Space Firebird is a game that seemed to taunt me for several summers. From the summer of '81 through sometime in '83, I would always run across a Space Firebird machine when I either didn't have a quarter or didn't have the time to stop and play. The 7-11 on the...

Imagine if there was one company that fulfilled all the needs of all gamers, classic and current. Imagine if one company owned the rights to all the classic games and reissued them in contemporary and classic editions. Well, before you get your hopes too high, you may...

I’ve never been a big fan of Superman. Call me crazy, but he has just never done anything for me. My roommate in college thought Superman was “The Best.” Superman was never “bitchen,” “rad,” or any other cool way of saying he liked him. My roommate, Phil, always...

Once your classic cartridge collection reaches a certain size, you'll discover you're finding few new cartridges at thrift stores. In order to "get their fix," so to speak, many collectors start collecting label variations to keep their number of "finds" up. “Label...

With Nintendo's announcement of their upcoming Game Boy Advanced, The Game Boy finally begins her journey into the sunset. Before historians and game players start writing their differing opinions about the Game Boy's place in our storied industry's history, a strong...

Throughout history, various mysteries have remained unsolved: The Riddle of The Sphinx, The Bermuda Triangle, The Missing Link, and even Bigfoot. But perhaps one of the most puzzling of all is the lack of a great Spider-Man video game. Not since Mickey Mouse and Bugs...

The recent death of Larry Linville, Frank Burns on TV's 'MASH,' saddened me. I'm sure many of us have fond memories laughing at ol' Ferret Face's antics on the long-running sitcom. However, Larry Linville actually has classic game-related memories for me. You see, his...

Like many classic gamers, I wasn't just into playing the games; I was into how they worked, how they “thought" and made their decisions. I originally lusted after my first computer (a gleaming, 64K, Apple II-compatible, one-ton - or so it seemed when I was merely...

Last holiday season, my fiancée, Seleen, and I took the day off from our jobs to finish up our Christmas shopping. We started early in the morning and finished late in the afternoon. At one point, our travels found us about 50 miles from home in a shopping mall I used...

I predict that lifelike virtual reality, fully integrated with the internet, will be in our homes by 2010. Virtual reality is a technology being rapidly developed right before our eyes, yet it's evolving gradually enough that most of you probably think nothing of it....

In the mid-to-late 1980’s, at a time when the Nintendo Entertainment System had taken its place as most beloved home video game system, odd and unnecessary licenses began sprouting up all over the video game landscape. Manufacturers thought that by tacking a popular...

Did you ever wish Atari made a sequel to their hit game “Adventure”? Well, you’re in luck because they did. Sort of. “Adventure II,” as it was originally known, was intended to be similar to the earlier Adventure, only much grander in scale. In fact, the project...

Once upon a time, The Enchanted Countryside was a land of happiness and prosperity. Then, a Druid magician created an amulet so powerful, he would be able to control a dragon at his command and become invincible to whoever opposed him. When the magician entered the...

If Adventure and Haunted House defined adventure games for the early consoles, it would be hard to find a game that exemplifies that genre on vintage computer systems, as well as the Ultima series. Richard Garriott created the first Ultima game, an extremely...

The Atari home computer series is not typically what one thinks of when asked about the better video game systems of the early 80's. But why not? The Atari 8-bit computer line (400, 800,1200) provided some of the best graphics, gameplay, and outright fun that could be...

What is it exactly that keeps Adventure so close to the hearts of most classic gamers? This year marks the game’s 20th anniversary, and certainly in that time frame we've had hundreds of games surpass Adventure's primitive charms. There was Advanced Dungeons and...

Craig Pell, aside from being an avid classic gamer and collector, is also known for programming an amazing port of the Atari 2600 cartridge, Adventure, in assembly, entitled “Indenture.” In his words, Indenture will work on: "any PC from the lowliest 8088 to a Pentium...