Talk:Electronic Games

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Video games Mid‑importance

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"Murder on the Orient Express" hoax

This magazine was A REALLY BIG DEAL during the early 1980s. Its a shame this article is only a very brief stub, because it totally fails to reflect the significance this publication had to suburban American boys born around the year 1970. It was like our Bible. This was pretty much THE publication on THE most interesting thing (or so it seemed, to our young minds) in the freakin' world (people who grew up with video games will never understand how exciting it was when they first came out). I would love to expand this article, but I haven't seen a copy of it since it went out of print, a quarter of a century ago, so my memory is a little hazy. Here's an amusing anecdote, however. Perhaps this can somehow be incorporated into a future version of the article.

Back in 1982, Electronic Games magazine was hoaxed. They published a review of a supposed Imagic game for the Atari 2600, called "Murder on The Orient Express." Man, did it look AWESOME! Well, as it turns out, their review was totally fraudulent, as it was based on a review of the same product that had appeared in the April 1982 issue of Electronic Fun magazine. The thing is, the reason this game looked so damn good was due to the fact that it was far beyond the tecnhnical capabilities of the Atari 2600. The Electronic Fun review was an April Fool's joke. So not only did Electronic Games magazine fall for the hoax, but by publishing their own review, they revealed themselves to be less than ethical.

I have two sources. One is "original research," ie., I distinctly recall reading the Electronic Games magazine review of "Orient Express," and subsequently have, on and off, spent the last quarter of a century trying to track down a copy of this game that I, just earlier today, learned never existed. The other is a link to an online bulletin board, found here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t29295.html

Anyhoo, if someone does have the ability to revamp this article, perhaps this anecdote can somehow be included. Its an amusing bit of early video game industry history, and it'd be a shame to have it lost in the ether. Of course, there's probably no question that the significance of this anecdote has become exaggerated in my mind, due to my 25+ year quest to track down a copy of "Murder on the Orient Express." Sigh. KevinOKeeffe (talk) 23:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]