The Famicom Top 100 List, Brought to you by Famitsu

Number 100: Gradius II - Number 1: Dragon Quest III

To commemorate the Famicom's 20th anniversary, Famitsu released a special DVD celebrating the console and its games. The main feature on the disc is a top 100 countdown, listing the most popular Famicom games. The list is a fascinating look into the tastes of the Famicom's original audience and the only one of its kind. Let's break it down today.

DOS Commands Across Home Computers: Apple, IBM & Commodore

To those people familiar with the MS-DOS command prompt, have you ever wondered how similar tasks are accomplished with non-PC compatible systems? Well, I am one of those people and I have wondered, so I have written this blog article to compare common disk operations with the DOS for the IBM PC, the Apple II and the Commodore 64 (and VIC-20) to compare how these tasks might or might not be accomplished on each system.

Godzilla & Criterion - The Monster vs. The Premier Boutique Label

The Criterion Collection is a well-known boutique distributor of aesthetically-interesting films on physical media. The company releases films that have had some significant artistic or cultural merit and has released well-over 1,000 films on disc. Its releases span the world's cinema, it has distributed films from every civilized continent on the planet. Japanese films are no exception and of course the biggest cultural icon that Japanese live-action cinema is Godzilla. Even if you may debate the artistic merits of the Godzilla films, they indisputably have had a significant cultural impact over the last 71 years. Criterion has released films in the Godzilla series on four separate occasions. In this blog article we will take the deepest dive into its releases, both the positives and negatives.

Tandy 1000 EX & HX vs. Color Computer 3 vs. Commodore 128 vs. Apple IIc - Which is the Better All-in-One?

In the calendar year of 1986 Tandy introduced two all-in-one computers, the Tandy 1000 EX and the Tandy Color Computer 3. Both were competitively priced at $799.00 and $219.95, respectively. At first the budget-conscious consumer may have chosen the CoCo 3 over the EX. By the next year the price of the EX had dropped by $100 while the Tandy 1000 HX took its prior price. At the same time the CoCo 3 dropped in price by $20, where it would stay until it was discontinued in 1990. The HX would displace the EX and eventually fall to $699 before it was also discontinued in 1990. In this article we will compare the features of these all-in-ones feature by feature and try to determine which would have really been the better purchase.

The 1977 Trinity - Which Computer is the Best Buy?

The 1977 Trinity, Courtesy of Wikipedia, Image by Timothy Colegrove

Consider that you have been transported back in time to the heady and hot summer of 1977. You are wanting one of these new "personal computers" that you see advertised in Popular Mechanics and Byte Magazine. Maybe you've seen an ad from Radio Shack. Perhaps you saw a flyer from that pocket calculator company called Commodore. Or you are a hobbyist frustrated with time sharing on the local college's PDP-10 and want a microcomputer of your very own. After you've seen Star Wars for the third time, you want to be part of the computer age. You have three choices, which will you chose? Let's break down the Apple II, Tandy Radio Shack TSR-80 and the Commodore PET 2001 and see how they might factor into a buyer's decision.

Is the Original Tandy Color Computer Worth your Gaming Time?

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Tandy Corporation's first home computer was the TRS-80, released in 1977. The TRS-80 was fairly affordably priced for its time but limited to monochrome text and extremely blocky semigraphics. 1979 saw the release of the TRS-80 Model II, a business machine with an 8" floppy disk drive incompatible with the previous computer or the budget of a middle-class family. With color computer systems like the Atari 400 and TI-99/4 being released in the late 1970s, Tandy realized that if it wanted to have any chance of capturing the growing home market for personal computers, it would need to offer a low-cost model with colorful graphics and a family-friendly appeal. Fortunately it had an ace up its sleeve in the form of the thousands of Radio Shack company and franchise stores dispersed across the United States and Canada that could sell a lower cost computer. That computer turned out to be the TRS-80 Color Computer, released in 1980. Having recently acquired one, let me go over some of its features and quirks.

Comparison of Comic Book Reproduction Editions - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 vs. Cerebus #1

As regular readers of this blog should no doubt be aware of by now, I have had a resurgent interest in comic books. There is nothing quite like holding and reading stapled pieces of folded paper together that tell a story with pictures and word balloons. Recently I have discussed both the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cerebus the Aardvark. Now let's compare a pair of recent authorized reproduction editions of the first issue of each series.

Cerebus the Aardvark Early Issues and Reprints

Since I have gone through the early years of TMNT I thought I would touch upon some highlights of one of the comics which inspired TMNT, Cerebus the Aardvark. Cerebus was created by one David Victor Sim with issue #1 premiering in December, 1977. The book ended with issue #300 in March, 2004. The comic was self-published and Dave Sim set up his own company, Aardvark-Vanaheim, to publish the comic. This blog entry will devote itself to distinguishing features made through the end of the main series. Another blog entry may look into similar features after that period.