You hear bats. You feel a draft. You smell a Wumpus.

April 27, 2006 12:46 PM

The Dot Eaters. A dauntingly comprehensive history of video games, beginning with proto-PONG and Spacewar!. If it's difficult to navigate through Captain O's prize matrix, use the handy timeline/scape (the dates don't work, so don't try). It's an interesting site, for sure, but if it doesn't pique your interest maybe the links page will, since it's the largest I've ever seen. In just minutes I found the First Church of Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros fanfiction (@), and a great Robotron shrine. Plus, this noise (wav).
posted by BlackLeotardFront (16 comments total)

Live Action Super Mario Brothers.
posted by ColdChef at 1:06 PM on April 27, 2006

This is humbling ... regarding Dragon's Lair.

"Played straight through without making a mistake, playing time is a total of six minutes."

All of those quarters ... two at a time ...
posted by grabbingsand at 1:07 PM on April 27, 2006

And, an oldie but a goodie: Super Mario theme on piano...blindfolded.
posted by ColdChef at 1:22 PM on April 27, 2006

Let me just be the first to bemoan the fact that the "@" does not point to anything Nethack related. Other than that... A++
posted by clockwork at 1:45 PM on April 27, 2006

GOTTA POCKET FULL O' QUARTERS AN' I'M HEADIN' TO THE AR-CADE...
posted by keswick at 2:32 PM on April 27, 2006

Wizard of Wor!
posted by joe lisboa at 3:40 PM on April 27, 2006

Oh, how I love me a Hunt the Wumpus reference. THanks!
posted by notsnot at 4:03 PM on April 27, 2006

what's the hunt the wumpus reference?
posted by cgs at 7:12 PM on April 27, 2006

Yow, that was exhaustive. For every dimly remembered tidbit from EG or Joystik (for my money, the best game mag of all time) there was a brand new soon-to-be dimly remembered tidbid waiting!

Great site.
posted by ipe at 8:16 PM on April 27, 2006

CGS, check the title of the thread...

I haven't played Wumpus in years....
Anybody else remember Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tails of It?
posted by cosmicbandito at 8:29 PM on April 27, 2006

aha! sorry, missed the title...
posted by cgs at 9:05 PM on April 27, 2006

Not a truly epic post, but I thought a few people might like it. I love this stuff so I'm always on the lookout. just look for "retro" and "games" tags on metafilter, they're like half mine.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:08 PM on April 27, 2006

Ah BlackLeotardFront... you pushed a sigh of nostalgia from me... I used to own Computer Space (unit #12xx) by Bushnell. A near perfect specimen, it was terribly difficult to control the little spaceship with the pushbuttons.

The last year of my posession was spent looking for the right buyer -- it now sits in an indie record shop along with a the owner's collection of other vintage video arcade games, including a 2-player version of itself.
posted by Extopalopaketle at 9:16 PM on April 27, 2006

Wow... somehow I was clicking around there and found this 1984 interview with some of the guys who started Infocom.

Computer Games: Why do you write computer games without graphics?

Berlyn: Home computer graphics right now can't create a picture good enough to convey the kinds of scenes and situations that we need to convey in these stories. They can't draw a scene as well as we can describe it in a paragraph. And when you read the text, you put yourself in the story.

My how things have changed. Good FPP!!
posted by wfrgms at 9:20 PM on April 27, 2006

ColdChef: Live Action Super Mario Brothers (part II)
posted by mrzer0 at 7:02 AM on April 28, 2006

Had a good laugh at the Mario links - thanks guys... Also, on the video game history site, I love the fact that you can't resize the screenshots as they are already original size :-) they are about stamp-size on my screen.
posted by Herr Fahrstuhl at 11:38 AM on April 28, 2006