For those interested, I will be attending Balticon this weekend, and have more than my usual level of panels:

Saturday, 9:00 PM (New Media Track) Chesapeake, Everything Old Is New Again: Now grandma and baby can both love Battlestar, If Hot Topic weren’t proof enough, all the stuff that’s old is new. Power Rangers, Doctor Who and many anime and science fiction shows aimed at younger audiences still keep their followings as they grow up. We explore favorite franchises and how much better they’ve aged than their fanbase.

Sunday, 12:00 Noon (New Media Track) Derby Room, Lovecraft Mythos Cagefight: Who Would Win in a Fight? Moderator Norm Sherman Cthulhu vs. Dagon? Yog-Sothoth vs. Shub-Niggurath? Would the match be a TKO or won on points?

Sunday 3:00 PM (Gaming Track) Parlor 1041, Creating Aliens and Their Culture, Moderator Kory Kease – One of the most exciting elements of a campaign, game world, science fiction/fantasy series (book TV, etc.) is the adventure of meeting and discovering new cultures that

Sunday 4:00 PM (Readers Track) Belmont Room, The Heinlein Panel – Moderator David J. Williams – How much math do people really need to know in our Age of Computers? Should we really have to solve a quadratic equation to be eligible to vote? How necessary is it to know calculus nowadays? Is there value in learning math beyond the solving of such problems?

Looks like there’s a little something for everyone there and I’m looking forward to every one of them.

In addition, I’ll be trying to attend all of Mur Lafferty’s events, and John Cmar’s events, and Command Line, and Jared Axelrod, and J.R. Blackwell… and… and…

Somewhere in there I need to sleep, too. Whew.

So much for every Monday. I let the links pile up until I felt there was enough for a post, and then got overwhelmed. Ah well, time to dig in.

In old RPG news, we have a few items. First, there’s the concluding articles to Ken Denmead’s Top 10 D&D Modules series: #7 Finale. I approve of both choices (but still no Barrier Peaks?).

Second, Allen Varney (no roleplaying slouch himself) has an interview over at the Escapist with Marc Miller, creator of Traveller.

The retro videogaming department is busy this week. For recent homages, we have Greg Costikyan at Play This Thing! with a review of a Japanese rogue-like and Z over at GeekDad with a review of a NES/SNES clone. For the latter, I’m glad Mur has her old SNES — this thing sounds like a cheap knockoff.

In nods to the past, Marc Cerny, creator of Marble Madness and contributor to many a Naughty Dog and Insomniac game (disclosure: I work for Insomniac Games) has been inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame. And around the same time Marble Madness came out, there was Starflight, one of the most complex games of its time. Erin Hoffman at the Escapist covers the story of its development.

Finally, a rather interesting story about how partnerships can go awry. Apparently, Konami, the creators of Yu-Gi-Oh, discovered that someone was creating bootleg cards, thereby both profiting from their creation and polluting the market with counterfeits. Little did they suspect that someone was their partner, Upper Deck… Cult-Stuff has all the details.

I keep collecting links, so here are some more. As a side note, in a wild attempt at scheduled behavior, I’m going to try to store up my vintage-gaming related links and post every Monday.

Long time listeners will remember my very early review of M.U.L.E. Well, there’s another version out there, this time at http://www.planetmule.com/. I haven’t tried it out yet, but it looks like there are clients for Windows, Mac and Linux, and eventually Debian. You do register with the site, but I don’t think they have a central matchmaking server, as they mention using the forum for that. The one strike against them is they credit Dan Bunten, not Danielle Bunten, against her wishes, but it’s probably worth taking a look if you’re a M.U.L.E. fan.

In more D&D related content, we have a repeat of a series at GeekDad, where Ken Denmead reviews the Top Ten D&D modules he found while cleaning up his storage shed. I don’t see Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, but otherwise looks to be a good list of classics: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

In another GeekDad post (I need to get out more), Michael Harrison interviews Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, a memoir/rediscovery of the geek life. Plus, until January 13 (Wednesday), you can enter a contest to win a copy of the book. See the article for more details.

Finally, yesterday Terry Cavanagh’s retro platformer VVVVVV was released. I tried out the demo and it’s definitely worth it. It’s challenging and fun, and has a very nifty mechanic where you can switch the “floor” to either the top or the bottom of the screen. For a fuller review, check out this one by Anthony Burch on Destructoid.

Still trying to get my feet under me for the New Year — or the new year, however it’s spelled. In any case, here are some interesting vintage gaming links that have been sitting in my RSS feed:

First, James Maliszewski has a nice little article up at The Escapist, entitled “Founding Fathers.” In it, he covers the history of wargames, from von Riesswitz’s Kriegspiel to David Wesley’s Braunstein (the progenitor of Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign).

Related to this is Monte Cook’s most recent article at the aforementioned The Escapist magazine about the original supplements to D&D record the evolution of the rules. This is a follow-up to his previous post on D&D, already covered here.

Second, Greg Costikyan talks about the background for his new board game, Megacorps, and how he inadvertently created a future history through game design.

Greg also has a review of the Civil War tabletop game A House Divided (designed by Frank Chadwick in 1981). I haven’t played this one, but based on Greg’s review I think I’ll give it a shot as I’m a huge Civil War (or the “recent unpleasantness”) buff.

Finally, on the video gaming front, Nathan Barry on Geekdad reports that Tatio has released a remake of Arkanoid for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Many are the hours I spent playing Arkanoid on my Mac SE — as it was pirated, perhaps I should purchase a copy to balance the books. And you should too, because it’s tons of fun.

Hope your holiday season was a good one and you got to play lots of games! And if not, you’ve got a whole year ahead so get to it…

Looks like it’s D&D month at The Escapist. This time it’s an article by James Maliszewski, talking about how he figured out Basic D&D with his friends — or didn’t really.

My friends and I were only a few years older than he was, and I’m still not sure how we figured it out. Determination, maybe. Ah well, as he says, a lifetime of gaming ensued…

I had planned at some point to cover the original version of Dungeons and Dragons on the podcast. It’s pretty unlikely at this point that this will happen — I planned it all out and found that I really didn’t have much to add to the mass of critique and commentary that the game has received. In fact, I’d say it’s safe to say that this episode, which was to be the next one, has been a factor in the long delay of the podcast in general. I keep trying to rework it and it just doesn’t happen. So in the interest of moving on, check out Monte Cook’s brief critique of the original three books.

As a side note, I have to agree with Mr. Cook about the quality of the writing. After looking at my basic D&D rules (the blue book mit dem Dragon), I can’t figure out how I and my seventh-grade compatriots figured out how to play. While conversational in tone, it’s nearly incomprehensible and certainly incomplete, especially compared to today’s RPGs. But then, I doubt the original Basic D&D was meant to be complete. I believe that Gygax intended that Advanced D&D was the One True Path, and Basic D&D was nod to the past (a lot of the material came from the original three books) but ultimately a gateway drug to the New Shiny. But enough of the customers disagreed that we ended up with the odd case of two different flavors of D&D (AD&D and Basic/Expert) for many years.

But enough of that. I’m moving on. I think.

(Via Joystiq) The Technologizer blog has a really great trip down memory lane, where they present patents from the early days of electronic games. They call it The Golden Age of Electronic Games. I guess I agree with that — though a lot of those games from early on in that age aren’t so much Golden as well… let me put this way. I have an old handheld soccer game that consists of a dot and a few lines. Does that compare with FIFA 09? Probably not except in the sense of nostalgia.

As a side note, they mention both the Magnavox Odyssey — as the first game console — and Simon — as a game that will survive the ages. The importance of these games isn’t a coincidence. They were both designed by The Father of Video Games Ralph H. Baer.

Link

Up for sale on eBay may well be the most amazing Advanced Squad Leader collection I’ve ever seen. If you’re looking for something for your loved one and money is no object (and they really really like ASL), you might consider this.

Link

Timothy Hyde has a blog called Hyde and Seek, where he covers “an eclectic Australian collection of older board games and ‘thrilling activity games.'” As the description suggests, it’s mostly Australian games, but it’s cool to see a very different look at the world of vintage games. Lots of nice pictures, organized by pages and categories; very much worth checking out.