1990s
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Hasbro is relaunching classic Tiger Electronics gaming handhelds (updated)
A few years ago, Bandai revived its line of Tamagotchi virtual pets. The new versions of the toy were smaller than the originals from the '90s and had fewer features. They must have sold pretty well, though, since the company followed those up with full-sized reissues of both first- and second-generation Tamagotchis. According to The Verge, Hasbro is banking on '90s nostalgia, too, and will reintroduce the then-ubiquitous Tiger Electronics LCD handhelds. The affordable games took cues from Nintendo's Game & Watch portables, featuring one title per device and a simple form of gameplay. The big reason for their success -- and what Hasbro is likely hoping to still be a selling point -- was that they were based on popular console and arcade games like Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden, as well as movies and TV shows like 101 Dalmations and Beavis and Butthead.
WRUP: Come on, man, it's the '90s
Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too! Going to BlizzCon? No? Why not? It's the '90s! Everyone's going to conventions these days! Sure, it's in Southern California, and for many of you, that's a long way from home. But man, this is the '90s. They have planes now. And some of those planes even have air phones. You can hook up your 14.4k modem to one of those and connect to your favorite Warcraft 2 BBS, maybe play a little Legend of the Red Dragon from 20,000 feet. Why not? It's the '90s! What's that? You say it's not the '90s -- it's 2011? Well, of course it is! I know exactly what today is. See this Casio digital watch on my wrist? It has the day, week, month, and year on it. Everyone's got one -- everyone, that is, who's living in the '90s. BlizzCon, the hottest event of the '90s, is coming up in a mere two weeks. So today, in addition to the usual question of "What are you playing?" (Super Nintendo and Scattergories, obvi), I had our top-notch writers (many of whom have Tripod pages) answer a bonus question: "What terrific advice do you have for the go-go BlizzCon attending folks of the '90s?"
Publishing for Apple's Pippin was a bit less curated than the App Store
Let me describe a game for you: Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead descends from Heaven and acid-trips his way through a parking lot, trying to avoid getting busted by the cops as he attempts to hug electric guitars. Sound like fun? Sure. Sound like something Apple would let onto the App Store in a million years? Probably not. But it turns out Apple wasn't always so choosy. Ars Technica recently interviewed Jason Rainbows, developer of Garcia's Guitars for the Apple Pippin, and the interview paints a picture of a much different (and maybe more lighthearted) mid-1990s Apple. "The Apple Pip-what?" some of you may be asking now, and you can be forgiven for that, because I never heard of it before a couple years ago, either. The Apple Pippin was Apple's aborted attempt at entering the gaming market in the mid-90s, running a version of System 7 on PowerPC hardware. As was typical of much of Apple's gear during that time, the Pippin was too expensive, too slow, had too little third-party support, and almost no one bought it. It was one of the first Apple products to disintegrate under Steve Jobs's laser gaze when he returned to Apple's top echelons, and as such the product is now little more than the answer to obscure Apple trivia. However, one interesting bit about the Apple Pippin is that Garcia's Guitars was actually packaged with the device. Apple doesn't include games with any of its iOS devices now, instead relying on users to discover them for themselves on the App Store, and it's hard to imagine the company highlighting a game like Garcia's Guitars today. According to Jason Rainbows, however, "Back then, if I called Apple and stayed on the phone (or bitched long enough), I'd eventually get Steve Jobs or The Woz on the line." In those days Apple was still fronting itself as a sort of "counterculture" alternative to the PC -- best exemplified by the later "Think Different" campaign -- so while Apple's tacit support for a game like Garcia's Guitars may seem surprising given the company's more "uptight" modern image, it was entirely in character in the company's earlier days. I never owned (or even saw) a Pippin, nor did I ever play Garcia's Guitars. But while it's nice to see Apple enjoying its top spot on the tech heap today, I'll admit that Ars Technica's interview with Jason Rainbows got me feeling a bit nostalgic for the company's earlier days. Apple had a bit more of a "devil may care" attitude back then, or at least it seems so today. Maybe it didn't do the company any favors when it came to the balance sheets, but I kind of miss the "mellower" Apple described in Ars Technica's article.
