As part of the Show & Tell blogging event featuring video games, Jason over at Rediscover the 80s wrote about the Activision video game patches he wished he’d earned back in the 80s. I read that post and got jealous myself, because not only did I never win a patch, but I never even knew of their existence until his post.
But it triggered a memory for me of an old Atari “magazine” I have. As it turned out, it wasn’t actually a magazine, but rather a newsletter. Back in 1981, Activision founder Jim Levy wrote a “welcome” letter introducing the original Activisions newsletter to Activision’s loyal fans. The Activisions newsletter was created to inform gamers of new titles in development and give the reader a small peek into Activision, its designers, their games, and the people who played them. The first Activisions newsletter arrived in the fall of 1981 and the last issue was sent out in the fall of 1983. Seven issues of the Activisions newsletters were created in all. In this Time Capsule, I’m presenting that seventh and final edition. It features some of those patches that Jason yearns for. Enjoy.
The flip book below is super easy to use. The controls are in the control panel below the book, and you can use them to go forward or backward. I suggest using the expand button to blow it up to full screen for maximum enjoyment.
The early days of my Nintendo play were dominated by action and sports games. I’ve detailed how Pro Wrestling was my first true Nintendo love, and the other games I owned at the beginning of my fandom were Alpha Mission and Top Gun. Those were followed by Double Dribble and Rad Racer. All of these games were ones that featured constant action and re-action but offered little in the way of role-play.
My game tastes would switch to role-playing when I first got to play The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventures of Link that I borrowed from my friend Geoffrey. After that, I bought my first role-playing game, Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest, and it would quickly shoot up to the top of my favorite games of all-time list and stay there. It wasn’t just the role-playing aspect that hooked me, it was also the strategy element involved in the game that really set the hook. I didn’t realize at that time just how much I was going to enjoy a pure strategy game until I borrowed another game from Geoffrey called Defender of the Crown.
Defender of the Crown was a strategy game set in England in 1149 during the middle ages. You had a spot of land to begin the game, and you attempted to conquer neighboring lands. Pretty simple concept don’t you think? You had several ways to go about that though. You could siege their land, or covertly go in and try to take over. And if you needed help, you had the ability to call on Robin Hood. Throw in the fact that you had sporting events as well like the joust and sword fight for the action quota, you were left with a pretty fun way to kill time on a Saturday afternoon.
Besides the strategy part of the game, what I liked best about Defender of the Crown was laying siege to an opponent’s castle. You had catapults with which you could launch boulders to knock holes in the walls. After holes had been created, you used the catapult to launch fire or plagues into the castle to weaken their defenses. Before you knew it, your opponent surrendered and you had acquired a new land to rule. But you had to watch because while you were out conquering new lands with your army, your enemies were plotting to invade your home territory. If you didn’t leave enough troops at home, you’d find yourself without a place to return to.
Growing up a fan of Robin Hood and medieval stories in general, this game was a big hit with me. And the strategy aspect had me engaged to the point I was playing it every afternoon after school. I never actually owned Defender of the Crown but would borrow it from Geoffrey and keep it for months on end.
Defender of the Crown really set me on a path of loving strategy games that continues to this day. I moved on to games like Genghis Khan and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego for Nintendo, and on to Act Raiser and others like it for Super Nintendo. Most people may have never even heard of the game, but Defender of the Crown was a transformative title in my gaming life.
In this Time Capsule, go back to the early days of Dungeons & Dragons with this TRS Catalog from 1981. There was a surprising amount of products available from TSR even back then, and this catalog showcases them all. It’s a great look back at the pioneering days of role-playing games and a real trip down memory lane.
The flip book below is super easy to use. The controls are in the control panel below the book, and you can use them to go forward or backward. I suggest using the expand button to blow it up to full screen for maximum enjoyment.
Ever since I was a young retro rambler, board games have been one of my favorite types of toys. While not a “toy” in a traditional sense, board games still made up a large part of my playtime through the years. I’ve written before about several of my favorites, but I’ve yet to talk about Hog Tied, the game of chase and chance. Let’s remedy that travesty here today.
To start with, let me tell you a little bit about the game. It was produced by Selchow and Righter. You may recognize the name as the one behind classic games Parcheesi, Scrabble, and Trivial Pursuit. They would eventually be bought out by Coleco in 1986, who in turn went bankrupt and had their assets purchased by Hasbro. But in 1981, they released Hog Tied.
Hog Tied is a two-player game, where the object is to capture all of the opposing player’s pigs and/or hogs. Each player has five pigs and five hogs, but only the pigs are in the game at the beginning. The five pigs start the game on the starting row, and advance their way across the board, trying to reach the opposing player’s starting row. If they reach the starting row, a pig becomes a hog. Pigs can only be captured by hogs, so getting your pigs to the other side of the board is the first goal of the game. Once you have hogs, you can then start capturing your opponent’s pigs. Hogs can move in any direction, backward and forwards, while pigs can only advance in a forward direction.
A few years ago my mall died. I know I’m not alone in this fact as numerous malls have closed all around the country in the last decade. For our local mall, it started when a new shopping center was constructed seven miles away. Only a few stores left for the new center, but it was like the first little snowball starting to roll down the hill. A couple of years later, a new mega-shopping attraction began construction, and all of the anchor stores in the mall declared they would be moving there. Even Stevie Wonder could read the writing on that wall, and before we knew it, most stores in the mall were signing up for the move to the new outdoor shopping center. The few shops that were left were too small to afford the move and ended up staying at the mall until the end, and then just vanished. The independent stores went out of business altogether, and the smaller chain stores just didn’t relocate, and that was the end of the mall.
A few days before it closed for good, I was able to get in and take the photos in the slideshow below. Consider them autopsy photos. If you have any questions as you browse through them, feel free to ask. I’ll be over in the corner weeping.
The main entrance to the mall.
One of the many entrances to the mall, and the one I used.
Another entrance to the mall.
Part of the main drag on the upper level of the mall.
Looking down the main aisle of the upper level.
The Customer Service desk also doubled as Gift Wrap during the holidays.
Part of the lower level of the mall.
A look at the escalators from the lower level perspective.
The middle of the mall, lower level.
What used to be two of my favorite stores. Kaybee Toys was on the left, and Spencer's Gifts was on the right. The wooden door front was added near the end when the store transitioned to a music store.
The store with the green exterior was Rack Room Shoes.
What used to be our local GNC store.
Game Stop, which before that was Software Etc...the absolute best place around when it came to buying computer games.
On the right is the exterior of what was FYE, a store I spent a small mint at through the years.
Misty Mountain Designs was the hippy store.
The lower level entrance to Sears.
The lower level entrance to JC Penny.
It's not hard to spot a Bath and Body Works facade. Even though it was empty, I could still smell the Cucumber Melon.
On the corner of the main aisle sits what used to be B. Dalton's book store...one of my favorite spots in the mall.
The exterior of Proffitts.
Friedman's Jewelers...where I bought my wife's engagement ring.
What once was the arcade. In it's later years is sported a neon sign and was called Tilt. When I was younger, it had a mining facade and was called The Gold Mine.
The small store you see here was our only Chic-Fil-A in the area for many years.
The display cases of Great American Cookie Company always looked great, and the smell coming from that store was one of the best in the entire mall.
One of the mainstays of the food court was Subway. It used to sport the familiar green and yellow color scheme, but changed when Subway left.
The exterior of the Piccadilly restaurant.
The dark corridor of Piccadilly's food line.
These two stores were part of the food court. On the left was Villa Pizza where you could get great pizza by the slice. And on the right was a small eatery called China Shuttle.
T. Gordon's restaurant where you could grab an adult beverage and a steak while at the mall.
A sad sign hanging in the window of one of the stores. A major part of my childhood and teenage years died along with the mall itself.
