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Hurray for game studio holiday breaks! Looking forward to spending the next week catching up on video games, starting a new restoration project, and uh, writing up design docs for work.

A Video Game Timeline (1967-Present)

Last month, Simon Parkin interviewed competitive Street Fighter legend Daigo Umehara. Go read it at Eurogamer.

Jeri Ellsworth is designing and building her own pinball machine. Here’s her progress so far: day 3, day 4, and plastic bending in a toaster oven.

Jason Scott is taking pre-orders for his text adventure documentary GET LAMP. 25% off until the end of December.

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Retro extravaganza!

Download all 21 issues of DC Comics’ Atari Force, one of the more ah, interesting Atari licensing deals of the 1980s. The original pack-in issues (telling a previous story) are also available.

Scott Evans, curator of AtariGames.com, recently uploaded the CAX 2009 Atari alumni discussion panel. Available in 5 parts, Arcade Heroes has bundled them all into a single post.

The birth of an industry: Ralph Baer and His All-Purpose Boxes.

For the ZX Brits: 25 Years of Crash.

Top Ten Favorite Games

Industry Gamers asked Cliff Bleszinski about his top ten games. Nick Chester linked to the interview and posed the same question to Destructoid readers (with a bunch of Dtoid staffer and community answers in the comments). Here are my favorites, in no particular order:

Rez HD
Okay, the rest are in no particular order, but Rez sits firmly at the top with its perfect mixture of simplicity and depth. Whenever I want to just zone out and play a game, this is the game I go to.

Mail Order Monsters
Probably the first game to really hook me, and a franchise I’d love to revisit as a designer. I still have a handful of monster disks around here somewhere.

Myth: The Fallen Lords
While the sequel was the better game, Myth: TFL led the way, and I do prefer its soundtrack (introducing me to the fine works of Marty O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori) over Soulblighter. Amazingly, the series is still strongly supported by developers in the fan community.

TRON
One of my earliest arcade memories is of walking into the Starcade at Disneyland and witnessing the overbright glow of multiple TRON cabinets, each with a spectator monitor mounted on the top. The experience burned something right in my brain, and I’ve been a huge fan of the franchise ever since.

Cave Story
Character, music, style, gameplay… Cave Story has it all. It still blows me away that Daisuke Amaya was able to create this entire game single-handedly, and I’m eagerly looking forward to Nicalis’ upcoming WiiWare release.

Herzog Zwei
Growing up as an Atari kid, I discovered the Genesis late, and Herzog Zwei even later. To this day, I don’t think anyone has done RTS on the console better.

Valkyria Chronicles
Lacking the polished veneer of nostalgia, recent games are always rarer on these lists. Valkyria Chronicles, flaws and all, was a breath of fresh air this year, and I enjoyed every moment of it.

Magical Drop
I’ll take any of the three in the series, really. Magical Drop is perfectly enjoyable as a single player experience, but the game really shines in versus play. Most frantic puzzle game ever.

Rampart
Back in school, I used walk through the student union at UNLV between classes and play a round on the (usually vacant) Rampart cabinet. One of the first genre-mashup games (see Puzzle Quest, etc), the alternating segments of arcade action and puzzle building strategy hooked me.

Halo: Combat Evolved
When Halo was announced at Macworld 1999, I was blown away. Halo was the title that sold me on the original Xbox over a PS2, and Halo LAN parties are some of the most fun I’ve ever had gaming.

So that’s my list. What are your top ten favorite games?

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Whoa, almost a month since the last link love.

Two excellent Kickstarter efforts met their goals this week: Computer historian Jason Scott‘s Sabbatical project and video game art mag Kill Screen. While Kill Screen fundraising is complete, there are several days remaining on Jason’s project… go give the guy a few bucks and let him keep doing what he does best.

The Making Of Tapper. Hey Edge, can we get an RSS feed just for the Making Of series?

The Running Man: behind the sketchbooks of Adam Saltsman’s Canabalt.

Highlights from Christmas 1977.

KLOV forum member Empire found a Montgomery Wards catalog from 1977, and has been uploading scans of the choice bits.

Video Games:

1977 was the tail-end of the dedicated console era, and most of these didn’t have long to live. By the time kids got down to circling their favorite items in the catalog, the Atari VCS would have already been released.

Toys:

1977 was also just prior to the three and three-fourths inch action figure explosion, started by Takara (in response to higher plastic costs due to the oil crisis), and dominated by Kenner’s Star Wars line.

You just dumb, son. You just dumb.

Housewares:

Beer can collections must’ve been a back East thing.

Hm. Guess that’s pretty accurate for a 1977 fridge, except I don’t see any cigarette cartons in the freezer.

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If you’re local, don’t forget: Max Brooks will be speaking at the Clark County Library tonight at 7:00pm.

Playgrounds from the 1970s. I was thinking the other day that designing a series of dinosaur jungle gyms would be a lot of fun… apparently there’s at least one already out there. Also, we had the generic t-shaped gym when we were kids — five of us would climb into one at lunch and be Voltron for the hour. [via MAKE]

Heather Anne Campbell’s Demon’s Souls review. I’ve been chipping away at the game all week… it’s tough, but fun tough.

A Gamasutra Q&A: Parsing Fumito Ueda’s Creativity.

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Classic gaming edition.

A gallery of photos from GCC, the company responsible for Ms. PacMan, Food Fight, and a slew of home console titles for Atari (they’ve since moved on to the printer business).

The 30-year invasion: The making of Space Invaders Infinity Gene.

The latest from Ben Heck: A new Atari 800 laptop mod. I’d love to score one of these.

The Best of CGE ’03 DVD set, featuring Nolen Bushnell’s Atari Story panel, arcade designer highlights, and more, is now available. In related news, the latest word is that Classing Gaming Expo 2010 is a go, and will be taking place here in Las Vegas.

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I was a latecomer.

By the time I bought my first Dreamcast, the system had already lived and died, games were only available on the internet and in dusty stacks on the used software endcaps of dedicated video game shops, and the console itself could be purchased for thirty bucks easily.

I was looking for something new, a change of pace from the titles I had been recently playing. I don’t know why I’d gone with the original Xbox over the PlayStation 2… No actually, that’s not true, I do remember. Halo. You see, I’ve been a Bungie fan since way back in the day — played the hell out of Marathon, and Myth is one of my all-time favorite series — and I was one of those folks watching with wary trepidation when it was announced that Microsoft (Microsoft!) would be purchasing the studio.

Anyways, so I had an original Xbox, I was tired of XTREME games about dudes shooting dudes, and I wanted something different and interesting. After a bit of shopping, I came home with a Dreamcast, two controllers, and used copies of Seaman (with microphone), and Grandia II.

And so, a very special link love.

History and Introspection…

9.9.99, A Dreamcast Memorial from 1UP.

Gamasutra Feature: The Rise and Fall of the Dreamcast.

Peter Moore, on the Dreamcast: 9/9/99 Ten Years After.

From Ars, The Swirl That Shook Gaming.

Still want more? Bitmob has been thinking about the Dreamcast all week.

Highlights of the library…

Destructoid celebrates 10 years of Dreamcast: the games.

The Sega Dreamcast Shmups Library, revised edition, at Racketboy.

A Decade of Dreams, a bunch of Dreamcast Quick Looks from Giant Bomb.

And the ultimate software retrospective of the week: THE DREAMCAST TOP 100.

They still make games for this thing?

Gaming on the Dreamcast is not dead. In fact, new titles continue to be developed and released every year, primarily by German publisher redspotgames. Here are some of the newest…

Announced this week, Rush Rush Rally Racing.

Yuan Work’s supercute Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles.

Dux and Last Hope, two shmups designed by NG:DEV.TEAM’s René Hellwig.

Locals! Things happening locally!

October is looking to be a fine month for geeks. Let’s go to these.

Natural History Auction
Featuring the Tyrannosaurus rex “Samson”
Saturday, October 3rd
Preview: September 18 – October 3
The Venetian, Las Vegas

One of the largest known Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever discovered will be offered on Saturday, October 3rd during Bonhams & Butterfields Natural History auction to be held at The Venetian in Las Vegas. The auction will contain approximately 50 lots of fossils with the centerpiece of the sale focusing on the expertly mounted female T. rex, expected to bring millions of dollars.

Preview the auction catalog.

An Evening with Max Brooks:Surviving the Zombie Wars
Author: Max Brooks
Friday, October 16th, 7:00 p.m.

Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119

Max Brooks, considered by many to be one of the world’s foremost zombie preparedness experts, will take the stage at the Clark County Library to explain the keys to success against the hordes of the undead that may be stalking you right now.

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How is it only September and I’m already facing game overload? Thank God half the holiday releases were delayed.

Composer Frank Klepacki has written a handful of Making Of articles for his Facebook page over the last month: Command & Conquer, C&C Tiberian Sun, and his solo albums Morphscape and Rocktronic.

A fan art tribute to the Sega Dreamcast. I want to host a Dreamcast anniversary party next weekend.

I don’t know if I feel this way because I’m been playing too much Batman, but surely, this is the makings of a Super Villain.

Lastly, check out these 1980s film poster paintings from Ghana. [via Boing Boing]