Mr Gorf’s Birthday-Picnic


Book Description

Mister Gorf, a green-colored frog, was sitting on his favorite lily-pad thinking with great excitement about his birthday, which he would be celebrating soon. He had decided that he would celebrate his birthday with a grand picnic and invite all his friends to come and join in the fun.




The Home Computer Wars


Book Description




Everything Nice


Book Description

Most coming-of-age stories are about teenagers, but not this one. Eddy's coming-of-age hardly starts until he's 35 years old, when he discovers a penchant for wearing women's clothes. It takes him ten more exciting and very weird years before he figures out he really should have been a girl all along. After the sex change, Eddy, now Lannie, has to build a whole new life as a woman. The hard part was going to be finding a man to love her. While Everything Nice is YATA - Yet Another Transgender Autobiography - it brings to the genre an honesty about releationships and sex before and after gender transition; a hard look at the dating scene from a transsexual point of view; and the unique sense of humor Lannie demonstrated in HOW THE CHANGE YOUR SEX and LANNIE! MY JOURNEY FROM MAN TO WOMAN. If you only read one transsexual autobiography this year, Everything Nice is the one you want to choose.




I'm Like You, You're Like Me


Book Description

“It’s fun to find ways I’m like you and you’re like me. It’s fun to find ways we’re different.” In this colorful, inviting book, kids from preschool to lower elementary learn about diversity in terms they can understand: hair that’s straight or curly, families with many people or few, bodies that are big or small. With its wide-ranging examples and fun, highly detailed art, I’m Like You, You’re Like Me helps kids appreciate the ways they are alike and affirm their individual differences. A two-page adult section in the back provides tips and activities for parents and caregivers to reinforce the themes and lessons of the book.




Los Angeles Magazine


Book Description

Los Angeles magazine is a regional magazine of national stature. Our combination of award-winning feature writing, investigative reporting, service journalism, and design covers the people, lifestyle, culture, entertainment, fashion, art and architecture, and news that define Southern California. Started in the spring of 1961, Los Angeles magazine has been addressing the needs and interests of our region for 48 years. The magazine continues to be the definitive resource for an affluent population that is intensely interested in a lifestyle that is uniquely Southern Californian.




Racing the Beam


Book Description

A study of the relationship between platform and creative expression in the Atari VCS, the gaming system for popular games like Pac-Man and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. The Atari Video Computer System dominated the home video game market so completely that “Atari” became the generic term for a video game console. The Atari VCS was affordable and offered the flexibility of changeable cartridges. Nearly a thousand of these were created, the most significant of which established new techniques, mechanics, and even entire genres. This book offers a detailed and accessible study of this influential video game console from both computational and cultural perspectives. Studies of digital media have rarely investigated platforms—the systems underlying computing. This book, the first in a series of Platform Studies, does so, developing a critical approach that examines the relationship between platforms and creative expression. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the Atari VCS itself and examine in detail six game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, Pitfall!, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. They describe the technical constraints and affordances of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. Adventure, for example, was the first game to represent a virtual space larger than the screen (anticipating the boundless virtual spaces of such later games as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto), by allowing the player to walk off one side into another space; and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was an early instance of interaction between media properties and video games. Montfort and Bogost show that the Atari VCS—often considered merely a retro fetish object—is an essential part of the history of video games.




Retro Gaming Hacks


Book Description

Maybe it was the recent Atari 2600 milestone anniversary that fueled nostalgia for the golden days of computer and console gaming. Every Game Boy must ponder his roots from time to time. But whatever is driving the current retro gaming craze, one thing is certain: classic games are back for a big second act, and they're being played in both old and new ways. Whether you've just been attacked by Space Invaders for the first time or you've been a Pong junkie since puberty, Chris Kohler's Retro Gaming Hacks is the indispensable new guide to playing and hacking classic games. Kohler has complied tons of how-to information on retro gaming that used to take days or weeks of web surfing to track down and sort through, and he presents it in the popular and highly readable Hacks style. Retro Gaming Hacks serves up 85 hard-nosed hacks for reviving the classic games. Want to game on an original system? Kohler shows you how to hack ancient hardware, and includes a primer for home-brewing classic software. Rather adapt today's equipment to run retro games? Kohler provides emulation techniques, complete with instructions for hacking a classic joystick that's compatible with a contemporary computer. This book also teaches readers to revive old machines for the original gaming experience: hook up an Apple II or a Commodore 64, for example, and play it like you played before. A video game journalist and author of Power Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, Kohler has taught the history of video games at Tufts University. In Retro Gaming Hacks, he locates the convergence of classic games and contemporary software, revealing not only how to retrofit classic games for today's systems, but how to find the golden oldies hidden in contemporary programs as well. Whether you're looking to recreate the magic of a Robotron marathon or simply crave a little handheld Donkey Kong, Retro Gaming Hacks shows you how to set the way-back dial.




How to Master the Video Games


Book Description




Fire and Fog


Book Description

"With her independent spirit and youthful determination, Miss Jones is virtually invincible," raved The New York Times Book Review upon meeting Dianne Day's spunky and appealing new heroine in her debut, The Strange Files of Fremont Jones. Now Fremont Jones returns, awakened by a terrible rumbling, and nearly crushed by a falling armoire, to find herself in the midst of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. In the confusion and devastation that ensues, Fremont volunteers for the Red Cross, and learns to drive an automobile to transport supplies and handsome doctors, sparking romances along the way. Her sleuthing cohort, the elusive Michael Archer, vanishes, leaving Fremont alone to sleuth the mysteries uncovered by the earthquake and to wrestle with her romantic feelings for Michael. A smuggler's cache unearthed by the disaster leads Fremont straight into danger: kidnapped by murderous Ninjas, Fremont must find her way to safety--thwarted at every turn, as even friends become suspect. Alone Fremont picks her way through the menacing ruins of San Francisco and narrowly escapes with her life.




Classic Home Video Games, 1985-1988


Book Description

A follow up to 2007's Classic Home Video Games, 1972-1984, this reference work provides detailed descriptions and reviews of every U.S.-released game for the Nintendo NES, the Atari 7800, and the Sega Master System, all of which are considered among the most popular video game systems ever produced. Organized alphabetically by console brand, each chapter includes a description of the game system followed by substantive entries for every game released for that console. Video game entries include publisher/developer data, release year, gameplay information, and, typically, the author's critique. A glossary provides a helpful guide to the classic video game genres and terms referenced throughout the work, and a preface provides a comparison between the modern gaming industry and the industry of the late 1980s.