved in the UK. The library of games made available for the line rivals that of the Commodore 64.

Developed by Matthew Smith and published by Bug-Byte (later Software Projects) in 1983, Manic Miner was one of the most popular platformers released for the ZX Spectrum. It was later ported to numerous other computer systems. The following year, Software Projects released Smith’s follow-up to the game, Jet Set Willy.

Miner Willy, tired and ready for bed, has to tidy the house after a party before he can turn in for the night. You go from screen to screen, exploring your mansion, locating all of the items you need to find in order to complete the game, and finally get a good night’s sleep. Jet Set Willy exploits features that would become popular in modern platformers: exploration and item collection. Often, if implemented poorly, these can be detrimental to a game. But, as long as the encompassing title is well done and engaging, preferably with an appealing story to go with it, exploration and collection can make for an enjoyable time. Jet Set Willy has these in spades.

Pac-Land (Arcade)

Pac-Land

When Pac-Man burst onto the arcade scene back in 1980, the little yellow maze runner quickly became a gaming phenomenon. He was on clothes, watches, wastepaper baskets, and even lunch boxes. Heck, he eventually got his own cartoon. When the inevitable sequels to the game came, they were all a variation of the maze-running, dot-chomping original (with the exception of the pinball-video-game hybrid that was Baby Pac-Man, but that’s for another article).

When Pac-Land was released in 1984, it marked the most extreme departure from the established Pac-Man formula to date. It was a side-scrolling platformer that had an anthropomorphized Pac-Man, similar to his design for the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, making his way across stages, or “trips”, trying to complete a task related to the area he was in. Along the way, you had to avoid the Ghost Gang (Iny, Blinky, Pinky, Clyde, and Sue), as well as other obstacles like fire hydrants leaking water, fallen logs, and quicksand. When you find and eat a flashing Power Pellet, the ghosts will turn blue, and you will be able to eat them for points.

While Pac-Land wasn’t the first side-scrolling platformer developed prior to Super Mario Bros, it was a significant one. It put the character in a colorful land of platforms, as the player ran, jumped, and avoided obstacles. Each level had a goal, and there were even end-of-level challenges. It was reported that the game was a significant inspiration during the development of SMB, though Shigeru himself stated that, while he did take the game into consideration, the only concept he really borrowed was the use of a blue background, as opposed to the black backgrounds of his previous games. Regardless, Pac-Land proved that the formula that made Super Mario Bros a success could work.

Most truly great games owe something to the games that came before them. Super Mario Bros. is no exception. While it’s a classic, there’s a vast universe of platform games that are also worth your time and paved the way for the modern platformer.

The post Life Before the Plumbers – Platform Games Before Super Mario Bros appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

In this series, we’ll take a game that was ported to different platforms, pick five, and look at what went right, what maybe went wrong, and how they’re all related. First off, the classic Dan Gorlin game, Choplifter. We’ll be looking at the original Apple II, the Commodore 64 conversion, the arcade port, the Sega Master System version, and, finally, the Atari 7800 release.

Choplifter Apple II Screenshot

Apple II

Dan Gorlin developed Choplifter for the Apple II home computer system, with Brøderbund releasing the game in 1982. While action games of the time were often focused on how quickly the player could destroy everything on the screen, Choplifter instead focused on a more deliberate rescue operation, with destruction a result of defense rather than offense. The gameplay loop was deceptively simple: take off from your base, release the POWs from one of the four buildings on the level, and rescue as many as possible by picking them up and flying them back to your base, all the while eluding enemy vehicles.

The game was a remarkable achievement, with smooth graphics and animation, and a real feeling of gravity and inertia that you must come to terms with as you maneuver your chopper around the game field. Attempts to rescue POWs will be hampered by, among other things, tanks and jets, either trying to shoot you down or take out the POWs as they run from the busted barracks, scrambling to climb aboard the waiting helicopter. Don’t land too hard, or you’ll crash, killing everyone you’re carrying. Make sure you don’t land on any of the waiting POWs, or they end up in the kill column, as well. Your reward for getting them safely to your base? The grateful, cheery waves of the little fellas as they disembark your chopper.

As Apple tried to position the Apple II as more than just a business and educational machine, games like Choplifter helped cement it as a solid entertainment platform.

Choplifter Commodore 64 Screenshot

Commodore 64

A year after the game’s release on the Apple II, the Commodore 64, the new successor to Commodore’s successful VIC-20 home computer, received its very own version of Choplifter.

The game remained largely unchanged from the original. The gameplay loop was the same, as were the obstacles to success. The game underwent a few changes in presentation, including updates to the HUD at the top of the screen and a slightly darker color palette that better aligned with the Commodore 64’s available hues. The essential graphic elements were remarkably similar to those of the Apple II game, as were the animation and smooth gameplay. The feeling of gravity and inertia had been successfully translated, as well. From a gameplay standpoint, you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the two.

The success of this port made Choplifter on the Commodore 64 a standard-bearer for quality games on the system for many years.

Choplifter Arcade Screenshot

Arcade

In 1985, Sega decided to bring Choplifter to the arcades. Instead of a straight port of the game, they redesigned it to take advantage of the more advanced hardware available to arcade games at the time and to appeal to the arcade gaming audience. Gamers would be looking for bright, colorful graphics with more detail than the original computer presentation.

The gameplay remained largely unchanged. You take off, fly to the left, dodging enemies, in search of the buildings housing the POWs you must rescue. Pick them up, survive the flight back to your base, and drop off the survivors. In addition to the enemy vehicles from the original version, there are now missile launchers and anti-aircraft guns to deal with, making each trip that much more treacherous. Another change from the original is that the number of successful rescues has been reduced to saving only 20 of 32. This, along with a fuel limit, helped increase the game’s pace while remaining challenging enough to keep the quarters flowing.

The backgrounds were detailed and used parallax scrolling to give the playfield a sense of depth. Instead of the single level of the original game, the arcade version of Choplifter took place on four different levels: the original desert level, a level at sea, a level in a cavern, and lastly a level on top of buildings. This, along with the redesigned vehicle graphics, helped it to stand out from the original and made it a true arcade classic.

Choplifter Sega Master System Screenshot

Sega Master System

When Sega brought Choplifter to their 8-bit NES competitor, the Master System, they chose to port their arcade version rather than the original computer game, as Coleco had done in 1984 for their ColecoVision system.

The decision to port the arcade version makes the Master System version more of an action game than the originals, in line with the arcade game. You face the same adversities as in the arcade game, but in an effort to increase the gameplay value of the home conversion, the POW rescue requirements are increased to 40. The graphics, while very similar to the arcade, are somewhat scaled back in color, detail, and background parallax levels. But they were (and still are) impressive for an 8-bit system.

The one thing that keeps this from being a truly epic conversion is something that plagues many Sega Master System games, especially action titles with many on-screen characters: sprite flicker. As the number of sprites on a horizontal plane increases, the sprite flicker increases as the system attempts to draw everything in place. When you are dealing with a large number of POWs roaming around on-screen, along with your chopper and possible enemies, it can get very distracting and can lead to some slowdown.

But, even this doesn’t detract from the fact that Choplifter on the Sega Master System is an excellent port, and one of the better arcade ports on the platform.

Choplifter Atari 7800 Screenshot

Atari 7800

Looking at it, you would be forgiven for assuming that the Atari 7800 version of Choplifter was another port of Sega’s arcade game. On the surface, the graphics seem more similar to the arcade version than to the original game. But this 1987 release is actually a port of the original computer game.

You are rescuing up to 64 POWs from four buildings of 16 scattered across the level, all the while on the lookout for enemies attempting to destroy you and your rescues.

The most obvious change is the graphic design. While not as detailed as the Sega Master System port of the arcade game, they are much more colorful and detailed than the Apple II original. It doesn’t play nearly as smoothly as the original or even the arcade version, but it is an important late release for a system that didn’t see many games before it was unceremoniously retired by Atari.

Bonus: Sega SG-1000

Though it didn’t see release outside Japan, a conversion of Choplifter was developed for Sega’s SG-1000 console (the predecessor to the Master System). Released in 1985, a few months short of Sega’s arcade version, it is essentially a slightly more complex version of the computer game. The graphics are very similar, with the monocolor chopper, minimalistic playfield design, and smooth animation. However, instead of the single level, it adds two more level types: a level that takes place at sea, where you rescue the POWs from lighthouse-looking buildings, and a cavern level similar to the level in the arcade and Master System versions.

Overall, the game plays quite nicely. It is too bad that we in the West didn’t get a chance to experience it. Choplifter for the SG-1000 would have been a great bridge between the computer classic and the arcade reimagining.

The post One Game, Five Systems – Choplifter appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

As the game took shape, one of the key aspects Will brought was the absence of a “win-lose” scenario. There were no puzzles to solve, no
final boss to defeat. Just a living, breathing city that you were trying to keep running. He knew that this might be a hard sell, say…..

Read the rest of this article on page 44 by clicking here!

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The post Sim City – by Marcus Albers appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Jupiter Fracture Title Screen

In case you haven’t heard, the classic Commodore has undergone a rebirth. Retro computer YouTuber Christian “Peri Fractic” Simpson managed to gather the support and financing to purchase the bits and pieces of Commodore held by other companies and bring them together into the new Commodore International Corporation. The first major product from the company was the Commodore 64 Ultimate (C64U), a reimagining of the classic 8-bit powerhouse, functionally similar to the original with many modern quality-of-life improvements under the hood.

Bundled with the new systems was a USB drive (housed in a classic data cassette) loaded with games, apps, scene demos, and SID music files to play with. In addition, owners gained access to CommoServe, an online repository of software and media. This serves as a new distribution method for new software, as evidenced by the first game published by the new Commodore, Jupiter Fracture (stylized “Fract/ure”). The game is exclusive to C64U owners and users of the CommodoreOS Linux-based operating system.

Jupiter Fracture is a sequel to the classic Jupiter Lander game, originally released on the VIC-20 and later the Commodore 64 in the early 80s. In fact, the game was one of the earliest releases for the original Commodore 64. The game was part of the broader “lunar lander” genre, which ranged from text-only simulations to a popular vector-based arcade game. The concept was loosely based on the 1969 Apollo Lunar Module landing on the Moon. As your lander falls to the surface, you would use thrusters to overcome gravity and inertia to touch down safely at specified locations. As you used your thrusters, you would consume fuel, which made it more difficult as the game went on. Jupiter Lander changed the location from the Moon to the planet Jupiter, giving you three different landing pads on the lone level to bring your ship down on. While the game remained very simple, it was incredibly popular, and is still looked upon fondly by those who played it as new C64 owners back in the day.

Jupiter Fracture Levels

Fast-forward to 2025, and Jupiter Fracture picks up where the original left off. The story goes that on April 29, 1994, the planet Jupiter experienced a mysterious event called The Blip, which fractured the planet into a number of floating fragments. As the last surviving lander pilot, it is up to you to explore each of these fragments, land, and discover the secret behind the mystery of The Blip.

Each of the planetary fragments is composed of different material, contains different hazards, and is affected by gravity differently. You will need to navigate the narrow underground corridors of each level, avoiding obstacles such as lasers, force fields, and even mines. If you hit a wall, run into a hazard, come down too hard, or miss a platform, you will lose a ship. Just like in the original, successfully landing on a pad will earn you bonus fuel, which will be important, as the multiscreen levels are much more complex than in the original game. The slower and more accurate your landing, the more points and bonus fuel you receive.

One notable change, aside from the expanded gameplay levels, is the method of controlling your ship. In the original Jupiter Lander, you had three thrusters that you used to control your ship: a downward-facing thruster that controlled descent and ascent, and two lateral thrusters that controlled horizontal movement. In the sequel, the control has shifted back to the method used in the original Lunar Lander arcade game. Lateral movement now requires rotating in the opposite direction and thrusting, making landing that much harder.

Jupiter Fracture Level 1

This game is a great sequel to a classic title. The vastly expanded gameplay helps to elevate this game beyond the simplistic goals of the original. The addition of hazards on each of the nine levels keeps the gameplay loop from becoming stale. Even though there are only nine levels, the later ones are quite tricky, and once completed, there is still the challenge of improving your score on the next run through the game.

The sound effects are standard thruster fare, but the music is vastly expanded over the original. The compositions use the familiar themes from Jupiter Lander, but do an excellent job of making them modern and interesting. As a release intended for the C64U’s expanded audio capabilities, the game also supports dual SIDs for an even more expansive aural experience.

If there is one criticism I can level at Jupiter Fracture, it is the transition from the zoomed-out level to the zoomed-in landing view. The original game had very simplistic level graphics, so zooming in during landing didn’t seem so jarring. But here, the change from what you see around you in the full-level view to the landing view can be very different, forcing you to make sometimes split-second decisions about your descent that you didn’t initially see. Also, the sense of inertia does not always carry over well from one view to another, with slower momentum while zoomed in translating to much faster momentum in the full-level view. It is not insurmountable and doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the game, but it could certainly be addressed in future versions.

If you own a C64U, you have no excuse not to download Jupiter Facture and give it a try. It’s a great experience, and the game’s overall story is a fun analog of the death and rebirth of Commodore itself. Happy landing!

The post Review: Jupiter Fracture for the Commodore 64 appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

While they started out focused on hardware access, MECC soon transformed into an educational software publisher. Their most famous educational game has become a household name, and Generation X and Millennials will certainly have heard of and played some of their other titles. Let’s take a look at some of the most influential MECC educational games.

Oregon Trail – Apple II

Oregon Trail

The endlessly meme-able historic simulation that put educational gaming, or edutainment, on the map. The development of this game actually predates MECC by a few years. Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger created the first version in 1971 for Rawitsch’s eighth-grade history class. Rawitsch joined MECC in 1974, and the game was added to the MECC system in the mid 70s. In 1985, it became a much larger stand-alone product for the Apple II. What made it important was not just popularity, but form. The Oregon Trail turned history into a decision-driven survival simulation, so students learned through trade-offs, scarcity, geography, and consequences rather than memorization alone. It remained central to MECC for decades and ultimately became the company’s defining cultural artifact.

Word Munchers

Introduced in 1985, Word Munchers was one of the games that proved MECC could make drill-oriented learning feel genuinely playful. It won a Parents’ Choice Gold Award that year. Later deluxe versions expanded it into a broad language arts package covering reading, grammar, vocabulary, phonics, parts of speech, and related word skills. In students’ memories, this is one of the quintessential school lab games because it wrapped language practice in fast, arcade-style pressure, using a gameplay style that vaguely emulated the popular Pac-Man.

Number Munchers – MS-DOS

Number Munchers

This was the math counterpart to MECC’s Word Munches and another of their signature games. Number Munchers was a Parents’ Choice Gold Award winner in 1986, and later one of the company’s first titles to span Apple II, Macintosh, and MS-DOS. In design terms, it distilled arithmetic and number sense into a quick chase format built around factors, equalities, and similar rule recognition, which is exactly why it stuck in so many students’ memories.

Storybook Weaver

This title is important because it reveals a different side of MECC’s educational philosophy. MECC listed Storybook Weaver among its new titles in 1990, then later reintroduced it for Mac and Windows and expanded it into Storybook Weaver Deluxe, which combined it with My Own Stories and added more art and technical features. Instead of teaching through simulation or drill, it emphasized authorship, composition, illustration, and multimedia storytelling. For many students, this was MECC at its most open-ended and creative.

Odell Lake – Apple II

Odell Lake

Odell Lake shows MECC was never only about frontier history and word drills. MECC later grouped it with The Oregon Trail and Number Munchers as one of its “Programs of the Decade,” and Odell Down Under was explicitly marketed as an expanded successor to the “classroom classic” Odell Lake. Its importance lies in the fact that it taught ecology through systems and survival. The game focused on predator-prey relationships, recognition, and environmental consequences rather than on simple question-and-answer prompts.

MECC was responsible for many other titles, including several Oregon Trail sequels. Unfortunately, in the mid-90s, MECC underwent a consolidation and was acquired by SoftKey. In 1996, the company was renamed The Learning Company, and by 1999, it had been shuttered altogether. Today, a variety of companies own the trademarks for MECC’s software library, with Oregon Trail continuing to appear in various forms on many modern platforms.

The post MECC: When Generation X Got to Play Games in School appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Infinity Blade for PC

As I was browsing Reddit the other day, as I’m wont to do from time to time, I came across a post about something of great interest to me that I knew nothing about. The post discussed the release of a PC port of Infinity Blade II. For the uninitiated, the Infinity Blade series of games was released for iOS devices starting in 2010. The three games in the series were among the most graphically impressive to be released for iOS devices at the time and were extremely popular. Unfortunately, due to difficulties adapting the games to the newer hardware Apple was releasing, and Epic Games losing their license to publish games on the App Store, developer Chair delisted them from the App Store rather than abandon the titles. The unfortunate consequence of this decision, and the reason I bring it up here, is that these glorious games have become “lost media” since they can no longer be downloaded from the App Store, not even onto hardware that once supported the games. If you purchased these games and didn’t have them already installed on a device, they were simply gone.

Lost media in the video game world is far from a new issue, given the ephemeral nature of digital marketplaces. While we believed for decades that physical media, whether cartridges, floppy disks, or CD/DVD/GD-ROM/etc, meant we permanently owned the games we purchased, as time marches on, we are finding that this is not necessarily the case. No matter what we do to store our bits and bytes, entropy always finds a way. Whether it’s corrosion of IC boards, failure and leakage of backup batteries, bit rot slowly destroying magnetic media, or degradation of optical discs (yes, even Blu-ray discs eventually), physical media is not the permanent paradise we were promised.

My Abandonware Site

Some of the earliest efforts to preserve these pieces of gaming history fell to websites like My Abandonware, which host digital archives of sometimes fragile, hard-to-source software packages. Of course, this has always ended up in a legal grey area. Technically, these games, even though they are no longer actively being sold on the market, are often still owned by some company somewhere. These sites, in an attempt to remain legally compliant, will often capitulate to companies that request/demand that their games be removed from the archives.

Fortunately, the game preservationists over at Good Old Games have stepped in to try to offer a fully legal way to experience some of these classic titles. Working with IP owners, they have built an extensive library of classic computer games that are fully playable on modern hardware, often using emulation layers such as DOSBox. Given that this is a digital marketplace, you may be worried that games could disappear, as with Capcom’s digital release of Marvel vs. Capcom or Ubisoft’s The Crew, but fortunately, that isn’t the case here. While games are sometimes removed from sale, such as the classic rally racer Colin McRae 2005 (often due to rights issues), these games are never removed from the libraries of those who purchased them. And, even if you are unwilling to believe that, GOG allows you to download the full install binaries for any games that you own in your library, allowing you to keep a personal archive of your purchases, 100% legal and free of any reliance on the GOG ecosystem. This system is a huge win for game preservation.

But what about games that were never released on physical media?

This is not necessarily as new a problem as you might think. In the ’90s, both Sega and Nintendo dipped their toes into digital software distribution, much of it exclusive to their digital-only platforms. Nintendo’s platform, known as the Satellaview, was a satellite service that attached to the Super Famicom. Users were able to access a library of games that eventually totaled 114 titles. Some were original games or original sequels to cartridge releases, while others were remakes of older Famicom and Super Famicom titles. In addition, some games, known as Soundlink games, had to be played “live” on a set schedule because they used live voice acting. While most standard digital-only titles have been preserved in the memory of various Satellaview systems, some content, such as the live audio from the Soundlink titles, is likely to be permanently lost.

The Sega Channel

Sega launched the Sega Channel in 1994. Using a special adapter that plugged into the Genesis’ cartridge slot, users would connect to the coaxial cable from their cable service provider, with either TCI or Time Warner Cable being the only two providers supporting the service in the US. Since the service used the existing cable infrastructure rather than an online service like the Stellaview, online gaming was not supported. The available games were broadcast on a loop. Once the user requested a title, the system would wait for the broadcast to loop to the selected game, then capture the data. The game would be saved to the adapter’s internal RAM, which was wiped when the system was powered off. Since the adapter used volatile RAM to store the games, preservation had been a challenge. Fortunately, in 2025, the Video Game History Foundation released over 140 ROMs from the Sega Channel, including exclusive games and demos that had never been released on physical media. These archives were obtained from the former Sega Channel VP of Programming, Michael Shorrock, and from a fan who had collected backup tapes of Sega Channel broadcasts.

Digital marketplaces are a current issue and will remain one going forward.

As consoles entered the 7th generation, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all opened digital marketplaces for their devices. This is where console users really began to see the potential negative consequences of software’s digital-only distribution. Each of the online shops experienced a number of titles being delisted. Fortunately, if you had purchased the game, it remained in your library, and you could redownload it later. But quite often, these titles never reappeared on subsequent systems or other platforms, especially Nintendo titles. Without a physical release, these games became relics of the aging accounts that originally purchased them. It wasn’t unusual to see listings on places like eBay for systems and, sometimes, marketplace accounts that included some of the more popular delisted titles.

Wii Shop

The next ticking time bomb for these legacy systems is the ability to access digital purchases in the future. Right now, if you have an old account with purchases on the PS3, PSP, Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, DSi, or 3DS, you can (with varying levels of difficulty) migrate these accounts to other physical systems. It’s not unusual for people to sell their systems when they go unused or when they decide to upgrade to the next-generation console. If you later decide to purchase these older consoles again, you can currently redownload your purchases, allowing you to access your legacy libraries. But, at some point, it will not make financial sense to support downloads for legacy consoles. Once those points of access are shut down, hundreds of titles will exist only on the non-volatile memory and hard drives of specific systems. And emulation will remain the sole way to experience some of these titles going forward, assuming the media has been rescued from one of these orphaned systems.

Of course, digital marketplace death is not exclusive to consoles. Mobile devices have long dealt with delisted software. Often, these titles remain in users’ purchase histories, but several high-profile titles from the past were not only delisted but also removed from users’ accounts. This meant that if the user deleted the app from their devices, they would have no opportunity to redownload it. Android users had it a bit easier. If they could find someone hosting an older APK of the app they could no longer access, they had a chance to reinstall it on their device. But iOS users, with Apple’s walled-garden architecture, found it much more difficult to access these digital assets that had disappeared.

And that’s not to mention the PC gamers who have lost purchases on storefronts like Steam, the Epic Store, and EA and Ubisoft’s own storefronts. These aren’t 99-cent app purchases, either. We’re talking AAA, full-priced titles that are no longer accessible to the users who paid good money for them. This doesn’t even begin to touch the other doom hammer, online gaming services. While many games rely on no online services, others have limited integration, and still others are fully reliant on internet-based services for game matching, content delivery, and multiplayer gameplay. When companies decide to shut down those servers, some games will lose functionality, while others will become completely unplayable.

Evercade EXP-R

So, what can we do? The most obvious option is to support companies that offer physical options for their games, specifically those that do not rely on an online service to play on the device. While Nintendo’s “key cards” have drawn some controversy for not including the game on the physical card, many games released for the Switch and Switch 2 are stored entirely on their cards. Another player that has entered the physical media space is Blaze Entertainment, with its Evercade line of retro systems. They have no digital marketplace. Every game they release is a physical cartridge featuring licenses from many popular companies, as well as indie retro-inspired titles. While they have had to stop producing older carts due to expiring licenses, it is the pinnacle of “you bought it, you own it”.

You can also support organizations like Good Old Games and the Video Game History Foundation, which are working to preserve and make these once-lost and abandoned titles available. When it comes down to it, the corporations aren’t going to preserve the long, unique history of video games. It is going to be up to us, the gamers, to keep it alive.

The post Musing of a Retro Gamer: Lost Media and Game Preservation appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Mortal Kombat Easter Egg

5. Secret Reptile Fight, Mortal Kombat (1992)

In the early ’90s, the fighting game scene was being dominated by Capcom’s juggernaut Street Fighter II. But a new challenger was about to take the genre by storm. Mortal Kombat brought a brutal, bloody style of gameplay to the genre, and would give both Capcom’s and SNK’s various fighting franchises a run for their quarters.

Over the course of the Mortal Kombat franchise’s life, there have been many hidden Easter Eggs to discover. Secrets like “Toasty” and “ABACABBA” are practically synonymous with the game. But the original makes the list because it’s the one that started it all. When you are on the Pit stage of the game, and you see a silhouette fly past the full moon on the stage, win the match with a double Flawless Victory without using block, successfully do the fatality, and you will be transported to the bottom of the stage. Here, you will battle Reptile, a green palette-swapped ninja character with the ability to turn invisible and spit venom.

Like other hidden characters in the series, Reptile would become a selectable character in subsequent sequels. But he started as Mortal Kombat’s OG Easter Egg.

Doom II Easter Egg

4. Romero’s Head, Doom II (1994)

When you talk about the first-person shooter (FPS) genre, id Software will likely immediately come to mind. The original Wolfenstein 3D helped to define the genre as we know it today, but the follow-up, Doom, really put the game style on the map. More variety in level design, better graphics, and faster action made it one of the most cloned games in computer game history. id’s sequel, Doom II, built on the original, allowing even more variety in level design and introducing new enemies and weapons.

Another thing the series is known for is its use of secrets, including hidden doors and switches, which give the player access to weapons, ammo, and power-ups. Beyond that, Doom and its sequels have their share of Easter Eggs that intrepid explorers have managed to dig up. Unlike some games, many of these Easter Eggs require the player to cheat in order to locate them, making them that much more difficult to find. One of the most famous is John Romero’s decapitated head hidden behind the wall in Doom II’s final boss area. In order to see it, you need to use the NOCLIP cheat in order to pass through the wall. But, once you do, you will behold one of the most metal Easter Eggs ever, and a sly in-joke from id Software’s designers.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Easter Egg

3. Warden’s Office Teasing Arkham City, Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009)

Much like movies and television series, video games based on comic properties have been hit or miss. For every game like Capcom’s X-Men: Children of the Atom, there is a Superman 64. Developers Rocksteady Studios managed a home run with the Arkham series of 3D action Batman games. The games told a compelling story, using immersive gameplay, smooth fighting mechanics, and recognizable characters, locations, and technology from the DC universe.

Rocksteady managed to hide a particularly interesting Easter Egg in this first entry in the Arkham series. If you go to the Warden’s office in the asylum, locate the blank wall. Place three explosive gel charges, and you will open a hole in the wall. On the other side, you will find a hidden part of the office that includes clues and blueprints that point to Arkham City, which would become the sequel to Arkham Asylum in 2011. It’s interesting to see the developers teasing the game before pretty much anyone would have known to look for anything related to it. Certainly one of the most interesting Easter Eggs on the list.

Day of the Tentacle Easter Egg

2. Fully Playable Maniac Mansion, Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle (1993)

Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, LucasArts was responsible for some of the most immersive gameplay experiences on 8- and 16-bit micros. Game series like Monkey Island and Sam & Max, and games like Loom and The Dig, were all incredible point-and-click adventure games that helped to define the genre. One of the most famous, and the one that started it all for LucasArts, was Maniac Mansion. The game engine acronym was even coined because of the game (SCUMM, Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion). The game itself is a love letter to classic sci-fi B-movies from the ’50s, including a mad scientist, a damsel in distress, and a creepy old house. The sequel, Day of the Tentacle, amps up the cheese while keeping the humor and strong storytelling of the original intact.

The Easter Egg here is a type we have seen in other games, such as Donkey Kong 64 and the GameCube version of Animal Crossing, which hide fully playable games within another game. Maniac Mansion II is somewhat unique here in that you get the opportunity to play the entire original Maniac Mansion in the game. This makes it one of the few times where the direct sequel to a game includes the original as an Easter Egg.  To access it, you simply have to use the computer in Weird Ed’s bedroom. That’s it. Have fun playing one of the best point-and-click adventures inside the sequel to one of the best point-and-click adventures.

Atari 2600 Adventure Easter Egg

1. Warren Robinett’s Hidden Room, Adventure for the Atari 2600 (1980)

Here it is. One of the original video game Easter Eggs, and the one that led to the term being coined in the first place. Adventure was a classic Atari 2600 game and one of the first action-adventure fantasy games ever released. It has since been viewed as one of the most influential games ever released, introducing features such as open-world gameplay and enemies that continue moving even while off-screen.

While it is not the first Easter Egg hidden in a video game, it has become one of the most well-known, even serving as a key plot point in the book Ready Player One and its movie adaptation. It is certainly one of the hardest ones to find on your own. You won’t trigger it by accident, and there is no real puzzle to solve. First, you must be playing the game on either difficulty 2 or 3. You need to find a single grey pixel hidden in the Black Castle catacombs. Pick it up, and then carry it, along with at least two other objects, to the east end of the corridor below the Golden Castle. The wall at the end will begin blinking rapidly, allowing you to enter a hidden room. Here, you will find the text “Created by Warren Robinett” flashing colors in the center of the room. If you’ve managed to successfully trigger this classic Easter Egg, consider yourself an egg hunter extraordinaire.

The post Five Classic Video Game Easter Eggs appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Choplifter for the SMS

Set the wayback machine to the early ’80s. While we had recently gotten our first home computer, the Commodore VIC-20, my cousins had been enjoying the Apple II system that my uncle used for writing sermons and the like. One of the first home computer games that I ever played was on that sturdy Apple II system, with its monochrome green CRT: Dan Gorlin’s Choplifter. A straightforward premise, easy-to-pick-up gameplay, smooth animation, and those classic clicky sound effects all came together to create a memorable gaming experience that sticks with me to this day.

When we eventually upgraded to the Commodore 64 at home, one of the first games that I sought out was the C64 version of that classic game. This version was pretty much a direct port of the original Apple II game, using the same graphics, sound, and gameplay. It was exactly what I was looking for, and it remains one of my absolute favorite games for the venerable home micro.

Fast forward to the early ’90s. In college, instead of grabbing a used NES like many of my fellow students, I opted for a used Sega Master System. I was impressed by the games I had read about in gaming magazines and found it a lot of fun when I had a chance to try the system out at a local used games shop. While it didn’t have anywhere near the NES’s game library, the games I played looked great and were fun. That’s really all I was looking for at that point. Along with the obligatory Alex Kidd game and a surprisingly competent version of Out Run, I snagged the SMS version of Choplifter. This version had the basic gameplay I remembered from the C64, but the graphics had been kicked up a notch. What I didn’t realize at the time was the true provenance of this particular version.

Choplifter First Level

Rather than a straight port of the original Apple II version, Choplifter for the Sega Master System was a home port of Sega’s arcade version. Choplifter in the arcade was delivered on Sega’s System 2 board. Instead of the simple monochrome graphics of the original, Sega redesigned it for modern arcades, using colorful, detailed pixel graphics and multiple levels of parallax scrolling. The same gameplay cycle that saw the player taking off, releasing hostages from buildings along the play field, picking them up under enemy fire, and flying them safely back to the base was kept. But additional threats, such as gun placements, missiles, and rocket launchers, were there to hinder your progress, amping up the difficulty.

Additionally, while the original game was played on the same playfield level after level, Sega’s version takes place in different environments, which adds to the gameplay variety. The first level is basically the same as the computer version. But the next level takes place at sea, with hostages rescued from various ships along the way. The additional challenge here, of course, is that you can only land your chopper on one of the ships or back at your base. No floating on the water for you, that’ll lose you a sortie. The next level takes place in a cavern. Again, you are presented with stretches of land that you cannot set down on, for fear of destroying your aircraft on a protruding stalagmite. This time, you also have a literal ceiling that you cannot exceed, as you attempt to avoid hanging stalactites. Things can get pretty claustrophobic pretty fast as you attempt to avoid enemy fire while also avoiding the edges of the cave.

Choplifter Cave Level

All of this to say, the Master System version of Choplifter wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. Fortunately, it turned out to be so much more. The System 2 board was, in many ways, a supersized Sega Master System. It utilized a Z80 processor clocked at 4 MHz, as opposed to the Master System’s Z80-compatible processor clocked at 3.58 MHz, and its sound hardware, while based on the same SN76496 processor as the SMS, doubled the number of chips and added a second Z80 for audio processing. The graphics also sported a higher number of on-screen colors. Fortunately, this all translated quite well to the home console. While the Master System takes a hit in color depth, graphical detail, and sound complexity, the core gameplay and look remain. The home conversion even amps up the difficulty a bit more than the arcade version by requiring the player to rescue more hostages to progress.

As much as I love the Master System version of this game, it is not without its flaws. The game suffers from a malady that many games on the system do: sprite flicker. By virtue of the way the game is structured, with many objects appearing at the same horizontal position on the screen, you will definitely run into sometimes significant sprite flicker, as the system attempts to display your chopper, all of the hostages wandering around awaiting rescue, and the tank that is bearing down on you all. While the programmers have done their best to minimize the impact on gameplay, it does suffer some slowdown during these flicker sessions. But it is not enough to mar the excellent overall gameplay experience.

Choplifter for the Sega Master System is a perfect example of a game you show off to your NES-loving friends, as you try to convince them there’s more than plumbers and princesses in the 8-bit gaming world. It’s the kind of arcade conversion that will make you a Master System believer: a beautiful home conversion of the arcade game that still bears the fingerprints of the iconic home-computer original.

The post Retro Review – Choplifter for the Sega Master System appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Fort Apocalypse Title Screen

Early in my video gaming life, one of the first computer games I ever played was Dan Gorlin’s classic Choplifter on my cousin’s Apple II. The simple presentation, on that glowing monochrome green CRT, was instantly addictive. When we got our Commodore 64 some time later, it was one of the first games I sought out. I was pleasantly surprised that the game translated nicely to the C64, but that is a story for another article. More important to this article is the game a friend of mine introduced me to, not long after that. The game seemed to me to be an evolution of the Choplifter formula I had fallen in love with: rescuing people, but now with the added challenge of more advanced combat, as well as navigating underground caverns. That game was Fort Apocalypse, published by Synapse Software. While I later found out the game wasn’t quite what I’d assumed, it didn’t change my opinion. That opinion remains all these years later.

First off, it is commonly assumed (as I did) that Fort Apocalypse is simply a more advanced Choplifter clone. Designer Steve Hales has gone on record to refute that, stating that he actually developed the concept for the game nearly 6 months before Gorlin’s hit came on the scene. He claims the idea for the game came from a dream about helicopters. The game was originally developed for the Atari 8-bit line of micros, and Synapse released the initial version in 1982. The C64 conversion, ported by Steve Hales, was released a year later. The game’s visual aesthetic is strongly informed by its Atari 8-bit roots, giving it an early-’80s action-game look and feel. But don’t let the looks distract you. This game is interesting, challenging, and, more importantly, fun.

Fort Apocalypse

Starting off at the top of the cavernous Fort Apocalypse, you must descend into the depths, rescuing prisoners. avoiding and taking out enemies, and dodging obstacles along the way. As you descend through the levels of caves, you must use your rockets and plasma bombs strategically to eliminate the obstructions between you and the goal on the bottom level, which will send you even deeper into the fort. But make sure to keep an eye on your fuel level. If it gets too low, you’ll have to head back to the fueling station to refuel before continuing your descent. Once you make it to the final room, you use a well-armed rocket to destroy the fort. But, you’re not finished. You must then make it back through the caverns, avoiding the same obstacles and enemies that hindered your initial progress, to the exit to actually win the game.

Something that makes Fort Apocalypse more than your bog-standard shooter is its strategic elements. First, your weapons are not controlled by different firing triggers, as they are in other games. They are instead determined by your helicopter’s orientation. If you are facing sideways, your chopper will fire its rockets. But when you rotate to face the screen, you will drop your plasma bombs. This adds a challenge to the cramped combat conditions deep in the caverns. You’ll need to rotate to drop your bombs to destroy the barriers allowing you access to the deeper levels of the fort, but at the same time, you’ll need to rotate sideways to fire rockets as enemies eventually appear from off-screen to eliminate you.

Fort Apocalypse

Helping you in combat and navigation is your navatron radar system. Similar to the early-warning radar system in Defender, you see a miniaturized version of approximately 6 times more area than you can see on the main screen, showing you enemies, barriers, and prisoners to be rescued. This really helps as you plan your movements through the game, and is essential, should you make it as far as destroying the fort, for finding your way back out to the surface.

As I said at the beginning of the review, the game may look primitive, but that belies its strategic gameplay and “just one more time” playability. Fort Apocalypse does what the best retro games do: balance difficulty with gameplay that is not so frustrating as to make you rage-quit and never come back to it. If you give it a chance, you will find yourself sinking hours into the game, trying to make it further into the caverns of the fort before you’re blasted by a missile launcher or crushed by a moving wall. I won’t say that a controller or two wasn’t lobbed across the room at times back in the day, but I always picked it up again and gave it another go.

While it wasn’t inspired by the classic, Fort Apocalypse benefits from the familiarity with the rescue gameplay that Choplifter made famous. But it expands on the concept, giving us a game that is part Choplifter, part Spelunker, part Scramble, and all fun. Definitely seek this one out if you’re looking for a retro shooter challenge.

The post Retro Review: Fort Apocalypse for the C64 appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.