For y’all way over there on the side, the question was – every had anything published? Yes, a couple of editorials in the high school newspaper. Oh, you mean like actual journalism? Well fine, um, I finally took a crack at it recently by chasing a video game history deep dive as distraction during the pandemic. A little bit about the story’s backstory:
In the middle days of the super no fun times, I was looking for holiday gifts for the family and thought it would be fun to revisit the classic titles and tech from the olden days. My favorite place to browse old stuff other than eBay is the Goodwill online resale site – ShopGoodwill – which reliably has listings for a lot of the old gaming systems that folks across the country have discarded, often bundled with a couple of games and accessories for a reasonable price. This particular search was for an old NINTENDO GAMEBOY COLOR and a couple of well-rated games including SNOOPY TENNIS.
I like Snoopy but had never played this game back then, stopping at the original GAMEBOY before college got in the way, so I went looking for the manual to figure out the controls. But the internet failed me. Lots of games have scans of manuals that you can page through online, but this one was nowhere to be found. In fact, there’s not much about the game online at all, which seemed odd and piqued my interest. I always enjoyed reading a good oral history about entertainment and video games, but had I actually stumbled on an untold story? What if I could track down a few folks to tell the tell of the game’s creation? Could I put together a proper investigative journalism piece and get it published? Would it be possible without leaving the house?
With no digital recourse for good information, I went on eBay to buy a physical copy of a used manual, hoping to find some origin hints. A few weeks later, the bubble wrapped thingy arrived. Thumbing through the pages there’s a credits list in the back, and the hunt began.
It turned into a fun story and SUPERJUMP magazine was kind enough to share the effort, digitally publishing the untold tale of the making of SNOOPY TENNIS for the NINTENDO GAMEBOY COLOR handheld system. Here’s links to the full story:
Beware, it’s a long read. But it’s Snoopy!
