Another game capitalizing on war-time anxiety: Ace Bomber by International Mutoscope! Lighting up the sky with artillery fire as in the Battle of Britain, this was among the most sophisticated war "simulators" before America was confronted with the real thing.

Is there a game designer you wish you could have a conversation with more than any other? I've been lucky to interview some people I think are very important creators, but who would you like to go to lunch with? thehistoryofhowweplay.wordpress.com/2016/09/29/f...

POV: You are watching the stream with @quarterpast.bsky.social and I. www.twitch.tv/play_history We're going live and in your bedroom to DATE and DEBATE every arcade game.

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

50 Years - 1976 Death Race by Exidy. The infamous car-crashing game that sparked some of the first evaluation of the content of video games. @retrohistories.bsky.social had much to say on this topic a few years ago, but perhaps there's yet more to say... gamehistory.org/media-vs-dea...

Don't climb on the #pinball! Well, if you have to, make sure there's stirrups. Some lovely promotional pics for J. H. Keeney's Stable Mate as pointed out by @ftb1979.bsky.social

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.

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

2025 was a year of many big anniversaries in video game history, but 2026 will be just as interesting. I'll be posting about the big fifty, forty, and twenty five year anniversaries over the next few weeks as we ready ourselves for a fine year of retrospective!

We're kicking off a series of music game oral histories with a look back at Rez Infinite -- and why it's been nine years without a follow-up.

Hear about the NES US launch 40 years ago from the people that made it happen: Gail Tilden, Bruce Lowry and Lance Barr with @frankcifaldi.bsky.social from the @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social moderating! Panel recording at youtu.be/f2WDfsiLiRA #prge #prge2025 #retrogaming #VGHF

An overview of the status of women in the video game industry in Japan and in Japanese society more generally (+ a focus on the career of Miki Morimoto, the second known woman to have directed a game at Sega) vgdensetsu.net/riekokodama6 dispo en VF vgdensetsu.net/riekokodamavf6

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

The post-war period carried on some of the frugality of the war days, with conversion kits for popular titles being an open opportunity for smaller manufacturers. Bag-A-Bunny replaced Seeburg light gun games like Ray-o-Lite and Chicken Sam, hopefully bringing vitality to forgotten machines.

Slug by Joey Ramone (Musician) type in program by Joey Latimer has been preserved by eboy71 for the Commodore 64. Enjoy! www.gamingalexandria.com/wp/2025/10/s...

Wiki migration, magazine scanning and indexing, podcast feeds, what I've been playing and squandering money on… it's the October update post, not published late for once. savestate.site/stage-clear-oc...

So, today I'm announcing a new book project... and doing a call for papers: crpgbook.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/t... It's an anthology of video game history outside the usual US perspective - an accessible & exciting panorama of different realities - and I'll pay 300 USD per article. Please share :)

Two men about to roll their hands raw on an Atari Football trakball.

I interviewed @digitaleclipse.bsky.social to write No More Secrets: The Making of #MortalKombat🐉 Legacy Kollection! Read about… 📖 🕹️ Emulating MK4 🎥 Making the documentary 👾Digital Eclipse’s history 🎮And more! Only @shacknews.com www.shacknews.com/article/1462...

A series of articles compiling information on Fuji Enterprises, one of the first companies to release video games in Japan. arcade-terra-incognita.blogspot.com/2025/02/fuji...

1982 was very early for Japanese adventure games, with only a small number of releases. Takara Building Adventure thus is one of the earliest adventure games in Japanese, but it was not generally available... ...until today. Includes some unexpected history! bluerenga.blog/2025/10/29/t...

Passed only just last year, Stanley Jarocki was one of the leading marketing magnates of the coin-op industry in the pre-video era. At Seeburg, he was an enthusiastic advocate for new locations and ideas for jukeboxes. At Midway, he helped heighten the video game revolution.

ANTIC — The Atari 8-bit podcast episode 122 is available ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-episod... and also on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-L6... I talk about my latest computer history archiving efforts.

And for those who have never heard of CyberFlix but are just fans of computer game history, you'll enjoy Nelson's extensive collection of news clippings, which he kept while he was learning about the game industry. archive.gamehistory.org/folder/6994b...

Nelson also kept tons of promotional materials from CyberFlix. We're partial to this flyer for the Japanese localization of their 1993 game Lunicus, featuring new artwork by Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo (!) archive.gamehistory.org/item/f95080e...

This collection gets deep into the history of CyberFlix. Their secret sauce was DreamFactory, a proprietary engine that helped non-programmers write and design games. DreamFactory used the movie industry as a metaphor for game development, with tools like CentralCasting for managing your "actors"

A little bit about Nelson... Andrew Nelson (second from left) was the co-founder and creative director of CyberFlix, a company in Knoxville, TN that made interactive movies. He was actually a magazine writer, not a programmer or design! How? Why?

The Andrew Nelson papers include hundreds of pages of draft scripts for Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, along with research, outlines, and correspondence from development. The drafts have some big differences from the final game that we can't wait for fans to analyze up-close

Presenting our newest archival collection: The Andrew Nelson papers, from the writer of the 1996 mystery game Titanic: Adventure Out of Time 🚢 Read more:

Are arcades to be feared? Dramatic photos in newspaper columns say: Yes.

Closing out 1980 in the Atari Archive blog with Larry Kaplan's Bridge, an incredibly niche game that apparently had quite a following in certain regions. Plus the year end roundup: www.atariarchive.org/blog/bridge-...

Gambling could hardly be simpler than Ad-Lee's Kings Horses. Put in your penny, choose your horse, and collect from the owner. Definitely no rigging or jipping involved.

Another insanely well done announcement video by @mrtalida.bsky.social! Check this out

The making of Phantasy Star, or how a female duo managed to break the mould and go beyond. An opportunity to learn a little about Chieko Aoki, one of the first female directors in the Japanese video game industry. vgdensetsu.net/riekokodama5/ dispo en VF vgdensetsu.net/riekokodamav...

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Mark III: Rieko Kodama, Part IV: Alex Kidd in Miracle World or the birth of a Master System icon (+ Double Target/Quartet, Miracle Warriors and The Black Onyx) vgdensetsu.net/riekokodama4/ dispo en VF vgdensetsu.net/riekokodamav...

Next up: the first adventure of Keith Campbell (legendary adventure columnist). This was designed for a team adventure-playing contest and is "for children" (based on books by the children's author Enid Blyton) but is much harder than that designation suggests. bluerenga.blog/2025/10/26/f...

In a special treat at Pinball Expo, I even got to play the famed Baffle Ball (often inaccurately dubbed the first pinball) - which many will remember from Microsoft Pinball Arcade. It plays distinctly differently than the tables that come right after it; was a thrill to get my hands on it.

Hey! If you enjoyed this apparently viral skeet, you might like this article I wrote a few years ago for @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social about the range of language newspaper editors used in 1976 to describe video games before anybody really knew what to call them: gamehistory.org/a-video-game...

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...

One of these days, I’m going to stop being lazy, get boots on the ground at the LoC, finish a couple more interviews, and eventually turn all this into a book or something.

The full history of the intersection between video games and the FCC in the 1970s through the 80s is mired in bureaucracy and technical details, but it’s a wild tale that doesn’t yet get its due. It’s the hidden history that influenced every company who produced a machine in that era.

Between that and a decade of institutional knowledge among engineers designing “quieter” electronics (instead of thick metal plating or reduced functionality), it led to lower-cost computers & video-game consoles. I’d argue Commodore most benefited from that change with the VIC-20 & Commodore 64.

For a year or so after that, any device connecting to a TV had to meet both rules’ standards (19281 & 20780). Companies petitioned to resolve this double standard, which the FCC did in early 1983, ending a decade of prohibitive regulations for things that attach to TVs.

Tricks like including a TV monitor or stripping out the RF modulator before sale would no longer cut it. But it did open a lane for some companies to design machines without excessive shielding, leading to cost-cutting (namely Commodore).

So, starting roughly in 1981, home computer and video game manufacturers had to comply with Class B device standards. These were not as relaxed as the Class A standards, but were significantly less than those that applied to CITVDs.

I’m also proud of having tracked Mr. Wall down in the first place. His name is like totally SEO-proof.

I interviewed Art Wall a few years ago about all this. He was very generous and spoke at length on the subject. He pointed out that this report was called a “First Report”—and not the usual “Final Report”—because they knew they would issue several follow-ups.

Anyway, on September 18, 1979, deliberations concluded, and the FCC voted to approve the new standards that would apply to all electronic devices (whether they had an RF modulator or not). The point person and author of this first report was Art Wall at the FCC’s Office of Science & Technology.

For a brief period, even arcade video games were going to be placed in the Class B tier of machines—threatening the legitimate operation of just about every arcade game of the day. They’d ultimately be spared and considered Class A devices.

Ironically, Atari petitioned the FCC for even stricter rules, since it was the only manufacturer to have cleared the hurdles for the even tighter CITVD standards when it made its 8-bit machines. Infighting among home computer companies didn’t help the lobbying efforts of smaller manufacturers.