Documentaries · Hardware and games, 1982–1999
The Beige Years
Researched histories of the machines, companies and games of the beige-box era, argued from the documents. Each video has a page here with its chapters, its full source list and every image credit.
The library
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02No.
Mortal Kombat · 1992
Mortal Kombat: The Fatality Began as an Office Gag
Mortal Kombat was filler to Midway: four people, a hole in the schedule, and a budget around $1 million.
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01No.
Commodore 64 · 1982
Commodore 64: Discontinued in 1994 While Still Selling
The Commodore 64 sold about 12.5 million by its own sales records, not the 17 million the company put in print.
Method
- Sources
Every claim traces to a source.
Each video's page lists what it was built from: period magazines, court records, company documents, interviews and reference works, with links and the date each was read.
- Disagreement
Where the record disagrees, the video says so.
When two sources give different figures or dates, both are named and the video explains which one it follows and why.
- Voice
The narration is a synthetic voice. The research isn't.
The voice is generated from a written script. The script, the sources behind it and the argument are the work, and each video's page lists them in full.
Spotted a wrong date, a misread spec or a bad attribution? Send the video, the timestamp and your source. Corrections are logged on the video's page.
corrections@thebeigeyears.com