It's in the original RadioShack box and everything, plus instruction books and inserts. I can't believe it, they're practically like new...

This is a 6809-based machine which was first released in 1983. It runs BASIC and the form factor comes built in with the keyboard. It can save and load programs from cartridges (called "Program Pak"s). The name TRS stands for Tandy/RadioShack- the manufacturer Tandy produced this hardware, and Radio Shack distributed it. Remember when Radio Shack was two words?

As it happened I did not have one of these growing up, but as a child we had an Apple IIc which was from around that era. I have fond memories of learning how to program in BASIC on that machine, writing small programs and simple text games, and the task of having to figure out how to debug them. The TRS-80 really reminds me of that whole experience. Now, in more colors than my former binary color dipslay. I went and cleared the screen to green, blue, and magenta just to make sure.

Testing it out on gigantic CRT just because I had a spare jack there

I installed Windows 98 to the "space heater computer"

Is it possible to install 98 to an Intel Core-i5 with 4GB of DDR3 RAM?

Turns out, yes. If you spoof it to only enumerate 1GB, plus a bunch of other sketchy edits to system.ini and config.sys.

Finished Super Mario RPG (SNES)

Do you remember back when Nintendo's first party titles tried to push the limits of the current technology?

Since I had done the "finish all my Super Nintendo games I currently own" I bought this new one. This game was not technically new to me since I played it all the way through as a child but I wanted to re-visit it.

I'm of the opinion that this game is the spiritual precursor to Paper Mario. They share the same role-playing elements and comedic style. Before SMRPG- and not counting weird outlyer games like "Mario is Missing"- Mario was a side-scrolling platformer and that was basically it. This was a first in having a Mario game with a character-driven story, EXP and inventory management, and so on. It has a very disctinctive level of polish, and so I think Paper Mario went on to build on this idea later.

SMRPG- which is top-down isometric 2D- achieves a "3D-looking style" through pre-rendered 3D graphics and creative ways of having planes overlap each other. You would not guess that this game was for a platform optimized for copying 16x16 sprites since literally nothing appears to have square boundaries. So many things have curved, irregular edges and unusual types of blending. The sprites all look like shaded 3D models because they are (were). One other game that comes to mind which used these same techniques is Donkey Kong Country 1/2/3 but SMRPG has larger, more varied worlds and characters and so I think it represents a greater level of achievement.

Given the sizes of sprites and envrionment with the lack of repitition or content recycling, I have no idea how they were able to fit a game of this size into 32MB. Performance-wise it was one of only a handful of games that were accelerated by the SA-1 chip though.

The game uses QTEs in all fights which keep things from getting boring or too grind-y.

In this game someone from the Final Fantasy franchise makes an appearance. In this playthrough I beat Culex, an optional boss- for the first time. I can see why this was optional. This was harder than literally anything else in this game including the final boss.

This photo- can you guess when it was taken?

The answer is today, June 25th, 2017.

This photo was an attempt to re-create, or give the impression of a 90s time period and is the workstation where I play some games. It includes the Sharp X68000 computer which retailed exclusively in Japan in the late 80s- early 90s.

This machine works and is shown in this post playing Gradius III.

In the photo

• Sharp X68000, CRT monitor

• Original Japanese keyboard for the Sharp

• Nintendo Power 1993 April issue

• IR 7000 pocket organizer (1994)

• Boxes for Sharp X68000 games: Xak, Lagoon, and Gradius III. They're booklets containing 5 1/4" floppies

• Commodore 64 and accessories in boxes on the shelf

• couple FDDs and HDDs from the early 90s, on the shelf

• Functioning rotary phone

• "Puppies" calendar from 1995- the dates for that year happen to line up such that it can also be used for 2017

I didn't do anything funny to cause the weird compression-looking artifacts. The digital camera used to take the photo was, in technical terms, "not very good"

For a photo to be "Undateable" means that it conveys a different time period from the one in which it was taken. This one contains not just the computer work station but also enough other things to make it sufficiently convincing. Still, there are one or two anachronisms keeping it from being totally consistent. Some things are off. Maybe you can spot them.

I picked it up to see if it was alive or if it was just a shell.

But when I picked it up, not only was it alive, it laid an egg in my hand

By coincidence today is father's day.

Planted this early last year as an experiment. Although tea roses are beautiful they are fussy and I've had bad luck with them. This specific variety is a climber- not as strong as ivy, but it should latch on to nearby things. It grew a decent amount, and started creeping upward, but would not bloom at all-

Until just this week. Four of them.

Tried to guide it to grab a hold of the lattice, but it doesn't seem to want to do that just yet. It appears to have two goals.

First, it tried to "hold hands" with another plant. So I separated them.
Second, it seems to be growing the opposite direction as intended, toward my hose faucet. I think that might mean it wants to be watered more... (I'm really cautious about this because I've accidentally killed roses by over-watering). I'm going to leave it for now. But, if my water bill spikes suddenly due to something when I'm not home...

Narrator:
A devastating war among mortals.
A legendary clash between gods.

In the interests of protecting humans against the corruption of a renegade god, there is a hero born to live among an ancient civilization in a forbidden realm. Only the one with the "Godkiller" can put a stop to evil machinations of villain who is developing deadly chemical weapons for the German military, setting the stage of a conflict which threatens to tear the world apart. The battleground reveals a terrifying secret, an unforetold threat at the same time as a potential turning point in the war where the destiny of all humans will hang in the balance. And-

Chris Pine: *bursts through the door* HAAAY GUUYSSS

Premonition of dubstep
This came out in 1996...

Japanese, USA and German respectively.

The Germans do not mess around with their box art