Tuesday, 7 April 2015
Cover to Cover Adventure International Spring 1981 Catalog pp 13 14
Page 13 continues the de rigeur lineup of arcade games, mostly for the TRS-80 despite the machines limited audiovisual capabilities:
As was common at the time, most of these are unlicensed versions of popular coin-op arcade games. Showdown is (ahem) "similar to the gun fighting arcade game", that is, the Taito/Midway Gun Fight and Boot Hill games; Space Colony is "in the space invaders theme." Note that the Color Computer version, crammed into 4K, was written by Charles Forsythe, who did a lot of impressive work for The Programmers Guild. Ive written at some length about the mummy-themed maze game clone Tunnels of Fahad earlier. Silver Flash Pinball was presumably semi-original, and was developed by a company called Southern Cross Systems -- it appears theyre still around, though they morphed into a digital imaging company circa 1984. And Tank Command appears to be an early version of the player vs. player combat contests that remain popular today.
Page 14 features a paid advertisement for an early series of computer shows -- again, in these wild and wooly early days of the hobby and industry, nobody felt it was necessary to solicit George Lucas permission for the imagery:
Im not at all familiar with these events, and a quick Google search doesnt turn up any interesting history; the National Computer Shows promotional organization was still advertising in InfoWorld magazine circa 1982, but as far as I can see the company seems to have faded into history not long after that.
Tomorrow, more pages!
