Fall Break Approaches…
Hello all!
We hope you’ve been having a good week and are staying safe and warm. We don’t have any major announcements but would like to inform you that during fall break the lab will likely not be open to visitors. Additionally, there will not be a newsletter sent next week, but the following Monday we should be back and ready to roll.
Thanksgiving Break Hours
During the break, we will be keeping the lab closed to visitors.
Demo of the Week
This week, we will be demoing Bugdom on the iMac G3 SE Indigo,
And High Rollers on the Apple //c.
Object of the Week
Our featured object this week is Nintendo’s Famicom.
The Famicon, the shortened nickname given to the Nintendo Family Computer and more famously known in the United States as the Nintendo Entertainment System (aka the NES), was one of Nintendo’s first video game consoles.
However, as you might notice, the Famicon is strikingly different in appearance from the NES. Despite being the same console as the NES, it has a completely different design. Why is that? During the Famicon’s initial release in Japan, the video game industry in the US was actually undergoing a massive recession.
This Wikipedia article and this article have more information, but during 1983, the US video game market was severely struggling. There were too many video game consoles on the market and most of the games for them were awful. Additionally, while this was happening, the Famicon was not meeting immediate success in Japan; its launch was riddled with a few critical issues, and so it had to be recalled and revised before it started meeting demand. As a result of both of these things, initially, Nintendo did not plan to release the Famicon to American audiences at all. However, after the Famicon’s technical issues were resolved and it became a hit in Japan, Nintendo started slowly releasing versions of it in American arcades and, seeing its success there, started thinking once more of a US release. They eventually decided to release a completely re-designed version of the Famicon as the NES, to smashing success.
Movie Screening of the Month
Our upcoming screening will be on December 7th at 7pm. We will be screening Rock & Rule, directed by Clive A. Smith!
Come join us and watch a classic film as it would’ve been seen during the 90s!
Lab Hours and Room Number
We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:
Tuesday: 10:00am-5:00pm
Wednesday: 2:00pm-6:00pm
Thursday: 10:00am-4:00pm
Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.
Sincerely,
The Media Archeology Lab
The University of Texas at Dallas