I’ve just finished browsing through Arthur’s Hall of Viking Manliness’ 10 Manliest Video Games of All Time, and I have to say, yes, the list is indeed full of manly video games.
How did the guys up at Arthur’s Hall come up with the idea of giving the world such a list of video games? Shatner (yes, after William Shatner), Arthur’s Viking Assistant, gives us the details:
I had a discussion with Arthur the other day regarding the question, “Are video games manly?” While wasting your life away on a couch playing video games isn’t quite as manly as killing small animals …read more

First off, I want to apologize to readers of this space for being remiss in my posting duties. December is a hectic month, what with the holidays just around the corner, and finding time to play good, classic video games is getting harder.
So with that in mind, I’ve decided to start a new topic or category, Video games I want to play forever. It’s very literal. It will feature video games that I love and those that I want to keep playing until my computer conks out, or until my body crumples from exhaustion.
Without further ado, I present to you …read more

I grew up in an era when Sho Kusugi and Michael Dudikoff ruled movie theaters worldwide. So it\\\\\\\’s really no surprise when I tell friends about my childhood antics, of donning a black kimono and threatening the neighborhood dogs and cats with my wooden katana and shurikens made from metal bottle caps (I\\\\\\\’ll explain how it\\\\\\\’s done if you have the time to read or listen). Needless to say, I was enamored with the ninja and its seemingly mystic powers, even to the point of seeking out a person who practices ninjitsu and asking him to train me.\\\\r\\\\n\\\\r\\\\nUnfortunately, I never …read more

I guess you already know how I feel about Swashbuckler, a 1982 computer game for the Apple II created by Paul Stephenson and published by Datamost. Sorry, Paul, it’s just so … boring.
Oh, I used to enjoy playing it, back when I was, what, 10 years old. I thought I could rekindle the flame by watching a video of Swashbuckler, but no go, unlike other Apple II video games.
The problem: Swashbuckler grew old pretty quickly. Check out this entry in Wikipedia about the reception of the game (emphasis in bold face mine):
Computer Gaming World gave Swashbuckler a glowing review, only …read more

Welcome to another Re:Retro Speed Run. In this post, we feature Conan: Hall of Volta, a 1984 action video game designed by Eric Robinson and Eric Parker, and published by Datasoft. Obviously, the lead character in the game, Conan, is the same Conan created by Robert Howard and played on the big screen by Arnold Schwarzenegger (yeah, the governor of California).

Conan: Hall of Volta was released in 1984, coinciding with the big screen debut of the sequel to the 1982 classic Conan the Barbarian. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Conan: Hall of Volta is a game for the …read more

Ahh, yes, Chivalry, a 1983 action role-playing game released for the Apple II by Optimum Resource. There are only three things I can remember about the game: 1) The intro screen (shown in the video above) with a knight on a horse, 2) the intro music (dark and sad but catchy), and 3) being called a “CLUMSY OAF” by the miller for dropping heavy sacks of flour.
Well, here’s a little more background for those who are not of my generation:
Chivalry is similar to a board game. Up to four players can play, but must wait their turn to move. On …read more

It hurts my eardrums to listen to it but, hey, it’s the Ghostbusters and I played the game on the Apple IIc. I’ll go look for a video of the gameplay. You guys watch the intro to the Ghostbusters video game and listen to the theme. Hope you remembered to bring earplugs.

I remember playing this classic on the Nintendo Family Computer with my sister Pepper, and we spent countless hours trying to master it. TwinBee, as most of you may recall, is a 1985 side-scrolling shooter released by Konami for the arcade. Fortunately for those who don’t have the funds and the time to spend at the arcades, TwinBee was ported to the Famicom the following year.
Since I had been playing TwinBee with Pepper, I remember having the power to wipe out enemy units—mostly flying fruits and vegetables like eggplants and strawberries and dinnerware such as forks, plates and knives—with twin …read more

Ragnarok Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed and released by Korea-based Gravity in the early 2000s, isn’t exactly an old video game, but it is a classic in its own right. Ragnarok Online has, for me and thousands of other MMORPG players in my little corner of the world, shaped the course of online games in most parts of Asia.
The game is based on the manhwa (Korean comic books) Ragnarok by Lee Myung-jin. Ragnarok Online was first released in, of course, South Korea in August 2001 for Microsoft Windows. Much of the game’s mythology is based, loosely I …read more

Not that Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy isn’t mentioned in a lot of video game-related websites and blogs. It’s just darn disappointing reading about it on Wikipedia. Why? Go check out the entry:
Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy is a real-time tactics video game developed by Blue Tongue Entertainment and published by Microprose on October 28, 2000. The game is based on both the 1997 movie Starship Troopers and the book Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.
It’s so short! Am I the only video game player who played the game?
The graphics and sound aren’t shabby as this video shows:

The gameplay is great, that I …read more