Blog – Page 12 – Obsolete Gamer

Patrick Scott Patterson

Two more NES prototypes hit online auctions

The first cartridge is a sample copy of the pack-in cartridge that came with the NES Power Set containing Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt and World Class Track Meet, a game designed for use with the Power Pad, an early example of a video game motion controller. The opening bid sees a “Buy It Now” price tag of $200,000 with the option to make an offer. The other cartridge is graded and comes with a certificate of authenticity. It is listed as a prototype version of a cartridge titled Arcadia VI, a multi-game cart. A page on website Unseen64.netshows more about this prototype and confirms the seller as co-owner of the only known example. The “Buy It Now” price for this item is currently $100,000, also with the option to make an offer.

Did you know: Vol 1

There is a little more to this story. With the success of Pong, created by Nolan Bushnell, he and Steve Bristow came up with an idea to create a single player version of Pong and so the concept of Breakout was born. Steve Jobs was tasked with creating the game and brought on Steve Wozniak to help engineer the game. After a lot of sleepless nights and other adventures the project was done. Now in the end Atari had to do some reworking to Wozniak’s design before the final product was released, but overall that is why Steve Jobs got the credit for the creation of Breakout.

The Art of Video Games: Debuts in Florida at Boca Raton Museum

The exhibit highlights some of the best games for 20 gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the Playstation 3. It will feature 80 video games presented through still images and video footage. In addition, the galleries include video interviews with developers and artists, historic game consoles, and large prints of in-game screen shots. Five featured games, one from each era, will be available in the exhibition galleries for visitors to play for a few minutes to gain some feel for interactivity. The playable games – Pac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, and Flower – will demonstrate how players interact with the virtual worlds, highlighting innovative new techniques that set the standard for many subsequent games.

Patrick Scott Patterson

Legend of Zelda prototype sells for $55,000

“I definitely cannot thank Jason Wilson, Mark Nolan, and Matt Nolan enough,” he added. “They had the foresight to go after these prototypes years and years ago. They preserved important pieces of gaming history. I think between this and the release of Ecstasy of Order the video game community is getting some much needed love. We are not a bunch of geeks sitting around glued to the boob tube, we are normal everyday people celebrating something that makes us happy.”

Zelda Music used during Olympic performance

We have seen classic video game music used in sports before like Chris Getz using R.B.I. baseball as his walk-up music. This time music from Zelda showed up in this year’s Olympics during Mexican gymnast Elsa Garcia Rodriguez Blancas floor routine. The music was specifically arranged by violinist Lindsey Stirling. Unfortunately, Blancas ended up ranking 35th, but it was cool nonetheless.

World of Tanks: Update 7.5

The American tech tree has been updated with the E3 and E4 modifications of the T110 destroyer, as well as the M48A1 Patton III medium tank. The Germany Tank Destroyer lines have also been strengthened with the mighty JadgPz E-100 and the E-50 Ausf M, which now occupies the spot as the nation’s most powerful medium tank. The heavy destroyer Object 268 and the medium T62A joined the ranks of the Soviet tech tree, while the French have received the Tier 10 Bat Chatillon 25t medium tank and the AMX 50 Foch 155 tank destroyer.

The Secret World: Free 2 Play Weekend

The supernatural MMO, The Secret World will be free to play this weekend. The offer is to celebrate the first full month of the game and will including a special in game t-shirt and bonus points for solving missions. Players will also receive 15 fireworks that they can fire off during the event. The offer is available from August 3rd at 4pm GMT to August 6th at 7am GMT.

Star Wars: The Old Republic going free to play

EA sent word via a press release that The Old Republic will indeed go free to play this November. In addition, the game will cost only $15 starting next week and will come with a free month of gametime. Now as expected, there will still be a subscription service for SWTOR that grants you access to additional content and features of the game. For the free to play model you can level all the way up to 50 and enjoy most of the features of the game.

Patrick Scott Patterson

Ecstasy of Order now on DVD

Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, a documentary film about the 2010 Classic TetrisWorld Championship, is now available on DVD. The film, which has won a number of film festival awards since starting on the circuit last year, has ties starting with the 1990 Nintendo World Championships and leads up to the 2010 California event that invited many of the current day Tetris champions to compete, including Robin Mihara, Jonas Neubauer and Harry Hong.

Ristar: Free on Dotemu

Now I played this back in the day and loved the style. The game really excels in its soundtrack that features catchy tunes and themes and the boss music is pretty awesome as well. Most of the game involves jumping, swinging and bashing enemies’ against your head as you make your way towards the boss. However, Ristar features a lot of cool puzzles and secret areas to discovery and there is real strategy involved in the gameplay. With the DotEmu package you can choose to play in windowed mode or full screen with several resolution options so it will play on pretty much any system. Like emulators, you can save the game at any point which is a pretty awesome feature. The game plays just like the original and you can use keyboard controls or connect a joystick. I use the Xbox 360 controller which was automatically detected by the program.

Game of Thrones: 16-bit style

Our video of the day comes from the fantastically funny folks over at College Humor. This time they take the season one storyline from Game of Thrones and put it into a Final Fantasy style game. For those who played the SNES versions of FF you will notice the style right away. The video is especially funny if you watched all of season one of Game of Thrones, but is funny nonetheless.

Patrick Scott Patterson

Joust turns 30

The two-player feature helped Joust make an impact in the coin box at arcades across the country. While the ability for numerous players to play together has been a common feature in arcades for some time, in 1982 it was quite the novelty for two players to be able to play at the same time. Adding to the feature were offers of bonus points on certain levels, some of which encouraged teamwork and others that encouraged direct competition.

Epic Scents: The scent of Mega Man

These scents are meant to be displayed and will come infused in small cut-outs of the characters. These cut-outs can be hung in cars or your mother’s basement or wherever you wish to extinguish the smell of the modern gamer. You will see these air fresheners hit the stories within a few weeks and they will cost around 3 bucks each. Word is if everything goes well they may expand to colognes and perfumes. Can you just imagine buying your girlfriend, “Essence of Metroid”, you might actually pause the game when she comes in the room.

Classic download of the Week: Kid Icarus – Of Myths and Monsters

Pit will encounter old friends and new enemies – from helpful Centurions to the dreaded Eggplant Wizard – as he journeys from the depths of the underworld to the towers of the sky palace. Find hammers to shatter special walls and reveal helpful items. Collect hearts by fighting off Pit’s foes. Train hard and battle harder. Pit’s challenges make the labors of Hercules look like a walk in the park.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YepzdVuRoNw

Upcoming MMO : Marvel Heroes

Our video of the day comes from Gamespot and features the first gameplay footage of the upcoming Marvel MMO titled, Marvel Heroes. This free to play game is dubbed an action MMO and plays more like Diablo than your traditional 3D MMO and features existing Marvel characters.

The Old Republic Now Free Until Level 15

BioWare’s , The Old Republic was to be the World of Warcraft-killer, but the only dying we have seen has been its own. We first saw the signs when people reached max level quickly and complained about endgame content. We saw more signs with bugs not fixed and features not implemented a true sign the game was rushed even more than other rushed MMO’s. There was the promise of patches that would fix everything, but as each patch came, more people became upset and left.