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The Adventures of Willy Beamish

1/31/2016

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​The Adventures of Willy Beamish is a graphic adventure game developed by Dynamix and published in 1991 by Sierra Entertainment. The player takes on the role of nine-year-old Willy Beamish in a game that is somewhat of a parody of the adventure genre. The game pioneered the use of in-game graphics drawn to resemble classic hand-drawn cartoon animation. It was initially released for MS-DOS and the Commodore Amiga and was ported to the Sega CD in 1993. CD versions of the game complemented the in-game text with speech, and included a few other cosmetic changes. A sequel was reportedly planned starring Willy Beamish as a late teenager, but the project was canceled.
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​Willy Beamish is introduced as a Millennial brat archetype of early 90s, being the middle child in a typical upper middle class American family, who is obsessed with science fiction, console games and hanging out with his gang in their tree house. His existence is not entirely idyllic, though; he is periodically tormented by a number of people. These include various staff members at Carbuncle Elementary School, a vicious teenaged school bully named Spider, and his two sisters, one of whom is a preschool prodigy and the other of whom is an angsty teen who undergoes a disturbing transformation midway through the game. His parents love him, but are at their wits end with his mischief, and are seriously considering enrolling him in military school. His adventures take place over the first few days of summer vacation, in the (fictitious) American town of Frumpton. He is occasionally visited by his grandfather's ghost, who serves as his conscience.
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As the game begins, Willy Beamish is sent to detention on the last day of school; his pet frog "Horny" disrupted the final school assembly by dislodging the principal's toupee. This initial scene is a good example of the game's array of choices presented to the player: Willy can stay in detention until it is over, but then he won't get home in time to pick up the mail and intercept the report card that shows a "C+" in Music Appreciation. To sneak out early, he must forge a hall pass and either avoid the school bully or pacify him by giving him something from Willy's inventory. It is ultimately impossible for Willy to keep the card out of his father's hands, but it is a good exercise in problem solving; Willy will later face challenges that cannot be avoided.
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​Many of the challenges that Willy faces are typical choices that a nine-year-old boy must make: whether to push his little sister on the swingset (and how high to push her), whether to wash his dad's car, and whether to take his dog for a walk. Making unwise choices can produce negative consequences of various sorts. For instance, if Willy does not wash his father's car, he does not receive his allowance, and cannot buy an item that he will need later in the game. In addition, Willy has a score system called the Trouble-O-meter, a thermometer with "Good Boy" at the bottom and "Cadet School" at the top. Actions that annoy Willy's parents will cause the meter to go up one level, and really infuriating them will cause it to go up more. If the mercury reaches "Cadet School", that's where Willy goes, and the game is over.
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​Here is a complete playthru of the game 
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Hoyle's Official Book of Game

1/31/2016

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​Hoyle's Official Book of Games (or Hoyle Series or Hoyle Games) is a series of games produced by Sierra Entertainment. Volume 1, released in 1989, featured multi-player card games. Volume 2, released in 1990, featured 28 varieties of Solitaire. Volume 3, released in 1991, featured board games. Volume 4, was a remake of Volume 1, with two additional games. Sierra continued to publish more games to the series up to its demise. Encore Software has continued publishing entries to the series since then.

​The games included are: Crazy Eights, Old Maid, Hearts, Gin Rummy, Cribbage and Klondike.
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​The original concept was submitted to Ken Williams (CEO/Founder of Sierra On-line) by Warren Schwader. Once the project was greenlit, Warren acted as the Lead Programmer as well as the Game Designer. The games were programmed using Sierra On-line's proprietary scripting language: Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI). SCI was originally created to aid in the development of Sierra's core line of adventure games. Working with SCI to implement card games and to code artificial intelligence for the characters proved challenging.

Warren Schwader continued as the Lead Programmer and Game Designer for the next two games in the series.
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Zip drive

1/31/2016

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​The Zip drive is a medium-to-high-capacity removable floppy disk storage system (for its period of contemporary use) that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Originally, Zip disks launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB.

The format became the most popular of the superfloppy products which filled a niche in the late 1990s portable storage market. However, it was never popular enough to replace the 3.5-inch floppy disk. Later versions of the disc matched the capacity available on rewritable CDs but this was far surpassed by the later rewritable DVDs. USB flash drives ultimately proved to be the better rewritable storage medium among the general public due to the near-ubiquity of USB ports on personal computers and soon after because of the far greater storage sizes offered. Zip drives fell out of favor for mass portable storage during the early 2000s. The Zip brand later covered internal and external CD writers known as Zip-650 or Zip-CD, which had no relation to the Zip drive.
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Micro Genius NES clone

1/31/2016

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​Micro Genius is a brand name used for Famicom clone consoles marketed in several countries around the world, particularly areas where Nintendo did not have an official presence, including the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, South Africa and East Asian countries excluding Japan. The name was initially and most famously used by TXC Corporation for its range of Taiwanese-made Famicom clones, software and accessories, but later passed to other companies and remains in use today on rebranded Chinese Famicom clones and LCD games.

In some countries - such as Malaysia - during the early 1990s, Micro Genius Famicom clones were the most popular game consoles, mirroring the popularity enjoyed several years earlier by Nintendo's official Famicom and NES in Japan and North America. In Russia certain models of Micro Genius were sold under the Dendy brand, and in Poland one version, the IQ-502, was released as a Pegasus console - both of which were also the most popular consoles in their respective countries - while in Colombia and certain other Latin American countries they were sold as Nichi-Man. Micro Genius consoles were also sighted being played by children in a North Korean children's camp in 2008, a country which few other video games have reached. However, they rarely reached markets where Nintendo operated, as they often infringed on Nintendo's patents in those regions.
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Nova 9: Return of Gir Draxon

1/13/2016

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​Nova 9: Return of Gir Draxon is a futuristic shooter video game developed by Dynamix and released by Sierra On-Line in 1991 for the PC as the second sequel to the game Stellar 7.  The player assumes the role of a futuristic tank pilot. The enemies include anything from other tanks to mechanical birds.

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​The game got 4½ out of 5 stars in Dragon. Computer Gaming World praised the game's "breathtaking graphics", high difficulty, and intelligent opponents, only criticizing the lack of a save game option. The magazine concluded that "Nova 9 is an excellent offering for arcade fans everywhere ... a thoroughly professional effort".
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    Yngvi Th. Johannsson

    Retro gaming enthusiast and all around computer collector. 

    Check out youtube site for more videos !

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