Tag Archives: ColecoVision

Retail Re-tales

29 Nov

November 29, 2018

With Black Friday behind us, I certainly hope you all got your, um, whatever the big thing is this year. As far as I can tell, there is no big hot toy or must have item this season. And that’s a real shame. I’m old enough to remember when people were stabbing each other in the backs to get a Cabbage Patch doll or Colecovision. Shopping today just isn’t the same without the threat of premeditated homicide in the checkout line.

But I am old enough to remember back in the 90’s when the retail industry got together and tried to change the image of Black Friday.

For some reason, probably the threat of premeditated homicide I mentioned above, the Big Retail Companies™ felt that Black Friday had a negative connotation. Long lines, crowds, sold out items, murder, etc, so they tried to change the name. Now back then retail was a different beast than we have now. People weren’t shopping online like today, and the stores were different too. People bought clothes at places like Chess King and Merry-Go-Round and shopped in huge department stores like Bamberger’s and Korvette’s. Where are these titans of industry today? Long gone and buried. And it’s no surprise given that these are the folks who tried to change the name of Black Friday to Green Friday.

BAM!-Berger’s!

Yup, Green Friday.

Today that sounds like an environmental message: Go Green This Friday With Recycled Shoelaces! Reduce Your Carbon Footprint By Flying Pantsless This Friday! and yes, it sounded that way back in the 90’s too. But they weren’t thinking of green grass, but of green money. All the green green cash that would be flooding their registers. So to stop people from thinking about long lines and stab wounds, they tried to get people to associate the day after Thanksgiving with Green Friday.

And you know what?

Nobody gave a damn.

And that is why we still call it Black Friday today.

Ah, tradition.

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Allan Keyes: Gamer Without Game

10 Feb

February 10, 2014

keyes1.jpg

So I wanted to do some blogging about some gaming that seemed to have become a thing: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/31/eve_online_erects_mashedup_memorial_to_biggest_space_fight_in_history/

A single missed micropayment sparked off an epic interstellar battle on EVE Online that was so costly the developers have decided to erect a permanent monument to the conflict.

CCP Games, the Icelandic firm behind the massively multiplayer online role-playing game that has over 500,000 subscribers, said the battle in the B-R5RB sector of the Immensea game-space region had dwarfed anything seen in the game’s 11-year history. Ships valued at $330,000 have been destroyed in a 21-hour battle in which 7,548 gamers destroyed assets that had taken years to accumulate.

I say I WANTED to do a blog, because this is so effing tiring just reading it. 7,500 gamers participated in a 21-hour battle????  And here I thought that the time me and my two best (only) friends had that 3 hour ColecoVision blowout while my parents went shopping for my orthopedic shoes was EPIC.  What the hell do I know I suppose??? Not that I know about these online games – I’m strictly a console fanboy, living on the Gears of War/Call of Duty highway.

game1

I have to give some of these guys credit – in this game, it seems that it takes months/years to build up your coalition, control your territory, build all those ships. And then to basically have it ALL flushed away if you’re on the losing side….have to say it, these guys had some set of brass balls. I mean, what do you think the losers did? Hang themselves? Quit the game? I mean, I barely had the patience to level up on the Intellivision version of Burger Time, and when I died, I threw a huge glass of Hi-C at the TV.

game 2

Or maybe it was the collective “ah, fuck this – I’m getting bored” of thousands? I mean, who hasn’t spent lots of time building something up and then just tearing it down to shit because you finally, irrevocably lost interest in it?

But what I really want to know – 21 hours? DUDE.  Who lasted the entire battle and what did you do when it was time to go to the bathroom????

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