Hey guess what? I’m writing the Geek in Review for the Suicide Girls Newswire again. Instead of a weekly column, it’ll be monthly, and a new column will go up on the second Wednesday of every month.

Today’s column is called “… when the MCP was just a chess program.”

The earliest video games didn’t just encourage us to use our imaginations when we played them, they forced us to. Yar’s Revenge, the best-selling original title on the Atari 2600, has simple yet entertaining gameplay, but it was supported by an extraordinarily rich backstory, turning it into one chapter in an epic struggle for cosmic justice. When I was 9, I wasn’t just chipping away at the shield while I readied my Zorlon cannon; I was helping the Yar extract revenge on the Qotile for the destruction of their planet, Razak IV, as illustrated in the comic that came with the game.

When I was 10 or 11, I arranged a TV tray, a dining room chair, and a worn blanket to make a small tent in front of our 24-inch TV set. I carefully moved our Atari 400 onto the tray and plugged Star Raiders into the cartridge slot. I flipped the power on, picked up the joystick, and booted up my imagination as I sat in the command chair of my very own space ship. For the next hour, I was a member of the Atarian Starship Fleet. I was all that stood between the Zylon Empire and the destruction of humanity. Through my cockpit’s viewscreen (developed at great expense by the RCA corporation back on Earth) I blasted Zylon starships and Zylon basestars, and I would have defeated them all, if my meddling mother hadn’t made me stop and eat dinner!

When I was writing the GiR before, the powers that be at SG always made sure the newswire was SFW. As far as I know, they’re still doing that, but your corporate firewall probably doesn’t know or care, so consider yourself warned about reading at work.

The shit ass economy claims another victim, and this one will hit close to home for a lot of geeks. Topps announced that “WizKids will immediately cease operations and discontinue its product lines.“

Allow me to be the first to say (on this blog, anyway) well, shit.

WizKids Games is an awesome company. They’re best known for their Heroclix and Horrorclix games, but my personal favorite is their Pirates game. Pirates packs an entire game into something the size of a pack of trading cards, including Dinky Dungeons-esque dice. It’s really fun to play, and scales well with gamers of varying experience levels.

HeroClix and HorrorClix are really fun tabletop minis games that take all the bookkeeping and stats of a wargame and put them right into the base of the figures. I got Nolan into 40K via HeroClix when he was in 6th or 7th grade, and I’ve heard similar tales from countless other Geekdads. As I write this, a HorrorClix Great Cthulhu sits on top of the bookcase behind me, keeping watch over everything I do, ready to devour me if I ever slack off.

I don’t know anything about the business behind this decision, but I wonder if this has more to do with Topps consolidating and returning a focus to trading cards, instead of WizKids’ games not selling well or enjoying popularity among gamers. In fact, I kind of hope that’s the case. According to GeekDad, “Topps will immediately pursue strategic alternatives so that viable brands and properties, including HeroClix, can continue without noticeable disruption.” Hopefully, gamers won’t experience much of a disruption, but I’m sure the people who work at WizKids and lost their jobs will notice one, and that sucks. I’ve been lucky enough to meet several WizKids employees, and they’re all great people.

I hope that WizKids will find a way to stay together and keep putting out their unique games, not only because they’re fun on their own, but because they are perfect entry points for GamerDads like me, who have a vested interest in creating the capital-G Gamers of tomorrow.

I Propelled this story earlier today. If you’re a propeller member, would you Prop it for me?