by William Winter | Apr 23, 2026 | 1970s, 1980s, Atari, Console/Handheld
I pulled something off the shelf the other day that I haven’t looked at in a while. It’s an old cartridge from the Atari 2600. The game: Adventure. You don’t need to be into games to follow this; it’s more about the connection than anything else. I was about ten when...
by Raiford Guins | Apr 15, 2026 | 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Arcade
The Colossus of Maroussi, Henry Miller’s travelogue of Greece, was meant to inspire my visit to Heraklion’s Video Games Museum but teargas blurred that vision. I left The James Joyce Irish Pub (no, I didn’t start this journey in Dublin—I came across the pub in Athens)...
by Jeremy Parish | Apr 11, 2026 | 1970s, 2020s, Magazine Preview, Opinions
Gaming historians often write about popular media in the pre-internet age as if it all existed in vacuum-sealed silos by country, but that’s not true at all. Intercontinental communication may have been a lot more complicated back then, but consider Heiankyo Alien, a...
by Ryan Burger | Apr 7, 2026 | 1970s, 2020s, Magazine Preview
Before home computers ever had an “adventure game,” there was Colossal Cave Adventure (1976- 1977) by Will Crowther and Don Woods. Often referred to simply as Adventure or ADVENT, it ran on a PDP-10 mainframe, a machine that cost about $150,000 in the 1970s, roughly...
by Raiford Guins | Apr 6, 2026 | 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Arcade
My most recent book, King PONG: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions, shows how Atari established not one but two massive consumer technology categories by adopting innovative product positioning and market development strategies. I conclude the short...
by Brett Weiss | Apr 5, 2026 | 1970s, 2020s, Magazine Preview
I discovered Space Invaders in 1978,Space was visiting my aunt and cousins in McGregor, Texas (outside of Waco), a town of barely over 2,000 people. It was in a dingy, seedy arcade and was very imposing. I’d already played my share of pinball and electromechanical...