My Time as Suite 101's Classic Home Video Games Editor

In mid-1996, I was contacted by Julie Bradshaw to become an "editor" for a new web site called Suite 101. They were seeking people for a variety of topics who would maintain a top 5 list of sites related to the topic and write a weekly article about it. I wasn't sure if I could commit to writing one article a week, so I hemmed and hawed with myself. Months of indecisiveness paid off when they announced the creation of part-time editors. I then quickly put in my application as the "classic home video games" editor. I figured I could handle one article a month. And I did…until my wife got pregnant. I managed to continue my duties for a time, but finally I missed an entire month. I realized I had to resign, perhaps just temporarily, so I did so in February 1998.

In case you haven't guessed, I never went back. It's all rather fuzzy now, but a review of my e-mails helped refresh my memory a bit. I never got much in the way of feedback from Suite 101 users, although the management told me at one point my topic ranked "around 55 out of 205 topics," putting me just out of the top 25%.  I enjoyed the writing and later wrote a regular column for Classic Gamer Magazine, but that's a story for another time. A little extra cash never hurts, either.

As I said above, editors also picked a "top 5" sites related to their topic.  I was running the Classic Video Games Nexus at the time, so the hard part wasn't finding five sites, but figuring out which five to link to.  I no longer have records of that, but I seem to remember including the Nexus as one of the links.  Nobody ever said I had to be completely unbiased.

When I was involved, Suite 101 was owned by i5ive communications inc., a Canadian company. (Yes, they used the name in all lower case.) That's pronounced "I-five" (or "eye five"). I don't know what's happened with it since I left, but Suite 101 still exists today with no mention of that company. (i5ive's old domain now belongs to i5ive Affordable Online Insurance.) While my work for i5ive was work for hire, under the terms of my contract I was free to reproduce the editorials on my own web site, so I'm going to assume that also applies to my blog, a concept that didn't exist back then. Furthermore, Suite 101 removed all the articles I wrote some time after I resigned. That kept stale topics from polluting the ones that were still updated regularly. So given the changes that have happened in the 15 years since I wrote these, I doubt Suite 101 has any record of me working for them any more anyway. Here, then, are my bio and the 16 articles I wrote for Suite 101 on Classic Home Video Games.

• c. late 1996: Autobiography
• November 1996: Classic Home Video Games: An Introduction
• December 2, 1996: How to Start A Classic Video Game Collection Part 1: Picking a System
• December 27, 1996: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 2: The System Choices - The Atari Trio
• January 17, 1997: The November 1996 editorial was repeated for Suite 101's grand opening.
• February 1, 1997: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 3: The System Choices - Non-Atari
• February 28, 1997: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 4: Where to Find Classics
• April 4, 1997: New Games for Classic Systems
• May 2, 1997: Atari 2600 Technical Spotlight
• June 6, 1997: Electronicon is Coming!: Would I Con You?
• July 4, 1997: Is It Live or Is It Emulated? - Part 1: Shareware and Freeware Emulators
• July 18, 1997: Is It Live or Is It Emulated? - Part 2: Commercial and Upcoming Emulators
• August 15, 1997: Thrifting: A Definition
• September 5, 1997: Preview: Atari Gaming HQ
• October 7, 1997: System Spotlight: Magnavox Odyssey
• November 14, 1997: Book Review: Phoenix (2nd Edition)
• December 12, 1997: When is a Combat not a Combat?
• February 13, 1998: Piracy: Collectors' Friend or Foe

Robb Waters Does It Again

Once again, Robb Waters has done Rom art.  This time it's a portrait of the action figure.  It's part of a series of portraits of various superheroes and science fiction characters.  And it's actually from 2011, but I'm just now discovering it.

If you missed it, here are the two previous Robb Waters works featured on the blog.