Gamasutra has just posted the fifth of six entries from me and Matt Barton in the "A History of Gaming Platforms" series, this time on the Mattel Intellivision, here. This was one of my favorite entries to write in the book this series is based off of, so I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did writing it. As a bonus, I've included here on Armchair Arcade the additional captions and images that Gamasutra chose not to include (I think I again improved image quality - by the way, those screenshots are DIRECT video captures straight from an Intellivision II, NOT from an emulator, and everything else of course is also straight from my personal collection). The next and presumably final entry will be on the Atari 8-bit. Enjoy and I'd love to hear some feedback, as I think it ranks right up there with the best overall articles ever written on platform (said with all due modesty and respect, of course ;-) ).

The unused images and all the captions (used and unused):

Shane Raistlin Monroe has released the February edition of Retrogaming Radio, which, as always, is loaded with great content for anyone even remotely interested in retrogaming and classic computing. Shane has even been kind enough to review my book Dungeons and Desktops.

A new version of Yabause - an open source Sega Saturn emulator for PC - is out. Check it out at http://yabause.sourceforge.net . This emulator is very versatile and compatibility is increasing rapidly.

Zottd, a great developer for the gamepark gp2x system has released his Gameboy Advance emulator for the handheld. It is titled Gpsp2x! and features a Dynarec'd CPU core.

GpSP2X is an official GP2X port of gpSP, a GBA emulator written from scratch by Exophase.

If there's one thing you can say about the internet, it's that it has all the information you need and too much more. Everyday I check my Google Reader, where I have some hundred odd feeds related to gaming, tech, science, and just cool stuff like Digg and YouTube. It would take hours to go through all the links that accrue in there daily, so I've become quite efficient at scanning headlines for interesting material. Eventually, I've noticed that I only tend to really pay attention to 10 or so blogs, so I thought I'd give you my list and ask you to compare it to yours. These blogs aren't all limited strictly to retrogaming, but I daresay that anyone who enjoys retrogaming will probably enjoy them.

I've revisited quite a few of the emulators I discussed earlier in my Retrogaming and Beyond on Mac OS X - article on various intel macintoshes ranging from a +- 1.4Ghz Intel machine with Ati 3D accelerated graphics to a +- 2.8Ghz Intel machine with Ati 3D accelerated graphics. Just to see if those new Mac's are up to the challenge (two Powerbooks, a macmini core solo and mini core duo, an acertosh and asustosh)

Why are so many people these days, surrounded as they are by some of the most sophisticated gaming technology ever designed, still captivated by so-called "obsolete" games like Pac-Man, Joust, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., and Frogger? Why are so many thousands (if not tens of thousands) of people running MAME or any number of other computer/console emulation programs on their modern PCs? Indeed, why would someone with a "decked out" PC capable of running the latest FPS in near-cinematic quality want to run programs intended for the humble Commodore 64 or the outright meek Atari 2600? The reasons, I think, are not as obvious as we might think.