​The machine included 6 games, some which were solely intended to be played with the lightgun, while the others all involved white paddles chasing a moving dot across the screen.

​The “controllers” are those two sliders at the bottom - it doesn’t get much simpler than that, does it?

​Text : Arni Vikingur

Text : Arni Vikingur

​
​Balance of Power is a computer strategy game of geopolitics during the Cold War, created by Chris Crawford and published in 1985 on the Apple Macintosh by Mindscape, followed by ports to a variety of platforms over the next two years.

In the game the player takes the role of the President of the United States or General Secretary of the Soviet Union. The goal is to improve the player's country's standing in the world relative to the other superpower. During each yearly turn, random events occur that may have effects on the player's international prestige. The player can choose to respond to these events in various ways, which may prompt a response from the other superpower. This creates brinkmanship situations between the two nations, potentially escalating to a nuclear war, which ends the game.

​Crawford was already fairly well known for earlier games, especially Eastern Front (1941). His 1984 announcement that he was moving to the Macintosh platform to work on an entirely new idea in gaming generated considerable interest. It was widely and positively reviewed after its release, including an extremely positive review in The New York Times Magazine. It was widely praised for its inventive nonaction gameplay that was nevertheless exciting and a distinct alternative to the more common arcade games of the era. It has been named as one of the most innovative computer games of all time.

Hugely successful on the Mac, the addition of an IBM PC port late in the year made it a best seller. Ultimately selling over a quarter million units although it only ran on relatively new platforms, it represented a not-insignificant fraction of all video game sales through 1985 and 86. It spawned a number of sequels and copycats, but none of these were as successful as the original.

After Balance, Crawford began work on an entirely new game, Trust & Betrayal: The Legacy of Siboot, released in 1987 and selling only a few thousand copies. Mindscape was disappointed, and pressured Crawford to do a follow-up to Balance. This was released in 1989 as Balance of Power: The 1990 Edition (sometimes referred to as Balance of Power II) on the Apple IIGS, Windows, Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST and that is the version we got here at the Museum.

Here at the Museum we just assembled a PC computer from the 2000 era. It´s a IBM Aptiva with a Pentium !!! 600 Mhz cpu, 10GB Harddrive with Windows 98 installed. It´s a great system to showcase most of the games from this time period.  ​Computers were still young in in 2000. The generations of computers existing in 2,000 were primarily of the Pentium 3, K6-23D, and Athlon line, by AMD and Intel respectively. Cyrix processors were still being manufactured in 2,000, but they were not very competitive performing less work per clock cycle. Cyrix died out completely soon after.

Games where mostly all released in CD-ROM and sound capabilities where no longer midi files which relied on a good sound card, we where getting the full professional recorded music on wav files. So having a good speaker system was almost an standard to enjoy this quality sound. 

​We got a stack of CD-ROM games from this period to test out on our "new" computer :) PC gaming remained popular throughout the decade, but was in an overall decline as console graphics technically advanced. Publishers also liked the standardisation that consoles provided, whereas PC game performance was dependent on the graphic capabilities of a player's hardware. Nevertheless, the PC remained the device of choice for many popular strategy, simulation, and online games.

​Here is a shot if the CPU that is inside the computer. It´s the first Pentium III variant the Katmai (Intel product code 80525). It was a further development of the Deschutes Pentium II. The Pentium III saw an increase of 2 million transistors over the Pentium II and it has the same cartridge based design. The philosophy behind it was that anyone could just plug in and out a new CPU as they evolved over time. Just like games for NES consoles.  

​Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, is a 1993 graphic adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Maniac Mansion. The game's plot follows Bernard Bernoulli and his friends Hoagie and Laverne as they attempt to stop the evil Purple Tentacle—a sentient, disembodied tentacle—from taking over the world. The player takes control of the trio and solves puzzles while using time travel to explore different periods of history.

​The game was released simultaneously on floppy disk and CD-ROM to critical acclaim and commercial success. Critics focused on its cartoon-style visuals and comedic elements. Day of the Tentacle has featured regularly in lists of "top" games published more than two decades after its release, and aspects have been referenced in popular culture. A remaster of Day of the Tentacle was developed by Schafer's current studio, Double Fine Productions, and released on March 22, 2016 for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Windows and OS X.