This was included with a copy Shadow Sorcerer I own but would have been bundled with any other 1992 release. I played Shadow Sorcerer so long ago that I don't remember much about it. I also played most of the 'gold box' games in here with the same disclaimer.

My only commentary on this catalog is the prices are substantially higher than they would be in a store, especially the C64/128 versions which would be heavily discounted by 1992...

I have a decent collection of the 'gold box' Dungeons and Dragons games. This particular catalog was included with most of the Apple II games I've found. These games are generally very difficult but a good deal in terms of dollars-per-hour.

That's about all the commentary I have for these, enjoy...

I finally visited Galloping Ghost on a Saturday a couple weeks ago. I've been making excuses for not going since they opened. My wife had an author event at a microbrewery just a block away. The weather was perfect that day so walking from one to the other was quite nice. The brewery even had a taco truck this particular Saturday. I don't know if I could have asked for a more perfect combination of things in the same day.

Here's a little page that recaps some cabinets I found interesting. They are a mix of rare games, "new to me" titles, old favorites, and a few I completely forgot about...

I've seen people trying to sell this catalog for $20 on auction sites. It was included free in the thousands of "Gold Box" games sold at the time. I have at least three of these. One is from a game I paid 27¢ for on clearance, I have the receipt to prove it. This is cool to look at, but not worth $20.

Here are some totally free scans of it in a relatively decent resolution...

Here are scans from a 1995 WizardWorks Catalog featuring a mix of budget productivity software and games. I don't know why I thought this was something that needed scanning.

I guess it's a small look into the world of knock-off Windows 3.11 software a few months before the Windows 95 launch. That's kind of interesting...

Here's a small catalog of games published by Strategic Simulations (SSI) in 1996, presented with minimal commentary because I'm not familiar with most of these games.

At this point SSI was publishing more simulation games than RPGs and those aren't my thing. If that's a genre you like, then there are some pages in here you'll feel all nostalgic about...

Normy's Beach Babe-o-Rama is a somewhat obscure Sega Genesis game starring a character from a midlife crisis comic released when the system itself was experiencing a midlife crisis. It's also similar enough to the TurboGrafx-16 CD game Camp California that I can't help but speculate if there's a connection.

In this article I sort of review the game, look at how it was originally received, and reflect on the state of the Sega Genesis in 1994...

I have a few old Visual Basic 6 applications that are collecting dust. Although they still run on Windows there isn't a practical way to update them anymore. I had some previous success converting FreeBASIC code to Java with Gemini so I decided to try it again.

The results were overall pretty good with only one problem that had to be manually fixed...

Quite a while ago I wrote a save state editor for the TurboGrafx-16 game Order of the Griffon. A little later I wrote an event editor for Phantasy Star III save states. I originally wrote these in Visual Basic 6 because it was easy and it made sense at the time. With a little help from AI they're now available as Java applications.

Download the now cross-platform versions here...

I once mused that it seems every article I post on this site gets 5 or 5 million views with absolutely nothing in-between.

This is a history of the few in the latter category, including a very recent addition...

I backed the Ouya. I have no regrets about it. I have not backed another system since. When I learned the Intellivision intellectual property was sold to an enthusiast with some industry connections I was cautiously optimistic. That feeling died when the Amico was announced. I signed up for the mailing list though. I wanted to see where this went. Through the mailing list I learned they sold some Intellivision properties to small developers and the rest to Atari. From there the updates never changed.

Inspired by my inability to unsubscribe from their mailing list, I try to figure out the business plan for the Amico...

I've started and abandoned many ideas. It's well into triple digits by now. They range from ideas I realize are bad quickly to ones where it takes too much time to experience that revelation. I usually don't talk about ideas I didn't follow through on. I'd like to post things more often though. I think I'll discuss some of these from time to time, if they are well thought out enough to discuss.

A little while ago I looked into writing a pro wrestling title crossover grid game. After much effort I realized it is a much more complex problem than I expected. Here's how far I went before moving on from this idea...

This is sort of the 20th anniversary of this section. The first year I posted this series was 2006. The pictures were much worse but the finds much better. Over time this section was re-tooled to focus on the absurdity of modern pricing and odd things found in the wild. I think I enjoy writing it more than I did twenty years ago.

Although 2026 has barely begun, I already have an interesting story. So I'm starting this page a little early this year...

Sometimes I write a small program to deal with a minor inconvenience. This is one of those programs. That's the same intro I used on my last Java article. Is this site growing stale, or have I discovered a new form of contentment in posting small miscellaneous pieces of content? Quite a while ago, before the existence of Java 1.7 (this is an important note), a friend came to me with a problem. He had a USB drive with some important files that was dying before all the files could be copied. I thought I could probably write a small program that handled this so I did. It even worked on the first try.

The actual code is very hacky and would be a tad simpler under Java 1.7+...

I have a couple planned articles this year that I think might turn out OK. Instead of working on any of them, I'm starting with something I didn't plan at all. The first weekend of the year I usually rearrange my game setup a little bit. Along the way there's a diagram I use to keep track of how it's all connected.

Here's how my setup has evolved over the past decade...

I started doing these recaps in 2020 out of boredom and a desire to spread some much-needed holiday cheer. I didn't plan to keep doing them or I didn't think about whether I planned to 5 years ago. They're still fun to put together and maybe somebody even likes reading them. This time around I'm going with a shorter format but including a new section to compensate.

Here's a look back at the year 2025 including my favorite posts from sites I follow. It also has the annual festive viewing of new video game ornaments and a recap of recaps....

I think many are finding it difficult to take a balanced view on artificial intelligence (AI). Some claim it will fix all the things and make any keyboard-based job obsolete. Others vow to never use it for anything. The majority are likely unsure.

Quite a while ago I wrote my master's thesis on neural networks. Generative AI wasn't something I thought all that much about then but I developed an overall understanding of the types of problems different AI technologies are good at solving. I am not going to generate articles or code using AI because I enjoy writing both the old-fashioned way. I will explore things that I think AI will be helpful with. I think that's a defensible position.

Here's an article where I try using Gemini to convert FreeBASIC code to Java. Although that worked fairly well, my ability to debug the results was sadly lacking...

Alright, back to regularly scheduled programming. This time it's a small bit of Java code I wrote in an hour to deal with a minor annoyance.

This is a program to copy a list of files, in random order, until the destination drive is full. The original intent was filling SD cards or USB drives for audio players. It could have other uses too...

I promise this site is not turning into a 1990s mall directory archive. I found a couple directories at an estate sale and am posting them before I forget or lose them.

This one is for Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills Illinois as it was in 1993...

Scans of a Lakehurst Mall directory from (probably) 1990. This was a frequent afterschool hangout for me in the late 1980s to early 1990s.

Perhaps others will find this interesting too...