Here it is guys, the long-awaited 19th episode of Matt Chat featuring "Gauntlet" from Atari games. I learned a lot about the game in preparing this video, particularly that it was basically a rip-off of an earlier Atari 8-bit game called "Dandy," which had an almost identical setup.

Thanks to friend and long-time Armchair Arcade member "davyk" for the heads-up on just-released Retro Gamer magazine issue 65 and its mention of our Vintage Games book. Quote: Bill and Matt's Vintage Games - "A brilliant book by Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton that looks at a range of classic influential games from Space Invaders and Castle Wolfenstein to The Sims and Dance Dance Revolution and examines how they have all helped to shape the industry as it stands to today. Essential reading." The issue is available at newsstands worldwide, or order here. I know I can't wait for my copy to come!

I just got this press release in and thought it important enough to share right away for all of you Commodore Amiga and would-be/should-be Commodore Amiga fans. This is a great LEGAL emulation package based on a legendary platform for modern PCs and well worth checking out. I'll try to have some type of review up soon.

BEGIN PRESS RELEASE:

Today's casual photos, again taken with the Panasonic digital camera, are Kriya Systems, Inc.'s Typing Tutor III (1984) from Simon & Schuster for the Apple Macintosh, and three cartridges for the first ever programmable videogame system (i.e., utilizing interchangeable cartridges), the 1976 Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES), later known as the Fairchild Channel F after the release of the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) in 1977. In fact, after the name change, Fairchild would come to pull out of the market entirely and Zircon would assume rights to the platform, which limped its way into the bargain bins of the early 1980s.

As some of you will remember, my wife and I were contracted to write, "Wii Fit for Dummies". With the recent announcement of "Wii Fit Plus", all work was stopped on "Wii Fit for Dummies" in lieu of "Wii Fit Plus for Dummies", pending that product's release. Well, long story short, its final form is now "Wii Fitness for Dummies", and will cover "Wii Fit Plus", "EA Sports Active: Personal Trainer", and "Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010", all in glorious full color, coming in at approximately 250 pages. There will also be brief mention of 10 of the other top Wii Fitness programs in a chapter in Section IV of the book, Part of Tens, which any "For Dummies" book fan will be familiar with. We'll let you know as we know more, but right now the only product in our hands is "EA Sports Active: Personal Trainer", so that will be our focus in the mean-time. I'm in contact with both Nintendo and Majesco about the other two products, but whether we'll be able to get pre-release copies of their respective titles is still very much up in the air at this point, as they're not even finished yet.

Having finally had a chance to play my copy of Fight Night Round 4, one of the more interesting features to me was the "Photo Face" feature, where you use your Xbox Live Vision camera (or go through a process of accessing proper images) to capture front and side profiles of your face, then via some digimagic, it maps it to a 3D model.

As for the game itself? Still not sure if I really like it, or really, really like it. It definitely doesn't have the same "wow" factor Round 3 did (how could it? You can only surprise people once!), though it does seem improved in just about every way. So far, just a few hours in and I'm still coming to grips with the new control scheme.

Anyway, here's what my first attempt looked like (I've since changed the hair to better match how it's actually shaved):

Today's casual photos (bit higher quality than usual, with my Panasonic digital camera), shown below, are two rare Apple Macintosh RPG's from 1989, Xor's TaskMaker (original version) and Postcraft's Citadel: Adventure of the CRYSTAL KEEP. The classic Macintosh platform is not known for its RPGs, and stand outs on the platform have been few and far between. Some of the others I own are rare and generally highly sought after, including Legends of the Lost Realm, a multi-character role playing game from Avalon Hill (1988; I don't have the sequel, which uses the same box, just with a small sticker on it to distinguish it), and the classic, Quarterstaff: The Tomb of Setmoth (1988, Infocom), which was originally released by Simulated Environment Systems in 1987 as simply Quarterstaff before Infocom's acquisition, and is considered one of the few authentic pen and paper-style RPGs in videogame form. Photos below:

Hi, guys, here it is: Matt Chat 18: Summer Games. Enjoy, and please rate the video and let me know what you think about Summer Games. I hope you guys had as much fun playing this one back in the day as I did!

Today's casual photos are of Zhadnost: The People's Party (1995) from Studio 3DO for the 3DO, taken with the iPhone 3G. Zhadnost is a late-life 3DO title in the spirit of one my favorite videogame game shows, Twisted: The Game Show (Electronic Arts, 1993), also for the 3DO platform. Both titles use lots of wacky, high quality full-motion video (FMV) segments featuring a combination of live actors and stock footage. Twisted errs more on the trivia side of things, while Zhadnost errs more on the mini-game side of things, and features a very specific type of humor. Both titles are highlights on the 3DO platform, making excellent use of the platform's capabilities to overlay quality full motion video over pre-rendered backgrounds. The production values of both are also high, with just the right amount of wit. In short, they're great multiplayer party games and in a format where the use of oft-maligned FMV makes perfect sense, and something more modern day games should consider over often low quality and robotic 3D models. Thinking of these FMV video game shows made me think of the Philips CD-i platform, which was home to several such games, including a favorite of my family's, 3rd Degree (PF Magic, 1992), which had the unique feature of containing a database of pre-recorded (pre-spoken) names, so unless you had an unusual name, the game would actually refer to you by name in the game host's voice (not synthesized). If your name wasn't in the database, they had a selection of cutesy and nickname type of monikers to choose from as well. Definitely another feature that should be incorporated in more modern games. Anyway, here are the images of Zhadnost: