July 11

2001 -- Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within hits the box office. It was a total flop, which is a total travesty. Final Fantasy is the surest thing in video games. It takes an incredible amount of skill to mess that up -- and I’m looking at you Hironobu Sakaguchi. OK, that’s not exactly fair. His new studio released Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, so he still has a bit of the old magic. How could you not with that fabulous moustache?

July 12

1987 -- Konami releases Metal Gear for the MSX 2 in Japan, beginning 20+ years of narrative craziness. It all seemed so innocent and simple back then.

July 13

2007 -- Ubisoft announces the Imagine series of video games targeted to young girls. The titles in the series would inspire thousands of jokes by “true” gamers, one of which inadvertently caused NeoGAF to create its own video game. Hey, I guess it was all good for something.

July 14

1966 -- Happy birthday Denis Dyack! This president of Silicon Knights has had more than few public run-ins with gamers over the years. All is forgiven because his latest game, Too Human, was completely awesome...right? Right?

July 15

1983 -- Sega releases its first home console, the SG-1000. Not much can be said for the system other than it was the predecessor for the much more successful Master System, and it would launch Sega as a console manufacturer. I wonder why it didn't do better....

1983 -- Nintendo releases the Famicom (short for "Family Computer") in Japan. Oh, that’s why. The launch of the system would revitalize the industry and propel Nintendo to the forefront of video games. One could argue that this may be the most important date in video game history. Which means I can finish the column here. Right? No? Damn.

2003 -- LucasArts releases the BioWare-developed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for the Xbox. While the game was good and a related MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, is coming soon-ish, the most important thing here is that KOTOR, as it is affectionately called, made BioWare, up to this point predominantly a PC RPG maker, a major player in the console realm.

July 16

1966 -- Happy birthday Billy Mitchell! This video game record holder has somehow ensured he is still relevant, despite playing old-school arcade classics exclusively. While that’s impressive, what really makes Billy special is that he can seem bad-ass while doing it.

July 17

1970 -- Ralph Baer demonstrates his video game console to the higher ups at Magnavox. They would eventually license and release the product. At the time it was called Brown Box, but Magnavox would name it “Odyssey.” I wonder why they changed the name. I mean, the Wii is doing well for itself.