Ok after all these discussion threads about the pros and cons of PC and console gaming I am going to revisit PC gaming and want to look at sensible expansion options for my (PC) gaming needs.

To the average Armchair Arcader, it's a self-evident truth that classic old games like Joust, Galaga, and Frogger are just as fun to play (if not more so) as the latest "AAA Title." The popularity of retrogaming as a whole has recently surged in both the PC and console markets, and more and more people are discovering (or re-discovering) the joys of classic games. However, as any child of the 80s knows, a big part of the thrill associated with retrogaming isn't just the games, but rather the competitive atmosphere of the arcade. In these dimly lit dens of digital delinquency, a generation honed their hand-eye coordination in exhilerating coin-op competition. These deftly-wristed heroes fought for personal glory--specifically, the glory of entering their initials into the high score tables kept by the arcade machines. It's certainly no coincidence that the arcade machines one still finds alongside pool tables and dartboards in smoky taverns are classics like Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga: These games are designed to be played in social environments.

Someone calling himself "DeadDrPhibes" has a great post up at The Older Gamers Paradise called The Birth of PC Gaming. The author takes us on a little tour of the earliest days of home PCs and gaming, starting with furniture-sized monstrosities and ending up with the Apple Mac and the Windows PC. He strikes me as a died-in-the-wall TRS-80 man, and spends good time discussing Radio Shack and Texas Instruments' entries in the home computing market (the CoCo, and so on). It's a fun read, even if it seems to be drafted mostly from the author's own experiences and memories. At any rate, it's nice to see a history like this from this perspective, since most "history-lite" like this I've read has focused mostly on the Apple, Commodore, or IBM. Now all I'm waiting for is a great feature on the Atari line of home computers.