Retro Round-Up

Lordy have we got a lot of retro-geekin' news for you on this lovely Tuesday! Today's Retro Round-Up includes Amiga computers, acquitted murderers, new Star Wars and old Star Trek, what more could you ask for? Check out the links below before you get any older, gramps.

Lando Calrissian Returns in Star Wars: Rebels Animated Series
Dissed by Abrams but still loved by Disney, our favorite space-scoundrel-turned-malt-liquor-pimp strikes back!




The City on the Edge of Forever #1 Out This Wednesday
The classic Harlan Ellison-penned original series Star Trek episode gets its own graphic novel this week.




Turn Your Old Mac Into a New Amiga
Got some old Amiga software? Got a PowerPC computer you're not using? Well then, you're probably the only person you know who'll enjoy this.




It Was 20 Years Ago Today: The OJ. Chase
Relive the excitement of television's first combination live celebrity car chase and Ford Bronco commercial!

Star Trek Continues

Star Trek: The Re-Reboot

Who needs big budget reboots when you've got fans? While J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot of the original Star Trek breathed new life into this venerable 60s television property, fan remakes, created with arguably more authenticity and unquestionably more love, have have been circulating the internet for years now. For hardcore Trekkers and casual fans alike, these independent remakes, such as Starship Exeter and Star Trek: New Voyages (later renamed Star Trek: Phase II), have provided new windows into creator Gene Roddenberry's futuristic world, which franchise-owner, Paramount Studios, would never consider producing due to their potentially limited appeal. The more successful of these fan-made series nearly always hark back to the original 1960s incarnation of the show, closely mimicking its style by employing more subtle special effects and exploring social, political and philosophical themes.

The latest entry into this sci-fi sub-genre is titled Star Trek Continues, an off-Hollywood but fairly professional attempt to continue the original five-year mission of the starship Enterprise and her loyal crew. Featuring one of James Doohan's own sons, Christopher, reprising his father's role as Scotty, the ship's hard-drinking, fist-throwing engineer, Star Trek Continues does an admirable job of emulating the Crayola-color lighting, the oddball camera angles and the quirky TV dialogue of those late-1960s Desilu productions and even manages to make you forget you're watching a fan-flick, most of the time. Although I'd say the casting could use some tweaking, and some of the acting is, well, bad, the impressive attention to detail and the bonus inclusion of original series guest star, Michael Forest, who played Apollo in the episode Who Mourns for Adonais?, makes the whole affair a worthy homage to an American science fiction classic. Check the video below for a look at the very first episode, Pilgrim of Eternity -- and to you mega-geeks out there, make sure to watch (and listen) for some quick but notable cameos by some space-opera royalty including Marina Sirtis from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Go ahead, watch it. What else you doing on a cold-ass Saturday afternoon?

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE HOME OF STAR TREK CONTINUES


Star Trek Continues E01 "Pilgrim of Eternity" from Star Trek Continues on Vimeo.

Abbey Road: Live!

Huh, I guess Paul IS dead.

Hey kids, what could be more retro than the legendary Beatles? Well for the purposes of today's post, nothing! For those of you who don't already know, the Beatles were a very popular rock band back in the 60s who pioneered, among other things, writing their own songs, playing in sports stadiums, and creating concept albums. The band officially broke up in 1970 shortly after the release of their final album, Abbey Road, which was named after the studio in which it was recorded, which itself was named after the street on which it was located. The cover of the LP featured the four members of the group, walking across Abbey Road on a sunny London day. So iconic was this classic rock and roll image that it's now been parodied and homaged dozens if not hundreds of times by the likes of the Simpsons, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and even former Beatles bass-player, Paul McCartney himself. Now, thanks to the magic of the information superhighway, we can pay a visit to this legendary locale any time we like, day or night. Fancy a peek at what those crazy Britons are doing right now on ol' Abbey Road? Click the link below to check it out for yourself via the Abbey Road Crossing Cam, courtesy of Abbey Road Studios. Be warned, you'll need Flash to view the page. Flash, that's almost retro, right?

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ABBEY ROAD CROSSING LIVE IN ACTION!

Cassettes Come Back

Courtesy of stealing from the internet.

You gotta love hipsters if only because they do nothing without being ironic. They drink the worst beer on the planet, they wear t-shirts from bands they don't listen to, they love dorky outdated glasses that no one in their right mind should find appealing (even after drinking several of those crappy beers) -- and now these hipper-than-thous have somehow managed to bring back…wait for it...the compact audio cassette, known the world over for having the lowest fidelity and reliability of just about any audio format invented since the 1960s. Yikes. Actual real-life bands have even started releasing their albums on this completely outdated format. Granted, the appreciation of any sort of retro technology makes me smile inside, but I could do without the irony. Check out this video for a look at this recent phenomenon. God help us if those hipsters discover VHS, God help us all.

Old Robots

White, white robots, for white, white families.

One of the great promises of my generation and, in fact, of all generations since the advent of mechanical labor, was the promise of futuristic robot armies that would cater to our every desire and unleash electric death upon our enemies while we slowly turned into those people from WALL-E. And while that promise has yet to to be fulfilled, we've come a long toward that goal, although most of mankind's recent attempts at building mechanical cohorts for ourselves have been skewed towards producing Asian sex robots. Call me a xenophobe, but I like my artificial lifeforms to look, well, artificial. Let's face it, would we all have gone gaga over R2-D2 back in '77 if he'd looked like Tia Carrere? Well, maybe that's a bad example. Regardless, when I'm talking about robots I mean beep beep boop bop robots covered in knobs, buttons, lights and other little fiddly bits, you know? And the folks at TheOldRobots.com agree with me. From goofy little squirts that barely function to great big articulated automatons, this site has them all. Check out the videos below for a couple of choice cuts from their collection.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THEOLDROBOTS.COM

Retro Cosplay Day

Hey everybody, can you name one thing better than than cute cosplay girls? That's right! Cute RETRO cosplay girls! Have a good weekend!

Doctor Who Found in Africa

Patrick Troughton as The Second Doctor.

The BBC just announced that nine missing episodes of the classic British Sci-Fi series, Doctor Who starring Patrick Troughton, have been discovered in Africa and have been made available to the public for the first time since their original airing in 1967 and 1968. The episodes have been made available via iTunes.

READ THE FULL STORY AT CBSNEWS

CLICK HERE TO BE PREVIEW "THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD" IN ITUNES

CLICK HERE TO PREVIEW "THE WEB OF FEAR" IN ITUNES

12th Doctor Who Announced

Peter Capaldi will be taking over for fan-favorite, Matt Smith, as the 12th incarnation of Doctor Who

After weeks of speculation as to who would be taking over the role of the Doctor on BBC's long-running scifi series, it was announced that veteran Scottish actor, Peter Capaldi, will be handed the keys to the TARDIS. The reveal was made with much fanfare on August 4, 2013 and there's a great clip on YouTube of Mr. Capaldi's first introduction to the world as the titular character, however due to the sticky web of international copyright laws, I am not allowed to embed it here, so you'll just have to hit the jump to see the video. Sorry.

One interesting side note, I noticed while doing research on Capaldi that he is featured in the new zombie flick, World War Z, as a doctor for the World Health Organization. His character is listed as "W.H.O. Doctor." Coincidence?

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE AWESOME REVEAL OF THE 12TH DOCTOR

8-Bit Star Trek Reboot

Actual scene from J.J. Abrams' 2009 hit, Star Trek.

Ever wonder what J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movie would look like as an 8-bit game?
Me neither. Watch this...

Star Trek: Into Whatever

So I went to see Star Trek: Into Dark Knight Darkness last weekend and as a lifelong Trekker all I can say is meh. I'd say the movie was 20% Star Trek (pointy ears) and 80% generic fill-in-any-action-hero-you-like-and-it'll-still-be-the-same-flick kind of stuff (Tom Cruise). Don't get me wrong, the effects were great, the action was non-stop, Alice Eve stripped down to her underwear, etc. but still...meh...they should have called it Star Trek: The Search for Plot. Anyway, one of the (many) things missing from this flick was some genuine humor. Oh there were a few attempts here and there, but I honestly can't remember any of them right now, which means they must not have been that good. So in celebration of the fact that Star Trek still exists in any form and the fact that it's Friday and we all could all use some laughs, I present to you: What's In Spock's Scanner Parts 1 & 2. Have a great weekend and live long and, you know...

WHAT'S IN SPOCK'S SCANNER PART 1

WHAT'S IN SPOCK'S SCANNER PART 2

Retro Fail Products

Having already failed to achieve my New Year's resolutions of losing 20 pounds, growing two inches taller and morphing my face to look more like Brad Pitt, I figure now is as good a time as any to celebrate some other massive failures, namely a few retro products that never managed to catch on. Click the images for a larger view.

 

First Peek at Star Trek 12

With the massive success of the first outside-produced Star Trek film in 2009, Paramount has finally got a Star Wars-type property on their hands and far be it from the bean counters to stop a charging juggernaut while it's dropping bags of gold out of it's butt. Hence, here comes Trek outing # 12 titled: STAR TREK: Into Darkness, because nothing's worth watching anymore unless it's sufficiently dark. Coming to theaters in May of 2013, here is the first peek at the next J.J Abrams-directed adventure featuring Kirk and company. Personally I thought the new movie should be titled "Star Trek 90210" but I think I'm just being bitter about Vulcan blowing up in that last flick. Enjoy.

Ye Olde Candies

Sorry we haven't had too many posts lately but my SyQuest drive crashed last week and all of my WordPerfect blog templates were lost. I'll have to fire up my phone list in Lotus 1-2-3 and lookup the support number for my Packard-Bell because I think the problem was caused by a faulty parallel port. Man, I should have stuck with that SCSI Zip drive instead. But until I get all that sorted out, look at this: RETRO CANDY! Yes chubby 40 year-olds everywhere can rejoice because you can now get all of your favorite sugar bombs from days gone past on one awesome website! Well not actually from days gone past. For example, a surviving Marathon bar would nigh be inedible at this point seeing as they were discontinued in 1981, but Old Time Candy sells the same product on their site, although it's actually shipped in from merry ol' England, where they still exist as the Curly Wurly. Other hard-to-find favorites featured on the site include Big League Chew, Flipsticks and those nasty little button candies that you could never get off of that damned strip of paper but you ate them anyway.

CLICK HERE TO GET FAT


Bonus Video: 1975 Marathon Candy Bar Commercial

1955-2011

www.apple.com

Mr. Wizard's a D*ck

Before there was Bill Nye, the world of educational television programming had Mr. Wizard, a grumpity old codger named Don Herbert who taught us wee lads and lasses how to amaze our friends with nifty science experiments that we could, mostly, even do at home, mostly. Kids everywhere loved Mr. Wizard, especially the nerdy ones like me, but ol' Don always seemed to come off as someone who didn't really like children but was forced to work with them anyway (sort of like the IT guys at your office). Have a look at this video by YouTuber, Mike Schuster, and you'll see what I mean.

Beam Me Up, Portland!

Leave it to Portland, Oregon to keep feeding us white, geeky, hipster news. The land espoused by SNL alum, Fred Armisen, to be the place where "the 90s never died" and "the tattoo ink never runs dry," has dipped a little further back into pop-culture's history to bring us a new summer pastime: Trek in the Park. Check out the video below - my apologies for the ad - for a glimpse of the Oregonian brother-sister duo, Adam and Amy Rosko, staging dramatic recreations of some of the original Star Trek's most-loved episodes to an audience of folks who are too hip to have cable.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE AND GALLERY ON CBS NEWS

Peace, Love and Mass Consumerism

The internet. You're soaking in it. You talk on it, shop on it, bank on it and perhaps partake in other unmentionables on it. But for all of our modern tech-savvy and gadget-centric behavior, it turns out that the brilliant minds of 1969 already knew what we idiots in 2012 would be doing with all of those amazing technologies they could only dream about - well except for maybe Facebook. Sure they had the implementation a bit wrong and our culture has changed quite a bit in 43 years, but as you'll see in the video below they were on the right track. So the next time Al Gore tries to tell you he invented the information super-highway, a.k.a. "cyberspace," you can politely tell him to go hang his chad.

Our First Bacon Post!

Because it's not an early 21st century blog unless you have some bacon thrown in there somewhere, I present to you the ultimate RetroGeeker snack: Reddi-Bacon. Introduced to pork-eating test-markets in 1964 by the same guys who brought you Reddi-Whip, Reddi-Bacon promised consumers quick and easy bacon without having to dirty up any dishes or pans. Partly because of aluminum's heat-conducive properties and partly because 1960s folk tended to think it looked spacey and futuristic, the product was shipped fully-coooked in foil packs which were designed to fit into an ordinary household toaster, allowing the preparer to heat the sweet meat into a salty, tasty treat. However, once the foil-packed strips of piggy goodness were subjected to the intense heat of the toasting process, the package would begin to leak molten fat, not only destroying the customer's only means of making Pop-Tarts (tried nuking one of those? it doesn't work) but also creating a potential fire-hazzard. Fortunately, the test markets spoke-up and and Reddi-Bacon was quickly and permanently shelved along with dozens of other unsuccessful products from the "Reddi" line such as Reddi-Head Cheese, Reddi-Ipecac and the vastly unpopular Reddi-Enema.

Will Not Exterminate Your Wallet

With all the hubbub these days over that new-fangled Doctor Who cum Twilight-wanna-be getting everybody's pants wet, it's nice to see the classic series that started it all get its fair share of recognition, although that honor comes in a tiny three and a quarter-inch package. Yes, sure to delight Doctor Who fans of any era is the new 1963-style wind-up desktop Dalek available now from our friends at TinToyArcade.com. At $9.98 this thing is practically a steal and it does double-duty as both an attractive totem announcing your love for Doctor Who and all things science-fictiony, but it will patrol your desk and take out any stray Pokemon dolls or lame McDonald's movie tie-in action figures as well. You pretty much can't put a price on that.


Click HERE to go directly to the product page.