[TV Schoolhouse II, Bingo and the end of a system.]

Yah, it's a phantom, though I've been out of it for a few years, something new about it may have turned up, but I'm skeptical. That site is great. Paul Robson? I think? (not checking, I'm lazy) he did a great job with the emulator, making it possible to feel all the pain of the system on the comfort of your own computer.

[TV School House I - RCA Studio II]

o_O That is bizarre.

[Speedway - Tag - RCA Studio II]

Hahah, Yes! May it Rest in Serenity.

[Gunfighter - Moonship Battle - RCA Studio II]

I'm so sorry.

 

LOL

[RCA Squash]

awww, pictures are missing from this entry. D: I think you're right, Nelio, I need to make sure I've backed all of this up. I actually own the domain www.chronogamer.com but I've done nothing with it.

[Baseball - RCA Studio II]

Thanks and fixed!

["Fun" with Numbers]

Thanks and fixed! Hmm... wow, I don't remember the game play for Reverse at all o_O I do remember it being one of the few of the games I liked, but was so appalled at the rest of the system I couldn't forgive it for being on the system.

[Biorhythms]

LOL yes, though in this case it is a flaw that RCA Studio IIs continued to work after Y2K xD

[Space War]

Hmm... MobyGames might have been speaking of another game of the same name called Space War. Again, so much easier to show these games with actual video footage. Back in 2005, it just wasn't as simple to take footage and upload it as it is now. Or at least I didn't think it was...

[Built-in and Charm-Free!]

hahaha. Wow, I'm having a flashback of this system. I still have it somewhere. It's too pretty to sell. xD

[I have no PONG and I must scream . . .]

Hope, never got it. I don't remember if I played it yet either.

[Racing's Ur Game.]

Actually I DID email him, two or three times I think and was ignored.

 

I also uploaded my scanned Odyssey Manual to some site and the person running the site edited the pdf to have the site name on it. He admittedly did a better job of compressing the files size than I had, but his reasoning was "I want everyone to know the best place to get scanned docs!" Needless to say it gave me little incentive to upload other stuff.

 

Makes me think I should have watermarked it or something. Not because I think I deserve credit for scanning it, but no one else deserves the credit either.

[Early Edutainment]

Ah, it's called a "Forget-me-not" : D

[Hi! Wow, I need to not neglect this stuff....]

Thanks! Two weeks. One in Tokyo, one in Kyoto.

[MY HISTORY WITH SWORDQUEST EARTHWORLD]

Wow, nice to see this! I never could get past those first two clues either. When I get to play it again I will probably use a walk through. I'm just really curious about it.

[My website reworked again]

I just watched Bacon Day. I am filled now with a craving for bacon.

[RCA Studio II]

GREAT book I would recommend is Dungeons and Desktops by Matt Barton. He does a terrific job of talking about the early computer RPGs. I adore that book.

 

lol, yes, I'm scheduled to finish all of this in about 4212 A.D., hopefully my cyber brain will arrive before my real one turns to mush.

[Bicentennial Rehash]

hahaha. burning acid fire trucks on rampage!

 

Yeah, I still twitch when I think about that system which shall not be named.

[Blackjack!]

That's interesting! My first Black Jack video game was on the Atari 2600. Actually Combat, Space Invaders and Black Jack were the first carts we owned. Since that was one of three carts, I do remember playing the hell out of it. Something hypnotic about it, but overall, I don't find it "fun", it's more like meditating.

[Der Wustenfuchs]

LOL sorry, that sentence must've been a big pain if English is not your first language. I apologize!

 

Hmm, I think my son did play this with me. Shoot, I really should have been mentioning that whenever one of them played.

[Videocart-1 Tic-Tac-DOH!]

Hmm... I didn't comment on the fact this was the first cartridge based game? Wow, though maybe from the perspective of having played Odyssey (I know they weren't programmable, they were just circuits) which had cartridges, i don't know if someone back in 1976 would have been able to know the difference. Well, an 8 year old at least might not have known the difference.

 

Hahaha, thanks for linking the Chicken video. Yeah, I saw those at county fairs while growing up. Smart to google it!

[Fairchild VES]

YES Jerry Lawson (R.I.P.) was a great interview! I remember him loving the "You Lose Turkey" hahahah.

 

I try to skew away from talking about the technology so much because:

 

A. I only really know some parts of it. Screen resolution, number of colors, etc. I mean, there's some programming bits about which I wish I knew more... for instance how one programmer found an "extra" memory buffer by reading one of the Channel F ports. I don't really go into the tech stuff because I'm certain I'm going to misinform someone.

 

B. The idea is that I'm just "Joe Consumer" playing these things as he gets them, though I don't stick to that too strictly.

[Adversary - National Semiconductor]

Yeah, that's a good point, though I think that the games now are extremely intricate and interesting on one level, the fact that there are so damn many games makes it hard for me to keep playing one for any amount of time.

 

That and the fact that they're so easy to come by. Waiting to save up enough money to get a new Atari cartridge back in 1982, and then hoping for a ride to Sears is a lot different than getting on Steam and having access to so many games for (the equivalent of) pocket change.

 

Onwards!

[Odyssey 400, the other white one . . .]

wow, that NEVER occurred to me, that the Odyssey 300's controls were not really 'advanced' as much as they were 'simplified' -- they only went up and down... an accurate statement would be "The Odyssey 300 system lacks horizontal controls for the paddle!"

 

Since Odyssey 300 was my first ever system, I thought of it as "only natural that one could just move the paddles up and down".

[Odyssey 300, the Yellow one]

Yeah, I don't have any experience with the 500. (though... hah, I'd forgotten I had a 400) I think the 500 actually had sprites or something.

 

In regards to "Smash" I'm not sure, it was probably called something else on other systems, but I remember Jai-lai because I don't think I learned to say it correctly until my early 20s. heheh.