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And now, happy 25th anniversary, Sega Dreamcast!

Also: happy 15th anniversary, Beatles Rock Band! "Number nine, number nine, number nine..."

And happy 10th anniversary, Destiny! "VENUS BABY"

Happy 20th anniversary, Sega Dreamcast!

(Not pictured: mod chip and Utopia boot disk)

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I'm also in the second generation.

My first console was a ColecoVision. Additionally, I had the very innocuously named "ColecoVision Expansion Module №1." Gather round, children, and let me tell you about this interesting little bit of kit.

ColecoVision Expansion Module №1 was a small black box about the size of a hotel bible, constructed of the same black faux-leather plastic as the ColecoVision, with a slight downward slope to it. It slotted into the front of the ColecoVision, giving the entire console this awkward L shape when fully connected. On the top were a couple of switches and a cartridge port, and it had two standard 9-pin joystick ports on the front. ColecoVision Expansion Module №1 had but one purpose: it allowed you to plug in and play Atari 2600 cartridges.

Can you imagine it, young person of today? Can you imagine if there was a little dongle that you could plug into your PlayStation 5 that would let you play Nintendo Switch games?

So how did they get away with it? It's not like Coleco was quiet about it: they even blatantly advertised that "you can play all Atari 2600 games on a ColecoVision, but you can't play ColecoVision games on Atari!" Well, the fact is that the Atari 2600, also known as the VCS, was built entirely with off-the-shelf parts; there was nothing custom but the wood paneling. There was no proprietary operating system, either: a VCS just hard-booted to whatever software instructions were on the cartridge chip. As such, a company with the right resources could easily construct their own VCS clones, with their own components... and a few did, including major retailers of the time like Sears and Radio Shack. ColecoVision Expansion Module №1 was, in essence, an entire Atari 2600 clone in a tiny package, with the power supply and TV connection hardware removed and provided by the ColecoVision host (they would eventually release a full VCS "twin" called the Gemini). Oh, sure, there was a lawsuit, and a counter-suit on anti-trust claims, and it was all settled for royalties... in fact, the two companies eventually settled into a quiet partnership and released some of their own exclusives on each others' systems.

So when people ask me if I ever owned an Atari 2600, I have to be honest that I did own and play many Atari 2600 games, but I never had an Atari myself. I had this little marvel of a device, impossible today, a throwback to the wild times before the crash of '83 when there were no patents, no operating systems, no standards (technologically or artistically), when forgiveness was asked instead of permission, and when a rival could take your entire console, shrink it down, and glom it onto their own.

This Wikipedia article has a more comprehensive list

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This absolutely would have been a game that you found by the hundreds in 1981 in a barrel by the checkout aisle of your local grocery store for $2.

The Tragedy of Macbeth by Douglas Blanchard

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Buckle up! This is GURPS Time Travel (the revised second edition from 1995). Before we dig in though, let us pause and appreciate that magnificent cover painting by John Zeleznik. Triceratops vs. Future Man. I would hang that next to Charles Knight’s Triceratops vs. T-Rex, I kid you not.

Moving on. GURPS Time Travel is a masterpiece. There are far too many GURPS books for me to have any idea which is The Best, but this one should certainly be in contention. It is the definitive RPG book on time travel to date, to my knowledge, for ANY system. For real, its pretty light on GURPS-centric rules, so you can use this for reference for any game that dips into the timestream.

In fact, it is an excellent primer on time travel in general. There’s plenty of discussion of both scientific thought on the matter (outdated now, but still handy) and much chin-stroking over the various strains of fictional time travel. This mechanical pondering of time travel takes up about half the book and covers pretty much all the time travel bases I am willing to consider (I admittedly have a low tolerance for time travel stories!). This forms a bedrock upon with Jackson and science fiction author John M. Ford build a number of campaign frames, both large (Time Corps!) and small (time jumping via drugs!). A lengthy section on parallel earths and all the messes time travel can make rounds things out.

I don’t really know how to convey how wildly out there the book is. The casual discussion of paradoxes and other theoretical quirks of time travel is both boggling, deeply entertaining and omnipresent. It seems intentionally complex, like the book is trying to make you wave your arms in the air in exasperation — and there is a wily fun in that pseudo-frustration. Without a doubt, this book, sitting at the crossroads of all worlds, times and possibilities, is the true and secret heart of GURPS.

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I have this: THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF ALL Fantasy Wargaming!  Two things really stand out: a Deities & Demigods-style table with the attributes of what we’ll call the Christian Mythos (in case you were ever wondering what the Virgin Mary’s Dexterity score is).  

The other is a double-helping of rampant misogyny.  For example, of the Gorean novels, Galloway says:

I'm no great advocate of womens' lib but these books are sufficiently strong in places to be more than mildly offensive, and you'll have to form your own judgement of them. For heaven's sake don't let a "liberated" wife or girlfriend read them, though, or you'll never hear the last of it!

Any gamers remember this strange little gem from 1981? I grabbed a copy from Waldenbooks when I was a kid. My mom hated the cover, but for some reason I was fascinated by the contents. I actually played a game or two, even though the rules were sketchy (at least to my mind). I just dug my copy out of the garage. 

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From the card game Dragonmaster.

My Dragonmaster mod for Tabletop Simulator is available here:

Various wizards by Bob Pepper, 1981

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Assuming the year is 1982 (the copyright date on the manual of the Intellivision II), in 2022 money:

The ColecoVision would cost $299 today (the same MSRP of an Xbox Series S), the Atari 5200 would cost $249, and the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision II are ~$149. Those $29.97 games would be $90 games today. Mr. Do's Castle for the ColecoVision or the Atari 5200 would cost a whopping ~$115 in 2022 money, and as you can see in the Atari 5200's case it cost just about half the price of the actual console itself.

The price of the consoles were actually quite good compared to today's $499 behemoths, but the prices of games have come down quite a bit compared to inflation, even at the new $70 price point. If you ever wondered how Gen X'ers like me ended up with the map to Adventure permanently inscribed on our memory banks, it's because our families couldn't afford more than only a few game cartridges to actually play.

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Every once in a while, this post blows up again (like this week) and I'm reminded I have a Tumblr. Lord knows Tumblr has made it difficult.

Happy 20th anniversary, Sega Dreamcast!

(Not pictured: mod chip and Utopia boot disk)

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CAPTCHA, to me, every time I tried to put an Xbox Series X in my cart

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The Last City (Vertorama)

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This is… fine, I guess. Especially for a pre-order placed a half-hour deep. Some people won't get one until 2021, so I'm considering myself 🍀/🙏.

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I might have to try the DYL to DXR "New York City sightseeing" tour in Microsoft Flight Simulator...

original url http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Runway/8318/

last modified 2004-01-22 02:50:05

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My Xbox Live account is now old enough to vote! 

Are you? 

THEN VOTE.

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I played a little PANORAMICAL last night.

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Planet Lipstroni (Datryon III), by day and by night. 🦕🌅👾🕊️🌅👾🌌🕊️🌴🔺🕷️📍

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I'm playing the 2012 version of "Need For Speed: Most Wanted," by EA Criterion.  I thought I'd drive around and take some screenshots of this beautiful city called, um... [checks notes] "Fairhaven."