This week in video-game history takes us as far back as 1946. See, I told you things would start getting interesting once we hit September.

August 29

1963: Hideo Kojima is born. Of course he doesn't look like he's 47. He's more like Raiden than we realize.

1989: The TurboGrafix 16 is released in North America. This is of note only to the two people who actually remember the TurboGrafix, Wired writer Chris Kohler and my fiance.

August 30

2004: Acclaim, the publisher responsible for a substantial portion of the sub-par SNES games in the world, declares bankruptcy. On September 1, they file for bankruptcy but soon collapse.

August 31

1995: Command & Conquer hits the shelves, bringing with it endearingly campy live-action cutscenes. I'm glad that element has never left the series.

1996: Crash Bandicoot is released, and a young Jasmine immediately stops caring about silly SNES games and contemplates the 32-bit future.

2007: The servers for the completely forgotten MMO Auto Assault are shut down a year after the game went live. It ambitiously attempted to mix Twisted Metal with role-playing elements, but ultimately failed miserably.

September 2

1980: The first Ultima game is released.

September 3

1946: Minoru Arakawa is born. Arakawa is the founder of Nintendo of America and served as the president of that branch from 1980-2002.

1995: Scalpers and unscrupulous game sellers rejoice when eBay launches. The next 15 years is riddled with shady deals and over-priced auctions, but occasionally yields some solidly good deals on rare games. Just last year I purchased a flawless copy of Persona 2 for under $50 from a very nice man who wrapped it lovingly in a towel to keep it safe during transport.

1998: Metal Gear Solid launches in Japan and triggers a whole new wave of cosplay.

September 4

1989: The much-maligned Super Mario Bros. Super Show debuts on Fox. It ran only from September 4 to December 1 of that year but hung around in syndication until 1994. It's now available on Neflix streaming, if you want to honor the memory of Mario actor Lou Abano.