Every company has its own corporate culture, and the truth is, G4techTV is a place where geek is chic. We have an entire email list so devoted to geekiness that it's become somewhat of a daily competition to see who can be first to send out links to breaking news stories on games, gadgets, comics, anime, movies and all things Lucas. We even have an internal Geek of the Week honor for the employee who geeks out the most that week as judged by volume and content of emails, cubicle decorations and lunchroom conversations.
But the most common form of geek exhibitionism comes in the form of bragging. Whether it be hanging around in the game capture room for hours after work battling for Halo rights or boasting about whose new gizmo is tops, bragging is what it's all about in our world. And just like the fisherman whose tales (and fish) get taller and taller over the years, the stories about classic gaming collections get suspiciously more impressive over time.
The topic of classic games recently came up in meeting and before we knew it, we’d spent twenty minutes lazily strolling down memory lane, lost in a world of childhood videogame nostalgia. One of the bosses finally realized how off-track we were and tried to steer us back--but not before I came up with the big idea.
“We should have a Show and Tell. Everybody can bring in their old games and we’ll have talk about them, like in elementary school.” When all my peers started laughing, I insisted I was serious. “We know,” they said. “That’s why it’s funny.”
But then I pointed out that it would be a chance to make everyone put his money where his mouth is, once and for all. "That PA who swears he’s got a mint condition Vectrex can finally put those 'liar, liar, pants on fire' rumors to rest,” I told them. “And maybe we can finally shut up that producer who has to work into every conversation the fact that he’s still got his old Channel F.”
Busting fibbers was all the motivation they needed, and so, with little fanfare and almost no planning, the G4techTV Blast from the Past Show and Tell was born. The geekiest of geeks got together in a conference room with boxes of games and consoles and the stream of “Holy-crap-I-haven’t-seen-one-of-those-in-forever”s began.
You so should have been there. But since you couldn’t —sorry, “security issues” —we used the magic of digital photography and the internet to bring you along for the ride. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much you forgot (and now remember)…though I gotta warn you, neither the Vectrex PA or that Channel F producer came through with the goods.
Ain’t nothin’ in the world like bustin’ a big fat liar. Except, maybe, holding an old piece of plastic and wires in your hand and remembering the joy of your first videogame.
Intellivision, Amiga CD-32 and Turbo GFX
"I remember having Atari and thinking it was the bomb, until I started seeing those Intellivision commercials with George Plimpton and was briefly convinced it was the wave of the future. Finally my neighbor Tommy got Intellivision for Christmas and I got the chance to play it. What a disappointment! The controllers were just these little keypads, and there was no joystick. Man, it sucked! So I went back to my little Atari world. Then, the following year or so, I started seeing the commercials for Colecovision, which had better graphics than Atari and offered a home version of my favorite game at the time, Zaxxon. There were also ads for a Smurf game that looked out of this world. My brother and I made such a stink that my mom ended up getting it for me for my birthday and I spent the next year or so in front of the TV rockin’ Zaxxon, Donkey Kong and Smurf. That may have been the happiest time of my life….. I know, I know, that’s pathetic…." --Frank M.
Editor's Note: No Frank, it's not pathetic. All these years later, you now work for the only television network devoted to video games and the video game lifestyle. And that, my friend, makes it beautiful.
"I got this Amiga CD-32 a few years ago on eBay. Apparently, it's very rare. Especially the North American version. One cool thing is that it also plays games from Commodore's CDTV (I know, I know, whatever the hell that is.) What sucks about it is that I've only found one game for it in the past three years. And boy, does that one game suck." --Brian S.
Another thing that sucks about the Amiga: this brick of a power cord. Amazing to think that entire laptops probably weigh less than this thing.
Turbo GFX-16 came out in 1989 and featured: 8-bit CPU (even though it was advertized as 16-bit!), 65802 @ 16 MHz,16-bit graphics chip. It was the first system with a CD-player attachment.
"Turbo GFX was one of the best friggin' games ever made. It came out about the same time as Genesis, but was alot more fun. It was very experimental at that time, the problem was they just didn't put enough time into developing it. They had really good RPG's too. Really tough." --Steve P.
"The cool thing about Turbo GFX was that the game was actually just a thin card. It was really cool, because the card was thin, like a folded up piece of paper or something so it seemed so high-tech at the time."--Steve P.
