Back from Extinction

Here's my latest project! It's Digital Dinosaurs, a book on the history and inner workings of 20th century game consoles and handhelds. Not every system is featured in this meaty tome (sorry, Gamate. Also, deeply sorry about your name. Must have been tough for you in handheld high school), but with forty favorites spanning nearly thirty years, there's a whole lot of fun reading in store for video game fanatics.

(Warning: may contain bias. Definitely contains bias.) 

It's free on Itch.IO 'till the end of the month, so pick up your favorite archaeology shovel and dig in! 

By the way, here's a fun little bonus from the book. Each system gets its own image that best describes the overall experience. For instance, the Genesis gets a picture of HAG president Denita Stokes getting insulted by Sonic the Hedgehog, while the Sega Master System gets Alex Kidd... standing in the far distance with a vacant expression as Sonic the superstar gets his butt kissed by his agent. Here's what I gave the Atari Jaguar...

If they sent him to Abu Dhabi, they'd
send him right back, postage due.

 

One image that didn't make the cut was this cute drawing of a SpongeBob-ified Ed Smith celebrating the arrival of his new home computer...

The short-lived era of the burnished 1980s were a gas, weren't they? That was the period between 1980 and 1983 when the 1980s still felt a lot like the 1970s, with slightly more conservative fashion and hair styles. The white people in their leisure suits looked like lit cigarettes, and black people traded their afros for the ooey-gooey not-so-goodness of jheri curls. Bars were dark, arcades were dimly lit, and everything just looked dingy and dirty, as if coated with a thin layer of cigarette ash. 

I'm weirdly nostalgic for this, and I can't even describe why. I barely remember it! It seems like it would have been a fun time for adults, at least.

This wistful look back at the filthy underside of the 1980s and a handful of hand-drawn drawings were brought to you by human engineering! Human engineering: when you care enough to do the damned work yourself. 

People forget that letting AI do all the work for you will slowly drain you of the ability to do it yourself. This becomes rather inconvenient when the price of AI services suddenly explodes after everyone's forgotten how to create. Ask an African mother how well it worked out for her after Nestle's free baby formula dried them out, leaving them at the company's (negligible) mercy. Funny... that formula was free last month, but now it's half my husband's paycheck.

I mention this because Epic Games, the Shasta to Steam's Coca-Cola, is starting a contest to determine who can "make" the best video game with AI. "Making" a game by having a computer do it for you is rather like dropping a quarter into a gumball machine and declaring yourself Willy Wonka, but okay? 

Perhaps the entries will be judged by computers, too. You know, like in that episode of Star Trek, where computers decide who wins battles in outer space, and who becomes the casualties. Get in the airlock, crewmen... the computer demands your sacrifice! It's for the sake of the algorithm!

Since human participation is strictly optional in the Epic Megaslop contest, I'll be opting out. Hell, I haven't even been cashing in on Epic's free bribe-games of the week lately. However, I will cheerfully give Epic and its disreputable CEO this rude drawing as a consolation prize. Enjoy! I made it myself!

Really, you can make things yourself! More people should try that.