A classic game featuring dungeons, dragons, and possibly insight into the human condition.

When Boulder Dash was released, it flew off the shelves almost as quickly as it could be restocked. Due to its sales alone, it was voted Piece of Plastic of the Year 1980 – it wasn’t discovered that it was a game until the Nintendo Entertainment System was released three-years later.

Boulder Dash features a fully orchestrated musical score as well as a touching story about an elfin boy who tries to save his village from the dark and mysterious Lord Shadow of Shadow Island.

In addition to its story and music, Boulder Dash was also praised for its innovative controls, especially its use of

• ‘A’ button

Can you find the sword, torch, boomerang, and collect all of the crystal shards in the correct order? There’s no save feature or password system so be sure to choose wisely – otherwise you’ll have to start from the very beginning: programming the game from scratch.

Always Game of the Year in my heart.

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Sierra On-Line Incorporated introduced our children to a third-person adventure game called EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus.  This game is about a young boy, named Adam, who embarks on a complicated adventure with his talking Dolphin friend.  Along the way, he meets fish with problems, Manatees who require help, a Hermit Crab with an inferority complex and even a Whale.  While this game does bring back some nostalgic memories, it also can broach feelings of blinding white hot RAGE.

Who did those Sierra game designers think they were?!  Attempting to influence and indoctrinate our children with environmental awareness and stewardship!  Who do they think they are, Koolaid or even ADIDAS!?  I may be willing to shell out money for shoes made by Koolaid, but I don’t want to feel bad on weekends when I drive around in my yellow 2007 Hummer, littering and paint balling pedestrians, all the while blasting my Beach Boy C.D.’s.

They have injured my ability to enjoy throwing rice at pigeons and running over Sea Manatees with a Seadoo.  Suddenly the 20 points I would have been awarded for knocking out the Sea Cow is clouded by images of life long friendship between Adam and that damn Manatee security guard!

Recycling? Friendship? Caring? Animal rights and respect?  Are these the values we should have been pushing on our children?  I blame you, Sierra, and EcoQuest for the disillusioned youth and the Copenhagen Summit.

 Maybe my inflatable Margaret Thatcher will make me feel better.

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Beginning our month long retrospective of the Game Boy, we’ll take a look at the origins of the device.

In 1988 Nintendo executives travelled behind the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union and discovered a game so incredible that they built a console around it. The game’s name was “Tetris.” Tetris is a Russian word meaning “Dead Capitalists.” The game is a futuristic look at a world where western nations have been destroyed. It’s your job to drop the socialist building blocks of love, honor, and respect on top of the empty, cold, capitalist soil.

Are you a bad enough dude to ensure everyone gets a piece of the pie? Nintendo wanted to answer this very question, and tasked Gunpei Yokoi – their finest cake decorator – with creating a console capable of handling the 128-bit Russian masterpiece.

Gunpei emerged a year later with perhaps the most detailed cake version of what we now know as the Game Boy. Nintendo executives were tempted to eat the cake, but instead had it molded and put into production – putting the greater good over their own sinful desires – as Stalin intended.

When the Game Boy was released in 1989, featuring Tetris as the pack-in game, it lit a fire in the cold capitalist hearts around the world. The Game Boy came equipped with a link cable port, allowing newly recruited communists to share the game with one another and spread the message.

By 1990 the Soviet agenda had been furthered so much by the Game Boy’s release that the Berlin wall came down, allowing the West Germans, who’d found enlightenment in Tetris, to travel to East Germany and understand what it was to “share.”

Some say Game Boy is about video games, but they’re missing the point. It’s about equality. It’s about rationing. It’s about combing your hair each morning with a worn out shoe polishing brush given to you by the government – and enjoying it.

The Walkman was originally introduced to North America as the Soundabout. It was the first device which enabled the portable listening of music.

One of the drawbacks of the Walkman was that you were forced to listen to songs in consecutive order. This was addressed years later with the invention of "Radio" which enabled songs to be shuffled into a random sequence.

Another drawback was the Walkman’s reliance on AA batteries. The estimated battery life of 47 seconds meant that rather than listening to music, Walkman owners could simply sample it. This sampling concept would later come into play in the hip-hop community.

Eventually Walkmen were equipped with belt-fed battery loaders, capable of loading several thousand batteries per second. The same technology was used in Vietnam to load lead batteries into power-hungry Charlie.

Finally I can listen to my Fleetwood Mac cassettes from the comfort of a stranger’s patio.

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‘Reaganomics’ was a term-coined by God Himself as he was dictating the 15 Commandments to Moses.

It wasn’t until Supreme and Divine Leader Ronald Reagan became president of the United States in 1980 that Reaganomics became a reality and not just a divine truth tucked away in scripture. After the destruction wrought on the United States by the in-his-heart adulterous Jimmy Carter, the entire world was ripe and ready for the implementation of a new economic plan.

As if this change was divinely inspired, two months into his first term, President Reagan discovered a series of gold plates in the woods that only he was capable of seeing and reading – with the aid of his trusty stone glasses.

These tablets contained the easily remembered axiomatic truths that became known as Reaganomics, such as:

1. Reduce government spending
2. Reduce income tax rates
3. Reduce governmental regulation of the economy
4. Control the money supply
5. He seemed like a nice man… Why did he try to shoot me?

And of course everyone knows the other thirty-seven points of Reaganomics, so they need not be listed here.

Reaganomics did receive its share of criticism – from artists such as Billie Joel and Boys Don’t Cry – but by the end of Reagan’s second term in 1989, Reaganomics had lifted the United States out of poverty, allowing it to quickly become the world’s most lovable superpower.

Keep up the good work, champs!

Thank you for creating a system that doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘failure’!

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Everyone’s favourite bulimic purple monkey-man with gold sideburns (known as ‘Super Mario’ in Australia) is back and bigger than ever in this classic Nintendo Entertainment System release.

In Brush Roller, video game heavy weights Taiwan ROC created one of the most original video games to be ever released on a hotel mattress. Much like a hotel mattress, players move around a red playing-area and try to turn it brown. In their attempt to do this, players find themselves being chased by blue and yellow enemies; and a friend sometimes appears to assist players in their journey by giving Super Mario bonus points.

In addition to its cutting-edge game-play, Brush Roller also features some of the most intuitive controls ever programmed. So intuitive and innovative, in fact, that the directional pad is the only set of buttons players will use.

Brush Roller was also riding the wave of Eastern philosophy in gaming, as players are unable to attack enemies or defend themselves from attacking enemies. Will the crumpled up body of the player be able to act as a mirror and reflect the enemy’s bad behaviour back at the enemy, causing it to see the horror of its actions and changing its course of action? Only Brush Roller has the answer.

The answer is no.

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