I spent a lot of time with a Commodore 64 growing up and it was primary gaming program from 1987 to 1993 even though I also had an NES and Super NES along the way. I wish there had been a Commodore 64 specific game magazine here in the U.S. but there wasn't. I didn't know about this U.K. published magazine until many years later. Though it covered the Amiga a little for a short time, it was always primarily a Commodore 64 gaming magazine. The April 1990 issue includes:
All of the photos in this set were taken in the late 1960s, and all were likely taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first photo was processed in April 1968. This looks like maybe some kind of party. The two older women have flowers but I don't have enough context to know exactly what was going on.
The One is a computer gaming magazine that was published in the U.K. in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While it would eventually become an Amiga exclusive magazine, in early 1991 it was still also covering the PC and Atari ST. The February 1991 issue includes:
The One (February 1991)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist is essentially TMNT: Turtles in Time remade for the Sega Genesis. The controls are mostly the same, the gameplay is essentially unchanged, though the levels are somewhat different. There are five levels and they are a combination of new levels made for this game and others based on Turtles in Time and the original TMNT arcade game.
Between the two, the Super Nintendo version is really the better version. More colorful graphics, smoother animation and it’s neat being able to fling your enemies towards the screen. Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with the Genesis version and if you are looking for more of the same style game play as Turtles in Time then Hyperstone Heist is a good choice (assuming you have a Genesis of course). The reverse is true also. Hyperstone Heist only had about half the levels of Turtles in Time but they were much longer levels. The speed at difficulty level in Hyperstone Heist was a bit higher.
Both Hyperstone Heist and Turtles in Time were released by Konami in 1992. The arcade version of Turtles in Time has seen re-releases as a bonus in TMNT 3: Mutant Nightmare for the PS2, GameCube and Xbox. In 2009 a 3D remake was released via Xbox Live and the PS3 PlayStation Network. I’m not aware of any remakes or re-releases specifically of Hyperstone Heist. The images above are from Hyperstone Heist on the Sega Genesis.
All of the photos in this set were taken in the 1960s, probably in the Lansing, Michigan area.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (485-488)
You had to be pretty hardcore to be computing in 1980. However, Byte was there to help you along. It covered all kinds of systems and much of the content was highly technical. The November 1980 issue includes:
Byte: The Small Systems Journal (November 1980)
Mean Streets was the first of a series of games featuring Tex Murphy as the protagonist. Mean Streets, which was released in 1989 by Access, was the only one in the series available on the Commodore 64. This was one of those games I always wanted but never got to play. What’s not appealing about a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk mystery? In addition to being available on the Commodore 64, it was also of course available on DOS based PCs where it was first developed. It was also ported to the Amiga and Atari ST but only in Europe for some reason.
The game is essentially a graphic adventure but there are other elements, including even a 3D flight sim. You, as Tex Murphy are investigating the mysterious death of a college professor who was seen falling from a bridge and had previously been working on a secret project. The police think it was suicide but his daughter is convinced it was murder.
The PC version was one of the first to support 256 color VGA graphics on the PC and also introduced a technique for creating digitized voices and other advanced sound using just the PC speaker without a sound card. The Commodore 64 version paled in comparison in these regards (though it seems they could have done better with the sound if they had wanted to). However, the consensus seems to be that the playability is nearly as good as the PC version and that’s what is most important. I’m not sure how the Amiga and Atari ST ports fared.
Sequels included Martian Memorandum released in 1991, Under a Killing Moon released in 1994, The Pandora Directive released in 2009 and Tesla Effect in 2014. The original was also remade in 1998 as Tex Murphy: Overseer. None of these made it to the Commodore 64 though.
The first two photos were processed in August 1979 and show people water skiing on a lake or river probably somewhere in Michigan.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (481-484): All of the photos in this set were take in in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters was released on three different systems but it was essentially three different games as opposed to being ports of the same game. While the same basic concept exists in all of them, that is the turtles have to fight in a tournament, the story, characters, locations and controls among other aspects of the game vary greatly between the different versions. This game was released by Konami for the NES (the last Konami game for this system), Super NES and Sega Genesis between 1993 and 1994.
In the Sega Genesis version pictured above, the player travels throughout Dimension X fighting clones of themselves among other enemies. The general consensus seems to be that the Super Nintendo version is the best by a slight margin and the NES version is not surprisingly the worst but they are really all different games and all worth having if you are a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan.
The Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 is a Core 2 Duo based laptop that was released circa 2006. In an era when the laptop market was dominated by HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc., the LifeBook line by Fujitsu was somewhat less common. Unlike various Dell and HP models which came in a multitude of configurations, the LifeBook N6420 seems to have only had two basic configurations. Overall, it seems to have been a relatively high end model though not quite rising to the level of professional workstation or gaming powerhouse.
Digital Archaeology: Fujitsu LifeBook N6420
Most of the photos in this set were processed in the early 1980s and were likely taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first photo is the exception. It is undated but is labeled "Playground - Marburg". It looks like it was taken in the 1960s and I'm assuming this is Marburg, Germany.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (477-480)
Byte was perhaps the best multi-format computer magazine there was, particularly if you wanted something more technical. Eventually, it mostly just covered the PC but that was just a reflection of the market. The December 1985 issue was huge at over 500 pages and includes:
Byte (December 1985)
All of the photos in this set were taken in the 1960s and were all likely taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first three photos were all processed in August 1961 and are all labeled 'Bud Maries 61'. This looks like some kind of a party at the home of who I assume were friends of the photographer.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (473-476)
If you had an IBM PC or compatible in the 1980s or 1990s, PC World was probably the magazine you wanted. It was certainly one of the most popular and perhaps the best all around PC magazine. The September 1986 issue includes:
PC World (September 1986)
All of the photos in this set were taken circa 1974 and were likely taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first photo was processed in February 1974 and was taken at a toddler's birthday party. Check out the homemade Winnie the Pooh cake.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (469-472)
Herzog Zwei was an early real-time strategy game released for the Sega Genesis in 1990. It actually predates and influenced the development of Dune II which is often credited with popularizing the genre. The player controls a flying mech from which they can purchase and deploy/redeploy and assign tasks to various ground units throughout various missions/levels.
Ironically, the game received pretty mixed reviews when it was released but retrospective reviews have been much better. For example, Electronic Gaming Monthly game the game a score of 4.25/10 upon release yet included it in its list of top 100 games (at number 43) in 1997. I think it was a case of limited experience with and not enough time to explore what was really a new genre at the time.
A sequel was planned on the 32X but that plan died with the early demise of the 32X. There have been no official sequels or re-releases since.
The One is a computer gaming magazine that was published in the U.K. While it originally also covered the PC and Atari ST, by 1995 it was only covering the Amiga. The January 1995 issue includes:
The One (January 1995)
If you were a member of the Atari Club, you could get this steaming pile for $5 off!
Seriously though, there really are many games that are worse than E.T. but perhaps none with such an abysmal hype/quality ratio. In those days, there was no internet so word of mouth was a little slower. Despite how awful E.T. was, it still became one of the best selling Atari 2600 games largely because so many people got it for Christmas. Despite this, there still really were many thousands buried in a landfill in New Mexico.
E.T. is largely credited with the video game crash of 1982/83 but really that’s giving it too much credit. No doubt being such a dud had an effect and maybe if it had instead been one of the best games of all time (i.e. lived up to its advertising and hype) things would have been a little different. However, the fact is that there was so much garbage and so many clones (often clones of the garbage) being rushed to market at this time that the crash was probably a forgone conclusion. Besides, the video game crash helped lead to the rise in popularity of home computers and my Commodore 64 was so much better anyway…
Rambo III was a game released in 1988 based on the Sylvester Stallone film of the same name and it is another one of those games that was available on a variety of systems but depending on the system had different developers and was a significantly different game.
The Sega Master System version (title screen above) was developed by Sega and was very similar to Operation Wolf. It is essentially a rail shooter in which you use the light gun (preferably) to shoot at on screen enemies. The game was also an arcade game (developed by Taito), available for the Sega Genesis (developed by Sega), and available for various computers including the PC (DOS), Commodore 64, Atari ST and Amiga among others (these were developed by Ocean). The Ocean developed games were completely different games than the Sega developed games and even games developed by the same developer for different systems have significant differences.
The Color Computer was a fairly popular and one of the longest supported computers of the 8-bit era. It was not at all related to the standard TRS-80 (Models I-IV) and used the relatively unique 6809 CPU which was pretty advanced for the time and had some 16-bit features. For some reason the Color Computer line never really gained a huge amount of third party software support as compared to others like Atari, Apple and Commodore but it had decent support from Radio Shack for more than a decade (and there was SOME 3rd party support).
The above ad by Spectral Associates, a retailer for Color Computer upgrades, accessories and software, is from 1982. There were three Color Computer models throughout the year but in 1982 when this ad appeared they were still on the original iteration. As you can see from the ad, 1982 was early enough in the life of home computers that software just being written in machine language (as opposed to BASIC) was considered a selling point.
The photos in this set were likely all taken in the 1960s or possibly 1970s in Michigan.
The first photo is labeled 'Jon Grad 64'. I started off asking ChatGPT about the uniform and the conversation eventually led to a probably identity of 'Jon J. Kipke, Central Michigan University, Class of 1964, Army ROTC'. If you are curious, see the ChatGPT conversation here: https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6abfdc42892c8191b3dc4104b5e6f98a Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (465-468)
Maximum PC was my favorite computer magazine. It was a relative newcomer to the computer magazine world being introduced as 'boot' in 1998 before becoming Maximum PC a year or two later. This was a magazine for PC enthusiasts, those who liked to build their own PCs, PC gaming, etc. It was somewhat similar to another enthusiast magazine for the Macintosh called MacAddict. In fact, both descended from an earlier magazine called CD-ROM Today. The April 2006 issue of Maximum PC includes:
Maximum PC (April 2006)
The photos in this set were likely all taken in the 1960s or 1970s in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first photo is undated but was likely taken in the late 1960s or early 1970s. The sign makes it obvious where this was taken. Tecumseh Park is a park in Lansing, Michigan that provides access to the Tecumseh River.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (461-464)
This post includes the contents of INTRO.DOC. This file is dated September 2nd, 1985 and is in a subdirectory called TELEPSYC. I've posted several documents from this subdirectory and I've been assuming that they came from Delphi since so much of the stuff I've posted from this disk (and others) have been from Delphi. However, based on this file, it looks like all of the files in this subdirectory came from a BBS that operated as a telecommunications counseling service. This document is a log of an initial logon and sign-up on this BBS so it has a ton of introductory information on how the service works. Previous documents from this subdirectory are most likely various 'pamphlets' that could be read on the BBS.
Digital Archaeology: Floppy Disk #14 – INTRO.DOC
The photos in this set were likely all taken in the 1960s or 1970s in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first photo is undated but was likely taken in the late 1960s or early 1970s. It is labeled 'Lansing Shuffleboard Club'.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (457-460)
PC World was one of the first and longest running magazines dedicated to the PC. It was also one of the best. The June 1983 issue includes:
PC World (June 1983)
The photos in this set were taken in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A couple were likely taken in the Lansing, Michigan area but a couple appear to have been taken on a vacation which included a trip to the Grand Canyon.
The first photo was processed in June 1971 and is labeled 'Grand Canyon'.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (453-456)