According to my records, I reached 10,000 MobyGames contributions points way back in the spring of 2008. Now, 11 years later, I am teetering on the precipice of 20,000 points:

Multimedia Mike reaches 19999 MobyGames contribution points

I’ve been going wild this year submitting promo art for various old games, a floodgate which opened late last year. Each promo art entry is worth a mere 1/2 point, so the fact that I have earned 171 points on this task so far this year says something. The small amount of contribution credit that each submission grants also allows me to finely control the exact point total. I have opted to savor the 19,999-point milestone for just a little bit before resuming contribution.

I started out manually scanning the video game ads from old comics. However, I then started perusing the Internet Archive’s collections of old computer magazines and saw that they had plenty of unentered advertisements. So I have also developed a workflow to systematically work through those issues and extract any ads. It’s what I call brainless work– it’s a low-mental-bandwidth, somewhat relaxing task to perform while I watch YouTube videos or listen to podcasts or audiobooks.

Over the years, I have collected more physical artifacts that are appropriate for scanning and preserving into the MobyGames database, especially as MG continues to expand its preservation charter. Here’s a curious item that I think I acquired in 2005, before I started maintaining this blog. It seems to be a package containing marketing materials for various Namco titles that were scheduled to be released in the 2004-2005 timeframe. I found this at a used game shop for just under a dollar.

Here’s the outside case:

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And the inside of the case, with the DVD video and “Assets” CD-ROM:

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In addition to the discs, there are also 11 cards in the case, each with marketing information cards (apparently called “sell sheets”) for each of 11 different games. Here is a closer look:

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I was thinking that I might have to painstakingly scan each one of those sell sheets, front and back. That turns out to be unnecessary because all of the sell sheets live on the assets CD-ROM, each as a 2-page PDF file. I have found a method to convert the pages of a PDF into flat PNG images so that I can submit them to the database. Curiously, while a PDF viewer will only display the same content as seen on the cards, the flattened exported images contain more information around the border, including the name of the marketing firm that created them (shout out to Ignited Minds for their lovely work on these sell sheets).

This reminds me of the Ubisoft marketing CD-ROM I found in a used game shop a few years later, the one which had similar sell sheets but in the form of PowerPoint presentations. Perhaps I need to flatten those into still images and submit them as well.

The assets CD-ROM also has lots of art and screenshots from each of the advertised games which all warrants inclusion into the database. Meanwhile, the video DVD has a series of trailers, some of which aren’t on YouTube and probably should be. I should rip and upload them into a playlist (just as I did with a Nintendo GameCube trailer CD-ROM a long time ago when YouTube was still young). Really, I need to get moving on getting everything on both of these discs preserved at archive.org.

Of course, I have also been on the hunt for more comics that might have useful game advertisements. To that end, I have been occasionally buying grab bag lots via eBay sellers. Not all of them will contain useful ads, but as long as the price is well below, say, a dollar per comic, I don’t mind rolling the dice.

Here are some of these recent comic acquisitions (including the legendary trucker superhero, US Archer):

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Here are some of the interesting ads contained within, from 1983 (Tutankhamen) to 2007 (Crackdown):

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Actual game acquisitions have been few and far between. But here are 3 that arrived in the last few months from an eBay seller:

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The titles are as follows:

• 3D Space Station Adventure: Copyright 2001 Sterling Software. This seems to be an activity center title rather than a game.
• Zombie Dinos From Planet Zeltoid: I picked this up even though it’s already in the database, just on the strength of its name. It came out for CD-i in 1992. This represents the later DOS release. Again, not sure if this is a game, at least from the jewel case copy. But if it is in MobyGames, then someone must have already assessed that it is indeed a game, though more on the alleged “educational” side.
• Inventor Labs: Transportation: 1997 published by Houghton Mifflin. Again, this seems like a pure educational title. However, there is already another game in this series in MobyGames. The jewel case copy mentions that you have to build your own transportation prototype and then race it against others, thus certifying this title as a “game”.

I had so much fun with the last batch of comics that I decided to visit the same comic shop and raid their dollar comic rack again, especially since I now know what the look for. In particular, I was interested in comics from the 1990s, when video games really took off, and advertising thereof ramped up commensurately. This score wasn’t as dramatic with only 8 comics:

Another pile of comics (click for larger image)

I was finding a lot of good stuff but noticed it was already in the database. These were the only issues I found with new material,

As of this writing, I have entered all of the scans into the database, all except 3. I have been putting these off since they are all double-page scans that require extra effort:

Double-page video game ads (click for larger image)

Two of them are from stapled comics so those should be rather simple to disassemble, scan piecemeal, and stitch together. The other has a glued spine, so I get to do that trick I’ve read about of heating up the spine with a hair dryer.

Note that one of the above ads (for Wild Arms) is actually a fold-in (apparently popularized by Mad Magazine). I’m thinking I may need to stitch together an example of the folded product and submit that separately.

I seem to have hit a point of diminishing returns pretty quickly on this front, at least with this particular comic shop. I may have to raid other comic shops in the area to see if any have similar deals on old comics.

As I mentioned in my 2018 year end review, I managed to make it through the entire year without acquiring any new games (classic, physical games; not counting Steam games here). Not for lack of trying, mind you. It’s just that a lot of my usual sources have dried up. I had a favorite local thrift store that I discovered in 2008, when I was still playing a lot of old games for this blog. I probably procured at least 150 games from that shop, if I were to estimate off the top of my head. In the last few years, they seemed to have fewer and fewer games, moving them around the large shop occasionally so I would have to go hunting. Then it closed entirely. So, R.I.P. to that thrift shop.

Further, I found an eBay shop that still somehow had loads of games that weren’t in MobyGames (entry 1, entry 2, and entry 3 describing the numerous interesting finds from these stores). I decided to check up on the store again late last year, and of course it was no more.

I finally have an acquisition breakthrough, though! A few weeks ago, I had a little time to kill at a comic shop. I hadn’t visited such a shop in a rather long time. As I was about to leave, I found a rack stuffed with classic comics, each costing a single US dollar. I picked up a stack of 24 comics. A sampling:

A pile of old comics (click for larger image)

Nifty stuff, eh? One of them (Warlock and the Infinity Watch) presents the aftermath of the Infinity Gauntlet. That seems like it would be more valuable than a dollar, especially with the recent success of the MCU Infinity War movie. But I’m no collector. (The shop also had a comic featuring Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet— it was hanging on the wall, carefully protected and professionally graded, asking US$200.)

Wait, what does this have to do with video game history? As of last October, MobyGames now accepts magazine advertisements. It wasn’t the front covers of the comics on this rack that caught my eye– it was the video game advertisements on the back covers.

Video game advertisements on the back covers of various comics (click for larger image)

This is some good stuff. Did you know there was an interactive fiction (think Zork) game for The Incredible Hulk? There’s the ad for it. Some of these issues are real gold mines for old video games ads. In particular, I am finding a sweet spot in early 1990s comic book ads. Some of these comics will have 5-7 video game ads.

I definitely anticipate returning to the shop to scavenge more comics with unsubmitted advertising, especially now that I know what to look for.

See also:

• The collection of promo art images I have contributed to MobyGames

I first learned of VTech’s V.Flash console in late 2006. Shortly thereafter, I purchased a game to be played on the system so that I could study the optical format and understand the data formats therein (it’s a weird hobby of mine).

Eventually, I found a new in box V.Flash console for relatively cheap and snatched it up. It arrived but I never got around to opening it at the time. I have accumulated several more games for the system in the meantime. I got it down from a shelf today:

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I thought it had only been 6 or 7 years since I bought the system. Turns out that it was almost 9 years ago that I picked it up:

I checked my Amazon order records for more details– turns out that I only paid about US$26 for it. I guess I snagged it during what is called “the trough of no/low value” because when I look it up now, asking prices for an NIB unit are substantially higher.

Surprisingly, there are no YouTube unboxing videos for this thing. So I guess it falls to me. Unboxing videos aren’t really my thing. Instead, please accept this series of photos documenting various aspects of the unit and its packaging. There is a lot to cover.

Just when I think I might be hitting a point of diminishing returns, I find 16 more items on my new favorite eBay store that don’t show up in the MobyGames database.

This lot contains 2 items that are in obscure franchises first seen in my last acquisition log entry (Dropout Trivia and Brain Bytes):

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• Earth Scout: Another in the “Brain Bytes Bite-Size Learning Fun” series. 1999 title that purports to teach geography skills. From Edmark, by now an IBM company.
• Search & Rescue 3: From Global Star Software, copyright date unknown. MobyGames has a number of the games in this series, but not this one yet.
• Dropout Entertainment Trivia Game: Presumably the entertainment counterpart to the sports variant I found for the last entry. 1996 game from Elsinore, published by WizardWorks.
• Jubilee’s Journey: “A Jane Goodall environmental journey”. 1996 educational game from Mind Magic.

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• Enemies From Space: A SoftKey release of “the next generation of an arcade classic”. 1997 title by TLC Properties, a subsidiary of The Learning Tree. The screenshots look a bit Galaga-like. The cover art also promises 10 free hours of Compuserve.
• The Fox & The Pussy Cat: This is a Mumbo Jumbo title and I usually expect better from them. However, the screenshots on cover art of this 2004 game are fairly uninspired, appearing about 10 years out of date.
• Slot Car Racing: It’s possible that this is supposed to have “3-D” as a prefix; I’m not quite sure. The cover art does state that a 3D video card is required. 1998 game by Toys by Phil and published by ValuSoft.
• Race Driver: Another rather generically-named game. This one is from Codemasters. It comes with 3 discs. There are 2 copies of disc 1, one in English and one in French, while disc 2 is marked as data. The database already contains several racing games from Codemasters, but I can’t match this one to any of the ones on record.

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• World of Shooting 2005: The title of this game from WS Enterprise is rather to the point. The title also implies that there are other versions for different years. MobyGames has no record of these.
• Clue: A DVD game of the venerable classic board game. Copyright 2006 by Hasbro.
• Ann’s Learning Games: 1994 game from Putnam New Media. The title implies multiple educational games.
• Jammin’ In Jamaica: A 2003 title from Mattel. Since it’s from Mattel, I figured it might possibly be a game. However, it bears no ESRB badge. It also says “Approximately 44 minutes, color, not rated”, so perhaps it’s just a multimedia disc exhibiting a video.

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• Canada Hunt: I suspect this is another in the venerable genre of hunting games, only set in Canada. 2009 title, and the companies mentioned include “Maximum Family Games” and “PSR Outdoors: The Most Realistic Hunting Games”.
• Deep Sea Explorer: Another MatchBox title, “with real U.S. Coast Guard video!” 1999 title.
• Casual Combo Collection: Shovelware collection which seems to consist of 4 color-matching games: Woodville Chronicles, Wizard Land, Age of Emeralds, and Lost in Reefs. Published by ValuSoft-Cosmi.
• Film Fatale: Lights, Camera, Madness! Another hidden objects game. 2012 game from Fugazo. It has a ratings system I haven’t heard of before: Family Friendly Ratings Council, or FFRC. I recommend that you not visit the site directly as it’s home to a pr0n squatter. If you must visit, check out the last Web Archive version before the squatter took over.

I have been raiding my new favorite eBay store for stuff that isn’t yet present in the database. This store happens to have lots of cheap games and a surprisingly large collection missing from MobyGames. I load up my eBay shopping cart until such cart gets too heavy to push (this might sound like a joke but it’s true– after a certain point, it took way too long to add a new item to the shopping cart; after 29 discs, I had to call it quits).

This batch was heavy on trivia, i.e., there were at least 2 items revolving around trivia:

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• Sci-Fi Channel Trivia Game: 1996 game by Byron Preiss Multimedia
• Dropout Sports Trivia Game: It’s a sports trivia game. It seems to be crossed with some kind of grid puzzle game. Curiously, you can play this against an AI opponent, which strikes me as a tad unfair. Copyright 1996 Elsinore Multimedia, distributed by good old WizardWorks. I have also learned that there were other trivia games under the Dropout umbrella.
• Neopets Codestone Quest: I don’t know much about NeoPets. I was concerned it was the sort of thing that might need extra physical components, like Skylanders. This is by Mumbo Jumbo, though, and I’ve enjoyed all of their games so far.
• The Scavenger Hunt Series: Africa: Possibly a hidden object game, long before that was an established genre category. Copyright 1993-1994 from oddly-stylized SWeDE Corporation.

Here are the educational acquisitions from this raid:

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• Reading Roller Coaster: 1998 educational title from Edmark, an IBM company. “Brain Bytes: Byte Size Learning Fun!” might be a series of educational titles.
• Trailblazer: This is a 1994 CD adventure by the legendary MECC (of Oregon Trail fame) and it surprises me that it’s not in the database yet. Therefore, possibly not a game.
• Richard Scarry’s Busytown: Best Activity Center Ever: Designed for 3 to 7 year olds. 1998 educational game from Simon & Schuster.
• Animal Genius: A 2008 game from Artech Studios. The cover art promises 5 addictive games, likely pertaining to animals. The cover art is sharp but the screenshots look shockingly primitive for a 2008 title. I’m wagering this was a set of Flash games for the web that was later packaged and sold on a disc.

And here are the girl-oriented titles from the lot I procured:

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• Rider’s World: I Want to Ride: I have covered 2 horse-riding series on this blog so far (Let’s Ride and Time to Ride). Based on the colonized title “I Want To Ride”, I’m guessing there are other titles in this series. Copyright 2006 and the companies mentioned are Aipirinha Games, Calibre, and CDV.
• Girl Talk: The CD-ROM Game of Truth or Dare: Rated E for everyone, which doesn’t really square with what I’ve always heard about Truth or Dare sessions. 1998 game by Humancode and published by Hasbro. Perhaps positioned as competition for Mattel’s contemporary Barbie games.
• Atomic Betty: Intergalactic Conspiracy: This feels like it might be based on an existing cartoon property. Sure enough. From Brighter Minds in 2006 (I’ve played some of their stuff).

A grab bag of gaming oddities:

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• The Game of Komando City: This 1997 title promises to be a game of some sort (the word is right there in the title). A little more googling indicates that this is some kind of computer training. Companies mentioned include Komando Corporation, Peak Interactive, and AT&T WorldNet Service (the latter is probably an ISP offer).
• Camp Make-A-Wacky: 1996 kids game (possibly edutainment) from Turner New Media.
• Tearstone: “A mind-bending hidden object adventure!” This is a hidden object game. I still have yet to actually play a hidden object game. I have a feeling that it’s easy points for MobyGames. Copyright date is confusingly listed as 2002-2013. Companies mentioned are Tag Publishing as well as ValuSoft-Cosmi, which is the first time I realized that those 2 purveyors of budgetware had merged.

And now we come to the section of “stuff that almost certainly contains no gaming elements but is still interesting”:

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• Internet The City (2 CD-ROMs): A Guided Tour Through The Internet. No copyright date on either of the disc. From Simply Interactive. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that their URL simply.com doesn’t host their original site anymore.
• How To Computers: 1994 learning title from CRT Multimedia. I feel like they were decades ahead of the trend, grammar-wise (“How to ‘noun’” seems to be a recent fad). This promised to teach word processing, spreadsheets, databases, and desktop publishing.
• Art Explosion: Seasons, Events, & Holidays: 1998 title from Nova Development Corporation. 15,000 sensational images for year-round celebrations.
• Virgin’s One Tribe: I didn’t get a close-up picture of this title on eBay. I just saw it was a Virgin Interactive title, and that it didn’t show up on MobyGames. I was hoping it was a missing game. Not quite: “An interactive encyclopedia of people and cultures.”

And a final grab bag of general oddities:

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• 3D Action & Adventure: A 1994 Shovelware disc
• Dennis Miller: That’s Geek To Me: 1995 title by Sanctuary Woods.
• TesselMania!: The art and design tool, also by MECC. Create tesselated images.