About Kate Willaert

Before the NES, before the Atari 2600…

Fairchild’s Channel F was the first video game console to run games directly from a cartridge. While Magnavox’s Odyssey had game cards that …
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Carmen Sandiego’s first showed up 35 years ago today in WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO? for the Apple II. But she wasn’t yet wearing her iconic red outfit …
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Early computer game history often gets overlooked.

Maybe it’s because “computer games” used to be considered different from “video games,” back when “video” was defined by the presence of a …
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Netflix has a new Bandersnatch-style interactive adventure. But where that film was about a character creating a fictional menu-driven adventure, the new film is based on one of the first …
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“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” the saying goes.

This age-old idiom originally meant you shouldn’t judge a person by their shabby clothing. But in a literal sense, I …
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Super Mario, Pac-Man, and Sonic The Hedgehog are three of the most recognizable icons in gaming, and their careers contain some interesting parallels.

They also happen to perfectly represent …
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Long before Carmen Sandiego or The Oregon Trail…

…there was The Sumerian Game. Designed for grade schoolers in 1964, it was as innovative as it is forgotten.

I discovered …
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I’m certain that Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? is the most confusing series in the history of video games. Different versions of a game might have the same …
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Legion co-creator Bill Sienkiewicz designed the characters and logo for the ’90s FOX cartoon Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?
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The term “gamer” predates video games by over six centuries.

The first known record of the word was found in the English town of Walsall and dates back to …
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