I'd just like to take a moment to provide an official update in response to several questions of late about when the book on the first 15 years of home videogames and computers will be coming out (the one that Gamasutra is running excerpts from). As you know, during the time from when that book was first announced 3+ years ago, Matt Barton was able to get his first mainstream book published. Unfortunately, the major publisher for the 15 years book had to pull out simply because it was taking too long to finish and they had their own internal staff changes to sort through (and other financial considerations). In short though, the book collapsed under its own ambitions. Sadly, by the time all of that was worked out and the formula perfected (again, as evidenced by the Gamasutra excerpts), the market for videogame books through normal publishing means (meaning not vanity press, subsidized or self-published) has collapsed, making publishers hesitant to bite on even a 90% completed book with proven content and testimonials from countless people who actually want to purchase it.

As if you didn't have enough pr0n on your hard drive already--I just read today that Playboy is considering building a new massive online player game based on their famous adult entertainment franchise.

Although keeping a physical collection of Commodore 64 hardware and software is a wonderful hobby, some of us (well, me!) do not have the money or space to dedicate to it. After watching Bill's incredible video of his collection I realized that a virtual (3D) room filled with the actual images of each software box that you could pick up, rotate, and even open would be a cool substitute.

Then I realized that complete scans of box art is hard to come by. Has there been any major attempts to digitize (in high-res) the box art, manuals and other stuff included with the software? Isn't this stuff just as important historically as the software code itself?

Among other updates, Intellivision Lives has announced that they've just once again made available the highly sought after Steamroller for the ColecoVision, an unreleased game created for Activision from 1984. It was released in limited quantities of ~100 at CGE back in 2000, and is once again available in a limited release of 100. I know I got mine and also ordered a nifty running man poster made up of the 125 original mainstream releases for the Intellivision for my basement den area. Fun stuff and with all the recent buzz about the Intellivision lately, I'm glad there's also a boost for the ColecoVision while we're at it! When you're at the Blue Sky Rangers/Intellivision Productions/Intellivision Lives Website, be sure to check out their news section for other interesting updates!

Gamasutra has just posted the fifth of six entries from me and Matt Barton in the "A History of Gaming Platforms" series, this time on the Mattel Intellivision, here. This was one of my favorite entries to write in the book this series is based off of, so I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did writing it. As a bonus, I've included here on Armchair Arcade the additional captions and images that Gamasutra chose not to include (I think I again improved image quality - by the way, those screenshots are DIRECT video captures straight from an Intellivision II, NOT from an emulator, and everything else of course is also straight from my personal collection). The next and presumably final entry will be on the Atari 8-bit. Enjoy and I'd love to hear some feedback, as I think it ranks right up there with the best overall articles ever written on platform (said with all due modesty and respect, of course ;-) ).

The unused images and all the captions (used and unused):

A new episode of RetroGaming Radio is out, here. From the Press Release: "Shane discusses hypocrisy and parental responsibility with gaming, catch the rare round table talk from the whole staff from CGE 2007, we review Cinemaware's Wings for the Amiga, Chasing the Chuckwagon and more!"

Well, it's been quite some time since I've bothered doing any on camera work (2004 to be exact) and I was kind of itching to do something a bit different again, so I came up with the idea for "The Goodnight Gamer", where, late at night, after my family goes to sleep (and already in my "jammies"), I go downstairs and do quick 10 minute or less episodes covering all kinds of (mostly vintage) videogame and computer content, much like Armchair Arcade itself. This first episode breaks that rule by being much longer than 10 minutes (hence being broken down into four parts), but was necessary to provide the baseline tour of the "facility". The idea is to have fun and knock these out quick - in one take - with minimal editing and post processing from a cheap flash memory-based pocket camcorder. I'll of course refine the concept over time. Enjoy and I'd love to hear feedback (bad and good). Thanks! [Note: I had to use Revver this time due to exceeding 10 minutes, but I'll get it down for the next episode so it also fits YouTube]

Episode 1, Part 1 (of 4):

Episode 1, Part 2 (of 4):