Art of the Arcade

Art of the Arcade is a fun little site dedicated to video game related art and graphics from the Atari age.  This stuff really brings me back!  The colors, the lines, the 'STACHES!  Great stuff!  In fact, speaking from experience I'd have to say that in some cases the artwork is better than the game it was based on!  Here are a few of my favorites, but be sure to check out the full site at artofthearcade.com, there's loads of great stuff there...

Pitfall!

Oink!

Cops 'n Robbers (looks a bit like an OBEY piece, no?)

Atari Soccer (The 'staches! The short shorts! Plus, is that Will Ferrell?)

It's the one people want most. Act like you know!

Game & Watch: Playable LCD Games

In the days before the Game Boy, handheld gaming was a much different affair. Sure, there had been handheld systems that featured interchangeable games before the Game Boy, (Anyone remember the Microvision? The Solarpower? Didn't think so.) but by and large if you wanted a little gaming on the go you picked up one of these babies....
Back in the 80's, these little single game LCD units were all the rage. In fact, years before the Game Boy first saw the light of day, Gunpei Yokoi (the man behind the Game Boy) designed a number of very successful LCD games for Nintendo under their Game & Watch line. One can still see the influence of their 'Multi Screen' design in the Nintendo DS and 3DS systems.

I recently came across a couple of different sites that allow you to play these classic games through your browser.


The first site is over at handheld.remakes.org (click the image above to go straight to the games). The best of these are the games from the actual Game & Watch line. Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Fire, and Octopus are all solid and worth a try. There a couple of games here that were clearly never available in handheld form, but are entertaining nonetheless. Chainsaw Maniac (a Resident Evil 4 tie-in) and God Of War (a re-skinned whack-a-mole style game) are also worth a look.

The next site is the very lovely pica-pic.com. Again, click the image above for the link. Well designed, and interestingly curated, this site offers several Game & Watch titles (including the rare Legend Of Zelda) as well as a few more bizarre Japanese and Russian games. I haven't had a chance to play them all, but Thief In Garden and Search Light (two different games in which you play as a criminal attempting to evade the police) and Coffee Shop (where you play a waitress serving customers) stood out to me.

Sadly, I wasn't able to find very many playable LCD games made by Tiger Electronics. Those who remember know that Tiger deserves just as much credit (if not more) as Nintendo for their contributions to the LCD gaming craze of the 80's and 90's. Tiger made loads of games that featured TV and movie tie-ins, and they even made several LCD versions of popular arcade and NES titles as well. Pica-pic features a playable version of The Terminator but, much to my surprise, I just couldn't seem to find anything else made by them.


Finally, take a look at a couple of parody pages courtesy of the folks at Handheld Remakes and Something Awful. Here they imagine what many iconic films and TV shows might look like as LCD handhelds.

'You insulted him a little.'

Repost-O-Rama! Lousy Game Consoles

I'm not usually in the habit of reposting entire articles from outside sources, but I got a kick out of this one. The fine folks over at Cracked.com came up with this list of...erm, 'The 6 Most Retarded Video Game Consoles Ever Released'. I admit that I had only vague notions of a couple of their selections (the Magnavox Odyssey, the Fairchild Channel F), and I don't completely agree about the overall 'retardedness' of the console in the number one spot, but its a fun read nonetheless. In fact, if you're not familiar, Cracked has loads of funny, well researched articles about video games. Click the image above and have a look.

Repost-O-Rama!

Here are a couple of links you might find interesting:



'The Great Gatsby' video game. You may have already seen this (it was all over the blogs a couple of weeks ago and everybody and their grandmother has reposted it), but if you haven't it's worth a look. I know nothing about the classic novel on which this game is based (and the sparse in-game cutscenes don't reveal much of the story), but I'm guessing that in the book, protagonist Nick Carraway never gets involved in a life or death struggle with a giant pair of eyeballs that shoot lasers....again, just guessing. Still, even if it strays from the source material, 'The Great Gatsby' is a loving tribute to the 8-bit era; worth playing, even if it is a little short and simplistic. And hey, if you're a fan of the book and you can make heads or tails of the cutscenes, more power to ya. Click the pic to play the game.

Have a look at this...


The Smithsonian Museum is holding an exhibition on the 'art' of video games. The exhibit doesn't open until March of 2012, but they are currently accepting votes on which games to feature. Vote for your favorites from the Atari era to the present. I'll post the results when they become available, and remember, you can't bitch if you don't vote.....my grandmother used to always say that. Click the pic or visit www.artofvideogames.org.