iPhone review: Vector Tanks

Vector Tanks is an iPhone game that seems to appeal to the nostalgia of former Battlezone players. I have very little connection to the source material here so I look at it through a different lens than would a player of the original Battlezone. It was released about three years before my birth, and, although Wikipedia says its popularity was enduring due to the innovative nature of the graphics and perspective, it...

Purchase and download old PC games on the cheap

Good Old Games is a digital download service offering PC games that, while they aren’t going to tax your new GTX 295, are some of the greatest titles of their time. Fortunately, they also won’t tax your wallet much. We’re not talking Ultima 2 or anything like that. Everything I’ve seen on the site was published in the last 15 years, and the quality of the games shows through in spite of the...

Oregon Trail making a comback?

Oregon Trail, the computer game released on multiple platforms beginning way back in 1971, is making something of a comeback online. I have to admit I have gotten caught up in the fuss by playing through the game as emulated in Flash. It was rough going about three-quarters of the way through, but my carpenter and his family managed to make the voyage with only one casuality. The next day after rediscovering this...

Video: Building an arcade cabinet

  It’s nice to have friends in high places. Failing that, it’s nice to have friends who can build you a sweet arcade cabinet! Brandon Haynes is a Rubik’s Cube virtuoso. He’s also pretty good with power tools. In this episode of the raddevon video podcast, we discuss his experience building a MAME cabinet. The plans Brandon used to construct the cabinet were obtained for free from...

D-Pad Hero rocks it old school

Have you ever stepped back and taken a look at the entire rhythm game genre (that’s Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DDR, Parappa, etcetera) and thought to yourself, “In terms of graphics, there was nothing preventing these game from existing 20 years ago.” Sure, they wouldn’t have been as pretty, but how pretty do you need arrows, circles, and text flying across the screen for it to still be fun? You...