Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the founding of psychoanalysis! As reviews for E.T. The Extra Terrestrial have piled up over the years, I’m here to talk about one aspect of the game that could impact your desire to buy a copy, as it has mine. I am a trypophobe, and I
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The office full of IP lawyers who are currently wearing the skin suit once known as Atari (allegedly)* recently announced that a new version of Food Fight is in the works, thanks to a collaboration with developers at Mega Cat Studios. Arriving in early 2022, new Food Fight will launch first as a timed exclusive for the Atari VCS PC/console
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The small group of intellectual property lawyers who call themselves Atari has announced the Mini Pong Jr., a portable handheld version of the original Pong arcade game. The Mini Pong Jr. features both competitive two-player and single-player modes, complete with ten different AI settings (sounds like difficulty levels to me). Here’s the official announcement trailer for the Mini Pong Jr,
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In the latest issue of Famitsu, publisher Taito and developer Natsume Atari announced that a new game in the KiKi KaiKai series is headed to the Nintendo Switch. The unique, vertical-scrolling shoot ’em up series is known as Pocky & Rocky in the West, and the new game is tentatively titled KiKi KaiKai: Kuro Mantle no Nazo (whatever that means).
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Curt Vendel, Atari historian and founder of the Atari History Museum has passed away on 30 August at the age of 53. Vendel’s passion for Atari began in his teenage years, when he collected games, engineering logs, schematics, drawings, and technical materials from former Atari employees. He was also known to have dug through the dumpsters at Atari’s California properties
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Intellivision has made several announcements over the last few days regarding their upcoming console, the Amico. More specifically, they have debuted new Breakout and Moon Patrol titles, both of which will be available at launch. Featuring trippy visuals and dynamic music which is driven by the gameplay, this new take on Breakout looks to be inspired at least partly by
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Welcome to yet another review celebrating Attack Helicopter Week here at The Splintering! Today we’re picking apart another retro arcade game port, this time it’s Steel Talons for the SEGA Genesis. Before we get going, however, I have to note that this game is ROUGH. I couldn’t play it through in a normal state, so the only solution was to
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Did you ever hide video games in your sock drawer as a teenager? Maybe under your mattress? There’s very few games that required that level of concealment, but one of the first was certainly Custer’s Revenge on the Atari 2600. First released in 1982, Custer’s Revenge is an adult-themed game in which the player controls a nude General George Armstrong
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Comedian Seth Rogen lit a small Internet fire this week when he took to Twitter and “revealed” a relatively unknown feature of Duck Hunt on the original NES. The world was stunned to learn that the onscreen ducks could actually be controlled by a second player. This revelation came as a shock to many, as I couldn’t even count how
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Before the world went nuts and people turned into whiny-ass vanguards of social righteousness, video game advertisements were frequently quite awesome. This is the first of what will probably be several posts highlighting samples of how the video game industry didn’t take itself so seriously and let their advertisements reflect the spirit of their games… through fun. For this first
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This past week, Intellivision Entertainment announced that it intended to revamp its brand by naming “Video Games Live” creator and 30-year video game industry veteran Tommy Tallarico as President of Intellivision Entertainment… and by introducing a new home video game console. Described as simple, affordable, family-friendly and fun, not much else is known about the yet unnamed Intellivision console. Tallarico
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Gaming pioneer and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney passed away on Saturday at the age of 80. Historian Leonard Herman, who told Dabney’s story in an article for “Edge” magazine in 2009, announced his death on Facebook. In 1971, Dabney co-founded Syzygy with Nolan Bushnell where they developed Computer Space, the world’s first commercially available arcade video game. Rather than use
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