Bringing Past To Present
Archive for March, 2011
Retro Reviews : The Nintendo Game Boy
Mar 28th
This time Retrobear embarks on a journey of tiny screens, funny shaped and coloured moulded plastics, sore fingers and a gem of a machine. It’s the juggernaut of the handheld world, the Nintendo Game Boy.
Truly a robot in disguise - the original Game Boy with Handy Boy attachment - providing additional light and stereo sound
Ahhhh the Nintendo Game Boy and it’s family of smaller more portable sequels that completely and utterly dominated that sector of the market. Never mind fighting the console wars on the 16 bit front, Oh no, Nintendo had a much bigger trick up it’s sleeve. The launch of the Game Boy in 1989 gave it an almost unrivalled position as King Of The Mini Micros. That’s not to say that there wasn’t any competition – there was and many firms tried their best to wrest the stranglehold that Nintendo had, but all failed.
Retro Review – An A-Z Through My Collection
Mar 23rd
Michael Jackson once sang that ABC was easy as 123. If only he knew what that meant at the time. This week, Retrobear has a walk through his collection, stopping off at letters D, F and Q as well as the other 23 in the alphabet. Sesame Street this isn’t and any comparisons to Muppets will be frowned upon….
An every day occurence for Retrobear - the endless struggle against the simple things in life
Its quite often hard to pick a favourite computer or console, let alone a favourite game from my collection of retro goodies. Quite frankly I would think about hurting the feelings of the ones I neglected and the amount of hours (or in The Running Man on the C64’s case, minutes) we had together, getting to know one another and the sheer joy that we gave to one another during those few stolen moments. OK, that is sounding a bit sick so I shall move on.
History : The 1983 Video Games Crash
Mar 13th
Seeing as the world as we know it appears to be collapsing around our ears, it seems fitting that this week RetroBear looks back to 1983 and how the home video games market literally imploded. A tale of blood, tears and unsold cartridges follows…..
The Atari Landfill in New Mexico - Resting place for the VCS versions of PacMan & E.T.
I have always found history to be a fascinating subject. Upon my travels and trawls through retro gaming, I came across the Video Games Crash of 1983. At the time I would have been 7 years old and more interested in Marmite and Lego as to why a company such as Atari entered meltdown. It’s a fascinating lesson that had repercussions for the rest of the world and was something that took a number of years to recover from.
Retrospective : Pac Man Championship Edition DX
Mar 6th
Pac Man was one of the biggest games of the 1980’s if not the whole of video gaming. Now Namco are giving the old yellow peril the dust off and a new chapter in his impressive history. So chomp down on your power pills with RetroBear as he looks at PacMan for the New Generation….
He's back. And this time he brought his missus and the nipper
Chances are if you are like me (i.e. over 30 years old) then one of the first games you would have come across in your youth would have been Pac Man. Whether it be Pac Man the arcade game or Pac Man on the Atari 2600, you would have been chomping up those power pills and eating ghosts before you knew how to count to 10. It should be said that along with Donkey Kong, Asteroids and Pong this is one of the titles that put video gaming on the map.