Konami’s Time Pilot headlines the latest Game Pack release for the Xbox Live Game Room, which just went live today. It’s joined by Asteroids, Space Duel, and four other Intellivision and Atari 2600 titles. More »
Cris Collinsworth took over as the colour analyst for the Madden franchise last year. John Madden retired from broadcasting this year. As this video suggests, it’s only a matter of time before the ex-Bengals receiver takes over the title More »
The trade-in program Toys R Us was testing back in March seems to have tested well, as the retailer launches said program nationwide today, accepting used games from the Atari 2600 on up. More »
Gametrailers has just launched part one of their in-depth look at everything Warcraft, The Warcraft Retrospective. It’s a comprehensive look at the origins of the Blizzard property, and when I say comprehensive I mean they go back to the original real-time strategy game, Don Daglow’s 1982 game Utopia for the Intellivision, through Warcraft 1 & 2, and even feature footage from the abandoned Warcraft Adventures game. So entertaining and informative that I almost forgot to set this post live. The Warcraft Retrospective Part 1: Drums of War [Gametrailers]
This month sees the largest addition to the Xbox Originals program for the Xbox 360 ever, with a more than 61 games hitting the service on September 15th. Of course all but one of those games is part of Crave’s Intellivision Reborn compilation – which incidentally failed to spark a rebirth of the Intellivision – but if we’re going to get technical about things than none of those even count, having not originally appeared on the Xbox. So, a whole slew of Intellivision Games of dubious quality, and one excellent alien invasion title in THQ’s Destroy All Humans, a game that received the coveted Fahey award for Best Use Of Zim in a Non-Zim role.
Thanks to Mustapha for pointing out the new additions.
Here’s another example of weird early advergames from my collection. These aren’t rare like the last ones I mentioned, but they offer an interesting historical case for other reasons.
Remember the Kool-Aid Man character and ad campaign from the 70s and 80s? Oh, Yeeeaaahh. By the early 80s, General Foods had started spreading the character beyond their own advertising, first into comic books. In 1983, Mattel’s M-Network software division created videogame versions of Kool-Aid Man for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. This was a more complex process than the Johnson & Johnson and Purina games I mentioned earlier. More »
I find collecting to be a very weird activity. Why amass expensive, arcane objects that just get stored away? So my own videogame collecting has been motivated mostly by my research and design interests. One of the things I thought I would do this week is share a few weird items from my personal videogame collection. Here’s the first: Jack LaLanne’s Physical Conditioning for the Intellivision. More »
Who says game programmers don’t have a sense of humour? Well, you might after watching this little clip circa 1983 made by Intellivision programmers for their own amusement. Well, thanks to YouTube, now we can all enjoy this little gem from years gone by that includes a naked guy, a guy in drag, a guy in a fairy outfit, smoking jokes, a shockingly realistic representation of a marketing person and lots and lots of large glasses. More »
