An image of the game being played; it is night, and the moon is full. In the distance, several mountains can be seen; many are snowcovered. Two lone trees are on the landscape, and in the front, a crashed prop plane (broken windshield, broken tail, and broken wing, with nonsense call letters) can be seen. There is a prompt at the bottom, awaiting the user's input.

Developed by a team of doctors, Wilderness had a traditional adventure goal (find a gold statue, and extract), but the gameplay focused on shelter, encumbrance, star navigation, limiting exposure, and food safety.

A dense article lists all the uploads to a Color Computer/OS9 usergroup in the August 1990 issue of The Rainbow magazine.

Uploads Galore!

A three-piece desktop computer. Up top is a black CRT, with a single red power button. The pizzabox style case features two 3.25" drives, a recessed red power switch, and an unlabeled future expansion port. The front of the case seems to slide off entirely, which would allow the top to hinge up and off, like their competitor Apple. The keyboard, itself, is black in the familiar IBM layout, with one addition: a raised ridge, where a student might rest a pencil.

Why did the JX fail? Perhaps selling a 64kb computer for $2115 while Commodore was rolling out a 128kb machine for $299 has something to do with it.

Hey! Someone tell @spinny.bsky.social that something in Skybot broke:
Error when attempting to post that happened after we tried to contact Bluesky.

Hey! Someone tell @spinny.bsky.social that something in Skybot broke:
Error posting #55:

An ad for the company Creative Software. The four left boxes depict VIC20 cartridge games: a man in space for Moondust, giant robot wasps attacking buildings in Save New York, a UFO shooting at a fighter jet shooting at a satellite dish in Astroblitz, and a giant fly attacking a garbage truck in Trashman. All are marked "Joystick controller required." The five smaller applications on the side are a sports car on a jack named Car Costs, a car attached to a comically giant loan agreement named Loan Analyzer, a set of bar charts named Household Finance, a safe with valuables inset into a wall covered in floral wallpaper named Home Inventory, and a man leaning over and considering his computer named Decision Maker.

The #1 independent VIC-20 full-line software publisher in the US is proud to announce 4 new Game Cartridges & 5 Home Appliances for the COMMODORE 64.

A Commodore 64 screenshot. Underneath the gothic font header of "The Bard's Tale by Michael Cranford", a bard plays a lute and sits on a barrel, drink at his side; customers lean in to listen. Below are the lyrics above: "The song I sing will tell the tale of a cold and wintry day;"

♪ The song I sing will tell the tale of a cold and wintry day; / when evil fled, and brave men bled, the Dark One came to stay... ♫

The cover of Family PC magazine for October 1999. Below the white-and magenta logo are the words "Real Life. Real Answers." The cover image is a kid holding a gun, looking at the viewer very intensely - well, as intense as a clean-cut 14-year-old wearing his hat backwards holding a pink plastic lightgun can be, anyways. The headlines on the left hand side read: "Teens & Violence", "Should We Blame The Games?", "How to Talk to Your Kids," "9 Games Kids Shouldn't Play," "PLUS: "Halloween Fun & Crafts," "Online Trading: Tread Carefully"

Teens & Violence: Should We Blame The Games? (Source.)

A Utopian Scholastic style ad that shows a computer. The title: "For the first time, a community has banded together to design their next computer. A revolutionary new computer, conceived by you. The MM/1." Many dense articlets follow, including: Power, Support, Smart, Free, Compare, For $779, Systems, Extras, Giveaway. It's credited to Interactive Media Systems of Davidson, NC.

When Tandy cancelled the OS-9 line, fans in 1990 tried to step up. The MM/1 beat the Amiga, Mac, and most PCs on price, but with less than 500 units made - and only 8 ever sold, not including the giveaway mentioned in this ad - there was never going to be the software needed. (Source.)

An ad from the August 1983 issue of Compute! magazine. Page top, the heading "PRESENTING THE REMARKABLE SV-318." Beneath is a photo of the machine hovering in an abstract blue and white field; the machine has a white case, a red-and-yellow logo, a 71 key keyboard with grey chiclet keys, and most notable of all, a red joystick machine right about the size of a pinball plunger instead of cursor keys. Page center, the slogan: "The personal computer you'll grow into, not out of." Page bottom left, a dense table presenting the Spectravideo as superior to its competitors (accomplished with gentle amounts of lyings, such as saying the Commodore 64 doesn't have a cartridge slot). Extremely dense text appears page bottom right. At the very bottom, the red-and-orange "SV 318" logo appears, followed by "For under $300" and the final, ultimate disclaimer: "This device has not been approved by the Federal Communications Commission."

For a machine called the "Spectravideo," how come it's a grey and white box with only a tiny splash of red?

An article about the game Lemmings for the PC-9801, X68000, and FMTOWNS computers, from the Japanese magazine Technopolis (Dec 1991). Powers, goals, and levels are depicted.

Lemmings got into everything back in the day

An advertisement for Utopia. Top right, a busy futuristic city is surrounded by a colorful and wild plant of alien megaflora. Left, screenshots show diplomacy, and terrain tiles. Bottom right is marketing spiel asking "Can you create Utopia? Now's your chance to find out." Bottom left are ratings such as 94% ('The best game Gremlin has ever released.') from Super Star, 93% ('A cross between Sim City & Populus') from The One, and 93% ('The next Generation in Godgames') from Amiga Computing Gamer Gold.

Utopia (PC/Amiga/Atari ST, 1992)

A magazine article for the game Temimu. Top left, it gives the name, the review ("Daruma fighting!"), the controls (one player on the keyboard, one player on the controller); it states that the game works on the MSX and MSX2 with 8K RAM. Top left, it gives a screenshot of two bird-looking things, P1 in yellow and P2 in white, facing each other; P1 has 10 points of life, P2 has 10 points of life. The short Japanese description describes our heroes, the play mechanics (two players jockey to a distance where they can use specific fighting game moves). Image right, the three special moves our heroes can use are depicted, top to bottom: Power Bomb, Brain Buster, and Back Drop.

Temimu (MSX, 1992; Hirota Yusuke) (Source.)

In a landscape screenshot, the top shows a rotting knight flying on a skeletal dragon, with red eyes watching the attacking knight from the night sky. The text reads: "Maya screams in despair as she recognizes the gruesome remains of her ex-lover. Sir Karl brandishes his sword as his death dragon swoops towards the scattering crowd. Press button or return to continue."

Death Knights of Krynn took the familiar gold box D&D formula and moved it the world of Dragonlance, where Arthurian heroes fought Gothic horrors.

( Whoops, that may be the wrong link - may have copypasta'd wrong. I'll fix it and continue the thread when I get back home. )

Even as we were pouring billions of dollars into new infrastructure, the "Digital Divide" was a topic of great concern - the new technology was available to a few, and inequitable access was of great concern.

@wyden.senate.gov gave a speech about the Digital Divide on June 30th, 1999.

Hi, Adam! Single-topic novelty account here. It would have been awfully hard for people to promote smartphones in 1999, considering that SymbianOS wasn't commercially available until 2000.

But you know what transformational technology was being promoted in 1999?

The Internet!

The cover for the book "Invent Your Own Computer Games: A Computer-Awareness First Book" by Fred D'Ignazio. In the orange frame and background book, a cathode-green sphinx and a white dragon play tic-tac-toe on a board balanced on a black pyramid; the white dragon, playing X, has just lost.

I could make a whole sub-bot based just on programming books with dragons on the cover.

A type-in program from the August 1988 issue of micomBASIC magazine. The left page has instructions, and a tiny illustration of a wizard threatened by a flower. The right page has screenshots of the title scren, a starting stage, a kill screen, and an illustration of a softlock.

THE DEVILISH LABYLINCE (FM-7 and FM-77, 1988) (Source.)

The Cardiac - "CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation", a blue cardboard computer resembling a calculator wheel. Device left is the output strip. In the left half is the 'accumulator', which is altered by three cardboard strips; a flowchart gives instructions on how to interpret the 'command' at any given step. On the right half is the memory, which is able to be written to by the human operator's pencil; to the left of each slot is a space for the operator to put a 'bug' which acts as the instruction pointer

CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation - CARDIAC

The cover from the June 1988 issue of Computer Magazine (the IEEE trade magazine) is a watercolor painting with possible digital touchups, showcasing the CD as an office building to indicate its use in business computing. Up top, the logo 'Computer' fills the cloudy sky. The bulk of the image is a idyllic city on a bay (get it? drive bay?). Cover left is the CD Tower (the parking lot and traffic cirlce around the base forms the "CD Drive"), which reflects the huge filing cabinet on top that forms the "Skyscraper" the parking lot surrounds. Individual cabinets in the skyscraper-cabinet are labelled things like Version Histories, File Archiving, Data Logging, and various cabinets are open to reveal the "workers" working in the "skyscraper" keeping books, working on easels, typing on fan-fold typewriters, and otherwise engaging in the world of business circa 1988. Cover right, the bay of the faux town has the headline story: "The Optical File Cabinet." Cover by Jay Simpson.

THE OPTICAL FILE CABINET (Source.)

A magazine ad from the March 1990 issue of Compute! Magazine. The center reads "IF ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS, YOU'D BE DEAF BY NOW. At Tengen, we take only the best hits from the arcade and make them available for play on your comptuer. We let the incredible action in our games do all the talking. Besides, with the roar of excitement in our ears, you can't hear our words anyways. TENGEN: Arcade Hits That Hit Home." Surrounding the ad copy are (bottom left clockwise to bottom right) Rolling Thunder, a platformer whose cover art features a man shooting offscreen while cradling an injured woman; Blasteroids, a shootemup whose cover art features two spaceships narrowly avoiding hitting each other while firing at a meteorite storm; Vindicators, a top-down tank combat game whose cover art features a giant tank firing a massive energy weapon; Xybots, a first-person cover shooter maze featuring a giant robot hunting a tiny human on its cover art; and All Points Bulletin, a top-down cop racing game whose cover features a police car with lights blazing driving through a wall of Wanted posters.

IF ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS, YOU'D BE DEAF BY NOW (Source.)

In the center of the screen, a rabbit samurai raises his sword and prepares to attack a rhinoceros in a forest; snowy mountains are in the background. Up top, we see the samurai's face contorted into anger, while the rhino says: "All those who challenge me die, ronin..." The corners of the screen give the player's money (3 ryo), Karma (4), the Player's health (9/10), and the enemy's health (8/10).

Usagi Yojimbo (Firebird; C64, 1988)

A radio that combines the design language of old American muscle cars and the spacerace. The top is forest green with tailfins, the bottom is ivory white, and the front is shining silver, on a silver stand. Up top we find a single antenna, a red power/volume dial, and you turn the 'intake" of the rocket to change the stations (the tuning display is immediately behind the engine, incoporated into the body).

The Sharp Tranket transistor radio (1960)

An ad from the August 1983 issue of Compute! Magazine. Up top, the slogan: "Learn to type or get blown to bits!" Page center, a boy sitting at his computer trying to type gets exploded; the evil face on the CRT has a lightning nose that is reaching out of the machine to explode the boy. Below, dense breathless ad copy proclaims "MasterType makes typing a blast," "MasterType earns a ten-gun salute," and "MasterType teaches your fingers to fly." At the very bottom, the Lightning Software logo appears below the MasterType logo.

LEARN TO TYPE OR GET BLOWN TO BITS.

A spade lug switch box. The face indicates various ports: GAME, 300Ω, 75Ω, TV - and has a black rocker switch to switch between GAME and ANT. The whole device is on a woodgrain background. From the bottom, a spade switch output wire runs offscreen.

I got the hook-up.

Ad top, a nondescript anthro mascot critter in backwards cap, black shirt with magenta 'A', and no discernable pants skateboards on the logo. The "Web Portal For Kids!" shows a nondescript browser (some sort of mashup of Windows icons with then-current-System 8 textures, and a IE5-esque layout of icons) showing the Alfy website, which has six icons - all very low linecount, very low color count icons of different things kids might be itnerested in like dogs, elephants, lions, dinosaurs, fish, and bats. The bottom text reads: "Revolutionizing how your kids search the web" "www.alfy.com", "a safe, easy, and educational place where kids can reach over 4000 sites thorugh pictures!" From the October 1999 issue of Family PC magazine.

THE WEB PORTAL FOR KIDS! (Source.)

Up top, the credit "Tim Hartnell, Master Gamesman". Below, the caveat, "For most popular home computers that use basic." A green-and-yellow dragon with blue crest and pink wings curls around the title: "Creating Adventure Games On Your Computer"

Have you ever wanted to make a video game? on your OWN computer? Computer illuminary Tim Hartnell has just the book for you. (Source.)

A black-and-white top-down block pusher, in the original System 6 black-and-white. Up top, a leprechaun is walking, with pots of gold to collect nearby. Down below, a troll is trapped by boulders; if the boulders are moved to retreive gold it will be free to chase the leprechaun. On the right, birds are moving around a fence to chanse the leprechaun.

Leprechaun (Original Mac, 1989)

ROGUE: The Adventure Game. The game of Rogue was originated by: Michael C. Toy and Kenneth C.R.C. Arnold Adapted for the IBM PC by: John Lane. Significant design contributions by: Glenn Wichman and scores of others. Public Domain Software - 1984, not to be sold. Rogue's Name? Player

Rogue (DOS, 1984)