The release of the original Grand Theft Auto will be closer to the release of Hamurabi than GTA VI when it's scheduled to come out

sure this seems like equivalent entertainment to watching paint dry, but after a few hours I get loopy and do things like call Zort on long-since disconnected phone numbers here's a sneak peak at the kind of trouble I could get in tonight trying to make the pamphlet robot cry fun starts in an hour

he knows what he has to do

6 years to the day since I released this video about gaming 'firsts' and the bias of history. Probably the most atypical video I ever made, both visually and as a call to action on something I deeply believe. Never got much traction, but it's probably my favourite work. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoj

He said it couldn't be done, but @quarterpast.bsky.social is back with entertainment of the sort you've never seen before. We'll be live on Twitch tomorrow, circa 7PM CST, dating all the arcade games that we care to.

You know what would be good right now—a Jonas Brothers mini concert

From the PET to the VIC-20 and C64, Commodore evolved from business machines to home computing powerhouses. Smart marketing, the SID chip, and low prices made the C64 a billion-dollar success of the 8-bit era. ▶ www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNzn... #Commodore #PET #VIC20 #C64 #RetroComputing

Halloween 1970 The record industry limps into its second year without the Beatles—apparently forgetting to release rock songs as singles Commercial video games won’t be created for at least another year, but 4-player pinball & the soul charts might save us at the arcade as we listen to this #AT40

bluesky the sports app

Remember to be considerate tonight while trick-or-treating!

Youppi! appointed commissioner for life

October 26, 1974 It’s a few days away from Rumble in the Jungle. The US is messing around with Daylight Saving Time (they tried and failed to stop moving the clock). We’re headed to the arcade to listen to #AT40 and play some Gran Trak 20. Theme this week is follow-up singles you’ve forgotten.

The VOD from our adventures in 1975 is up. We (well, @quarterpast.bsky.social ) still have to fill in the back half of the year but we are getting - slowly but surely - Beyond Pong. www.youtube.com/watch?v=S70e...

It’s exciting when someone publishes long-form on a subject you’ve been researching for years. Here’s a thread commenting on this article in more detail. If you do the retro computer, read the article & then come back here. Apologies and respect in advance to @ernie.tedium.co 🧵👇

look, you can stay here in 2025 and be inundated with more shitty news OR you could join us in going back to 1975 while Ethan meticulously documents primary source history and I make fun of songs like "Convoy" your choice I won't judge we start in an hour

We'll be inundating you again tonight at 7PM CST: @quarterpast.bsky.social and I putting dates to every single arcade game of the 1970s and 1980s. www.twitch.tv/play_history We enter 1975. What horrors shall we find together?

Nintendo celebrates approval of patent on having fun, laughing

Shout it to the world! Tell them what the FCC did!

Closing in on the end of 1980 on the Atari Archive blog as we get to the final two Activision titles for that year. First up is Bob Whitehead's Skiing, one of the earliest video attempts at that sport and a hell of a title to match up to: www.atariarchive.org/blog/skiing-...

Get lost on your Saturday night with my writeup of Maze Craze, Rick Maurer's final VCS release and one of the last notable games in the early genre of simply trying to navigate randomly generated mazes. www.atariarchive.org/blog/maze-cr...

It's a challenging remote #AT40 this week, as everyone is headed out to remind some folks there's more of us than there are of them. We're headed back exactly 50 years to the day on the way. Storm the arcade, grab your friends, hit the streets—be safe and loud out there.

New blog post! Let's give sports games their due and wander down the path of the innovations of the video golf game. thehistoryofhowweplay.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/h...

October 8, 1977 America, beacon of democracy, is about to get exactly the #AT40 it deserves. Star Wars is still held over for, like, the 25th consecutive week. The first posthumous sightings of Elvis with a beard are happening in various airports. Tragedy is just around the corner…

We conclude the articles on Activision's four initial games with a history of Dragster, David Crane's other game from the lot and, reportedly, one of the company's biggest early successes... as well as a game infamous for a speedrunning scandal. www.atariarchive.org/blog/dragste...

The blog continues its updates, as Bob Whitehead's Boxing gets its time in the spotlight. Unassuming but a blast to play, particularly if you're using the original joysticks and want to experience actual exhaustion in your boxing match. www.atariarchive.org/blog/boxing-...

Renga in Blue has arrived at what is imo the hardest Infocom game ever

#OnThisDay #OTD October 1990, #TheSimpsons pinball game was released by Data East Pinball. It has been cited as helping increase the popularity of pinball machines at the beginning of the 1990s.

Join us for a day of recording the history of Commodore! LIVE! www.twitch.tv/tcwpodcast

Starting in about 15 minutes from now—it's the 7th (almost) annual They Create Worlds livestream! Alex & Jeffrey should be able to stream for about 10 hours before they collapse! Will any audience member be able to last the marathon? Tune in & learn more about Commodore Intl than thought possible

September 29, 1973 Big day: Rose Mary Woods is busy making transcriptions of President Nixon’s recordings and probably thinking about “Alice’s Restaurant”. The music industry is in shambles, but still persists in creating enough music to craft a weekly #AT40.

tfw you crack the code on what was going on in 1974

New Atari Archive piece is up, centered on the birth of Activision and David Crane's Fishing Derby! Activision had a very distinctive and color visual style quite unlike anything Atari had been putting out to that point, and it shows clearly here. www.atariarchive.org/atari-vcs/fi...

In about an hour from now Ethan will be doing much of the heavy lifting in our research while I drone on about Terry Jacks or some pop culture references from 1974. Join us—hilarity will ensue... or else!

government shutdown means analog tv broadcasts can come back, who's going to stop you, the fcc?

A quiz for you: What pioneering coin-op machine released mid-decade drove electro-mechanical amusements into new locations and pushed a new coin price for games? Would you believe that it happened twice? These are the bizarre, parallel tales of the quiz game booms in the 40s and 60s.

Gaming Alexandria has acquired and scanned the entire run of Technopoiis, and I have provided a history overview .Thanks to @playhistory.bsky.social and @marklincadet.bsky.social for editing and factchecking, and for Hubz for putting up with me summarizing many magazines on a hunch.

September 25, 1971 The music industry is in way worse shape than Richard Nixon’s at the start of his second term, to give you an idea of this #AT40. Expect unprecedented levels of “I-don’t-remember-this-song” comments & multiple visits behind the arcade to the older kids in Black Sabbath t-shirts.

anyway, like (probably) most of you, I assumed that shellac was some horrifying 1950s futurist petrochemical, but did you know it is actually an ooze produced from bugs

RESEARCH in action!

This starts in less than an hour. Please check in to hurl critiques in the comments, or find out if this exercise is the perfect mix help sedate you to sleep...

Live on the free feed: @jparish.bsky.social @atariarchive.org @feitclub.bsky.social & @stuartgipp.bsky.social wish they could fix the worst games they ever played retronauts.com/article/2432...

Iconic war-time coin-op ads.

Putting out a call: Do you know of early crafting systems in video games? We're looking for examples prior to 1993.

Podcasting is now twenty years old. And that means shows that ran for years are now just a bunch of URLs that resolve to nothing. Sometimes, someone uploads a full set of mp3s to archive.org, and that’s great! But you can’t easily listen the same way as your other podcasts. What if you could? 🧵

If you’ve never heard of Herman Brood before or only know this #AT40 song, he’s worth checking out. An absolute engine of rock self-destruction whose life ended when he launched himself off the roof of a hotel at age 54. Here’s one of many:

Sept. 15, 1979 The old Disco is dying, and the New Wave struggles to be born; now is the time of Monsters. And there’s no better place to watch that paradigm shift take place than over an #AT40 at the arcade/roller-rink. This one’s an exquisite mess.

I paid real money dollars to acquire this—the greatest coin-op magazine cover ever published—so @gamingalexandria.bsky.social could scan it in ridiculously hi-res for the world to share and it was worth every penny.

james cameron walks up to whiteboard with TOEJAM and EARL written on it. he erases the "and" and writes Vs.