British Bastards - Illegitimacy in the English Monarchy

The laws and customs pertaining succession to the throne in the Kingdom of England were, in normal times, simple. The eldest legitimate surviving son of the monarch automatically succeeded his father on the throne after his father's death. If the monarch did not have surviving sons but had surviving brothers, then the eldest of those would rule. The formal name for this succession method is agnatic primogeniture. But what if the King had no surviving legitimate male heirs? Then things became a little more complicated and invited the rule of men and women whose legitimacy was not beyond reproach. I will examine the famous cases where men and women obtained or almost obtained the crown despite the stain of being born or alleged to have been born in sin (out of wedlock.)

The Ultimate Commodore 64? - The Commodore 64 Ultimate Review

The original Commodore 64 had a pretty long run for a computing platform, released in 1982 and discontinued in 1994. Its fortunes mirrored that of the company which developed it as Commodore achieved its greatest success with the C64 and never quite managed to achieve a similar level of market dominance thereafter. Now there is a new Commodore 64, the Commodore C64 Ultimate, which promises to be an end-all, be-all solution to running C64 software on a platform worthy of the Commodore legacy. Today, having had a chance to play with one for about a week, I can put those claims to the test.

Neverwinter Nights: The Original's Workings

Neverwinter Nights was released by SSI and America Online in March, 1991 and discontinued on July 19, 1997. This game was an adaptation of SSI's Gold Box engine to support online multiplayer. The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition ruleset were used as a basis for the engine. It is notable as the first graphical massively multiplayer online role playing game. The engine on which it was built was designed for a single player, so how did it work as a multiplayer game? This blog will attempt to answer that question and give all the information about how the game ran over time which is still available.

Observations on Early Versions of Wizardry

Wizardry is the first role playing game to make a substantial, widespread impact on video gaming. First released for the Apple II in 1981, it spawned many, many ports, sequels and spinoffs. Its origins tend to be obscured by later releases and re-releases, so in this blog article I will discuss what made the features of Wizardry as it was first released to the public so interesting.

The Uniqueness of Early (Advanced) Dungeons and Dragons Color Cover Art

When Dungeons and Dragons was released in 1974, the presentation was very hobbyist-oriented. The box containing the three little brown books was serviceable enough but the woodgrain pattern and the less than professional artwork on the cover or inside the booklets, combined with the near-inscrutability of the early rules and limited distribution undoubtedly limited its appeal. Further products would have to stand out beyond what might be expected in a hobby shop or wargaming bookshelf in order to have broader appeal. Let's see how TSR accomplished this goal.

USPS Media Mail Rules are Arbitrary and Stupid

The United States Postal Service offers a shipping option called Media Mail. Media Mail is a popular way to ship certain types of goods through the mail because it is cheap and offers a tracking number. It is not the fasted form of shipping but many buyers are prepared to wait an extra day or two or three for their package to be delivered. Media Mail allows printed material, books, periodicals, literature, plays, audio and video recordings to be shipped at a reduced rate compared to Priority Mail. But it does not allow all things which might fall into these categories or like categories. The rules are riddled with contradictions and outdated approaches. We will look at two such applications, comic books and video games.

TMNT 1987: The Original Theme Song's English Versions

The 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was a phenomenon which brought the TMNT from an important independent comic book to a much wider audience. The first  season of five episodes was produced and aired in December of that year. It was produced by Murakami/Wolf/Swenson and ran for 10 seasons, ending in 1996. The series ran for 193 episodes, and in most of them they opened with a very catchy theme song. But in later years this theme song has been altered or replaced. I will identify all distinct English versions of it and where they can be found.

Nintendo Gives you the Power of Flash - Nintendo Power Rewritable Cartridges

Courtesy of Wikipedia, Photo by Muband

Three times Nintendo released a product where you could write new games to existing media. The first was the Famicom Disk System, where users could bring in their disks to Disk Writer kiosks in stores and have new games rewritten to the floppy disks. This system began in 1986 and was modestly successful, newly written games were cheaper than buying either new cartridges or new disk games in boxes. The disk system's popularity waned by the 1990s, but Nintendo revived the concept with the Super Famicom Nintendo Power cartridge in 1997. A few years later they released the Game Boy Nintendo Power cartridge in 2000. They discontinued the service on February 28, 2007. In this article I will discuss how the service worked, how the flash cartridges worked, and how they can be flashed today.