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Intruder Alert…Intruder Alert! – By Kevin Butler
NAME: BERZERK MANUFACTURER: STERN ELECTRONICS YEAR: 1980 TYPE: VIDEOGAME TEAM LEADER: DESIGNED AND PROGRAMMED BY ALAN MCNEIL Berzerk is a two-dimensional maze-style game that involves you attempting to escape killer robots in a never- ending gallery of mazes. Somewhat...
Tetris and Joseph Saelee – By Joel West / Completed by Brian Szarek
Welcome to another installment of a column dedicated exclusively to Old School Gamers and Old School Games from the Golden Age of gaming. These gamers, back in the day, had to physically use a coin or token to start a video game. The earning of these coins was mostly...
Entering the Digitized Era – Part 1 – By Warren Davis
In the beginning, there was the dot. The white dot. Alone in a void of blackness. This was the world of Pong, Computer Space, Breakout and many more. Crude graphics and no color. These were the earliest arcade video games – many implemented solely through hardwired...
The Ren & Stimpy Show Presents: Stimpy’s Invention
August 11, 1991 It’s a date that should be etched in the annals of time. It’s like July 20, 1969 (the date of the first moon landing), but much more important. It’s the day that The Ren & Stimpy Show first debuted on television. There aren’t enough superlatives to...
Pratt At the Arcade: The Darius Series – By Adam Pratt
Instead of trying to cram everything about a genre into one article, this time I am going to focus on a particular series within the realm of the shoot ‘em up. It is one that started off in arcades and was done in such a way that the home ports never could capture the...
Old Atari on Switch and New Atari on 4 Switchers – By Ryan Burger and Rice Pryor
New Atari-related releases are coming fast and furious, from many different directions recently. AtariAge. com has been publishing tons of new games, many of which were first released at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo and to the public quickly afterwards....
Introducing Evercade, a Mysterious New Retro Handheld
Access the mysterious Evercade website and the first thing that will grab your attention is the text; “EVERCADE - A BRAND NEW HANDHELD CONSOLE WITH UNIQUE MULTI-GAME RETRO CARTRIDGES FROM LEADING GAMES PUBLISHERS AND CONSOLE PLATFORMS”. It says a lot, but then again,...
Jersey Jack Announces Willy Wonka Pinball at MGC – By Brad Feingold
After passing out specially made Willy Wonka Candy Bars to mark the occasion at the first night of the Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee, Wi, Jersey Jack opened the doors and let the special guests into the presentation room to announce their latest pinball that...
Coffee Crisis – Grab a Cup and Kick Alien Butt!!! – By Brad Feingold
“The evil alien Smurglien race has taken notice of Earth’s fancy World Wide Web and have begun stealing its WiFi. In doing so, they have hacked their own version of the internet and hid it deep within the Earth’s web-based systems, calling it the Smurnet.” Now that’s...
Convention Update: Nov 2018 – Jan 2019 – By Old School Gamer
RETRO GAME CON SYRACUSE, NY - BY CONOR O’BRIEN The sixth Retro Game Con was held November 3-4 at the Oncenter in Syracuse, NY. Despite grey skies and cold rain, hundreds of attendees showed up at the venue. Some attendees came in costume and many were gamer parents...
Video Game Preservationist Auctions Off Unfinished Akira Prototype
Tetsuooooooooo!!!
Flip Grip: Bullet Heaven – By Rob Faraldi
Shmups (short for “shoot ‘em ups”) were a mainstream genre decades ago, but have since become a persistent niche. Some of the more popular and notable shmups include Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, M.U.S.H.A., and Raiden. Certain classic consoles including TurboGrafx-16,...
Mortal Kombat: Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme
You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone! Picture if you will a video game...
A Killer App: Star Raiders – By Bill Lange
Star Raiders, the iconic computer adventure game, was created for the Atari 400/800 home computer line, in fact, it was created at the same time as the development of the computers. It was programmed by Atari hardware designer Doug Neubauer. Neubauer was also on the...
Brett’s Old School Bargain Bin: Asteroids and Beamrider – By Brett Weiss
The theme for this installment of Old School Gamer is simu- lation games, but I’m still on a shooter high from the last issue, so I’m going to spotlight two more shooting games that are easy on the wallet, yet fun to play. If you’re cool with cartridge only, Asteroids...
The Origins of the Name “Pac-Man” Indecent to Iconic – By Ethan Johnson
All old-school gamers should be familiar with localization by now. Whether that is the censorship of Nazi symbols in Bionic Commando or the hilarious cutscenes of Zero Wing, things can change for better or worse when crossing the Pacific. It is fair to say though that...
Video Game Trading Card Spotlight – Ellis Rowland
Our next Trading Card Spotlight features Ellis Rowland, who is displayed on card number 42, from the Superstars of 2011 Collection. Ellis is proud of his world record at the arcade game Eagle. His score of 274,970 was posted on the Leaderboard on July16, 2011 and...
ToeJam and Earl
Last month, the world was gifted with ToeJam and Earl: Back In the Groove. The game was funded by a $500,000 Kickstarter campaign with help from Adult Swim, and comes out roughly 28 years after the first game in the franchise was released. To celebrate the release of...
Just for Qix: Behind Enemy Lines – By Michael Thomasson
Near the end of 1980, Atari released the first-person combat simulator Battlezone in arcades. With its twin stick controls, overhead radar, and innovative plastic periscope, it mimicked an early construct of today’s virtual reality set-ups. Since the viewfinder...
The Last Official Release: Neo Geo Pocket Color – SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash 2 (2001)
Greetings, those enamoured with retro consoles, and welcome back to The Last Official Release. Here, I scrutinise, study and examine the last official games released on your favourite consoles. Today, I finalise my journey through the universe of Neo Geo, but I’ve...
RetroPlace.com – A New Community to Collect With – By Brad Feingold
The staff of Old School Gamer has possibly found a new home for keeping track of our console game collection online and we recommend you check them out! This dynamic site, Retroplace.com, is built utilizing an amazing database that can do so many things. I can easily...
Driver and Driver 2 – By Conor McBrien
W hile most classic driving games would make players participate in races, stunts, or demolition derbies, Driver has players do things like helping crooks flee the scene of a bank robbery or delivering a stolen car to a chop shop. In Driver and Driver 2, you play as...
Horowitz’s History – 32X – Star Wars Arcade – By Ken Horowitz
One of the marquee titles for the launch of the 32X was Star Wars Arcade, a conversion of the Sega coin- op game. Based on the climactic Death Star battle of Episode IV, it set players in the role of Luke Skywalker as he made his classic run to destroy the massive...
The Curious Case of George Plimpton in the Video Game World
We’re still relatively close to April Fool’s Day, so I’m going to take a slight detour from my typical blog posts. Instead of writing about the history or gameplay of an an old school video game, I thought we’d take a look at the curious case of George Plimpton in the...
