Released in July 2021 by Good Deal Games/Homebrew Heaven Kung-Fu Combat 2, my twelfth manual, was the fourth one I did for Good Deal Games. As I did with Pro Golf, Kung-Fu Combat 2 did not mimic a manual design of an established company. The use of the “Chinese” font on the first page and…… Continue reading KUNG-FU COMBAT 2
Category: The Game Scholar
CIRCUS CONVOY
Released in March 2021 by Audacity Games In early 2020 I had an agreement with Dan Kitchen to do the documentation for his new game Dan Kitchen’s Gold Rush that he was releasing under his own company TikiVision. This was to to be a sequel to his brother Garry’s Activision hit game Keystone Kapers!. I…… Continue reading CIRCUS CONVOY
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…… Continue reading TOOTING MY OWN HORN
THE ROAD TO VIDEOGAME HISTORY – Part 5
I don’t know exactly when I decided to begin a third edition of Phoenix. The second edition had three more chapters than the first and perhaps I wanted to do the same for the third. So I researched and wrote three new chapters, 1997-1999. The year 2000 was probably over by the time I completed…… Continue reading THE ROAD TO VIDEOGAME HISTORY – Part 5
THE ROAD TO VIDEOGAME HISTORY – Part 4
Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Home Videogames was a minor hit. It was mentioned in major magazines such as Next Generation and I began receiving letters from people thanking me for writing it. Many of them asked me when I was going to write an updated version of the book since it only went…… Continue reading THE ROAD TO VIDEOGAME HISTORY – Part 4
THE ROAD TO VIDEOGAME HISTORY – Part 3
Based on the responses that I received from readers of The 2600 Connection, I knew that people wanted to read my books. My task was to figure out a way to get them to these readers. The 2600 Connection was a fanzine, an amateur publication that had been produced by a fan of the Atari…… Continue reading THE ROAD TO VIDEOGAME HISTORY – Part 3
THE ROAD TO VIDEOGAME HISTORY – Part 2
The American videogame industry had crashed at the end of 1983 and by 1984 few companies were releasing new games for the existing consoles. Then in 1985 Nintendo released its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and suddenly videogames were once again in vogue. In 1986 Atari released its 7800 console, which also played most 2600 games.…… Continue reading THE ROAD TO VIDEOGAME HISTORY – Part 2
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…… Continue reading SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
THE ROAD TO VIDEOGAME HISTORY – Part 1
MY EARLY WRITING YEARS I began writing when I was ten years old. An avid reader of Superman comics, one day I took two pieces of notebook paper, folded them in half, stapled them along the edge, and began writing comic books. I use the word “writing” loosely because what I actually did was draw…… Continue reading THE ROAD TO VIDEOGAME HISTORY – Part 1
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…… Continue reading MY ATARI BOOK THAT WAS SABOTAGED
The Game Scholar 