Martins Ferry, Ohio is a little town nestled close to the Ohio River. For decades it was a steel town, built up and brought low by the rise and fall of Wheeling Steel. When the smoke cleared and the barges left, my grandmother and grandfather built a little house on North 8th Street and settled in, raising my dad, and, later, making our holidays there just about the most magical times of my life. → Read More
Because we just experienced the one-year anniversary of Steve Jobs’ passing, I began to think about how technology has impacted my life, and how different it is for today’s children. I thought about my first computer, what computing was like back then and what it’s like now. And it hit me: stories where people recount tales of their first computer will become something only the old people talk… → Read More
Good golly, was it really seventeen years ago that NCSA Mosaic 1.0 was released? How far we’ve come in the nearly two decades since images were first rendered inline with text. Now we take it for granted that we can watch movies in our browsers! → Read More
Hot on the heels of our celebration of the BBS, here’s a pair of retro stories to ease your transition into the weekend. First up is “Pascal Spoken Here“, by Ian Bogost about the subtle shift over the years in how we view computers. Back in 1977 the advertising clearly identified the connection between using, exploring, and learning a computer in ways that you simply don’t see any more. Next up is… → Read More
Hot damn, you guys. Hot damn. Good Old Games — GOG.com — is now selling old Activision games for six bucks a pop. And you know what Activision owns? All the old Sierra games. → Read More
Ah, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, my favorite TV show when I was a kid. If you find yourself searching for some kitsch to deck out your own playhouse, perhaps this replica Clocky will do the trick. It’s a real, working clock, too. → Read More
Ah, nostalgia. Your gentle touch knows no limits. Today you’ve taken modern movies and shown us what they would have looked like as video games from 30 years ago. → Read More
Great article over at Edge Online for anyone interested in the early days of EA’s John Madden Football franchise. Did you know that one of the first versions of the game was initially 7-on-7 due to memory limitations? Madden himself put the kibosh on that one right away, saying, “What’s this seven-on-seven? This isn’t football. If my name’s going to be on something it’s got to be… → Read More
If this video doesn’t warm the swollen-shut cockles of your adult heart, then you didn’t grow up in the eighties. I, for one, was awash in a sea of Atari, NES, LEGO, and Pac-Man. The stop-motion footage in this video apparently took 1500 hours to put together, which is pretty amazing considering the final product is just under four minutes long. Four wonderful, cockle-warming minutes. → Read More
If you feel like you’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into the wonderful world of technology, now’s the time to show everyone that you still haven’t forgotten your old school analog roots — sort of. This is a four-port USB hub that looks like a cassette tape. → Read More
Be still, my beating heart. I’ve been this excited before, but I can’t remember when.
Some of the greatest games in the history of personal computing are now available on Steam. I’m talking, of course, about Sierra’s King’s Quest and Space Quest collections. This can only mean that additional Sierra games will be made available in the future. Please, please, please, make it so. → Read More
Combine your longing for the good old days of early video gaming with your obsessive need to be on time, and you’ve got yourself a series of clocks made from old Atari cartridges selling for $20 apiece. → Read More
The beloved HP-35, one of the first scientific calculators able to “perform transcendental functions such as trigonometric, logarithmic and exponential functions” with an LED display just received an IEEE Milestone Award. The award commemorates important steps in computing technology.
Sadly, HP’s current computing technology is sub-par and won’t let us embed a video of Dean Takahashi and some guy… → Read More
I love this. Back in the day before it was AMD’s Radeon vs. NVIDIA’s GeForce, it was Riva’s TNT vs. 3DFX’s Voodoo. At that stage there were serious differences and advantages, and if I remember correctly, the Voodoo3 came out as Riva was ascendant, and was competitive. The Voodoo5, implementing hardware full-screen anti-aliasing, was an interesting card but was seriously… → Read More
You guys! SEGA will be releasing a title for the Xbox 360 and PS3 called “Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection” early next year for $30. The game will include 40 classic Genesis games, all upgraded to 720p, and will also feature unlockable content like “arcade games and interviews with the original game developers.” You gonna buy it? Hit the jump to see the full game list… → Read More
http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1274171289 Hey, I know that guy. Didn’t he used to sell street dogs down the block from that three-story gay bar on Pine Street? No, wait. He was a blogger for CrunchSomething. What’s he doing reviewing guitars? That aren’t right! Looks like a pretty sweet piece of gear, though &mdash until he reveals the price. I… → Read More
It all started back in 2000. The Y2K scare had come and gone with nary a hiccup, Who Let The Dogs Out by Baha Men was unfortunately taking the music world by storm, and a fresh-faced youngster named Doug Aamoth (me!) was finessing his way through his junior year at the University of Puget Sound. Ah t’was a simpler time, to be certain. All of a sudden, a portable device emerged – a device so… → Read More
Great piece over on OMG Nintendo about the top ten all-time best Nintendo levels. The staples are there like 8-4 from Super Mario Brothers, the Dark World (above video) from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Rainbow Road from Mario Kart. Oh, and let’s not forget Giant Land in SMB 3 – that was unreal at the time. What would you add? I’d probably add the final level from Mike Tyson’s… → Read More
Here are a few shots from a contest over on Pixelation. They’re from almost a year ago so if you’ve seen them, forgiveness please. I came across them via Geekologie today. Sometimes stuff hides on the internet for a while. Oh well. It’s still cool to see current games as they’d look on the original Gameboy. → Read More
Oh man, here’s a thing that looks like a juke box but – BUT! – it’s actually a popcorn maker. Behold the future! Not only does it make popcorn, it makes movie theater style popcorn (yay!) using “healthy hot air” (awww). Why can’t they use hot, melty, buttery air mixed with gallons of oil? What about all the delicious trans-fat? If you’re into your health for some reason and you… → Read More
If your name is Michael and you’re into GPS systems, then have I got the unit for you. The Knight Rider GPS by Mio features voice directions by none other than William Daniels, the voice of KITT on the Knight Rider series. When you fire the gadget up, you’ll hear “Hello, Michael. Where do you want to go today?” No word on a release date, but the price will be $270 when it becomes… → Read More
http://www.viddler.com/player/8c574347/ Here is a plethora of pinatas mobile phones from 1985 until close to the present day. I’m standing at my desk and clapping methodically. Well done, whoever you are. via BBG → Read More
Oh wow, I guess I’m getting old. Did anyone else own this player — the Eiger Labs MPMan? This is the 64-megabyte F20 shown here but I had the 32-megabyte F10. Remember how it hooked up to your computer via Parallel port and took forever to transfer songs? Apparently the prototype for this device was shown at CeBIT back in March of 1998 before going on sale in May of the same year. My… → Read More
Digital has almost completely replaced film in the casual set and is making inroads among professionals and artists, but that doesn’t mean film is being completely forgotten. Kodak and Vivitar have not forgotten their roots, and are creating a new film camera aimed at universities teaching “traditional photography.” They say it’ll be similar to the V3000. I’m not sure… → Read More
This is part of a thread on BBG about DVNO, a new video from Justice designed to look like the TV intros from the 1980s and early 1990s. This video describes how they made the original bumper for HBO — the video that played before every movie and that signaled the start of big things back when I was 12 or 13. Whereas now you’d just CG this in a week, these guys spent weeks building a… → Read More
Q: Is that a drawing by Al Jaffee? Back in the late 80s my Dad and I took the train in from my Aunt’s house in New Jersey to walk through Manhattan. There are two things I remember about that trip: touching something that looked like a booger on a movie poster in the subway and my dad telling me that it was a booger and visiting Mad magazine’s offices on MAD-ison Avenue. When we walked… → Read More
Howsabout a little mini golf before your mid-morning accounts receivable meeting? These remote controlled Mario and Luigi figurines would be great for just that. At $25 each, they’re not exactly cheap given that "frustration may ensue when trying for the perfect putt" but can you really put a price on the nostalgia-meets-mini-golf craze that’s about to sweep the nation? The… → Read More
So here we are, entering the fall of another year. This is the time, traditionally, when we prepare our brains to be assaulted by hundreds of ads for electronics (as well as less important stuff) that will be available at low, low prices in just a few months, in time for the holiday shopping season. There will be specials on iPhones, Centros, Oceans, and other high-end cellphones that will, with… → Read More
Elvis may have permanently left the building, but he never left some people’s hearts. If you’re one of those people, $300 will get you a creepy animatronic Elvis that “comes to life — checking you out and talking you up.” The King also sings eight of his classics and, if the mood hits you, you can sing along using the glittering microphone/remote control that… → Read More
If you’ve got too much money, loathe technology, and can’t stand the weird smell of your local GoodWill store, AbleCom will sell you a dumpy-ass old phone for way more than it’s worth. Remember the old, white rotary phone that your grandma had hanging in the kitchen next to her ficus plants? All it takes is $49 and a pack of Benson and Hedges Ultralight 100′s and… → Read More
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA
