Yar’s Revenge Remake??

I remember Yar’s Revenge back in the day.  It was a very hard game.  I believe I was the only one of my friends that finished it.  And we used to have speed contests finishing Adventure.  Now there’s an old 2D game that needs a remake.  I was skeptical at first, since this game was not that popular, but it looks like they have a good idea and re-imagining going on.

Now, compare to the original.

Yar’s Revenge

Worst Game Ports Ever!

Street Fighter II port on the C-64. What were they thinking?!?!
We all have played them, great games that originally came out on a competing system which were ported to your system in a way that left you wishing for death to the programmers or project managers who botched the hell out of the game you waited to play for so long.
In the old days the Atari 2600 had a port of Pac-Man. To this day, if I met who was responsible for that abomination I'd (to this day) give them the finger. Especially since Ms. Pac-Man was much more faithful to it's arcade counterpart.
Recent times saw the first version of Madden for the PS3 running around 25 frames per second. No, it's not always the fault of the system you're playing on; it's the crap job the company of the game title did that left you saying, "I paid $50 plus dollars for this?!?!?"
This site has a list of ports that truly sucked. It's a trip down memory lane of rushed titles and programming incompetence.
I want to see your most hated ports here on Cowbell Tech. Let the venom flow free!!!

Nolan Bushnell is a bitter old man

OK. I've seen the stories all over the game sites on Nolan Bushnell's comments on video games, and I can only come to one conclusion. He is a very bitter, bitter old man. I know he's kind of retracted some of his statements from earlier, but it still comes off the same to me. The industry has passed him by. One of his quotes, "Video games today are a race to the bottom", describing them generally as "pure, unadulterated trash" that made him "sad", makes him sound like a more sane Jack Thompson. The one quote that had me chuckling to myself was, "What I have consistently been concerned about is sort of the repetition and the lack of innovation," he explained. "Innovation is one of those things that I value very highly, and I just find that as much as I applaud the beautiful, fantastic production guys of Halo 3, it's really Doom 1 in different clothing."
OK. Let's see here. Wasn't Doom 1 just Castle Wolfenstien 2.0? Really now. It is innovation when you come up with a new way of doing an old idea. At least that's what I always thought. When you saw Tetris, you knew that it was fundamentally different than anything you’d seen before(duh!!!).
The Sims was innovative (2nd duh, but arent' there about 427 different expansion packs and versions of the same innovative? I digress).
When you climb up to Dance Dance Revolution and use your whole body, that’s innovation. (anyone remember the various power pads for all the systems?)
When you play air guitar with Guitar Hero, that’s an innovation. (Uhmm. every pattern match game that has ever been out there, except you play with an overpriced 5 button controller?)

/rant off

Read the interview on Gametap

The First Console War

I love G4TV, they point out some of the most interesting things that sometimes I don't think about. Case in point, the next-gen console wars going on isn't the first one. That started with Atari and Intellivision, which I would have to agree that Atari won. Check the quote:

" Intellivision had the more impressive hardware and processing power, but the games just weren't there."

Boy does that sound familiar right about now?

Oh well.... check out this retro clip below, which my favorate part is the "total destruction of a planet."

This One's for Malcolm

Sometimes it's just good to see what got us here (Tech Speaking). There are many paths; but each one helped bring the Tech Savvy to where we are today.

I also bring this up because Malcolm a long while back asked if there were any videos of his beloved computer of the past.

Check out The Atari 800!

Two Hard Drives to Consider; Depending on Your Wallet

Summer is almost upon us, even though it doesn't feel like it in good ol' Indiana. If your hard drive is already full, getting a new one should not be a problem for most users anymore, because hard drive storage capacity is cheaper than ever.
At this point, you can buy a simple hard drive for as little as $40, and even high-capacity 500-GB drive prices are falling below $100.
At this point, the mainstream and sweet spot for most hard drives still are somewhere between 160 and 200 GB, and 160 GB still is plenty of storage space for your operating system and an average amount of data.
Outside of the quick "band-aid" solution of getting a super-cheap Hard Drive, lies the high capacity hard drives. Most people define drives over 500 GB as high capacity. Only Seagate and Hitachi offer hard drives with over 500 GB of capacity, but it is only a matter of a few months until other hard drive makers will follow with larger capacity drives.
If price is no object, Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 currently is the world's largest desktop hard drive. Its five platters spin at 7,200 RPM and the drive carries as much as 32 MB cache memory. Hitachi uses a Serial ATA/300 interface with Command Queuing to communicate with the host system. The drive's performance is excellent, although it is not the undisputed performance champion. Other 7,200 RPM drives perform similarly well, and there still is Western Digital's 10,000 RPM Raptor drive, which delivers a much quicker access time.
At $450, this drive is extraordinarily expensive, which can be justified by its uniqueness. If you're looking for maximum storage capacity, there is no alternative to the 7K1000.
But more than likely, cost is an object to people who also have to buy gasoline in the states. My recommendations for a lower price but nice quality drives is the Western Digital - WD1600AAJS. It is interesting because it offers 160 GB storage capacity on a single platter. This ensures very low heat dissipation, quiet acoustics and little moving parts that suffer from wear and tear. It has 8 MB cache, uses a Serial ATA/300 interface, supports Command Queuing and spins at 7,200 RPM. In addition, this drive starts at only $50 and has a three year warranty.
That my friends, is a great solution at an excellent price!

Atari Joystick Candle Holder

This one's for all my 'old skool' hommies that remember rock'n space invaders, pitfall, and dig dug. This Atari candle holder is the work of artist Mixko and is not currently for sale.

But if you own an Atari joystick, you could probably create your own mold Mythbusters-style.