By Luke Anderson

The floppy disk has been dead for years now. I still remember working in retail and having to explain to customers why their new computer wouldn’t include a floppy drive. I believe the last time I had to use one was when I installed XP on a SATA drive. If you miss the sight of those ugly black disks, you could always get these Floppy CD-R discs.

What’s interesting here is that someone has decided to take a dying format and disguise it as a dead piece of technology. I’m not necessarily implying that we’re going to stop seeing CD’s in the near future, but I can count the number of times I’ve burned a CD in the last year on one hand. I usually just copy files onto a flash drive, or email the file if it’s small enough. With their relatively small (200MB) size and $10 per disc price tag, they aren’t good for much more than nostalgia.

[ DesignBoom ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The corporation might be long gone, but Pan Am’s blue and white globe logo continues to enjoy a life of its own. Not only is it an iconic example of great graphic design, but the airline has also become the poster child for large corporations that went belly up. This Pan Am watch, however, tries to remember the better times, and prominently features the company’s signature blue and white color scheme, and the aforementioned globe logo.

Its 2-inch face includes digital and analog date displays, dual-time zone indicators and even a day-of-the-week display marked with a tiny circling airplane and curved jet stream. How cute, it almost makes you forget about those thousands of lost jobs. The watch also has luminescent accents on the face for those overnight red-eye flights, a matching blue and white leather band and is 3 ATM water-resistant. And if the $395 price tag from the Wireless Catalog seems a bit steep for you, just remember the watch does come with the mini Pan Am travel bag pictured above.

[ Pan Am Departure Dual-Time Watch ]

By Andrew Liszewski

To be honest, I always preferred Johnny Lightning’s die-cast offerings over Hot Wheels when I was younger. Sure, they were a bit more expensive, but I felt the extra attention to detail was worth it. But the one thing that Johnny Lightning never had (to the best of my knowledge) was its own video game. Hot Wheels for the Commodore 64 was a slightly more obscure title, and like Nintendogs or GTA it provided a sandbox approach to gaming where there was really no defined goal. You spent your time driving around a small city where you could stop at gas stations, enter demolition derbies and even swap your ride for a firetruck which required you to put out random fires around the city. Basically the same stuff you did with real Hot Wheels cars and playsets in your parent’s living room.

At the start of the game you could choose from a small selection of pre-designed vehicles (which vaguely resembled actual Hot Wheels cars) or you could walk into the factory and design your own, which was probably the best part of the game. Using your joystick as a mouse, you assembled your car from various components and you could even send it to the paint shop and choose from a mind-blowing selection of 12 different colors! Overall Hot Wheels wasn’t the most exciting or challenging game in my giant box of C64 floppy disks, but it’s open-ended nature made it a staple of those occasional rainy Saturday afternoons.

[ Lemon64.com - Hot Wheels ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’ve been racking my brain for the past few weeks, but I just can’t remember ever playing a video game that had some sort of Christmas theme to it. I know games like that existed, but I like to keep this column limited to titles that I’ve actually played. So instead, for this week’s special ‘Christmas Edition’ of The Games We Played, please enjoy these scans of video games and systems from the 1983 Sears Wishbook catalog, courtesy of The Retroist.

Let’s face it, before the internet or you were old enough to hang around with the weirdos at your local computer store, catalogs were really the only place where a kid could get information about what new games and systems would soon be available. And since 1983 was the year of the great video game crash, this particular Wishbook features everything from the Odyssey 2 to the Vectrex and even Merlin! I can remember a lot of these systems being on my Christmas lists of yesteryear, and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind finding a few of these under the tree this year either.

[ The Retroist - The Video Game Systems Of The 1983 Sears Wishbook ]

By Andrew Liszewski

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and time and time again we’ve seen that a bit of controversy can do wonders for a game’s popularity. Sometimes that is. While it didn’t contain any gore or adult material, let’s just say that Gary Coleman would probably refer to The Great Giana Sisters as the biggest rip-off since Webster. The game wasn’t just an homage to Super Mario Bros., it basically was Super Mario Bros. In fact, the version of the game I had for my C64 was cracked to include Mario sprites, and it wasn’t until years later that I learned Nintendo hadn’t actually produced a version of their beloved side-scroller for other systems.

And speaking of Nintendo, not surprisingly they didn’t feel that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, and pursued legal action to have the game removed from store shelves almost immediately after it was released. But since The Great Giana Sisters was one of the rare 2D side-scrolling run-and-jump games that existed for PCs at the time, it managed to live on as several unofficial ports throughout the years.

But apparently time does heal all wounds, and believe it or not a company called dtp entertainment has secured the rights to produce an official The Great Giana Sisters sequel for the Nintendo DS of all platforms. The game is scheduled to hit Europe sometime in June of next year, though plans for the North America release haven’t been revealed. But here’s to hoping for a most excellent rip-off of New Super Mario Bros. this time.

[ Shacknews - Famed Mario Rip-off Giana Sisters Coming to DS ]
[ Lemon64.com - The Great Giana Sisters ]

By Andrew Liszewski

You can say what you want about George Lucas and his Star Wars prequels, but there’s no denying the man has incredible foresight when it comes to the melding of cutting-edge technologies and entertainment. Not only did he change the motion picture industry with Industrial Light & Magic and his championing of digital cinema, but way back in 1982 he saw the potential in the burgeoning interactive entertainment industry and formed his own game company called LucasArts. Today that burgeoning industry is worth billions of dollars, and while LucasArts has had its ups and downs over the years, they’ve remained one of the longest surviving and most prolific game publishers in the industry’s relatively short existence.

Now you’re welcome to argue amongst yourselves in the comments as to what can be considered LucasArts golden years, but looking back at games like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Full Throttle or Dark Forces, I know I can’t narrow it down. Thankfully neither does Rob Smith in his new 256 page hardcover book; Rogue Leaders: The Story Of LucasArts. The book covers the entire history of the company with interviews, concept art, character development sketches, storyboards (over 300 images are included) and even a glimpse at games that were never actually released. It definitely seems like a great trip down memory lane for those of us who actually considered a 386 to be a real gaming platform.

The book is available for pre-order from StarWarsShop.com for $59.99, and is expected to ship sometime in January of next year. It also features a foreword by none other than George Lucas himself, and a lenticular cover that changes between the Purple Tentacle, Guybrush Threepwood, LEGO Indy and Darth Vader.

[ StarWarsShop.com - Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’m sure part of my grown-up fascination with gadgets and technology was fostered by one of the greatest cartoons to ever hit the airwaves when I was a kid. G.I. Joe not only featured outlandish plots for world domination, awesome battles and crazy characters, but also some of the coolest war machines ever to be devised by man. While I’m not really sure who funded the Joes or Cobra, their military R&D budgets had to be in the trillions of dollars. But as Cracked.com points out, even with all of that money, some of their designs were not only impractical, but downright deadly to the poor soldiers assigned to ride or drive in them. I particularly like what they have to say about #9, the Cobra IMP which is pictured above;

Imagine showing up for war one day, and they tell you to get in this thing. The helmet this guy is wearing is going to serve about the same purpose as aluminum foil on a baked potato.

And as outlandish as some of the designs were, I can never fault a toyline that not only included an F-14 fighter (the Skystriker) that was bigger than a toddler, but also an aircraft carrier (the USS Flagg) that was probably bigger than me.

[ Cracked.com - The 20 Stupidest GI Joe Vehicles Ever ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While fighting games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and even Super Smash Brothers remain some of my favorite titles from the past 20+ years, you never forget your first. And for me that was International Karate on the Commodore 64. For being a C64 game the graphics in International Karate were actually quite good, but I guess when you consider the game just consisted of a couple of sprites bouncing around, it’s not surprising the developers were able to include some impressive backdrops like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sphinx and pyramids in Giza and even the New York skyline.

Of course International Karate came out well before the days of finishing moves, fireballs and other gimmicks, and was basically just a couple of guys (quite possibly twin brothers resolving an eternal grudge) duking it out using nothing but their karate skills. You scored points or half-points based on the hits you landed, and the first player to two points won the round. And in the event the clock ran out, the player with the highest score claimed the victory. There was also a series of great mini-games you got to play at the end of each stage like breaking stacked blocks with your head or jumping/ducking to avoid a barrage of throwing knives. Who needs fatalities anyways?

International Karate was definitely one of the staples of my C64 (you could tell because it always had a home near the front of the diskette box) and from what I recall, the fighting mechanics and control were actually pretty decent. However, I distinctly remember one little quirk that drove my friends and I crazy. Besides moving your character around and punching and kicking, you were also able to control which direction they faced. Now in modern fighting games the two opponents automatically turn to face each other if they cross on screen, but that wasn’t the case with International Karate. If you jumped over your opponent (or simply walked past them) you had to make sure you turned around in time, otherwise you basically set yourself up for a fist in the back of the head. It wasn’t the prettiest way to win a fight, but to a kid a win is a win.

[ MobyGames - International Karate ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you asked me to sum up the 1998 DreamWorks Interactive title Trespasser in just a few words, I’d have to say it was hands down the worst game I ever loved playing. Before Trespasser was released, it seemed to have everything going for it like a unique control system which eliminated a cluttered HUD, open-ended gameplay, cutting edge graphics, a robust physics and AI system and even a real-time foley engine for generating and mixing sound effects on the fly. Not to mention the fact the game was based on an insanely popular film franchise, and it involved dinosaurs! But in the end, Trespasser as a whole was definitely not greater than the sum of its parts. In fact, it was far less.

A long list of development issues had plagued the game, including an ever expanding budget and a race to release the title in time for Jurassic Park’s sequel. And it resulted in a final product that didn’t even come close to the ridiculous amount of hype that Trespasser had generated before its release.

And while I (and most reviewers) considered Trespasser to be an incredible disappointment, I still really enjoyed playing the game, at least as far as it allowed me to. One of the biggest problems with Trespasser was the unending list of bugs that made the game both hilariously entertaining, and frustratingly impossible. While it was quite amusing to see a Triceratops suddenly jump 50 feet into the air for no explicit reason, you could end up in tears trying to perform a simple task like stacking a few crates in order to traverse a broken staircase. But the game still had those rare moments when all of the elements worked together like they were designed to, and while hiding behind a rock watching a pack of Velociraptors go after a T-Rex, it kind of made you forget what Trespasser could have been. Hey Valve, any chance you’d be interested in taking over the reins and cooking up a sequel for us?

[ Wikipedia - Jurassic Park: Trespasser ] & [ TresCom ]