A week-long series of articles.
No doubt much of this is old news for you tabletop gamers. As someone whose RPG experience is limited to several PC titles, most of it is new to me. The tale of Gygax forming and eventually being squeezed out of TSR Games is curious. Interesting to set straight the apocryphal story of the Michigan State gamer dying in the tunnels underneath the campus.
As yet I have not recognised any of the titles in the video games section, I think I may have missed out on some cool stuff.
It all began with a military training tool designed by a Prussian Officer in the 19th century. Heh.
Hey, thanks for the link. Definitely going to have to follow this throughout the week. Lotsa great memories there.
Yes, I played (and still have) every one of the Gold Box computer games, and also still have the original books pictured on this page. 
Ah, you newbies … .
I’ve got an original white box set. And Chainmail.
In college I knew a guy who had the original books (the beige pamphlets). It was kinda silly, like people who play too much D&D will get. My favorite monsters from that set that ended up getting discontinued were “Kill Kittens.” These ornery little bastards hunt in packs. All but one of the pack will hide in a tree and one will lie in wait on the road, pretending to be badly injured. When some unwary traveller tries to do some good by taking care of the kitten, its cohorts all drop out of the tree and start injecting venom through their tiny little claws.
The language is a little rouger, too. Rather than say “The target of this spell is turned to stone” the phrase will read “the target is stoned.” And yes, once or twice they actually mean a state of mind as opposed to lithification. All in all, very fun.
I hope he still has them. I’ll bet they’re priceless.
I’ve still got some of the little books, but I actually only ever played from the AD&D books (the one with the thief prying the gem out of the statue’s eye).
I’m looking forward to their Friday article on Planescape: Torment; I agree totally with their headline.
So far, it is the best CRPG made.