On the latest episode of Down Home Gamin, I discuss a game that was a staple of early childhood. Penetrator, developed by Beam Software of Australia, is a Scramble clone made for the ZX Spectrum, TRS-80, and C64 in 1982. It has a number of features which set it apart from the many other Scramble clones of its time. 

One last review blog dump for the end of the year.  Here’s some more reviews I’ve written recently at GamerDad.com.  Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d appreciate it.  OK let’s begin!

It's February and I have begun reviewing Console Generation 2, or rather, the years '77-'83 and all games both arcade, PC and maybe even board games. Here goes:

80s retro gaming is the topic today. Here's what I played last week (or earlier this week) on various collections I have.

After playing Duck Hunt as a child in 1987, I became an instant fan of Nintendo's Zapper peripheral. There was something magical about pointing the orange & grey gun at the screen and seeing the game respond to my attempts at shooting the waterfowl flying about. As the years passed, I played other enjoyable Zapper games like Hogan's Alley, Wild Gunman, and Barker Bill's Trick Shooting. After such great experiences, I was convinced that all Nintendo-developed light gun games were as good as the previous ones I played. "They can do no wrong!" I said—famous last words of a naive fool.

Two of the biggest arcade games of the Golden Age of Arcade Games were Scramble and Super Cobra. These side-scrolling tunnel shooters were produced by Konami, and were both released in the same year, with Scramble being released early in 1981 and Super Cobra being released later the same year. Both were notable for being among the earliest forced-scrolling games and for having distinct stages that flowed into one another. Konami considered Scramble and Super Cobra to be precursors to its popular Gradius games, and in some cases even listed Scramble as the first Gradius game.

A few of the games I got on sale recently are three collections of Konami classic games.  So today we’ll look at the collection with a bunch of Konami arcade titles.  I’ll go over the other collections in the coming weeks, don’t worry.  They should’ve called this the Shooter Collection, because with the exception of one game on here, they’re all shooters.  So let’s take a look at what’s on here!

A look back at being on the internet for 10 years...

Halochief90 got ahead of me in achievement points today. Only by 20, at first, so it gave me a goal to shoot for. The first easy achievement game on my list was Batman The TellTale Series. I had to download episode 4 first, though. Why this game downloads episodes one at a time instead of all at once, is a mystery to me. The files are small, though, so not too long a wait. In the meantime, I played some of my new retro game collections.

Looking ahead, but not too far, just the next month. I got a few I'd like to play. 

NIS America recently released a collection of some of SNK’s arcade hits on the Switch.  While SNK is mostly known for their fighting games and NEO GEO, before then they made other arcade games, too, and that’s what this collection is all about.  So no King of Fighters or other NEO GEO games.  Mostly pre-90’s stuff here.  But despite having a lot of army themed shooters, this is still a pretty good collection, so I thought I’d go over the games on it today.

Last week we looked at some games on the SEGA Genesis Classics collection out now on consoles.  But there were so many games on this collection, that I had to split it into two parts!  So here are the second half of the games found on this massive 16-bit collection.  Do be sure and read the first part, too, if you haven’t already!

To celebrate the recent release of Kirby Star Allies for Nintendo Switch, let’s look at another Kirby game that came out earlier this year that I just now got around to playing.  It’s Kirby Battle Royale, a 3DS game featuring four player battle style mini-games with Kirby and his different copy abilities.  There are ten different types of arenas to battle in, and they’re all pretty interesting enough to be deemed ‘blog-worthy’ by me, so let’s take a look at them!  Also be sure to stick around to the end, as I’ve got some news about HAL Laboratory (creators of Kirby), and their first new mobile game!

I got a laptop I used for Steam gaming eventually in July of 2012, but I honestly don't even remember if I was gaming in 2012 or just had to get a new laptop, cause I know I played Fez and Hotline Miami in 2013, but it was mostly getting to the Batman Arkham games I'd missed otherwise. 

Since I'm on the theme of Emulator Oddities, one that caught my eye was very strange indeed. Today's emulator oddity on deck from my Xbox Emulators is the Pokemon Mini. On November 16, 2001 the Pokemon Mini was released in America. Luckily, through the use of emulation I can discuss all the games that were on this curious little handheld that ran for the price of $50 or so at launch. So let's talk about the Pokemon Mini!

I was a teenager when the video game arcades were big in the 80s. I rode my bike everywhere and arcades were all around me. I would go to a pizza shop, a hotel lobby, a department store or the mall and find them. It was fun to go to different places because they often had different machines. I got to play a lot of different games, so I'm breaking this blog up into three parts. This first one is the years 1978-1981.

Season's warnings, PixlBit community! I thought I'd bestir myself and write a quick blog.

Hey folks, I’ve got another batch of game reviews over at GamerDad.com that I’ve written and posted lately.  So here are some links and things.  Please click on and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a comment or two.  I’d really appreciate it.  Thanks so much!

We all play games here, and I'm willing to bet that the higher percentage of people here are aslo pretty good at them.  Maybe you can hip shot and tear a room of campers apart while reading the paper in an FPS.  Perhaps you can drift and powerslide your way to victory lane in the likes of MarioKart better than Vin Diesel.  Could be you're the spiritual video game successor to the likes of  Ryu or Heihachi Mishima.  Whatever the game, you have prowess that few others have.  So I ask you, which game do you make others your bitch?

One of the most prominent developers on the Atari 8-bit line was, of course, Activision. Known as the world's first third party developer, Activision was formed by disgruntled Atari employees with the promise to treat individual developers like rock stars. If you ever read a manual for a 2600 Activision game, you've seen the "about the author" bios for each of them. Eventually, as Activision grew and became more corporate, its employees would leave and form their own companies. Most notable among these were Accolade, Absolute Entertainment, and the best known of all of the baby Activisions, Acclaim Entertainment. By 1990, Activision completely flamed out, was bankrupt, and well on its way to going out of business. A new CEO that came from the grocery store industry, one Robert "Bobby" Kotick, was hired... and the rest is history.

I have been around computer and video games for almost my entire life. My first gaming experiences I can remember were with the Donkey Kong, Dig-Dug, and Ms. Pac-Man machines at the Vekol Commissary in Maricopa, Arizona, near where I lived at the time. However, I never had an Atari 2600 at home, though my cousin in Gilbert had one. Instead, I got a lot of my home gaming fix on home computers, at least until I got my first Game Boy in 1989.

The 1980s was a true renaissance period for the budding video game industry. Arcade games like Xevious, Donkey Kong, and OutRun gave us new levels of visual, audio and strategic detail that took us beyond the comparatively simple mechanics of Pong and Space Invaders. It was indeed the golden age of gaming.

Good morning Pixlbits.