Thursday, June 21, 2012
K-Power Issue 1, February 1984
The February 1984 issue of K-Power, a personal computer magazine covering systems such as the Commodore 64, VIC-20, TRS-80, Apple II, Atari 400/800, Coleco Adam, IBM PCjr and TI 99/4A.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Personal Computer News Issue Number 87
The November 17, 1984 issue of Personal Computer News, a weekly UK based personal computer magazine from the 80s.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
MicroComputer Printout, November 1982
November 1982 issue of MicroComputer Printout. This is a UK based magazine that covered the (primarily 8-bit) computers of the day.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Richard Garriott Could Wind Up Making Ultima Online 2
It’s all very up in the air, so don’t hold the guy to any of this, but Ultima creator and one-time space tourist Richard Garriott says it’s possible his new roleplaying game, Ultimate RPG, could wind up becoming Ultima Online 2.
“We’ve actually talked to Electronic Arts about it,” Garriott told Eurogamer. “I would love to have access to the Ultima property. We’ve had discussions at very high levels with Electronic Arts about access to the property.”
“We’re in discussions with Electronic Arts even now about a possible marketing and distribution relationships and things of this nature.”
The Ultima games were what really propelled me into PC gaming. I spent most of high school (the late 1980s) with limited access to computers, but when I got my hands on an Apple II and someone else’s copy of Ultima III, it’s all I was playing. I hopped on the Commodore 64 bandwagon late, just as Ultima V arrived, but got right down to business renting (that’s right, from a local computer store) a copy of Ultima IV and snatching up a copy of Ultima V in its gorgeous lift-open box stuffed with decorated manuals, a color cloth map, and other cool trademark Garriott miscellany. I wound up playing them all, including the “Worlds of Ultima” games and one of Warren “Deus Ex” Spector’s first (and best) ideas, something called Martian Dreams. In fact I remember placing several long distance phone calls to Origin’s hint service (remember, pre-Internet days here) to help me past more than one puzzle.
Full article: http://www.pcworld.c … ultima_online_2.html
Monday, October 24, 2011
Prince of Persia leaps to Commodore 64
Finally, those stalwarts who refuse to “upgrade” from their trusty Commodore 64 computers can experience that hot new game, Prince of Persia. Homebrew developer mrsid ported the 1989 game from its original Apple 2 version, making the cartridge image available for download from his site (http://popc64.blogsp … commodore-64128.html). If you have a C64 or 128 and a flashable C64 cartridge — or, more likely, if you have a C64 emulator — you can check out the achievement.
The rest of us will have to settle for this video, which looks remarkably smooth for an unofficial port on such an old system. It drew the attention of Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, who commented to say “I’m amazed and humbled by the amount of work this must have taken.”
Full article: http://www.joystiq.c … aps-to-commodore-64/
Monday, October 10, 2011
Secrets of the Little Blue Box
In 1971, Slate columnist Ron Rosenbaum wrote an article for Esquire about a loose confederation of proto-hackers who built devices—little blue boxes—that could crack phone networks. According the New York Times obituary of Apple founder Steve Jobs, after reading Rosenbaum’s article, Jobs and his partner in founding Apple, Steve Wozniak, “collaborated on building and selling blue boxes, devices that were widely used for making free—and illegal—phone calls. They raised a total of $6,000 from the effort.” The original 1971 article, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” is reprinted below, with permission from the author.
Full article: http://www.slate.com … le_blue_.single.html