Variations of Mouse Trap

And Now for Something Completely Different, for the 500th published entry on this blog, I am going beyond the typical fare of video game and vintage computer content to focus on another type of gaming, board games.  And in this blog entry, I am going to talk about the evolution of the mechanics of the 1963 game Mouse Trap, first published by Ideal.  Mouse Trap is famous for its Rube Goldberg-inspired mouse trap which dominates the game.  The design has endured more or less intact for sixty years and its combination of simplicity and silly design has appealed to multiple generations of children.  I am aware there are a few other games that use the Mouse Trap name and descend from Habsro or Milton Bradley, but these do not use the traditional Mouse Trap mechanics and will not be covered here.  No game with such longevity has survived into the present day without changes, so in this blog entry I will identify three distinct editions of the game and describe their differences.

Tandy 1000 Chip Replacements

The Tandy 1000s, especially the older ones, are rather reliable as non-IBM manufactured PCs go.  They tend to continue working year after year.  But inevitably they will fail, and something they cannot be easily fixed because a chip went bad.  Tandy was good enough to socket major chips in most of its machines (DIP and PLCC) and frequently reused chips from machine to machine.  Tandy sometimes would use off the shelf chips, sometimes custom chips and sometimes programmable logic.  In this blog article I will identify the major chips each system uses in order to help people find suitable replacements, if possible.  

Official and Unofficial Variants of the Atari 2600 VCS

The Atari 2600 went through many variations over its long lifespan.  Officially Atari authorized a dozen or so variations of the console, and tolerated several more when the 2600 mattered.  Most only differ cosmetically, but the sheer number of "official variants" for an early console is quite the achievement.  Today we will identify them and discuss what makes them unique. 

Rethinking the Video Game Generations and Handheld Video Games

Generations of video games have been defined in reference to home video game consoles which were released over time and their capabilities.  While I have some views on that subject, in today's blog I wish to talk about generations of handheld video games.  Handheld video games have always lagged behind their home console brethren due to their need to work within smaller sizes and smaller power sources.  In this blog video I will trace the hardware developments in the handheld world and categorize them into eras and technologies which make sense.

Turbo EverDrive Pro + EDFX - A Match Made in Heaven?

Courtesy of Krikzz and Wikipedia

One of Krikzz' earliest flash carts was the Turbo EverDrive for the Turbo Grafx 16 and PC Engine.  His Turbo EverDrive v1 and v2 only supported HuCards.  Eventually competition came in the form of TerraOnion and their Super SD System 3 and later Super HD System 3 PRO, which supported TurboGrafx/PC Engine CD images.  Most people who keep track of the flash cart and optical drive emulator world assumed sooner or later that Krikzz would release a device that would support CD images. While recent events affecting his country may have caused delay Krikzz' CD-ROM simulating device, the Turbo EverDrive Pro, is finally here and I will review it.

The Kneale Watcher, Reader & Listener

Nigel Kneale (1922-2006) was a British/Manx author whose influence on science fiction, supernatural fiction and television drama cannot be understated.  Kneale wrote many scripts, screenplays and stories that would have a formative influence in English drama.  While Kneale is best known for his Quatermass stories, his work is much more varied than those relating to Professor Bernard Quatermass.  He has a fairly vast body of work that still exists, although due to the nearsighted preservation practices of the BBC and ITV affiliates of the 1940s-1970s, many of his contributions to TV drama do not survive, at least in their original form.  The man wrote books, TV plays, film scripts and radio dramas.  The purpose of this article is to identify what of his "genre work" still exists, what has been released and the best versions available to acquire.  While books have been written about Kneale's career, impact on modern genre fantasy and his works, here we will let the author speak for himself directly to his audience.

Tandy 1000 EX and Tandy 1000 HX - The All-in-One Tandys

The Tandy 1000 EX was released in mid-1986 ($799) and the Tandy 1000 HX released in mid-1987 ($699) .  They were Tandy's "entry-level" PC-compatible models, containing everything you need to run PC and MS-DOS software in a fully self-contained unit by means of the built-in keyboard. The Tandy 1000 SX ($1,199) was released alongside the EX and the Tandy 1000 TX ($1,199) accompanied the HX. Due to their low cost and despite their increasingly unimpressive specifications, they still sold very, very well.  Lets talk about their abilities, their upgrades and their differences.

Completing the B/X D&D Rules - The Cook/Marsh Expert Set

The post-1980 version of "Classic" or "Basic" Dungeons and Dragons was very popular and had a rather lengthy life for a role playing game (1981-1996).  In 1981 TSR published a new revision of the Basic Set with its Rulebook edited by Tom Moldvay which had mostly rewritten, revised and reorganized the Rulebook  previously edited by J. Eric Holmes for the 1977 Basic Set.  Moldvay's Basic Rulebook's excellence in laying down the rules was as such that they went almost completely unchanged for the next fifteen years.  I have previously covered its ruleset in detail.

But what lied beyond the levels 1-3 covered in the Basic Set?  During the rather lengthy reign of the Holmes Basic Set, the official answer was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.  The Holmes Basic Rules were a simplified version of the Original Dungeons and Dragons game for new players. Once the players learned what a role playing game was with a few tabletop sessions, it was time to progress to the "full game".  Original Dungeons and Dragons covered the higher levels but that game was becoming increasingly forgotten with each passing year.  AD&D was a more expensive game to play with the three hardcover rulebooks and required converting characters to the advanced system and adapting to new mechanics.  In part in order to keep players interested in D&D rather than to explore non-TSR games and in part to placate OD&D co-creator Dave Arneson's demands for royalties, TSR decided to expand the Basic Dungeons and Dragons ruleset. 

Accompanying the new Basic Set from Moldvay was a new Expert Set with a Rulebook edited by David Cook with Steve Marsh.  These covered character levels 4-14 and were intended to allow player characters to explore wilderness areas, fight on the seas and the skies and of course added new spells, monsters and magic items.  In this blog entry we will examine the influence of these rules and how they cemented the B/X series as one of the most popular rulesets that have inspired present day Old School Renaissance games.