Vintage Computing and Gaming

[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Censored by Electronic Games Magazine

Benj Edwards — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:19:04 +0000

Click above to see the full ad. Close your eyes! The above picture is too hot for young minds to take. Or so thought Electronic Games in 1983 when they elected to censor the poster-girl’s bikini-clad crotch with an inelegant black circle. When I first saw this ad for “video game sports accessories,” I thought [...]

MS-DOS Saves Columbia Shuttle Data

Benj Edwards — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:54:44 +0000

Vintage computing shows up in some of the unlikeliest places. And in this case, it saved the day. According to a recent Associated Press article, a 340 megabyte 2.5″ Seagate hard drive from the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia survived the craft’s fiery break-up and crash to the earth back in February 2003. A data recovery service [...]

[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Online Gaming, 1992 Style

Benj Edwards — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:46:53 +0000

An excellent source of FDA Certified non-GMO 100% organic, free-range people. Tired of trouncing lifeless, boring computer chips in your games? Then you’ve come to the right place. Here at GEnie, our entire subscriber base is clinically insane and writes exclusively in crayon. Signing up is easy. Here’s how: 1. Set your modem [...]

[ Fuzzy Memory ] Tutankhamen Rises Again

Benj Edwards — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:58:14 +0000

We’re back. Last week’s Fuzzy Memory mysery was such an astounding success that we’ve received another request from someone seeking resolution of their distant childhood gaming memories. I’m not a fount of infinite knowledge, so like always, I need the adept VC&G readership to help solve the mystery. Spirits of Ancient Egypt Julia, from Australia, [...]

The 2008 Hamfest Report

Benj Edwards — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:24:32 +0000

A couple weekends ago, I made the requisite annual trek to RARSfest, my local hamfest of choice, which takes place on the NC State Fairgrounds. You might remember my in-depth slideshow on a similar hamfest adventure two years ago. Well, this year I decided to take a few shots of the ‘fest again, [...]

[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Online Dating, Circa 1985

Benj Edwards — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:30:54 +0000

They put that blue streak there for a reason. It may seem like online dating is a new thing, but it stretches back farther than you’d think. Case in point: American People/Link, an early dial-up relationship service using Teletext — a much hyped (but little used) online graphical display technology at the time. I’m [...]

Celebrity Computer Endorsements

Benj Edwards — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:07:39 +0000

Hot off the virtual PC World presses comes my latest volley of vintage nostalgia. This time I covered celebrity computer endorsements. William Shatner, Alan Alda, Bill Cosby, Isaac Asimov, and other celebrities promoted certain brands of PCs in the early 1980s, and this PC World slideshow surveys the topic well, with eleven scans straight from [...]

[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Too Little, Too Late?

Benj Edwards — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:00:09 +0000

TTI took three of these and never woke up. [ From Video Games and Computer Entertainment, November 1992 ] Discussion topic of the week: Pretend it’s 1991 and you’re giving advice to NEC executives on how to save the TurboGrafx-16 in the United States. What do you say? If you use this image on your site, please [...]

[ Fuzzy Memory ] Seeking Childhood Computer Toy

Benj Edwards — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:26:13 +0000

Often we yearn to reclaim fond memories from childhood, but those memories remain just out of reach. Sometimes the event or object we’re seeking happened so long ago that our recollections have become foggy or even distorted over time. Well, in a way, that’s why I’m here. As a historian, I like [...]

[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Fly in the Face of Reality

Benj Edwards — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:46:18 +0000

Tom’s congenital lack of eyeballs had never been an obstacle…until now. [ From Video Games and Computer Entertainment, November 1992 ] Discussion topic of the week: What’s your favorite flight simulator software of all time? If you use this image on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original [...]