In 2002 I was asked if I would like to write game manuals for three games for the Atari 2600 that CGE Services was releasing at Classic Gaming Expo that year. The three games had been written in the early eighties but had never been released at the time. This was the first time these games were to be available to the general public.
The three initial games were Cracked from Atari and Save the Whales & Pickup from Games of the Century (20th Century Fox). Not only did I want to write the manuals, but I wanted the manuals to follow the format of the original manuals of the original companies.
During the following years I was asked to do more manuals, which I again did in the style of the company that created it. So far I have done manuals that mimicked those from Atari, Coleco, CommaVid, Games of the Century and Odyssey2. One manual, Pro Golf, was written from scratch.
CRACK’ED
Released in 2002 by CGE Services at Classic Gaming Expo Crack’ed was part of the first trio of manuals that I wrote for CGE Services. I used the Atari 7800 manual of the same game as my model and downgraded the graphics. The manual presented here is in color as it was designed, although the…
SAVE THE WHALES
Released in 2002 by CGE Services at Classic Gaming Expo Save the Whales was part of the first trio of manuals that I wrote for CGE Services. The 20th Century Fox logo was used, although it would be removed from later Fox-related games. The manual presented here is in color as it was designed, although…
PICK UP
Released in 2002 by CGE Services at Classic Gaming Expo Pick Up was part of the first trio of manuals that I wrote for CGE Services. The 20th Century Fox logo was used, although it would be removed from later Fox-related games. The manual presented here is in color as it was designed, although the…
RUSH HOUR
Released in 2003 by CGE Services at Classic Gaming Expo Rush Hour was part of the second trio of manuals that I wrote for CGE Services. I remember being very excited for this game because I had played the original unfinished prototype of this game at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in 1983. I had…
LOOPING
Released in 2003 by CGE Services at Classic Gaming Expo Looping was part of the second trio of manuals that I wrote for CGE Services. The cover was taken from the Colecovision manual of the same game. This is the only manual that I did based on a Coleco product. The manual included here is…
ENTITY
Released in 2003 by CGE Services at Classic Gaming Expo Entity was part of the second trio of manuals that I wrote for CGE Services. This one is based on the 20th Century Fox movie of the same name. Or is it? The original manual as I created it is included here. You’ll notice that…
LASERCADE
Released in 2007 by CGE Services at Classic Gaming Expo I don’t remember much about the circumstances of this game, as all of my original files for this one has disappeared. The version included here is just a scan of the published work. Lasercade was a game I had never heard of and John Hardie…
RALPH BAER’S PINBALL!
Released in 2015 by Good Deal Games/Homebrew Heaven at Portland Retro Gaming Expo Ralph Baer, who had invented the Magnavox Odyssey, the world’s first videogame console, had nothing to do with Magnavox’s later console, the Odyssey2. However, the company that Baer worked for, Sanders Associates negotiated with Magnavox to develop software for the new console.…
K.C. ESCAPE!
Released in 2017 by Good Deal Games/Homebrew Heaven at Portland Retro Gaming Expo K.C. Escape! was designed using the template that I created for Ralph Baer’s Pinball. As before I wanted to include a little history so I added the K.C. Munchkin Story which compared Odyssey’s K.C. Munchkin! to Atari’s Pac-Man.
PRO GOLF
Released in 2019 by Good Deal Games/Homebrew Heaven at Portland Retro Gaming Expo Pro Golf, written by Edward Smith, was the first manual I created that didn’t mimic the design of a former videogame company. This was the third manual that I did for Michael Thomasson of Homebrew Heaven so I used the Odyssey2 template…
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…
KUNG-FU COMBAT 2
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…
The Game Scholar 