Retrogaming Times Monthly - September 2009

[Albert]

A new issue of Retrogaming Times Monthly is now online. Highlights from the September 2009 issue (#64) include:

 

• Movies with a Byte: "Joystick"
• The Legend Of Trash Truck
• All Eyes On Power Rangers: The Movie
• RTM Idiocy: The Pot Of Lead At The End Of The Rainbow
• Apple II Incider - Spy Hunter
• Modern Retro - Worms
• Videological Dig - The Ratings War
• Laughing Pixels
• Gaming Advertisements

You can read these articles and more inside the Retrogaming Times Monthly, now running 144 months in a row! You can also browse their archives to catch up on past issues.

[VectorGamer]

I enjoyed the movie review actually..

 

But, why isn't there any content devoted to 80s home consoles and games? Isn't that what Retrogaming is all about (not to say the Apple Spy Hunter isn't)?

[triverse]

I enjoyed the movie review actually..

 

But, why isn't there any content devoted to 80s home consoles and games?  Isn't that what Retrogaming is all about (not to say the Apple Spy Hunter isn't)?

 

 

 

Like most sites/publications they are probably dependent on material that is donated to their magazine so it is probably a case of no one wrote anything for them about 80's home consoles and games.

 

 

 

[zerodin]

Life got in the way of me doing any more additions to "Who'd Win?", so I've become just another reader, but I gotta tell ya, my least favorite article is "RTM Idiocy". In lolcat terminology it has an angry, an angry that doesn't fit RTM one bit. Plus I can't stand people who rip on the Coco.

Edited September 11, 2009 by zerodin

[Inky]

RTM is a shell of its former self. I used to love the articles that compared games against multiple platforms, and that's long gone.

[Tempest]

I got a kick out of the 'review' of Rainbow. So many computer mags were like that back then.

 

Tempest

[Ward Shrake]

I enjoyed the movie review actually..

 

But, why isn't there any content devoted to 80s home consoles and games?  Isn't that what Retrogaming is all about (not to say the Apple Spy Hunter isn't)?

 

 

 

Like most sites/publications they are probably dependent on material that is donated to their magazine so it is probably a case of no one wrote anything for them about 80's home consoles and games.

 

 

That, yes ... but maybe it's also a case of "what is there left to say, after nearly 30 years of talking about a given subject?" Sooner or later, any topic is bound to be "talked out". It's inevitable.

 

I am primarily posting because I'm a bit confused about the wording of the first post, quoted above. I wrote an article about a late-1970s / early 1980s game console slash home computer that virtually no one has ever heard of, or wrote about, online ... and here's a reader implying that they read the whole issue, and found no content of that type. It's there ... that particular reader just failed to find it, and read it. That's hardly the online magazine's fault!

 

I can only assume that since another post complained about the tone of one (other, different) article, and the tone of my article wasn't "Oh Golly Gee, what a fabulously wonderful old gaming system!" ... that the complaint is that some folks only want to read about game systems that were massively popular? ... or, that no writer is allowed to voice the ugly truth that some game systems never became more widely popular than they did, for the simple reason that they were never all that good in the first place?

 

In every horse race, there's only one horse that's going to win first place. The odds of any horse winning vary. In some races, certain horses had virtually no statistical chance of winning that particular race, at that point in time. And there are usually a lot of very legitimate reasons why there's a big difference in each horse's odds of winning.

 

Speaking only for myself: more and more, I'm losing interest in the horses that, statistically, really shouldn't have been in a particular race in the first place. But by the same token, talking about "wasn't that the greatest race ever seen, anywhere on earth?" isn't something that can really sustain (interesting!) conversation, for three decades plus.

 

We may be seeing the beginnings of the end of an era. An era when the positive things have already been said, many many many times before. And where, if people want to be entertained with NEW info, a different tone is going to be common.

 

It's not a new situation, really. Even the big magazines like Electronic Games had their fair share of things to say, of a less-than-complimentary nature, about certain consumer products.

 

Some games kick butt. Recently, I'm rediscovering how fun certain old games were to play ... and why they still are fun.

 

But, realistically, quite a few games should have stayed in development, for another six months. That period of tuning up a functional game, and making it into a FUN game, was skipped or short-changed, far too often.

 

And, realisictically, some games (and/or gaming hardware) could have not bothered to show up, in the marketplace, at all. Which systems? Well, that's a matter for personal opinion. But the biggies still are; and the others ... well ...

 

As a writer, I'd rather retain my credibility, by calling an iffy game or console or situation, just that.

 

As a reader, there's only so many times you can hear puffed-up comments, before they turn into background noise.

 

-- Ward Shrake --

 

 

P.S. -- This isn't intended as some sort of flame bait. Just food for thought. If anyone's tempted to react as if it were flame bait, I'd gently ask that they push away from the keyboard, and go find a favorite game, and go play it. If, after a long period of doing that, you still feel some need to comment ... write up an article about it, and submit it to Retrogaming Times Monthly. Because, as noted above ... they're dependent on what writers write, and then send in. (One possible suggested topic: "Classic Gaming is dead. Long live Classic Gaming!" ... with some folks arguing that it died, or is in the process of dying; and others arguing -- hopefully, realistically and logically -- the other way.)

[Toucan]

Now there's an idea! A series of articles on how the classic gaming world has changed through the years. That would be a fun read. Hearing about how things have changed, where the hangouts on-line and in real life used to be, etc. It would be kind of fun to read about someone's journey in the classic gaming world since it is probably similar to our's and we could relate. Such as remembering when a major find was made only to have it turn out to be a hoax or something. Anyone here game for writing such as article? I'll have to search around to see if I can find someone to take up this challenge. It sure would be fun to read every month the journey's of a classic gaming collector

[VectorGamer]

Yes, skimming over the article I missed the MP-1000 article. The screenshots led me to believe it was a vintage computer article.

 

Re: Writing something fresh for 30 year old consoles - it's challenging but doable

[keilbaca]

I'm just sad that they stopped the monthly high score club...

[marksabbatini]

Life got in the way of me doing any more additions to "Who'd Win?", so I've become just another reader, but I gotta tell ya, my least favorite article is "RTM Idiocy". In lolcat terminology it has an angry, an angry that doesn't fit RTM one bit. Plus I can't stand people who rip on the Coco.

 

 

As the guy who writes those "Idiocy" pieces (and apparently may not be much longer, due to the gripes), I should note the "CoCo bashing" is coming from someone who seems to state endlessly it was the primary machine of his younger days. I've owned something like 20 of the machines, about a dozen of which are still in my possession. I also own every copy of The Rainbow and copies of nearly every other CoCo magazine published, not to mention (mostly) legitimate copies of a sizable percentage of the machine's overall software library.

 

Did you ever read Marty Goodman's rants on Delphi back in the day? Nobody can argue he was as knowledgeable and dedicated a CoCo Nut as anybody, but his flamethrowing about all things Tandy was legendary. Fact is, we all owned a second-rate computer the rest of the world laughed at. I can live with that, because I had my reasons for favoring the machine and my emotional security wasn't tied to other people's opinions. But there was an awfully large and shrill bunch of people determined to build the CoCo up and tear anything else down, and ignore the many, many screw-ups coming out of Fort Worth and Kentucky (I'd say less than 20 percent of the reviews in The Rainbow offered anything more than a glowing overhype of the instruction manual). This sort of thing wasn't limited to the CoCo, obviously, which is why there's been so much to tap into for these columns for so long.

 

As for the negative and - according to you, angry - tone: legitimate criticism. I'm no fan of negative whiners in conversation, so I can see how reading that endlessly gets to be a drag. As I mentioned above, I'm guessing the columns is going to get retooled into something else as a result. What it won't be, I guarantee you, is endless gushing about all things wonderful from the old days. Way too many people doing that already.

[Ward Shrake]

Re: Writing something fresh for 30 year old consoles - it's challenging but doable

 

 

Fabulous! Glad to hear it! We can expect one or more RTM articles from you, then, before the year is out?

[Ward Shrake]

What it won't be, I guarantee you, is endless gushing about all things wonderful from the old days. Way too many people doing that already.

 

Way, way too much time is spent endlessly talking about how grand and glorious all sorts of stuff is, in the Classic Gaming World ... and after 30 years of hearing it, yeah, it gets old! Been there, seen that, got the t-shirts(s)!

 

The reality is that a lot of stuff sucked. Some stuff, it's hard to tell if it sucked or not ... because ads ran, but from the prices charged and other factors, it seems unlikely more than a handful of people ever shelled out the cash.

 

Sci-Fi author Ted Sturgeon once famously said something to the effect that yeah, ninety percent of science fiction stories were crud ... because ninety percent of just about anything is crud. (See Wikipedia for the exact quotes.)

 

In any given field or possible way of categorizing things, you end up with a small percentage of excellent items; a small percentage of absolutely awful ones; and a LOT of stuff that's just basically sitting there, in the middle.

 

This is why it's not only challenging, but d*mn near impossible to keep inventing (truly) new things to say, that are not only of a positive nature, and informative, but also entertaining. Something worth reading; let alone writing!

 

I like old games. I prefer the "one screen, forever" type of gameplay, most of the time. If you can win the game, then I'm probably not going to bother playing it. That's just me. That's just the kind of thing that I personally want.

 

But, brothers and sisters, I'm hear to tell you: it's a royal pain in the arse to keep trying to invent reasons why one obscure old console or home computer or other should have "made it big" in the marketplace ... but, for reasons some folks will jump up and down over and loudly chant (as if volume was interchangeable with facts or logic), and others will have a more skeptical outlook towards ... well, frankly, some systems basically deserved their quick, quiet deaths! (Or, some might argue, their long, lingering, "everyone know's it's coming" exits from the marketplace.)

 

I won't declare Classic Gaming dead, but it does occur to me to wonder if maybe it needs better health insurance. When three out of the last four CGE expo's failed to happen (if memory serves), and classic arcades are going under ...

 

Keep in mind that the people looking at the seedy underbelly of things, here, are writing about the smaller systems (in terms of popularity). Folks in the Atari Mainstream may think we're just doom and gloom types ... because their insulated little world hasn't felt any major shocks (that I'm aware of?) ... but those of us who can hear the crickets chirping, over the din of all the fans clamoring for more games and more info about the "also ran" game systems ... in other words, to wrap this up quickly: we who inhabit the lower decks question moisture, when it's well past our ankles, and knees, and is rising above our chests. The folks on the upper decks don't even have their little toes wet, yet, perhaps ... but that doesn't mean that things will always stay the same.

 

For that matter, they never did stay the same. Guys like myself can remember back, just fifteen years ago ... and it'd take a small book just to set the record straight as far as what folks think happened then, that didn't; because the technology just wasn't advanced enough to allow the things that today's users take for granted.

 

Example: I was archiving the cartridge library for the VIC-20 before things like emulation existed, or web sites with pictures were the least bit common! Paul LeBrasse and I did what we did, over about a two year period; averaging about one new game or utility cart per week -- each, mind you; so, two per week total -- and that wasn't by just taking our personal libraries of carts, and dumping them. We had to literally search the globe just to find every one of those old carts ... because, it really seemed at the time, that if we didn't, most of that old stuff was going to Landfill City!

 

And people today probably just assume that we went onto eBay, and bid on stuff!? Ummm ... since eBay didn't exist, no, that's not how things happened. We exchanged literally thousands of e-mails with people all over the planet, trying to track down the truth behind whether Cart XYZ existed. Only to pay someone (via snail mail!) for that cart ... only to find that even the most knowledgeable people back then mistook an MPT-03 cart for a VIC-20 cart, and sold it to you as if it was some unheard of VIC-20 cart ... and once you figure out that's what happened, everyone involved has to sit around, scratching their heads, and wonder what the h*ll this odd-ball cart is, that looks like the same pin set-up as a VIC-20 cart ... but that, internally, isn't even remotely like a VIC-20 anything!

 

Repeat sending out dozens if not a hundred e-mails, by yourself, for every VIC-20 cart that I or Paul LeBrasse tracked down and archived, and then, after that week's (totally unpaid!) "work" ... repeat the whole process a hundred times.

 

Then have some rude (insert two hours of cussing) individual tell you, after a couple of years of work like that, that if you hadn't have done it, someone else would have ... and you'll have some TINY idea of why guys like me "are angry".

 

Not to make things too unpleasant for previous posters, but when a person like me writes something genuinely new, and gets it published for all and sundry to read ... only to be met with one person mistakenly believing there's nothing of interest in regards to what you just wrote, from a certain era ... well, that bites, but to then have several other folks agree with that mistake (that there's nothing of that sort in the issue in question; even though there is!!!) ...

 

I don't know whether to laugh or cry, at situations like that. Guess I'm just glad I'm 99% retired, these days! (My other hobbies take nowhere near as much work, and the appreciation factor is orders of magnitude greater / faster.)

 

Folks, if you want genuinely new stuff to read, THEN START ACTUALLY READING EVERYTHING THAT'S HANDED TO YOU!

 

(I'll just say that I find that younger people's attention spans can be measured in milliseconds, these days. Sigh.)

 

People have already forgotten the answers to things that only happened ten years ago. (Like why the VIC CD-ROM project had started: because most people had never seen the actual carts, or ads, or whatever; and suddenly things like full color photos were possible -- albeit only after expensive computer upgrades! -- on a person's personal computer. And flatbed scanners got down to the price range that average mortals could afford, without hocking all they owned.)

 

Back then, a single picture on the front page of a small web site, had people whining (that it was fat-ware). Just a short fifteen years later, we're in a world where sending small-format movies to one another, over the Internet, is absolutely common; and people with fast connections can download whole music libraries, or even full studio movies. But guys like Paul and I were using e-mail and FTP services, over telephone lines -- I still remember mounting an external 9600 baud modem in a spare drive bay slot, at one point -- and we were paying for our internet time by the hour, mind you! -- and all because that's all that the average nerdy person had available to them, at that time. (And even then, it wasn't easy: I can remember one month's phone bill costing me $200 USD!)

 

Too many people, these days, substitute what is true, today, for what they mistakenly think was true then ... which is fine, except that when they're calling themselves historians as they do it, it takes on an unintended comic tone!

 

People think that the earliest I'net archiving efforts happened because of emulation; and that web sites existed. Not true! Back in the early days -- just 15 years ago! -- guys like me, that were going out of their way to wait to see if Windoze 95 was going to be all it was advertised to be, and who were still clinging to Windows 3.1 as their basic OS (I actually still considered DOS to be my main operating system, in the early to mid 1990s) ... well, anyway, most of what I hear being discussed today isn't even remotely the situation that existed, or why folks like me did what we did. So, I find it easy to believe that folks that were doing their thing back in the 1980s are very misunderstood, as well.

 

Truthfully, there are times when I feel like the thousand incorrect assumptions with the other person's questions or comments would take so d*mned long to break down and "fix," before I could even "simply" reply to what they said -- well, it gets to be too pointless of busy work; and, these days, I simply shrug and don't bother replying. It's not that different, in a sense, from waking up one day to find out you're one of the only people left, from some old race of beings; and the new beings don't understand anything you try to tell them. Sooner or later, you quit trying.

 

Guess that makes me a dinosaur. C'est la vie! (In my other hobbies, that's not the case at all; which is fabulous!)

 

In any case ... you racka-frakkin' darned whipper-snappers don't know the pain of having to walk to school in huge snowstorms ... miles and miles of endless walking, I tells ya! ... and uphill, both ways!

 

-- Ward Shrake --

[VectorGamer]

Re: Writing something fresh for 30 year old consoles - it's challenging but doable

 

 

Fabulous! Glad to hear it! We can expect one or more RTM articles from you, then, before the year is out?

 

 

I don't have time - I'm writing articles for CVGM

[zerodin]

Well Mark, my "legitimate criticism" is that the magazine started going down the toilet with the issue that first featured RTM idiocy. RTM used to be about celebrating Retro gaming. Yeah, there was the occasional bad review of a game, but not a monthly bit that served no purpose save for hating on something. COCO being a second, or third rate computer or not, RTM suffers because of that hate monthly piece.

Edited September 16, 2009 by zerodin

[Tempest]

I think RTM is just fine, I don't like an article from time to time but then again no one is forcing me to read those articles. It's not like I'm paying for the magazine. I do miss the Many Faces Of articles, but eventually you start running out of multi-platform games. Not much you can do about that.

 

Tempest

[zerodin]

I think RTM is just fine, I don't like an article from time to time but then again no one is forcing me to read those articles. It's not like I'm paying for the magazine. I do miss the Many Faces Of articles, but eventually you start running out of multi-platform games. Not much you can do about that.

 

Tempest

But the magazines reputation is defined by the articles in it. I realize my comments against RTM Idiocy's author come off as scathing, but he's no stranger to that manner of writing.

Edited September 16, 2009 by zerodin

[ZIMM]

I'm just sad that they stopped the monthly high score club...

it will be back in October.