Today in 1976 the Apple computer, hand-built by Steve Wozniak, was released to the public; it’s now known as the Apple 1. Its introductory price was $666.66 – creepy. Besides Geek Flea V, what are you doing this weekend?

Stu Horvath: Geek Flea V. Then sleep. Blessed sleep.

Chuck Moran: I will put on my best P.T. Barnum identity and sell some raffle tickets and help out the best I can at Geek Flea – come down and visit. Possibly play board games on Friday night.

Ian Gonzales: I will be hitting up Geek Flea V this Saturday. Then I’m off to see The  Sonics at the Bell House. Sunday is reserved for writing, Doctor Who and Game of Thrones. Oh, and sleep… somewhere.

Dave Trainer:  Geek Flea V is this weekend. Unfortunately, I do not have a table but I will be there buying stuff from my friends. Also Saturday is the Rangers v. Islanders game. Unwinnable columnist and all-around solid dude Don Becker will be cheering on the Islanders and I will be cheering on the Rangers as we put our friendship on hold in between commercial breaks whilst each team battles for a playoff spot. I am sure Don and I will resume our friendship once the horn sounds.

Don Becker: After Geek Flea V I will be testing the limits of my friendship with Dave Trainer by watching the most important Islanders/Rangers game in 20 years with him.

Matt Marrone: Working on Saturday and just taking it from there.

Ken Lucas: I will be at my Hoarder Art booth selling jewelry and lamps at Geek Flea V. It will be a fun day selling things and hanging out with buddies!

Mark Mariano: I’ll miss my fellow Geek Flea folk this time around but I’ll still be selling my books in Ohio at SPACE.

Rowan Kaiser: I am going to be marketing the hell out of the crowdfunding campaign of my book-length analysis of Mass Effect, Potential Space. Oh, look, I just did.

Richard Clark: This is the weekend I convince myself I’ve had enough time to recover from GDC and get to work writing stuff.

Brendan Keogh: I’ll be burning the midnight oil to hit three deadlines that all happen to be on Monday. Occasionally I might take a break to argue on the Internet about games I haven’t played yet. Apparently, I do that now.

Dan Crabtree: I’ll be making music and lots of snot as I crawl out of illness and into spring allergies. The music bit is unrelated to the congestion.

Teddy Diefenbach: I will be making SO MANY animated GIFs to post on our new MoonlightersGame.com Tumblr. The human brain has been programmed over thousands of years to think video games with animated screenshots are superior.

Stu Horvath: I will be attempting to counter post-GDC depression by attempting to convince everyone in the Unwinnable mansion to stay and live here forever. When that doesn’t work, I will go back to trying to beat FTL.

Chuck Moran: This weekend I will be returning to New Jersey where I will see my wife and build baby room furniture. I look forward to playing the new games I have learned about and keeping up with some new friends I have made. It was a great week, but I look forward to returning from the hunt.

Ian Gonzales: This Saturday I will be checking out my friend’s band, New London Fire, over at Maxwells. I want to see the new GI Joe movie too, but that depends on when buddies want to go see it. Besides, I have Easter dinner and a Walking Dead/Game of Thrones double feature on Sunday. This weekend is packed with awesome nerdery!

Don Becker: I will spend the last weekend of my 30s with family for Easter, then try to convince my wife to break her Passover fast with my floor hockey team.

Matt Marrone: Easter Sunday with the family … then heading to Yankee Stadium on Monday for Opening Day with pops. Can’t beat it. (Please don’t rain!)

Ethan Sacks: Spending weekend in the mountains of Nagano, Japan. May not come home.

Jill Scharr: I’ll be decorating Easter eggs at my aunt’s house on Saturday, celebrating Easter with the family all Sunday, and somewhere in between it all I’ll be writing and playing BioShock Infinite and hopefully writing about the playing of BioShock Infinite.

Ken Lucas: I will be returning to the east coast after a great week hanging with buddies new and old at GDC in San Francisco. Then it’s back to my projects for Geek Flea V.

Erik Weinbrecht: This weekend celebrates my favorite zombie story of all time and gives me another excuse to eat with my family. Happy Easter.

Mark Mariano: I’ll be making Pizza Gain with Pops on Friday. On Saturday, I’ll be developing my new drawing game show for comic conventions. On Sunday, I’ll enjoy Easter, The Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones!

Dennis Scimeca: Transcribing many thousands of words’ worth of interviews from PAX East and GDC, and then seeing a doctor about my worsening carpal tunnel syndrome.

Steve Haske: I will be moping around the house with Stu Horvath. I imagine there will be drinking.

Chris Dahlen: When I get out of GDC I am going to spin silk from my butt, wrap myself in a cocoon and sleep for like a month.

Adam Rosenberg: I will apparently not be seeing any of you for more than a handful of moments. I will also be landing in NYC at 5 a.m. on Saturday and playing Bioshock Infinite until it is beaten. Then sleep.

Richard Clark: I’m going to sleep on an airplane as I fly over the entire country, starting Friday at midnight. God help me.

Dan Apczynski: I’m laughing so hard I’m crying — gimme a second. Let me just wipe my eyes with this handkerchief that Chris Dahlen gave me.

Sam Machkovech: Going on a Mission burrito quest once GDC wraps up. Also, as soon as I get back to Seattle on Saturday, I’m gonna run a BioShock Infinite marathon.

Brendan Keogh: I will be transcribing about 4 hours of interviews and trying not to die.

Dan Crabtree: Going into 1999 Mode on BioShock Infinite, may not come out.

Chris Martinez: Amber Harris and I will be at WonderCon in Anaheim this weekend. She’ll be exhibiting for her first time and will be selling a sketchbook, along with some prints. If you’re wondering who we are, since we’re relatively quiet, we’re your fellow illustrators. Drop us a message and we’ll draw you a thing and see if you like it!

Mike Rousseau: I’m going to a Street Fighter Vs. Mortal Kombat 80s dance party wearing a Minecraft Creeper head. You wish you were me.

JP Grant: I’m wearing a robe of the purest Dahlenian butt-silk right now.

Teddy Diefenbach: I’ll be trying to recover from the GDC blitz by trying out a juice fast, crying, sniffling, and giving up on a juice fast. Then I’ll play some Hotline Miami.

Be thankful it’s the weekend. What are you doing?

Stu Horvath: I have been obsessively watching the Steam flash sales and accumulating all the games I’ve been meaning to take a crack at. I will play all of them this weekend. Anyone want to play a match of Frozen Synapse? Or Pay Day: The Heist? Or…

Chuck Moran: Tomorrow, Saturday, is the firetruck parade in Wallington. This will be the loudest thing I hear all year – I am excited.

Ian Gonzales: This weekend, my local comic shop, Paradox Comics, is having a sale. I will be drowning in Spider-Man and Conan comics. Also, Dan Imperiale and John “Hambone” McGuire have a show tonight in Clifton. It’s going to be a good weekend.

Don Becker: Thanksgiving II at a Pennsylvania Dutch smorgasbord. I will die fat and happy.

Matt Marrone: After working through Thanksgiving, I have a couple days off to spend with the family, starting with my nephew’s second birthday party, where the gf will meet my rents.

Ken Lucas: After spending much of Thursday cooking, I am going to chill out this weekend and recover from Geek Flea and Thanksgiving.

Jordan Mammo: Thursday’s Thanksgiving was wonderful and I’ll be going for Part II at my girlfriend’s house this weekend. I’m ready and happy to eat leftovers for the next week.

Ryan Kuo: I forgot to hit my goal of 500 stomach crunches before Thanksgiving, so I guess I’m going to distribute those 500 across the long weekend…

Appetizers

 
First, get together with Brendan Keogh in Journey. Then have a videogame olive with Gus Mastrapa. Next up, visit the Imperial city of Thalnax in Star Wars: Galaxies with Dennis Scimeca and finish of in the deep blue sea to explore Oceans Away with Chris Dahlen.

Entrees

 
Heavier fare is next! First, Stu Horvath talks about love. Cara Ellison looks at gender roles in Tomb Raider while Earnest “Nex” Cavalli uses Max Payne 3 to ponder colonialism in South America. Finally, Brian Taylor meditates on the overwhelming violence in videogames.

Desserts

 
Things get lighter for dessert. Charles Francis Moran VI get’s his butt kicked by booth babes and Unwinnable turns to a college essay black market to learn about the history of storytelling in videogames. Meanwhile, Richard Clark get’s some life affirming joy out of the Perfect Strangers browser game and Jenn Frank explains why Diablo III is oh so adorable.

Leftovers

 
Everybody wants leftovers to get you through the weekend. Nap along with Matt Marrone when he gets bored of Rockstar’s open world games. Or go back to Grand Theft Auto IV and look to the future of fatherhood with Dan Apczynski. Brian Bannen looks at the romance between Apollo and Midnighter from The Authority. Finally, Jill Scharr gives some advice to Disney on the future of the Star Wars franchise.

Two things you may or may not know about Unwinnable:

1. We have around 1500 articles in our archive (according to Stu).
2. One staff member (me) has a Masters of Library and Information Science.

Starting this week, once we’ve gotten ready for the weekend, I’ll be publishing a little piece like this that pulls a few stories out for you to read over the weekend. They might not be our best work (we wouldn’t want to raise your expectations too high, now). They could be two years or two weeks old. But there will be a theme.

Sometimes that theme will be relevant and timely (for example, next week’s major movie release could provide some focus). Sometimes they will be arbitrary. Sometimes the same article could appear in multiple entries! I’m not looking to be exhaustive or authoritative, just trying to shine a little light into our dusty corners.

And so, in keeping with this being the initial entry in this series, here are four posts about beginnings:

We Need New Maps (6/3/2010) – Unwinnable’s first post, by Stu Horvath, is a kind of manifesto for the site. It’s about the challenge of finding new ways to write about things, which I’m guessing is one of the reasons many of us write about games instead of movies or books. And I know, there are some older posts in the archives than this, but they’re all brief summaries of his work elsewhere. Did you know Unwinnable started as Stu’s portfolio?

Everything is Bigger in Texas: What Was Your First Computer? (7/30/2010) – When our own Chuck, Charles Francis Moran VI, got his first computer, a TI-99 4/A, for Christmas 1983, I wasn’t two years old yet. It’s a little memoir, a little computer history and there are TWO embedded Youtube videos: a commercial for the TI-99 4/A and gameplay video of Microsurgeon.

Massive: Origins Part 1 (11/23/2010) – Richie Procopio gives a quick introduction to the MMO with a brief trip from MUDS to Ultima Online.

Rookie of the Year: The Newlywed Game (4/25/2011) – Last April, Matt Marrone (Maccone) bought a TV and an Xbox 360 and started playing videogames again. Though more of a return to games than a beginning, this is the first entry in his column, which continues to run on the site biweekly.

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Brian Taylor is an information technologist by day and a freelance librarian by night. He’s not sure which title is more made-up. Follow him on Twitter @BrianMTaylor.

Appetizers

First up is Rob Robert’s look at Stake Land, the best vampire movie he’s seen in years. Next is Bee Tee Dee’s amazing Calvin and Hobbes parody, Commerce and Slobs. George Collazo has another great movie recommendation in 13 Assassins. Finally, check out Matt Marrone’s first entry in his column Rookie of the Year.

Entrees

Our entrees are a bit heartier and will have you thinking for hours. Matt Giaquinto deconstructs the recent prequel of The Thing. Stu Horvath is haunted, literally, by Sleep No More. Comic legend Frank Miller’s fall into insanity is chronicled by Michael Edwards. Finally, Stu Horvath ponders what the game industry should do now that the shadow of Brown vs. Entertainment Merchants Association is no longer looming over it.

Desserts

The feast comes to an end with good humor. John “Hambone” McGuire looks at the mark the Ghostbusters franchise has left on videogames. Ed Coleman shares his love of statistics. Don Becker investigates the economic collapse of the Forgotten Realms in light of the rising price of gold. And, finally, Team Unwinnable comes up with better ideas for Grand Theft Auto V than Rockstar did.

Like what you read in this digest? Unwinnable is printing a book collecting the very best stories from its first year. Contribute to the Kickstarter to pre-order your copy now!

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Amid the chaos of New York Comic Con there existed an oasis of calm and reason. Far from the crush of the crowds, the flashing lights of video games, the cloying scent of vinyl, sweat and popped corn, lay the North Hall. That fabled land where few would tread, home of the D-list celebrity (may their autograph hands always be strong!), a life-sized roaming R2D2, a time-traveling DeLorean, two Batmobiles and the Wizards of the Coast gaming area. While the main halls were packed with mainstream movies, comic book companies and book publishers, a large portion of the North Hall was filled with tables and chairs. Around those tables people, often strangers to one another, sat across from each other playing Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons 4th Ed. and a slew of D&D based board games. I’ve never played an RPG at a con before, and outside of my experience with D&D Encounters (See TTW#3), I’ve never played with strangers before. I mean, it’s not always the easiest thing to pretend that you’re a fantasy warrior in front of people you hardly know, but we were all there for the same thing, so judgment was at a minimum.

The volunteer DMs ran a few different games all weekend: a learn-to-play for newbies, a Convention Delve called “Lair of the Dread Witch,” a few board games based on D&D properties and a four-hour campaign named Siege of Gardmore Abbey. Guess which one the intrepid Tabletop Wizard chose. Yes! I signed up for the Siege at Gardmore Abbey, which was only happening on Friday and Saturday, and only once per day. This was something I needed to experience. There were plenty of spots open so I signed up early Saturday morning, and then went off to explore more of the con. At around 3 p.m. I ventured back down to the fabled and mystical North Pavilion – which was actually kind of difficult to find – and was joined by my friend, Venture Brothers‘ artist Rick Lacy.

The table slowly filled up and within a few minutes we had an adventuring party of five ready to go.

The GM, Melissa, laid characters out on the table and asked us to pick one. As far as pre-generated characters go, these were pretty badass, and Rick and I were kind of upset that our current D&D characters, who are a level above the pre-gens, weren’t nearly as cool. Each character had a short biography and a paragraph detailing our relationships with our comrades. I chose a Half-Elf war-priest named Sir Tamlin the Black.

The other characters were a human, Sir Nordan (of) Gram, played by Rick; Harak, a half-orc and Tamlin’s adopted son, played by Andre; Savvra, a tiefling played by Sean; and Glynneth, an eladrin played by Conner. Each character also had a goal that they needed to achieve during the four hours of play. Sir Tamlin’s goal was to make sure that none of his party died, and if they did he was to call upon The Raven Queen to spare their souls.

Our DM, Melissa, gave us a quick intro to the world we were playing in; we were all knights tasked with protecting the Abbey at Gardmore. As we started the mission the abbey was being surrounded by orc forces, which in itself was not particularly an oddity. The orcs assembled under the black-on-black banner of an orc general named Nightbringer, and used strategies they’d never used before. The party was worried, but the knight commander wasn’t; the abbey apparently had a powerful magical weapon that they could unleash upon the orc forces should they tear down the walls of the fortress. Melissa was a great DM, a quick thinker who presented clear options for us and kept us moving along. She had some great home-brew additions to the game that really spiced things up, meshing role-playing and skill checks together as story-encounters. She also had a great way to deal with initiative tracking. She had us each write our character names on a slip of paper, and then she folded those slips over her DM screen and used a clip to show us whose turn it was. It was surprisingly simple and effective and had two interesting effects. One: we never had to question whose turn it was in battle. Two: it had us calling ourselves and our comrades by our character’s names.

Now, I’ve never really gone too in-depth about 4th Edition D&D here, and I will in a future column, but here’s a little primer: The focus of 4th Edition is to create heroes. Big damned fantasy heroes. In earlier editions of the game there were crafting skills, armory skills, cooking, etc, but not in 4th Edition. Heroes don’t have jobs – or rather, they do, but that job is being a hero. Fourth Edition is all about leveling and gaining powers – literally super-powers – so that you can do incredible things on the battlefield. Every decision you make as a character is designed to lead you to the next combat encounter; it very much attempts to capitalize off of the success of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. In our home games we try to balance the role-paying with the combat encounters, but when you’re playing 4th Edition D&D at a convention, there’s really no need to pretend you’re playing a strict storytelling game. You’re a big damned fantasy hero and you’re just trying to get through these skill encounters so you can try out some of the powers you’ve got burning a hole in your character sheet. This isn’t to suggest that we didn’t role-play, because we did. All of us, all strangers, read our character bios and relationships and made sure to speak to each other with that in mind. This actually made it one of the most fun games I’ve played in a long time.

Big Kev’s Geek Stuff, one of Team Unwinnable’s favorite radio shows, will be at Booth E7 in the Podcast Pavilion. Kev and OG will have guests coming to their booth all weekend long, so check them out.

Yuffie Bunny has a booth, Booth #177 to be exact. At this booth she’ll be selling her handmade hair falls, which go by the name of Head Kandi. Go get yourself some and if you’re really nice to her, she might tell you tales of her many cosplay adventures!

Located at #2933 in the Comic Book Diner booth are the Brothers Mariano! Pick up Flabbergast! Get it signed by Mark and be sure to get a free Chris O-Matic Show postcard set. Mark and Chris will be at the Comic Book Diner booth with Buzzboy, Rich Faber of Roboy Red, Jamar Nicholas of Fist Stick Knife Gun, Thomas Zahler of Love and Capes and the Timony Twins of Night Owls.

Rob Longo will be at Booth #2036 promoting his web series, Vixens of Virtue, Vixens of Vice. Rob and his Vixens will be selling Season One and Two on DVD. Be sure to drop by to say hello and pick up a DVD or two.

Stop by Booth #2511 for special giveaways and promotions from Alternative Cinema. Meet Michael Raso, John Fedele and William Hellfire from the Alternative Cinema Podcast and check them out each month for an insightful, entertaining and unvarnished glimpse into the world of independent and ultra low-budget genre filmmaking.

Unwinnable contributor Kurt Christenson and Reilly Brown will be hustling all over NYCC trying to pimp out their digital comic Power Play, now available for download through ComiXology. You can find Reilly in Artist Alley at Table N2 and follow @PowerPlayComic on Twitter for updates about their tweet-up at the ComiXology booth, where you can meet the tentacle-master, Gowanus Pete!

Longtime friend of Unwinnable Jordan Hembrough’s Hollywood Heroes will be at Booth #1280 filming the series premiere of his yet-to-be-titled toy show for the Travel Channel. This is Jordan’s fourth year at NYCC where, alongside many other vintage and modern collectibles, Jordan will be showing a rare prototype from ThunderCats:  The Mad Bubbler. Check out Hollywood Heroes and, who knows, you may end up on TV.

And be sure to follow @JapanDudeGirl, @Dave_Trainer, @8ozcup, @JohnMiserable, @IanGonzales, @KurtChristenson, @OliviaNoelDavis and the rest of Team Unwinnable on Twitter for their adventures and exploits on the show floor at New York Comic Con 2011!

We would like to publicly thank the following:

The First Presbyterian Church of Arlington and the church ladies – for graciously hosting us, allowing us to expand and feeding us

Micki Fever – for providing some seriously kick-ass artwork for our promotional flyer

Chris O-Matic – for putting together the Unwinnable booth video reel on rather short notice

Our sponsors – Barcade, the Loop Lounge, Tail Slate, Comic Explosion and Paradox Comics

The Babycastles indie gaming arcade, as well as the makers of Detective Geronimo’s Therapy Session, Forget Me Not and Super Crate Box Vs for letting us play their games for the day

Retail stores at the Flea – Sugee, New World Manga and The Ave Shack

Shops that were cool about us putting our poster up -
Zapp Comics, Time Warp Comics, Silk City Tattoo, Jinx Proof Tattoo, Division East Skateboard Shop, Cafe Eclectic, Montclair Book Center, Bloomfield Comic Book Market, Fortress of Solitude, Sweet Avenue Bake Shop, Rutherford Pancake House, Blackwork Tattoo and Eternal Eyes Permanent Makeup

South Ward Patch and Big Kev’s Geek Stuff, for giving us huge shout-outs

Eric Sita – for stepping in to do gaming demos early in the day

DJ Vic, DJ Ant and Brian Malloy – for the tunes

Shawn Orr at Chucky Farms – for bringing the sound system

Everyone who came out or spread the word.

All our vendors.

You.

I hate when pop culture vultures call my peers and me “the Nintendo Generation.” Yes, we grew up playing the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and probably know more about the Triforce than any religion we were raised in, but that’s not all we are. If that were so, Video Power would have been a fondly remembered classic as opposed to being a footnote.

Any American kid growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s knew what the NES was. So it made sense that children’s television magnate Haim Saban would want to get in on the trend – hence the birth of Video Power.

Premiering in 1990 in first-run syndication, Video Power started as a tips and tricks show hosted by a hyperactive teenager named Johnny Arcade. The show also had an animated segment featuring The Power Team. This was a group made up of Acclaim characters like the cop from NARC, an Arch Rivals character, the guy from Wizards & Warriors, the Bigfoot monster truck and Kwirk the tomato. The unrelated videogame characters as cartoon superhero team may seem familiar to you. It’s the formula of Captain N: The Game Master.

Who would you rather watch – the cop from NARC and Bigfoot fight an inept crime boss, or Mega Man and Simon Belmont versus Mother Brain? Case closed. So, the producers of Video Power needed to do something about their format.

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Ian will haphazardly stumble upon pop culture footnotes while writing. Sometimes they appear here and sometimes he tweets them via @IanGonzales.