What can your Atari 800 do for you? Well, according to this You Tube video of an Atari 800 in-store demo (see below), mostly business and professional applications (yeah, right). It's almost sad to see Atari working so hard in this demo to impress the very people who dismissed Atari as nothing more than a maker of game consoles. Both Atari and Commodore shunned the "game machine" label, even though the most loyal fans of both systems probably played more games than any other type of software (though I'm sure any of these fans would be quick to defend these machines as "real computers.") Although the demo mentions the popular hit Star Raiders, it's obviously designed to minimize the game-playing potential of the system. Interestingly, companies like Alien Ware (and increasingly Dell) seem willing to offer "gaming rigs" without bothering to play up the business/professional potential of these systems.

Mr. Rogers: What, you thought Mr. Rogers wasn't into gaming?I've been so busy lately that I haven't been able to keep up with my blog reading...And boy, have I missed some cool stuff. Let me run through some of the most interesting posts. First off, from Kotaku comes this snippet of A Mr. Roger's Neighborhood episode featuring Donkey Kong. Fred Rogers reveals himself to be a true hacker, asking not just to play the game but to see inside the box to see how it works. Fun! And, by the way, anyone who thinks Fred Rogers was a pedo is truly sick. Next up, Racketboy runs through the best games for Sega's Master System, starting off with Phantasy Star. Psycho Fox, anyone? Thirdly, buried in this site is an announcement that Epyx will be releasing some of its C-64 titles for the Wii. Sorry, no titles as of yet...!

Just watched an episode of Icons on YouTube that was fairly decent-- it covered the formation of the ESRB. While I didn't learn a whole lot from the episode that I didn't already know, its political slant made it appear more professional than the usual "cowabunga dude" casual demeanor G4 typically presents in its tripe it calls original programming. Check out the full link after the jump.

I wish the episode would have gone more into the controversy with the ESRB. Not too long ago, a Punisher video game was released for the PS2. The designer of the game was greatly upset at how the ESRB insisted upon censoring the special "violent kills" in the game; originally, they were in color and showed the full kill. In the finished version of the game, they are shown in black and white and sometimes fade to white or cut out early.