Gaming Ads: Interplay

Interplay Productions was founded in 1983 by Brian Fargo. The California-based developer quickly made a name for itself in 1985 with the release of the role-playing game (RPG) Tales of the Unknown: Volume I -- The Bard's Tale. Electronic Arts (EA) published The Bard's Tale, as well as The Bard's Tale II (1986) and The Bard's Tale III (1988). Another one of Interplay's well known RPGs published by EA in 1988 is one of my favorite games of all time, the post-apocalyptic Wasteland. Interplay would also begin self-publishing its own games in 1988 and by the mid-'90s was publishing games from other developers as the company became a significant publisher in the industry.

Although best known for its PC games, during the '90s it published many of its games for consoles too, including Earthworm Jim titles, a variety of Star Trek games, and the Clay Fighter series (based on the number of ads I came across I'd say it put a lot of money into marketing this one). It also published Blizzard Entertainment's (then known as Silicon & Synapse) first games and got into sports game development like so many publishers did in the '90s, and released them under a label known as VR Sports (later renamed Interplay Sports). However, computer RPGs were still a major part of Interplay's library and in 1997 it released Fallout, the spiritual successor to Wasteland (EA owned the rights to a Wasteland 2). In 1998 it had another huge hit on its hands when it published the Bioware-developed Baldur's Gate. Following Baldur's Gate, Interplay's internal division Black Isle Studios developed two more Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games, Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale.

Despite having developed and published numerous successful games, Interplay was struggling financially in 1998 and the company went public, at which time it also changed its name from Interplay Productions to Interplay Entertainment. Although a version of Interplay still exists today, this was essentially the beginning of the end for the company that released more than 300 games in a 20 year span. Titus Software purchased controlling interest in Interplay by 2001 and Brian Fargo eventually left Interplay to found inXile Entertainment (Fargo got the rights to Wasteland back and released an official sequel in 2014). In 2005 Titus Software ended up going into bankruptcy and while Interplay retained rights to most of its assets, it also faced backruptcy in 2006 leading to a deal with Bethesda Softworks to use the Fallout license. That Fallout deal had a clause in it that Interplay ultimately failed to live up to. Bethesda sued Interplay in 2009 and after going to court acquired the complete rights to Fallout.

Today, what remains of Interplay primarily publishes digital versions of its back catalog for modern computers.

Interplay albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Year 2: March Update

It's almost baseball season!

I posted the last update in early February and now March is nearing an end so it has been a while. Of course, more electronics have failed me which is a reoccurring theme here. One is another older item, not exactly a toy but something I had hoped to base a video on for the start of the Major League Baseball season on the 29th. A grounding wire inside of the device did detach but my soldering skills are painfully bad and I've not been able to reattach it (can't be certain that would even be enough to fix it). Also, when I first opened it I found that I left batteries in it that expired in 1993 so there was a lovely gift inside to clean up. Obviously I had not tried to turn it on in quite some time.

The other item that broke is only eight months old and that is my PlayStation 4. It was only the hard drive though so I didn't need to repair it exactly, just had to reinitialize it from safe mode but of course my save files were not backed up. Unfortunately, you have to subscribe to PlayStation Plus in order to use the cloud back-up service whereas Microsoft offers that to all of its Xbox One users. It is possible to back things up on a flash drive though I did not think I needed to. Due to my frustration I stopped playing games for a while as I let it sit in the non-working condition for about three weeks before erasing all of my game saves.

Other than the usual posts and videos, I've not been up to much. I did take apart both of my Sega Genesis arcade sticks to see if I could do anything to make them work better. Not sure if that was successful as I've not tested them but I did find the older one could use replacement parts under the buttons since they are damaged.

Sega Genesis Arcade Stick 

Sega Genesis 6-button Arcade Stick

I do continue to scan non-gaming magazines and sometimes find game ads. Mostly I'm trying to sort through stuff to get rid of and figured I should scan most of the ads, gaming or not, before I toss them. I've also started scanning and photographing some G.I. Joe items for 3DJoes.com. It's a nice site that aims to preserve the art of G.I. Joe and has fully rotating images of the toys. While I've mentioned a few times that's my favorite toy line, I have yet to actually do a video of any G.I. Joe things. There are some great videos out there of the toys already that I couldn't hope to even come close to matching on my own so I'm not sure what to do with the toys. A large setup might be the only interesting thing I could put together but I do have one video idea for a tie-in product. 

The last couple ad updates haven't been too interesting but there are some good publishers coming up soon and a little backfilling too on some popular companies. Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan

1977 Playmobil Catalog

Maybe I should have said the blog is about the '70s too as I've got a lot more stuff from the '70s than I realized. Of course, the toys in this catalog post were also sold during the '80s which is when I would have played with some of them. This Playmobil catalog is more like a brochure as it folds out and has six panels on both sides. The front side describes the toys while the flip side focuses on individual sets.

Gaming Ads: Intellimedia Sports, Interactive Magic, and IBM

Intellimedia Sports was a company based in Atlanta that specialized in instructional multimedia software and published products under the IntelliPlay brand. Of the ads, which might include all of Intellimedia's products, only the poker software appears to have gameplay. The other products provide educational videos about soccer, baseball, golf, and football from athletes and coaches, and were marketed with ESPN.

Interactive Magic, also known as I-Magic, was founded in 1994 in North Carolina with offices in the U.K., Germany, and Japan as well. The chairman of the board was MicroProse co-founder J.W. "Wild Bill" Stealey so it should come as no surprise that Interactive Magic focused on simulation and strategy games.

International Business Machines, better known as IBM, was founded in 1911 as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company before changing its name in 1924. Based in New York, IBM has made a wide range of products throughout its history, though it's best known for it contributions to computers, including the creation of the term personal computer (PC). The IBM PC released in 1981 and typically used DOS, which was originally created by Seattle Computer Products but later purchased and modified by Microsoft.

Of course, there is a lot that can be said about IBM, though I'm going to keep this brief and jump ahead to the software since that is what the blog focuses on. IBM actually released a handful of games for mainframe computers in the '50s and '60s, and dozens during the '80s and '90s for the PC. It released a variety of original educational games and some computer ports of well known games, like King's Quest, M.U.L.E., Jumpman, and Mad Dog McCree.

6/22/19 UPDATE: IBM fell into the post because I was originally listing it under International Business Machines. However, everyone simply knows it as IBM so I decided after I moved the ads to Facebook that IBM made more sense.

Intellimedia Sports albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Interactive Magic albums: Facebook - Google Photos

IBM albums: Facebook - Google Photos

[YouTube] 2-XL

https://youtu.be/NoWvtavxoDY

2-XL is an electronic toy from Mego Corp. first released in 1978. Designed to look like a robot, the toy speaks and interacts with users by reading 8-track tapes. One tape was included with the robot, which I believe was "General Information," and a variety of others were sold separately. You can see in the box and toy side-by-side photo below that that my 2-XL doesn't match the box image exactly, namely the eyes. I've got the second version of the toy that released in 1980, though they obviously didn't update the packaging. There is a price tag on the top of my box that indicates it retailed for $69.99.

2-XL box (1978) and toy (1980).

Although it may appear to be just for kids, there are many tapes for all ages and some that might only appeal to adults, such as "50's and 60's Nostalgia" and "TV and Movie Challenges." In most cases the tapes include questions that can be answered using the buttons on the face of the toy. Some tapes do require users to follow along in a tape's instruction manual, use a pen and paper to solve problems, or complete activities in the manual. 2-XL often spouts jokes and makes humorous comments in between questions or while waiting for answers.

Answer panel and "Talking Calculator" tape.

Mego Corp. stopped making the toy in 1981 and would declare backruptcy in 1982 before going out of business in 1983. Tiger Electronics re-introduced 2-XL in 1992 with a modern look. Of course, 8-track tapes were a thing of the past at that point, replaced by cassette tapes in the music industry and that's also what the 1990's version of the toy uses. If you were a kid in the early '90s you might even remember seeing 2-XL on a television show called Pick Your Brain that was hosted by Marc Summers. The show featured a large version of the robot and was voiced by Greg Berg; the original toy was voiced by its inventor, Michael J. Freeman.

A 2-XL ad from Toys "R" Us (1992).

I've got a bunch of photos of my 1980 toy and scans of the few documents I still have. Also, since I opened it up to see if I could improve the sound I took a couple photos of what the inside of the toy looks like.

 

        

       

Gaming Ads: Infogrames and Information Global Services (IGS)

Bruno Bonnell and Christope Sapet founded Infogrames Entertainment S.A. in France in 1983. From what I can tell, it published around a dozen games in Europe during the '80s while some of its games started appearing in the U.S. in the early '90s. Infogrames has gone by a few names in North America as it acquired and renamed various companies that published its games. You might remember its aardvark logo that has five colored stripes on it. Along with the Infogrames name, sometimes a game box might say I-Motion on it which is also Infogrames. In the late '90s/early '00s is when Infogrames started expanding quickly in North America.

I have mentioned Infogrames previously in the Atari, GT Interactive, and Hasbro Interactive posts due to the acquisitions. GT Interactive was renamed to Infogrames, Inc. in 1999 and Hasbro Interactive became Infogrames Interactive, Inc. in 2001. It acquired the Atari name from Hasbro and used that as a publishing brand before eventually renaming all of the Infogrames branches to Atari. Even the original Infogrames Entertainment S.A. was changed to Atari S.A. in 2009. Although it went through financial difficulties, including filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company is still in business and that is the Atari we have today. For a while it focused on mobile releases and the old Atari properties which it still does but of late it's been pushing new RollerCoaster Tycoon games for PC.

Despite being around since 1983, at this time I only have four ads for Infogrames which is why I'm including a second publisher in this post. Infogrames has published a lot of games but many of its own ads didn't appear until the 2000s when it released quite a few games for the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, and of course, I primarily stick to the '90s and earlier for ads. We'll see more Infogrames much later when I put together some Dreamcast features.

Information Global Services, or IGS, was the North American publishing division of Japan-based Information Global Service (note that the word "service" is singular for the parent company). It released games from 1990-93 for a few platforms, though at least half of its games are for the TurboGrafx-16.

Infogrames albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Information Global Services albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Gaming Ads: Impressions Software, Incredible Technologies, and Infocom

Founded in 1989 by David Lester, Impressions Software was based in the U.K. and specialized in strategy games. In 1992 it opened a branch in the U.S., originally based in Connecticut but later moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sierra On-Line purchased Impressions in 1995 and moving forward it was known as Impressions Games. Sierra was eventually acquired by Vivendi Universal and Impressions was closed in 2004. The developer is best known for its Caesar, Civil War, and Lords of the Realm games.

Incredible Technologies was founded in 1985 by Elaine Hodgson and Richard Ditton in Illinois. The company developed arcade games for its first 20 years and is still in business today primarily making casino games. Its first arcade game was a bowling title for Capcom simply titled Capcom Bowling (1988). In 1989 Incredible Technologies released the game Golden Tee Golf, which went on to become a hugely popular series of arcade golf games. There are numerous title variations when it comes to the Golden Tee games; some of the others include Golden Tee Golf II (1990), Peter Jacobsen's Golden Tee 3D Golf (1995), Golden Tee Fore (2000), and Golden Tee Live (2005).

When gamers think of text-based adventures one of the first names to come to mind is surely Infocom. Founded in 1979, Infocom was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts as it was created by MIT staff and students. Undoubtedly, its most popular game series is Zork while other well known titles include The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (based on Douglas Adams' books), Planetfall, and Cutthroats. Due to financial difficulties the company merged with Activision in 1986. Activision, which was known as Mediagenic from 1988-1992, closed the Cambridge office and laid everyone off in 1989 and thus, the original development team was gone even if the Infocom name lived on.

Impressions Software albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Incredible Technologies albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Infocom albums: Facebook - Google Photos