Claiming ot be the biggest simulation gaming even of 1973 is EAST CON III scheduled for July 7th and 8th at the Hotel McAlpin, 34th and Broadway, in New York City. Co-sponsored by the SICL and the AGA, the emphasis in the East Con III will be on competition. All sorts of tournaments in a variety of categories will be held including an Avalon Hill Classics tournament with trophies and $175.00 in cash going to the top three finishers. Miniatures, Chess and Diplomacy competitions will also be held. Among the other attractions will be a magic show by talented entertainer (and designer of LUFTWAFFE) Lou Zocchi, and a demonstration of an electronic space warfare game played on television screens!

The very first issue of 1973 wargaming magazine the Avalon Hill General contains a surprising reference to "a demonstration of an electronic space warfare game played on television screens." I had to know more...

ウルトラマンとは何か？ドキュメンタリー「THE ORIGIN OF ULTRAMAN」公開日決定

ギレルモ・デル・トロ、是枝裕和、庵野秀明、樋口真嗣、黒部進、桜井浩子らが証言

natalie.mu/eiga/news/668847

#ウルトラマン60周年

Odyssey #3, Journey Through Time (1980) Joel Mick and James Taranto return for one last game. By my best reckoning, this is the first adventure game ever made that involves traveling back in time. (Krell Software’s Time Traveller i…

maybe bluerenga.blog/2019/12/10/o...

Goblins (1979) has a bit where you eat cheese and turn small to go into a small hole but I don't believe you actually meet the mouse in question

there's a bunch in 1981 and 1982, I think the most "fun" appearance is probably bluerenga.blog/tag/the-mous...

The Phantom Ship / Yuureisen: Cursed Defiler Last time, I mentioned three books published at the incorporation of Shinkigensha. One of them was an NEC PC “yearbook”, essentially an encyclopedia of software. Looking at the inside f…

my exploration of The Phantom Ship / Yuureisen continues, as I realize the "quantum state" of the LOOK command, hear the cries of the damned, and vanish into the depths of the ocean

also, more history including potential connections with a police framing plot

bluerenga.blog/2026/04/14/t...

pillage-village – Renga in Blue Posts about pillage-village written by Jason Dyer

btw I do often have someone ask about game X and I really have never seen it because it never made any lists, meaning I can add it, so please feel free to keep asking about things!

Pillage Village was just someone randomly finding a disk in their stash bluerenga.blog/tag/pillage-...

I have it on my list. I also have the early original version but I was having tech issues so it is postponed

mystery-house-japan – Renga in Blue Posts about mystery-house-japan written by Jason Dyer

my writeups other than Omotesando so far:

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bluerenga.blog/tag/diamond-...
bluerenga.blog/tag/takara-b...
bluerenga.blog/tag/cosmo-cr...
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If you have any stories I'd love to hear them!

cosmo-cross – Renga in Blue Posts about cosmo-cross written by Jason Dyer

if you'd like to see a timeline by month, I have one at the end of my post on Cosmo Cross

bluerenga.blog/tag/cosmo-cr...

omotesando – Renga in Blue Posts about omotesando written by Jason Dyer

I wrote about it here!

that game is written in English

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ad from I/O Magazine with a spooky ship

in my second post on The Phantom Ship (Yuureisen), the first text-only adventure game in Japanese, I give a little more history including early ads, explore the map, and explore the verbs used and how each language gets a chance to reset their standards

bluerenga.blog/2026/04/11/t...

The Phantom Ship (1982) 1940 was a curious year to be starting a publishing company, but especially one in Tokyo. This was in the midst of WW2, and the same year Italy, Germany, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact. Censo…

Next on All the Adventures, I embark on a story that starts during WW2 and the founding of a publishing company

passing through accounting textbooks and innovations in erotic scholarship

and landing at the first all-text adventure game written in Japanese.

bluerenga.blog/2026/04/05/p...

Tough to estimate but I think 2027

Yes, I have played it before, and it is slated to land on my blog sometime in not terribly long (I sorted it with 1983)

www.solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C24...

Skull Cave: The Mystery of the Mazes This one was from a while ago, and while I’m not replaying (I beat the game, just not with a full score) I did check a walkthrough that was posted last year (after I had finished) because I w…

in which I give a history of the famous D&D module Tomb of Horrors, and explain why it connects to adventure games more strongly than other modules

and return to a Sol-20 game with an open mystery about its mazes, even though we have a complete walkthrough

bluerenga.blog/2026/04/02/s...

how accurate is the assertion made elsewhere it was "designed by Apple's marketing department"? How does a marketing department design a computer?

Wasn't the lack of air vents (apparently a big hardware failure source) a Jobs thing?

Head On (Sega/Gremlin, 1979) – exp. The original dot eater from a forgotten pioneer.

Unlocked! I play the original dot-eater, Sega/Gremlin's Head On by going to some lengths to play Sega Ages 2500 Vol. 23. And I learn that there's a pioneer of video games that we don't talk about enough: Lane Hauck.

Is your oral history thing going to have Apple III content?

Might need that in the future for … reasons.

Epic Hero #2, Dungeon of Derojhen: Final Judgement I’ve defeated the game; my previous posts are needed to understand this one. First of all: it was a short hop to defeating the vampire master (and both John Myers and Rob guessed the answer m…

the grand conclusion of Dungeon of Derojhen

where a familiar foe returns

and I observe why Epic Hero 2's Experimentalism design philosophy didn't grate me as much as it has with other fantasy games

bluerenga.blog/2026/04/01/e...

Beyond Zork, Border Zone, and Sherlock are the three that use z5

This is the best game I have played so far in 2026

There are multiple points where failing rolls can be good things

There is enough wild stuff going on in the fringe that you want to be making “wrong choices”

I got one of the best monologues in the game from an utterly daft choice

just went back to check and it isn't looking good

maybe it's just not obvious enough there's a game here? It does seem to boil down to a couple art pieces and it's a little less certain it would get over the finish line than some projects

maybe it's a little _too_ close to Hotel Dusk?

Epic Hero #2, Dungeon of Derojhen: Experiments in Death (Continued from my previous post.) There are two different philosophies when it comes to deathtraps involving multiple choices (buttons, doors, etc.) from around this time. Philosophy Type One (let…

Epic Hero 2 (Dungeons of the improbably spelled Derojhen) continues, as I theorize about Signalism vs. Experimentalism in game design and drag a vampire in to visit the king.

bluerenga.blog/2026/03/30/e...

Epic Hero #2, Dungeon of Derojhen (1982) This continues my series on Marc Leduc starting with Epic Hero 1. At least, unlike the previous game, this game is traditionally hero-like. Before going into the gameplay: I’ve managed to une…

A new quest begins at All the Adventures: Epic Hero 2. In unearth more history of Marc Leduc and get stuck on performing an elaborate ritual (perhaps you, the reader, can help out?)

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Yeah, Japanese adventures pretty much were straight inspired by the early Sierra games (they didn’t really have exposure to Crowther/Woods) and you can follow a line straight from that to visual novels and dating sims

Seiko’s Adventure (1983) Also known as Seiko no Adventure or 星子のアドベンチャー; I decided to use the English title given in the game itself. Yasuhiro Fukushima was the child of entrepreneurs (his father: movie theaters and pachin…

In which I give the history of the founding of Enix, the (in)famous contest which they used to solicit their first round of games, and the utterly bizarre Seiko's Adventure, which comes close to being the most surreal game I've ever played for the blog.

bluerenga.blog/2026/03/25/s...

is there a big 1238/1239 schism in scholarship

this is one of those only-a-handful-of-historians-in-the-world-care type pictures, but for the tiny corner studying this sort of thing (eremeka arcade games), it is a very big deal

honestly thought for a while maybe the mention of a 605 crane was a misprint

The Missing People: Violence Is the Answer to This One I’ve finished the game; this continues from my previous post. (As predicted, it didn’t take that long, but I wanted to talk theory a little more so you get a whole new post for the endi…

the conclusion to The Missing People, the recently rescued game that had only published one copy

including theorizing about subjective reactions in game design

bluerenga.blog/2026/03/24/t...