This is going to look like I had a really busy February, but as I mentioned last month, it was actually the delayed reaction of a busy January.
Best Box Art (Part 1): Maganavox Odyssey
A lot has been written about Odyssey, the first home console, but not about the box art of its games. Montage-style video game illustrations are usually thought to be an Atari thing, but it turns out Pong wasn’t the only thing Odyssey actually did first.
GDC 2009: Portal Post-Mortem
GDC may’ve been postponed this year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t watch a classic GDC talk that you’ve probably never seen before.
What did I have to do with this?
Older talks in the GDC Vault are typically just audio and a separate untimed slideshow you have to manually click through. I was asked if I could sync up the two elements as a video for them, and this was the result.
EDITH: The Framing Of Tony Stark
Did you know Tony Stark constantly changes his glasses in the MCU movies, wearing over 30 pairs in total? I had no idea until Dave Wiskus asked me to illustrate them all for his new documentary.
This is behind a paywall, but there’s a 7 day free trial and it’s only $3 a month after that. Nebula is a new video service featuring video essayists like Lindsay Ellis, Patrick H Willems, and Hbomberguy allowing them to not be exclusively at the mercy of Youtube’s algorithm.
And More
Speaking of video essays on Youtube, I did thumbnails for the Half As Interesting videos “The Antarctic Accent,” “Legally Mailing Babies,” and broke the thumbnail for “How A Grandma Broke Armenia’s Internet.”
I’ve also been helping out PolyMatter design some of the in-video slides.
Twitter Threads
FEB27: Words Whose Meaning Flipped
FEB28: A Preview Of March
Around The Internet
VIDEO: What Facts Did I Get Wrong? (Gaming Historian)
This reminds me of the corrections episode of Adam Ruins Everything. I think we should be doing more of this.
VIDEO: The Fastest Interview Ever WIth Ben Schwartz From Sonic The Hedgehog (Polygon)
This reminds me of Game Informer’s hilarious Rapid Fire interviews, except the interviewee dishes weirdness right back at the interviewer.
PODCAST: Pre-Atari Consoles with Kevin Bunch (Retronauts)
PODCAST: Adventuring With LucasArts (They Create Worlds)
ARTICLE: The Ragtag Squad That Saved 38,000 Flash Games From Internet Oblivion (WIRED)
ARTICLE: When Charlottestwon Declared Arcades Off-Limits For Kids (CBC)
ARTICLE: These Maps Reveal The Hidden Structures Of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Books (Atlas Obscura)
THREAD: Signal Vs. Noise In Game Writing with Jessica Price
THREAD: Game Magazine Explores Gender Issues Circa 1983 with Jess Morrissette
That’s all for now. And as always, you can support my research on Patreon.