Alcazar - The Forgotten Fortress
(Activision, 1985; ColecoVision)
via Retro UprisingI'd like to provide the latest update to my list of working emulator sites for various platforms. All of these enable play directly within your browser, so there's no sticky business of downloading software and finding the necessary game files to get it all going. These are all great sites and we should all show our support. This is the "July 2010" edition of the list and, naturally, I'd love to keep adding to it, so suggest away. Here goes:

* 2600online.com - Play various Atari 2600 Video Computer Systems games
* Another World (aka, Out of this World; 1991)
* Atari.com - Play select Atari 2600 and Atari arcade favorites
* BBC Micro News - Parrot - News stories and a speech synthesizer directly from a cluster of BBC Micros
* c64s.com - Play various Commodore 64 games
* First-Person Tetris (NES version)
* Freearcade.com (Scott Adams section) - Play various Scott Adams/Adventure International text adventures
* Google Pac-Man - The popular browser-based re-imagining of the classic arcade game
* JEMU - Emulate and play on the Acorn BBC Model B, Amstrad CPC464, Dick Smith VZ-300, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, Sinclair ZX80, and Sinclair ZX81
* JSVecX - Play GCE/Milton Bradley Vectrex games in your browser
* nintendo8.com - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* Play Infocom Adventures Online
* The Gallery of Zork - Play the Infocom games online
* Retro Uprising - Play a wide range of videogame and computer systems (arcade, Atari, Coleco, Nintendo, Sega, etc.) in your browser and through a custom software interface
* Sandy White's Ant Attack
* Sarien.net - Play Sierra adventure games
* SC-3000 Survivors - Play Sega SC-3000/SG-1000 games
* Timex/Sinclair 1000 Emulator
* Virtual Apple 2 - Play Apple II and IIGS games
* Virtual Atari - Play Atari 2600 games
* vNES - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* ZX81 Software, Books and Hardware Collection - Play ZX81/Timex Sinclair 1000 games

Tass Times in Tone Town (Activision, 1986; Apple IIGS): From Virtual Apple 2I'd like to provide the latest update to my list of working emulator sites for various platforms. All of these enable play directly within your browser, so there's no sticky business of downloading software and finding the necessary game files to get it all going. These are all great sites and we should all show our support. This is the "May 2010" edition of the list and, naturally, I'd love to keep adding to it, so suggest away. Here goes:

* 2600online.com - Play various Atari 2600 Video Computer Systems games
* Another World (aka, Out of this World; 1991)
* Atari.com - Play select Atari 2600 and Atari arcade favorites
* c64s.com - Play various Commodore 64 games
* First-Person Tetris (NES version)
* Freearcade.com (Scott Adams section) - Play various Scott Adams/Adventure International text adventures
* JEMU - Emulate and play on the Acorn BBC Model B, Amstrad CPC464, Dick Smith VZ-300, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, Sinclair ZX80, and Sinclair ZX81
* nintendo8.com - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* Play Infocom Adventures Online
* Sandy White's Ant Attack
* Sarien.net - Play Sierra adventure games
* SC-3000 Survivors - Play Sega SC-3000/SG-1000 games
* The Gallery of Zork - Infocom museum and plenty of games to play (click on "The Canon")
* Virtual Apple 2 - Play Apple II and IIGS games
* Virtual Atari - Play Atari 2600 games
* vNES - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* ZX81 Software, Books and Hardware Collection - Play ZX81/Timex Sinclair 1000 games

Though there isn't even a passing resemblance and they're obviously Male, I still like to refer to these six volleyball players (from left to right) as: Ayane, Christie, Helena, Hitomi, Kasumi and Lei Fang.

Fast-forward to the present day (2010, to those of you reading this in some 25th century museum/blog-vault), videogame volleyball will evolve/has evolved/evolved into poly-polygonal, progressively scanned-tily clad women bouncing around on exotic beaches and buying each other cute gifts. Back here in 1972/73, where I am, Volleyball for Odyssey is the primordial soup of videogame volleyball. Don't forget, those little figures on the overlay are static; frozen eternally in those positions. The only movement on the screen occurs with the PlayerSpots and the BallSpot, just like in the previous 20-or-so Odyssey games.

What is exciting is that this game utilizes a new numbered cartridge! Seeing a shiny new number "7" on the cart used to play the game does add a little excitement to its initial playing. To recap, for anyone who may not know, cards for Odyssey don't have programs on them. They act as switches to simply toggle the display of, and modify the behaviors of, the "spots" which Odyssey broadcasts to your TV. The hardware variation used by this lucky number "7" cartridge creates a half-height version of the CenterLineSpot (only seen previously in Table Tennis) and stations it at the bottom of the screen as a volleyball "net".

UNBOXING again, THANKS MarkVergeer!
PART 1:

Wipeout Overlay: Looks more intestinal than intense...Wipeout was the first home videogame racing simulation. I know there was nothing in the arcades in 1972 with a racing theme, and I've never read anything about mainframe versions of a racing game, either. That being said, just as we saw with Invasion and Baseball, Wipeout is more boardgame than videogame.

Addressing the videogame portion first. The overlay is a stylized racetrack, reminiscent of the twisted cargo fleet's course in Submarine. The players take turns acting as the Driver and serving as the Timer. Prior to a racing phase, the Timer uses the left controller to position their light behind the clock on the left side of the overlay. The Driver uses the right controller to control the light that represents their race car. The Driver's goal is to maneuver their light around the race track. The Timer's job is to hit the reset button (on the Driver's controller!) to "serve" the BallSpot so that it comes in from the right side of the screen, crosses the screen and hits the light behind the left side clock to deflect back across the screen and off the right side again. The Timer player does this throughout the Driver's journey around the track. The Driver starts with 30 laps in their count. Every time the Timer player hits the reset button, one lap is subtracted from the lap count. If the Driver leaves the track, they lose two laps. If the Driver's light is actually hit by the Timer's BallSpot, they lose a big fat five laps! The idea is to get around the track before the lap count evaporates entirely.

In the interest of sharing, I'd like to provide my current list of working emulator sites for various platforms. All of these enable gameplay directly within your browser, so there's no sticky business of downloading software and finding the necessary game files to get it all going. These are all great sites and we should all show our support. I'm dubbing this the "November 2009" edition of the list and would love to keep adding to it, so suggest away and when I do the next edition, I'll expand it. Here goes:

* 2600online.com - Play various Atari 2600 Video Computer Systems games
* c64s.com - Play various Commodore 64 games
* Freearcade.com (Scott Adams section) - Play various Scott Adams/Adventure International text adventures
* JEMU - Emulate and play on the Acorn BBC Model B, Amstrad CPC464, Dick Smith VZ-300, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, Sinclair ZX80 and Siclair ZX81
* nintendo8.com - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* Play Infocom Adventures Online
* The Gallery of Zork - Infocom museum and plenty of games to play
* Sandy White's Ant Attack
* Sarien.net - Play Sierra adventure games
* SC-3000 Survivors - Play Sega SC-3000/SG-1000 games
* Virtual Apple ][ - Play Apple II and IIGS games
* vNES - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games

Finally, don't forget the Games section right here on Armchair Arcade. Enjoy!

Well, it wasn't Slashdot after all, but Gamer's Intuition that got out the first formal review of Vintage Games: An Insider Look at Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time. The verdict? It's a hit! The review is available here, so be sure to check it out and all the other great content at Gamer's Intuition.

A new series of small videos, not really reviews but just some games I happen to really like. This is episodes 10 & 11.

Games: Various Magnavox Odyssey2 & 3, Philips Videopac G7000, G7400 games
Publisher: Philips / Magnavox
Platform: Magnavox Odyssey / Philips Videopac

The Philips Videopac+ G7400 console was a rare beast, it was released in very limited quantities in 1983 but only in Europa. An American release was planned named the Odyssey³ Command Center but it never saw the light of day.

The G7400 console could play all Videopac / Odyssey2 games out there. Three types of games exist. The original G7000 videogames, the plus versions sporting an additional high-resolution background which would only be visible on the G7400. And finally the special G7400 only games with high-resolution graphics very reminiscent of Teletext, BBC Micro or ZX Spectum.

Here I am playing the rare G7400 through my video-grabber with some of my favourite games whilst I comment on the gameplay, etc.

http://www.videopac.org/ - home of Philips Videopac / Magnavox Odyssey

Next year Pac-Man is going to be 30 years old. Namco is going to celebrate with a new game developed by Hirokazu Yasuhara - the man responsible for Sonic the Hedgehog.