When I was growing up, there was a quaint little country store about a mile from home called Maloney's. In addition to candy, milk, cigarettes, and trinkets, they featured two arcade games for their patrons to play. Most of the biggest hits cycled through this little...

When I was in high school, the only friend of mine who had an Atari videogame was Rosalind Goldberg. Roz, as we called her, was from a family that not only owned the most ultimate high tech video game player available—the Atari 2600—but also had a home computer! They...

With the advent of Fall upon us, the appearance of ghosts, witches and vampires at our front doors is not too far in the distance. Yes, Halloween will soon be upon us once again. What better way to spend a Halloween’s eve than curled up with your classic gaming system...

As collectors of classic video games we know how frustrating it can be when we hit upon a dry period of finding classic cartridges and game systems. We know the feeling of wanting to spit nails when seeing the mother lode of rare cartridges walk off with somebody else...

An underdog in the arcade became a winner in the living room. Based on Universal’s sleeper arcade game, Cosmic Avenger became a huge hit for the Colecovision. As with many of their arcade ports, Coleco took a chance in bringing this game to the home market. However,...

Midnight Magic - The game that brought it all back for me. I remember when I first saw this game for the Atari 2600. It was on clearance at a video store in one of our local malls. Having played the game of the same name for the Apple back in the early 80’s, I thought...

What defines a rare cartridge? All collectors have different interpretations of the word, but to me it has a simple meaning: “A cartridge that is harder to find than most carts.” Here we’ll examine the many factors that can make a cartridge rare. (Examples cited are...

Welcome to the first CVG 101 column. My name is Lee K. Seitz, and I've been actively collecting classic video games since the late 1980s. The purpose of this column is to help educate newcomers to the hobby of collecting classic video games. Each issue I'll choose a...

Back in the day when arcades and corner markets were after school hangouts, one could expect to hear the “whacka-whacka” sounds of Pac-Man, the lasers firing up in Defender and the crackling, shooting sound of Centipede. There weren’t any life-like PCM samples or 3D...

I don’t think the console wars of today have anything on the console wars of the late 70’s/early 80’s. You had a choice to make: The Atari 2600 or the Mattel Intellivision. For me the choice was always obvious: The Atari 2600. For some reason, I always felt superior...

When you ask the average Joe or Josephine which video game they associate most with the early 80's, you get a variety of answers...Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Galaga, and of course, Pac-Man and his family. Not ONCE will you ever hear somebody excitedly...

It can be difficult to write a magazine article. You have to sit down, focus, etc... It's not really FUN. Actually, it's quite easy to put off. I'd rather just play Bomberman on my Sega Saturn. What's that? Did I just say I was playing on one of the "newer" systems?...