Featured Posts
Entering the Digitized Era–Part3 – By Warren Davis
In Parts 1 and 2, I talked about the development of WTARG, the software I developed at Williams/Bally/ Midway to allow artists to incorporate digitized video of live actors in our games. My exploration into digitizing began in 1986, and the first version of WTARG came...
Ghostbusters By Skyler Miller
This year marks the 15th anniversary of Ghostbusters, the 1984 hit comedy starring Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson. Directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Akroyd and Ramis, the movie grossed almost $240 million in the U.S., spawning a sequel,...
People and Places: Estarland – By Ryan Burger and Billy Mitchell
In this issue of Old School Gamer, we are profiling two stores that we love for different reasons. The first, which you will read about elsewhere in this issue, is a smaller sole proprietorship. Jason took his passion and built a store that caters to like-minded...
Alien By Kyle Snyder
Being a fan of horror and sci-fi, I remember being rather excited to see a video game version of the claustrophobic cinematic masterpiece, Alien. It must be a fantastic and frenetic shoot-em-up, I thought. Probably one of those three-dimensional type games like CBS'...
Dumbo’s Flying Circus By Kyle Snyder
What happens when you take elements of the arcade classics Joust, Defender, and Kickman, toss in some Disney magic, a clever control scheme, and engaging game play? You get a delightful cocktail known as Dumbo's Flying Circus for the Atari 2600. This was intended to...
Analogue Finally Announces its Handheld: The Analogue Pocket
Analogue, king of FPGA, has, at last, pulled the trigger on a handheld to dominate over all rivals. The Analogue Pocket is, naturally, powered by FPGA (so, no emulation here) and out of the box will play Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance cartridges. The...
Convention & Event Update: July-August 2019 – By Old School Gamer Staff
Austin, Phoenix, St. Louis, Long Island, Ames, Pittsburgh, Chicago & Cleveland VIDEO GAME SUMMIT CHICAGO, IL BY RYAN BURGER Some events we go for the crowds, some for the spread of games, and some events we go to meet new people. Friends of Old School Gamer have...
Tron
Odds are, if you consider yourself a “Classic Gamer,” you’ve seen the movie “Tron” 112.4 times. That number comes from the fact that we know you scan the movie to the “Space Paranoids” scene and then straight to when Flynn gets digitized and brought into the computer...
Arcade Smash Hit Killer Queen Black Lands Nintendo Switch and PC Today
Killer Queen Black, the strategic eight-player action platformer from Liquid Bit and BumbleBear Games, triumphantly soars out of arcades and onto Nintendo Switch and PC via Discord and Steam today. The ultimate arcade eSport with millions of play sessions is finally...
Tracking Your Game Collection with Excel and Dropbox: A Simple, but Practical Guide
There are many ways one can track their game collection, be it an app or some other sort of online service. While these offer niceties like box art, market worth and social networking features so you can gloat about your collection of cardboard and plastic to other...
About Massively Multiplayer Online Games
Would you want to compete with other online players from different parts of the world in a variety of online only games? A massively multiplayer online game also known as (MMOG/MMO) refers to those video games that allow a large group of players to participate...
Brett’s Old School Bargain Bin: So You Want to Be a YouTuber – By Brett Weiss
If you know me well, you know I love a good bargain, and YouTube is about as good as it gets. If you’ve got a device to play it on, such as a modern game console or computer, a Roku device, a Blu-ray player, or a smartphone, YouTube gives you countless hours of free...
Lost Arcade Classic: Stratovox by Kyle Snyder
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...
Just for Qix: Space Invaders – By Michael Thomasson
The Story of How Tomohiro Nisikado Revived the Early Coin-Op Industry and Inadvertently Helped Save Atari's Home VCS Console In the late 70s, PONG clones were running amok and the market was so saturated that the coin-op industry was in a real slump. The release of...
Pac-Man World Review by Sarah Thomas
You’re invited to Pac-Man’s 20th birthday party! In celebration of our favorite yellow dot’s birthday, Namco has released Pac-Man World, a 3D version of the classic game. While at first it may appear Namco has released this 3D game in order to keep up with the Joneses...
Games That Haunt Me: Mega Man 8
I've been playing video games for a good long while, but there are some games that, to this very day, haunt me. Not because the game is bad per se, or because something happened to said game that made it unplayable. No, I'm talking about games that, for the life of...
Deep Thaw by Chris Lion
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...
Fixture Gaming Launches Fixture S1 For Nintendo Switch – By Brad Feingold
When I was at the Game On convention in Phoenix, Az, I came across a booth that was actually hidden and almost missed. Austin Stark, owner of Fixture Gaming, was displaying a product that he was ready to launch on Indiegogo, but was still working on the details. But...
That 70’s Show, or The Pinball Wizard Breaks Out! – By Bill Donohue
From the Writer Formerly Known as The Jaded Gamer Editor’s note: In order to capture the entire zeitgeist of the decade in question, I had to attempt a simulation of my mindset at that time. As a result, I’ve had several “beverages,” I’ve driven the neighborhood crazy...
The Legend of Bira Bira
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...
Remakes Announced for House of the Dead 1 & 2
Polish publisher Forever Entertainment, who you might know for their remakes of Panzer Dragoon and its sequel (available exclusively on the Nintendo Switch soon) has confirmed reports that they’re also remaking the light gun shooters, House of the Dead and House of...
Coleco Visions
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,...
Frank’s Video-Pinball Palace By Frank Traut
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...
How Rare Do You Like Your Cartridge? By Mike Genova
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...
