THE FINAL CORRESPONDENCES WITH NOLAN
Three men make up the pillars of videogame history. One was Ralph Baer, who invented the home videogame console. The other two were Nolan Bushnell & Ted Dabney, the co-founders of Atari and creators of Computer Space, the world’s first arcade videogame. I maintained very close relationships with Ralph and Ted until their deaths, and…
MY FATHER’S LEGACY
Although I was never an athlete, I grew up in the shadow of one. My father, Ronnie Herman, was a table tennis player. He didn’t play professionally but he had dozens of trophies that sat atop our dining room breakfront. My father joined the New Jersey Table Tennis Club during the fifties, when it rented…
RALPH BAER’S RELEVANCE IN THE MODERN WORLD
On Saturday, May 21, 2022, the city of Manchester, New Hampshire celebrated Ralph Baer’s 100th birthday by rededicating the statue of him that they put up a few years ago. I was invited to give a speech about Ralph’s relevance in the modern world. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend due to an onset of…
FIRST IS NOT ENOUGH
The assumption is that we mostly remember the people who did things first or the products that came out first. But that isn’t necessary true. There were several people who came up with the idea of the incandescent light bulb before Thomas Edison but how many of them could you name? And how many people…
TOOTING MY OWN HORN
I can’t help tooting my own horn but I just found a hard copy of an email sent to me on January 10, 2000 from Crispin Boyer, my editor at Electronic Gaming Monthly, which at the time was the world’s number one videogame magazine. Crispin stated that they received “loads of positive feedback“ regarding my…
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Apparently videogame historians are a dime a dozen these days. It seems anybody can just write something and claim to be a historian, whether the information they provided is accurate or not. The danger in this is people digest the current information, and if nobody calls it out it’s assumed to be the truth. That…
MY ATARI BOOK THAT WAS SABOTAGED
This article was originally written on July 15, 2020, but never published. In light of Curt Vendel’s untimely death on August 30, 2020, I thought I would honor Curt’s memory and release this so everyone would know about a book that we had once planned to write together. For those who don’t know who Curt…
THE EPSTEIN-NINTENDO CONNECTION
On July 2, 2020, Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested for allegedly aiding Epstein in his nefarious activities. According to the indictment, Maxwell “assisted, facilitated, and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls.” While videogamers may take a cursory interest in the Epstein-Maxwell scandal, they would take…
THE FORGOTTEN EPIC
Much has been written about gaming’s first decade, with a particular focus on western innovation and domination. This focus is understandable considering Americans developed the first console, the first arcade games, the first hit videogame, the first system to support programmable games and the first console that was a true mainstream success, among many other…
The Game Scholar 