Retro Thing

Play Zork Online!

Zork is the quintessential text game. There's no need to click your mouse, maneuver a joystick or mash a d-pad. All you need is the ability to read, type and think somewhat logically. The amusingly clever text adventure was developed on a PDP-10 mainframe at MIT in the late 1970s.

Three of the four original programmers went on to found Infocom, which released the Zork Trilogy for many popular microcomputers in the early 1980s. Three decades later, you can play it on your web enabled fridge for free. That's true progress.

Link: Welcome to Zork [This is a link to a page on web-adventures.org. Zork is not hosted by Retro Thing]

The Internet Arcade: Over 900 Vintage Arcade Games In Your Browser

The Internet Archive has long been one of the coolest sites on the web, thanks to its incredible collection of long-forgotten web pages and public domain films. They added home console games to the mix with the Console Living Room late last year, and now they've unveiled The Internet Arcade - a browser-friendly collection of classic arcade games that will blow your mind. 

The list of games includes well-known titles like Frogger, Amidar, Joust, Lode Runner, Rally-X and Zaxxon along with hundreds of lesser known games -- many of which had slipped my mind. Because the emulations use the original game ROMs, you'll have to sit through a few seconds of power-up self tests and deal with odd control arrangements on a few titles. Thankfully, the Internet Archivists have created a page of games that should run at full speed on most hardware. 

So how is it done? They say, "The Internet Arcade is a web-based library of arcade (coin-operated) video games from the 1970s through to the 1990s, emulated in JSMAME, part of the JSMESS software package. Containing hundreds of games ranging through many different genres and styles, the Arcade provides research, comparison, and entertainment in the realm of the Video Game Arcade.

  The game collection ranges from early 'bronze-age' videogames, with black and white screens and simple sounds, through to large-scale games containing digitized voices, images and music. Most games are playable in some form, although some are useful more for verification of behavior or programming due to the intensity and requirements of their systems."

Visit The Internet Arcade at the Internet Archive to see if you've still got the chops to grab a high score. No quarters required. 

ColecoVision's Affordable Retro Console

$39.99 is all it costs to get your hands on the new ColecoVision Flashback console with 60 built-in games. Coleco's late entry into the early 80s console wars was one of my favorites, simply because it was the first to offer a near-arcade experience at home. The fact that the pack-in game was Donkey Kong didn't hurt things, either. 

This miniature recreation doesn't include any Nintendo titles, but it does offer enjoyable classics such as Zaxxon, Venture, Space Panic, Jumpman Junior, Frenzy, Cosmic Avenger and Choplifter.

The console and controllers mimic the original hardware in an affordable form factor and you get old school composite video output (perfect if you still have an old tube TV lurking in the corner of the basement). As a bonus, it looks like the main unit will work with original Coleco controllers. [Update from the comments: Don says the ports aren't compatible with old controllers. Pity.]

The ColecoVision Flashback is available from Toys "R" Us stores across the USA. The flashback retro console series also includes Intellivision and Atari 2600 units, too. 

Stern Unveils The Walking Dead Pinball Machines

 

Stern is the only major pinball machine manufacturer still in business. They seem to be tempting fate with their latest licensed machine, based on AMC's The Walking Dead. The zombie-themed show seems like an unusual pick for Stern, but perhaps the wild panic of trying to avoid a zombie hoard isn't that much different from the quest not to lose your balls. Well, except for the flesh eating bit. 

The machine is available in two editions: the $5995 Pro and the more advanced $8595 LE (shown above). Each looks fantastic, but the LE includes a variety of gameplay bonuses such as some "Well Walker" exposed guts, the "Governor's Fish Tank" and a few other ramps and targets that should lead you down the path of blind panic in no time. 

The Walking Dead is available only in North America. And while the price of these handmade machines might be somewhat scary for some, Stern Pinball is anything but deceased-- the factory floor is busier than it has been for years, churning out endless rows of machines for nostalgic gamers. 

The Walking Dead Pinball [Stern]

Retro Shanghai: Pac-Man With Freakishly Long Tongue

As I walked the streets of Shanghai, I didn't run into any crazy electronic delights. Unfortunate, but I did find the next best thing. A reminder of my 8 bit gaming heritage - a Pac-Man figure! Back in the 80s, I fell in love with the game. I wasn't any good at it (and I'm still not, despite having the full-size cabinet of Pac-man Plus), but I fell in love with the single-minded design of the game. A simple mouth in the pursuit of eating, and the bad guys are the same as have haunted stories for all time - ghosts! Back then, I remember buying some Pac-Man socks, Pac-Man silly putty, even Pac-Man scratcher games... but never a figure.
I was bemused and thrilled at the very existence of a Pac-Man figure I could put on my shelf. I assumed that like some of the other treasures I found in Shanghai, this was simply another attempt to shanghai (ha!) someone else's intellectual property to create another incomprehensible toy. Especially when I saw Pac's massive mechanical tongue.

I've forgotten a lot of things from the 80s, but I'd remember an aardvark berserker mode in Pac-Man that let you lick up all the ghost monsters. I assumed that this was one of the weird additions you find in bootleg toys, but as it turns out there's a new cartoon on TV that features some member of the proud Pac-Man lineage (Pac-Second-Cousin-Twice-Removed) with a superextended stamplicker. Though my toy doesn't exactly match the one on the box, so it still may be some weird bootleg.

I can't figure out the cartoon's storyline from the Wikipedia entry - possibly due to my advancing decrepitude. There's some basic thread of the yellow guy eating the ghost guys, but after that I'm lost. There are more Pac-Men; a bluish ice-spitting one, even a chrome Pac-Man who upchucks a magnet. You can get these figures in the US, as well as a special edition golden Pac-Man who's tongue has the original game's graphics tattooed (I assume) right on.

Guess what? Since the cartoon has been successful, they've already converted it into a video game. Hey, wait a minute...

Help out Retro Thing when you add a pink-tongued Pac-Man to your collection.

Special limited edition commemorative gold edition

What It Would Take To Get Me To Buy A PS4

Phantom Fighter on Twitter was inspired by a photo post called "generations" showing an old Atari 2600 resting on top of a Playstation 4. Taking the pixels by the horns, he whipped up this mockup. I must admit that this collection of retro surfaces & textures almost works better on the sinister rhombus that is the PS4 than it did on the whatever-in-the-hell-shape-it-is of the original Atari.

Sadly the Atari PS4 isn't real, and to be honest I don't even know what I'd do with a PS4 if I had one. No paddle controllers = no Kaboom = no deal.

link:

artist's original blog post

Pac-Man Headphones; Genuine Vintage, or Modern Retro Repro?

Given the 8-bit retro gaming vibe that is all around us, in can be a little embarrassing when you run across an object that you can't tell is actually a vintage gadget or a modern retro repro. I found these headphones at a thrift, the cord held together with ancient and sticky electrical tape. They are in the style of cheap 80s headphones, but you can still find this styled on discount shelves today.

These phones exhibit no appreciable wear to reveal age. They sound pretty crappy, but poor headphones are a curse of every portable music era. Oddly, the 1/8" plug is mono. The only other identifier is a sticker crediting Midway games for the image of Pac-Man.

For some reason, I feel like this sticker is the best evidence of the real age of these phones. I feel like today it would be more customary to print the credit permanently next to the character. Plus I think that on a modern branded novelty the copyright would be credited to Namco, not Midway.

What do you think of these retro Pac-Man headphones? Old or new?

The 8 Best 8-Bit Arcade Games of 1981

Video arcades flourished in the early 1980s for one simple reason -- arcade consoles offered stunning gameplay unmatched by the rudimentary home consoles of the day.

Even relatively straightforward arcade titles like Namco's Galaga incorporated three Z80 microprocessors, a dedicated sound chip and a high resolution (for the time) color display -- a potent combination unmatched by the blocky graphics and bleeps of Intellivision and Atari 2600 consoles.

1981 was a landmark year. Games like Defender and Pac Man arrived in arcades late the previous fall, and the gold rush was on to develop the next smash hit title. The result was an onslaught of brilliantly coded and innovative games.

Here are my 8 favorite arcade video game titles from '81, in alphabetical order.

Bosconian

Namco's brilliant multi-directional shooter places your tiny spacecraft in space, surrounded by an endless collection of enemy space stations, enemy fighter formations, space mines, asteroids and spy ships. Your job is simply to cause as much mayhem and destruction as possible before succumbing to the inevitable.

Apart from the frenetic gameplay, it was also the first game to feature a continue screen that allowed you to pick things up without having to start from the beginning.

It's An 8-Bit Bird... It's A Blocky Plane... It's... It's... Atari 2600 Superman!

In 1979, the Atari 2600 wasn't quite the mega-hit we all think of. That would came in 1980 with the release of Space Invaders for the console. In '79 the system was only two years old with about 30 available games (yes, I'm including Fun With Numbers and Basic Programming in that count). For the first time that year, there was other console competition in the form of Odyssey and Intellivision, so it was time for Atari to soup up their offerings with a touch of comic book superdom.

Atari "Superman" plays a bit like the classic Atari "Adventure", also released that year. There's a multi-screen "world" that you can sort of "explore". Duck into a phone booth to transform into Superman and fly around looking for the pieces to rebuild the Metropolis bridge. Get nailed by a Kryptonite satellite (anyone looking for a new band name?) and only Lois Lane will restore your powers.

The mechanics of the game are a little confusing (echoes of "Adventure" again), but you have to admire that Superman is so iconic, he can be meaningfully executed in very low res 8 bit graphics. It's interesting also to note that this may be the first video game that licenses something other than an existing arcade title (can any of you think of earlier examples?). The modern video game eco-system is lousy with movie tie-ins and licensed characters, and it all started with that little blocky Superman from some 35 years ago. It's also the first video game with a "pause" function built in.

I was going decry the challenge of Atari Superman as being a little too simple for today's tastes, but a friend of mine who never plays video games played it through for an hour at a party. I'd never seen her so happy (nor had I ever seen her punch the leg of anyone who walked between her and the TV, but that's another story).

If you don't feel like hunting down an original cartridge and the system, you can find the ROM easily enough to plug into your favorite Atari emulator. Or for the truly uninspired, you can get a glimpse of the game in action (objects flicker when there are too many of them on-screen) in this play-through video I found on YouTube.

Those 80s Electronic Games That Raced Through Batteries

I scanned this image out of an old UK Doctor Who magazine from December 1982. At first I have to admit that I thought it was some kind of spaceship (I'm SUCH a nerd), but it quickly resolved into a race car made out of at least, oh I dunno... $30 worth of batteries these days. The ad promises rebates when you buy certain electronic games.

The games are what's interesting... by 1982 the handheld electronic revolution was in full swing. We were still nearly a decade away from a single efficient handheld that used carts (the MicroVision being a reluctant exception), so these expensive little handhelds only played a single game most of the time. Let's take a moment to remember a couple of those fun-filled battery sucking games...

I actually have this electronic Scramble that's vaguely reminisicient of a mini arcade cabinet. Considering that in the arcade Scramble is a game with a scrolling landscape, it's a minor miracle that they were able to reproduce the fun with an LED screen.

Puck Monster is one of the innumerable Pac-Man clones of the era... a wholesale infringement that could never fly today. Pac-Man is pretty easy to capture in an LCD game, but the title of this game is what's interesting. Originally Pac-Man was going to be called "Puck Man" in the US, but an executive at Midway reasoned that it would be too easy for unruly teens to vandalize "Puck" into saying something else... if you catch my drift (and let's not even think of what could be made out of Pac-Man's nose). "Puck Monster" clearly didn't get the memo, and the poor print quality of the ad does make the title look a little... ahem... questionable.
"Contraption" was sold in the US by Lakeside. Two D cells start the gears in motion, and players try to migrate their colored marbles from one side of the board to the other. I imagine a loud time, but I think that would add to the clanky gear gameplay. Looks like it would be fun for adults too. Gotta try to find one of these...

Touch N' Tell is more of an educational game. Created by the same geniuses at TI who created Speak & Spell, Touch N' Tell has replaceable color sheets that invite pre-schoolers to point to items named by the not-at-all-sinister robot voice. Today the Touch N' Tell is a frequent platform for "circuit-bending", experimental audio devices created by kitbashing old electronics. I'd characterize the results as possibly "interesting", but the rest of the band might stop telling you when practice is...

The original magazine ad's rebate offer sounds like a generous chunk of change, but it's money that will go right back into Duracell's pockets since these games tended to burn through batteries. Remember how quickly your dead battery pile grew after a few hours of electronic excitement? Now we all know what to do with those dead batteries... build a vague model of a race car that isn't going anywhere.

$14 MP3 Player With Built In NES Emulator, But...

I still don't have an expensive mp3 player. I listen to music & podcasts all the time, so an MP3 player in my employ is likely to get crammed into a pocket and get knocked around a bit. Since there is such a wealth of perfectly serviceable sub $25 models around, it really doesn't pay for me to splash out for a fancy music player (though I'd still like to get an early iPod one of these days).

I usually end up with an off-brand or non-brand unit from some online surplus outfit. The one I'm using right now is amazingly feature-packed. It plays music that sounds good (not always the case with a cheapie), videos, even e-books... all of this for the amazing price of $14.

So what makes this interesting to the retro crowd (besides the fact that I keep it loaded up with old time radio shows and old Sammy Davis Jr. records...)? It packs a surprise function. This $14 no-name has an extra on-screen menu for "Games". I highlighted the joystick icon to be greeted by what is clearly a not-at-all legal NES emulator. The included game ROM? A game starring a certain plumber in his adventure-ready coveralls. Ahem.

That signature music came on, so I was looking forward to playing NES games on a $14 cheapie that I could recommend to all of you, but there's a significant problem. There aren't enough buttons to actually play the games. You use the fast-forward and rewind buttons to move left and right (the buttons are on top of each other to make gameplay even more disorienting). No buttons on the player make Mario jump or do anything other than move left and right. As you can imagine, this does curtail one's game selection quite a bit. I can't even think of one game that would be fun this way... Arkanoid maybe?

My guess is that my player is reusing firmware from another (possibly less cheap?) MP3 player that hopefully has more buttons built in. I guess that an NES emulator doesn't pose much of a challenge to modern processors - even the sorts of processor chips they can afford to slap into a cheap MP3 player. Let's remain vigilant, retro readers, for any other cheap electronics harboring an illegitimate 8 bit secret.

Wall To Wall Retro Video Games From Ikea For $10

Originally I was going to write about an ongoing retro video game Ebay auction that had already reached more than a half million dollars, but the listing has been pulled. We were wondering whether those bids could have been real, but it's "game over" on the auction. Sadly, the point is moot.

That said, we would have thoroughly enjoyed the affiliate fees had one of our faithful Retro Thing readers won the lot, but we figure that perhaps it's smarter to find a thriftier way to share our love of old video games. For me, being a career cheapass is what got me into retro video games in the first place...

Ikea, of all places, is offering a set of wall decals to retro up any room in your house that has... uh... walls. While not devoted to any specific game, you can feel the ghost of Berzerk & Space Invaders here. Because the decals are lo-res blocks of a single color, I'm reminded of the stripped down graphics of the earliest home consoles, so this is about as retro as retro gaming gets.

For $10, the SLÄTTHULT (I know, I know...) provides you with four sheets of decals about the size of a legal pad. It's the same lineup of characters on each sheet, and you get two color variations. The sameyness is even MORE of an authentic retro gaming move if you ask me.

Other companies have offered similar retro gaming wall decals, but they've almost universally been way too expensive. Only a few have been of actual gaming graphics - most I've seen show characters like Mario and Zelda rendered as cartoons. Cute, but my memory of these characters is a but more on the blocky side.

For those of you who don't want to splash out the 10 smackers for the Ikea decals, and if you want to go even deeper into video game history, you'll be pleased to know that Retro Thing is negotiating to bring you wall decals of our own. For $4 we hope to send you the end of a roll of masking tape, and instructions on how to create your own wall-sized Pong diorama.

SLÄTTHULT computer game stickers

¡Ay, caramba! El "Great Video Game Crash" En Español

You can point your joystick a whole lot of directions to try to target the exact cause of the Great Video Game Crash of the early 80s. Home computers were on the horizon, reaching a level of sophistication that 70s era game console hardware couldn't touch. There were a couple of high profile failures at Atari in the form of that poor anemic Pac-Man, and the much maligned E.T.. Then there was the avalanche of atari 2600 shovelware littering shelves.

The Atari 2600 didn't have any sort of built-in security, so anyone could figure out the workings of the system and develop a game for it. [Nintendo was able to reboot video gaming a few years later by building a lock-out chip into their NES system so only licensed games bearing the "seal of quality" would run.] The tremendous profits that Atari was raking in attracted developers who were less invested in creating cool games, than they were in cashing in on the fad.

Genuine games from Atari cost $30-40 back then, but this new breed of budget releases were hitting shelves at $10-20 driving the overall market down. Many of these poor games made the Atari 2600 look even longer in the 8 bit tooth, weakening confidence in the market.

Here's a TV commercial from the mid 80s that bundles together several third party games (with doubtful claims of the games' value) into a mega-bundle deal for $19.95. The Game Crash may have been over, but there was still a lot of crap game inventory to blow out. It's a long ad too - 90 seconds to offer UHF audiences everywhere (at least in Chicago) about this Five Pack of not-so-great games. Even at this price, it wasn't that great of a deal. My local Zayre was already selling these titles at 88 cents a piece at that time.

No cash grab is complete without reaching the largest audience possible, so here's another version of the ad (that's even 30 seconds LONGER!) en Español as it was broadcast in Chicago on Sunday June 9th, 1985.

These Membership Cards Should Stay In Your Wallet

One of the great comforts of the internet is that no matter how obscure your interests are, you're going to find some virtual friends out there who like the same stuff. Lots of folks who thought they were the only people in the world interested in [insert oddball anti-social pastime here], are now part of online communities and real-world clubs too. The net has made it easier than ever to find others and organize real world get-togethers between like-minded hobbyists.

What if your new shared-interest friends aren't quite specific enough for your tastes? You're about to discover the joy of the splinter group... My father was, quite literally, a card-carrying philatelist. Sure, there was the unparalleled joy of tweezing his way through all of those miniature sticky-backed engravings, but there sure seemed to be a lot of multi-ethnic riff-raff around. So here's his membership card from the really specific First (there were more?) Czechoslovak Philatelic Club Of America. The membership card is from 1973, but the club actually dates back to 1924, and was founded right here in Chicago. Follow this link to thrill to one of their newsletters from the 60s.

Like a lot of hobbies, your interest eventually focuses less on the hobby itself, and more on the friends you've made along the way. So I imagine that stamp night was more about my father hanging out with his stamp-crazy singing buddies (I did mention that he was a card carrying member of a Czech singing club, right?) swapping stamps, telling ribald stories of Ben Franklin (that's a Postmaster General joke right there...), and have a few laughs.Growing up, I always wanted to be part of some club too, but I was remarkably unliked. Okay, so in high school in the 80s I was in Doctor Who club - not exactly a bid for Mr. Popularity. I was a card-carrying member of the Doctor Who Fan Club of America (I'm still waiting for my newsletters, guys!). Before that, I did carry around a sort-of membership card. In reality it was from a pack of Pac-Man bubblegum cards and was my way of claiming to be a bad-ass at arcade Pac-Man. You'll note my best attempt at Pac-Man style lettering (I used to go by my middle name back then in a vain bid to fit in... *sigh*) to really cement my nerdery.Most recently, I was a card-carrying member of the Chicago Accordion Club (which was pretty much all 80 year old men, plus me...), so I probably shouldn't be too haughty about my old man's Czech stamp collector card. Looks like the weird apple doesn't fall far from the twisted tree. I guess that I collect peculiar membership cards with my last name on them.

[Addendum: Moments before I published this post, I moved some stuff in my office only to have this set of "collectible" stamps that had been missing for years end up in my lap. I should probably cogitate on what this all means, but I'm going to go have a lie down.]

Last Chance for Rogue Red Clear Classic USB Joysticks - 2 Day Sale!

We just built the final few dozen of our exclusive Rogue Red Clear Classic USB Joysticks. This is it, there won't be any more - in fact the mold isn't capable of making any more, even if we wanted to. If you're the kind of person who waits until the last minute... this is it.

Need a little extra push? Until Saturday at midnight, our Retro Red USB Joysticks are only $29.99 with free shipping within the US. We won't be repeating this offer again as we expect to sell out the last of our stock in the next few days.

To all those of you who helped make this fusion of current tech and retro good looks a success, thank you. You made our Clear Classic controller a consistent Top Ten product on Amazon (we rocketed all the way up to #2!) More importantly, every joystick helps keep Retro Thing going, and we're very grateful.

We're also very grateful to not have to spend long nights assembling sticks.That's right, they were all assembled in the U.S. of A. in our Chicago HQ. No underpaid overseas assembly service... in fact, everyone who touched the Clear Classic joysticks had a college degree. Now we can see what exactly a college degree is worth, I suppose.

But I digress. This is absolutely your last chance to get a Clear Classic USB joystick. When you plug it into any USB port, the whole stick lights up red. You can use it on any computer with any game that accepts input from a standard USB d-pad. Some games (including online Flash games) are keyboard-only, so please ensure that your favorite game is joystick compatible.

We expect to sell out very soon, and once they're gone, they're gone.

Thanks again to all of you for making our first Retro Thing hardware product a success, and thanks for keeping Retro Thing going. We hope to keep at it for many more years to come.

Order your Rogue Red Clear Classic USB joystick from Amazon before it's too late.