Catalog Cavalcade: Avalon Hill Gaming Company

Anyone who has ever played a war game owes a tremendous debt to the Avalon Hill Gaming Company. It was a company that was founded in 1954 with the premise that strategic multi-counter war games would be a profitable product to sell, and proved it by having a commercial success with its very first product, Tactics.  Many, many other war games followed, such as Blitzkrieg!, Panzer Blitz, and Starship Troopers, as well as games in other genres, such as Acquire, Football Strategy, and Outdoor Strategy. Some were instant classics, some…well, not so much.

Of course, Avalon Hill also translated a large volume of their wargame classics to the computer realm, making for some fabulous solo or human-to-human game play without having to leave the comfort of your computer desk.  In honor of those games – and the company that has long since been absorbed by the Borg of the gaming world (Hasbro) – reproduced below is one of Avalon Hill’s original PC game catalogs from 1996.  Simply click on the first page to open the catalog up. One warning: it’s a big file! Enjoy!

Avalon Hill Game Company Catalog

Catalog Cavalcade: Commodore Amiga Spec Sheets

Every so often I find a little piece of personal computing history hidden inside a game box that I like to share with others with a like-minded love of retrogaming and memories of computers of yesterday. Up today are three product spec sheets from the Commodore Business Machine Limited product line: a sheet for the Commodore Amiga 500 computer (Commodore order number 0500-999-1), a sheet for the Commodore  1084 monitor (Commodore order number 1084-999-1), and one for the Amiga 1010 disk drive (Commodore order number 1010-999-1).  Note the pen marks on the Amiga 500 sheet; I’ve used the power of the Gimp to remove most of the offending writing, but not all of it.

Each sheet is two-sided, with a description on one side and specifications on the other. I’ve combined them all into a single .pdf file for your enjoyment; simply click on the image below to see what salespeople handed out to prospective computer buyers back in the 1980s. Enjoy!

Click on this image to open the .pdf file!

Catalog Cavalcade: Spectrum HoloByte 1992 Product Catalog

This week’s Catalog Cavalcade takes us back to 1992, with the company that brought us the (then) technologically brilliant Falcon 3.0 PC game. Spectrum HoloByte was a software company founded in 1983 that pumped out some great games, including the Falcon series, various games based on Alexey Pajitnov’s ideas (including bringing Tetris to the PC), car racing sims (Stunt Driver and Vette!), and one of the most underrated political simulations of all time, Crisis in the Kremlin. The company was sold to Hasbro, Inc. (the Evil Empire) in 1998, and its development house was shut down that same year. However, in 1992, Spectrum HoloByte was still a thriving software business, so much so that it would go on to purchase MicroProse Software the next year. Below is the catalog of Spectrum HoloByte’s offerings in 1992 – just click on the image to open up the .pdf file! Enjoy!

1992 Spectrum HoloByte Catalog

Catalog Cavalcade: Celebrate 1988 with Accolade

The world of computer games in 1988 were marked by many platform choices: you could find the same game on an IBM-PC (MS-DOS), a Commodore 64 or Amiga, an Atari ST or 400/800 series, even an Apple II.  When game publishers advertised their wares, they typically chose screenshots from whichever platform best showed off their game (which typically was the C64).  Accolade was no different than any other company in that regard, as a quick glimpse through their 1988 catalog would show…which you can now do thanks to the time-traveling magic of the Internet!  Click on the image to launch the catalog, and enjoy!

Catalog Cavalcade: Gateway to Adventure – 1981 TSR Hobbies

Once upon a time the RPG universe was filled with names like Top Secret, Boot Hill, Gamma World, and Dungeons & Dragons – both Basic and Advanced.  TSR Hobbies were The Game Wizards, and their creations were craved by masses of roleplayers worldwide.  Now they’re just another part of the Hasbro empire.  So, take a moment to peel back the pages of time, and peer into a different era of roleplaying with TSR Hobbies, Inc.’s 1981 product catalog, apply named: Gateway to Adventure!

Click to open the catalog!