Waltzing for Dreamers

The day we brought home the Atari 2600 was a day of many firsts for me. It was, for example, the first time my parents told me to lie. As we piled out of our brick-red AMC, Mom mentioned casually, “So if someone asks, we got it as a gift. We’re behind on the rent, and if the landlord found out we spent money on this, well…” Once Dad gave the landlord-all-clear signal, Mom yanked the giant black and orange box out of the trunk and sprinted across our apartment complex courtyard with Dad leading the way. Keeping pace behind them, my sister and I found this behavior glamorous, as if we were a family of international spies. Read more

Love’s Labour’s Lost … and Found

This a love story. Like all great love stories it is about infatuation, contentment, pain, and loss. I was six, and he was new to the States, just over from Japan. He was high-maintenance, constantly asking for money when we were together. His name was Pac-Man. Read more

PTD Magazine on Facebook

In case you’ve not heard, Facebook is pretty great. We’ve setup a group, so why not join?

Listening to Programs Load

On a desk in my house is a cassette tape. On one side of the tape is the first half of Frank Zappa’s album Joe’s Garage. On the other side of the tape is screeching, metallic static that sounds not unlike Lou Reed’s album Metal Machine Music. It’s a computer program, specifically a game called Madness and the Minotaur for the TRS-80 Color Computer. It was a text adventure game that used words to describe an alluring and dangerous labyrinth. It was a game of the mind. Read more

A Quarter in Denver

When I handed the reigns over to Peter for our annual retro issue, I was planning on escaping into the mountains of Colorado for some much needed vacation. While my planned respite did occur, I didn’t make it out of the office without a homework assignment. Peter’s idea was was simple. Try to find an arcade in the Denver Metro area where I could play a game for one quarter. We both agreed that it would probably be difficult, as we assumed that inflation had affected the video arcade market like everything else. Read more

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