As any hardcore videogame and computer collector knows, there are many intriguing classic systems out there worthy of your time that never made it to your home territory. One of the biggest challenges when importing vintage systems from foreign countries is having the necessary hardware on hand to convert either or both of the power (voltage) and video (television standard) connections.

With vintage Japanese systems in the US, it's fairly trivial to use those systems here. Generally speaking, the video signal is the same - though you may have to tune in a weird channel if you're stuck using an RF connection - and power requirements are similar, generally 100-110v to our 110-120v. While you can usually get away with just plugging a Japanese system direct into a US outlet, a simple power converter is still recommended in some situations. With vintage European systems, it's not nearly as straightforward, since they use a completely different television standard and power requirements usually run 220-240v, so you need to do double conversions. On top of that, plugs for both video and power are often unusual shapes and may require yet another adapter.

The MSX is a home computer system much like the AppleII, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC and Commodore 64. Home computers were first developed in the 70's to be able to compete with the hugely expensive PCs that were available at the time. Home computer systems were relatively cheap and could easily outperform the PCs in terms of graphics, sound and versatility. Read more below on how to actually use games, disks and files on these (old) wonderful computer systems.

MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s. It was a Microsoft-led attempt to create a unified standard among computer companies. MSX-based machines were a rarity in the United States and Britain, but they were very popular in other parts of the world like Asia, Australia, Europe (especially the Netherlands and Belgium) and Brazil. - Read more to view video.

A new series of small videos, not really reviews but just some games I happen to really like. This is episodes 10 & 11.

Games: Various Magnavox Odyssey2 & 3, Philips Videopac G7000, G7400 games
Publisher: Philips / Magnavox
Platform: Magnavox Odyssey / Philips Videopac

The Philips Videopac+ G7400 console was a rare beast, it was released in very limited quantities in 1983 but only in Europa. An American release was planned named the Odyssey³ Command Center but it never saw the light of day.

The G7400 console could play all Videopac / Odyssey2 games out there. Three types of games exist. The original G7000 videogames, the plus versions sporting an additional high-resolution background which would only be visible on the G7400. And finally the special G7400 only games with high-resolution graphics very reminiscent of Teletext, BBC Micro or ZX Spectum.

Here I am playing the rare G7400 through my video-grabber with some of my favourite games whilst I comment on the gameplay, etc.

http://www.videopac.org/ - home of Philips Videopac / Magnavox Odyssey

Below are two new iPhone photos, this time of sealed copies of Firebird's The Sentry (1987), Atari ST version, and Philips' Jeopardy! (1994), for their CD-i platform. The Sentry was the US version of The Sentinel, an oft-ported and highly original simulation/puzzle/action game, and of course Jeopardy! is one of the truly countless adaptations of the popular game show and one of the late life CD-i titles. I still own and remember playing the C-64 version of The Sentinel/The Sentry (and struggling with it), and also put in quite a bit of time into Jeopardy! (love trivia!) on that same legendary computer. I also picked up the unreleased Coleco Adam version in the mid 80's, which was released to the public domain, and may very well have been the original version since it had a copyright of 1984 and the other versions weren't released by Share Data (Sharedata) until several years later if I recall correctly. Regardless of the origins of the first official computer version of Jeopardy!, the Coleco Adam version - as expected - is a fine interpretation with some nifty features that didn't necessarily find their way into later "ports".

"Lord of the Dungeon" was released in limited quantities as a homebrew back in 2000 from the 1984 unreleased original prototype for the ColecoVision from Probe 2000, which would have been the first ever battery backed cartridge. These are rare, rare images since so few people have it and it's unsupported by any emulator. You can see it would have been a phenomenal Wizardry-like RPG for a console well before anything like it on the NES!

The Philips Entertaible Digital Board Gaming Surface: Photo from PC Magazine onlinePC Magazine, reporting on news from the Internationale Funkausstellung, a consumer electronics show in Berlin, revealed that Philips will show off the Entertaible, a digital board-gaming surface, on Friday.

We've of course recently seen over the past several years the rise of virtual physical games, if you want to call them that, mostly in "arcades" (if even those can be called that anymore). Essentially these games take real world concepts like shuffleboard or bowling, and use partial physical items, like paddles or pucks, that are utilized on a flat, virtual surface, and interact with an impact sensor at the end of the table to make something happen on the video screen, preferably accurately reflecting what would happen if it were an all physical setup. There's also been quite a bit of controversy in the pinball world, where these virtual machines take the form factor of traditional pinball machines, but do the majority of their work via a video screen. This allows for infinitely configurable tables, but is it still really pinball, or more akin to what we play on our computers and videogame systems? In any case, the revolution, if you want to call it that, has been well under way.