No Hangovers in 2014!

Well it's time to flip the calendar again as 2014 is nearly upon us. For my final post of the year, I'm harking back to 1978, the year my family came back to the U.S. and in my opinion, the best year ever next to 1982 (Joust, Q*Bert and Ms.Pac-Man) and maybe 1987 (Star Trek: The Next Generation). The following print ad touting Alka-Selzter's hangover-fighting abilities is from a time when people were much more open about inebriation and intoxication. The children of the 60s had grown up, they were now in power and were continuing to pursue their dreams of, as Austin Powers put it, "having unprotected sex with many anonymous partners, while experimenting with mind expanding drugs in a consequence free environment." Of course then Nancy Reagan and Mr. T came along in the 80s and shut the whole damned party down. So enjoy this little nugget from a simpler time and perhaps you too can avoid the dreaded New Year's Day hangover.

Star Wars on the Small Screen

Star Wars on your TV? No way!

Within the Grand Geekdom of Star Wars, it seems that the producers of said saga have always relished in the scapegoating of the now infamous television one-off, The Star Wars Holiday Special, which has long been regarded as the "red-headed stepchild" of the entire pew-pew franchise. This funky two-hour special was originally broadcast in 1978 and featured musical numbers by Jefferson Starship, comedy skits with Harvey Korman and Bea Arthur, and the public's first introduction to space-opera's greatest bounty hunter and general badass, Boba Fett. But I think it's a bit unfair for Lucas and company to shrug off this classic 70's variety show as if it were their only foray into total goofiness, because I recall more than a few odd appearances by Luke Skywalker and his galactic buddies on the small screen during that quiet period between the first two films, which, although I didn't realize at the time, mostly served to keep the giant Star Wars publicity machine rolling until the next flick was released. After all, you gotta keep selling action figures during down time, right?

So in order to support my ongoing quest to prove that I'm right about everything, I present to you one of my favorite retro moments featuring disco, droids and Jedi in hopes that you'll all come to see that George Lucas has, perhaps, a few more skeletons in his closet than he'd like to admit to. Enjoy.

YOU SAY YOU'VE SEEN DANCING STORMTROOPERS? NOT UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THIS.

BONUS VIDEO:
MUPPETS MEET STAR WARS…AND 30 YEARS LATER DISNEY BUYS THEM BOTH.

Merry Christmas, If That's OK

Happy Holidays from the Bots

This is one of my favorite TV show Christmas songs. It comes to us from way back in 1993, that's 20 years ago to you and me, and was featured on the obscure geek extravaganza known as MST3000. At the time this video was originally broadcast, cultural awareness and political correctness were quickly becoming the hot topics of the day. This little Xmas ditty hit the nail on the head and actually might be even more relevant today in 2013, when perhaps our collective level of cultural sensitivity has spiralled so far out of control, that everyone on the planet is afraid of saying anything to anyone. The song, entitled Merry Christmas, If That's OK, does contain a positive message of tolerance, although the performers quite obviously have their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks. Happy birthday, Jesus, don't let the bastards get you down.

Nobody Expects the...

…Spanish Inquisition. 

Can a parakeet repeat this famous Monty Python line? Yes. Yes it can. BTW if you're wondering, it's completely real. Odd that they didn't teach it the "parrot sketch" though.

Into the Dragon's Lair

Illustration by TBottch. Stolen from DeviantArt.com - how's THAT for deviancy?

In 1983, as the Great Video Game Crash was looming upon the horizon, ready to crush huge software development houses and well-established corporate brands into digital dust, the gaming industry still had a few tricks up its Coca-Cola shirt sleeve. While kids continued to rabidly stuff quarters into arcade machines all over the country, the availability of increasingly sophisticated home gaming consoles was already chipping away at the coin-op market. This of course wasn't that surprising because after all, who wants to drive all the way out to the mall and drop $5 in quarters on Donkey Kong at the arcade when you could hit "reset" on your Colecovision at home as many times as you liked? So just as the film industry had done by introducing Technicolor and Panavision into theaters to stave off irrelevancy during the post-war television boom, the video game industry began looking into ways to pull kids away from their Ataris and Intellivisions in their living rooms and back into the money-sucking arcades.

Improvements upon graphics and sound had been, up until then, the standard way to attract gamers who were looking for the latest and greatest in what the arcades had to offer, but the computer technology behind most games of the time was already being pushed to its limits. As fate would have it, however, a bright fellow named Rick Dyer, who at the time was the president of Advanced Microcomputer Systems, got the idea to take the basic structure of early computer text adventures and scale it up to accommodate prerecorded audio and photo stills, which would form a sort of visual story in which a player could take part. After several failed attempts at generating investor interest for what he dubbed his "Fantasy Machine," a chance viewing of producer Don Bluth's 1982 animated film, The Secret of NIMH, got him thinking about replacing the static photos with quality, full motion video which, as it turns out, was just what the project needed to get people excited about it. So Rick hired the veteran Disney animator's production company to do the grunt work and on an anemic budget of about a million dollars plus, they produced roughly 22 minutes of animated footage, which could then be played back on standard arcade machine monitors using Pioneer laser-disc players and coordinated by Dyer's "Fantasy Machine" hardware.

In partnership with seasoned coin-op manufacturer, Cinematronics, the first game released to utilize this new laser-disc technology was called Dragon's Lair. It's story revolved around a brave but sometimes reluctant sword and sorcery hero named Dirk Daring, whose purpose it was to explore a dark wizard's castle and battle magical monsters in order to rescue the beautiful Princess Daphne from the clutches of the evil dragon, Singe. As in most video games, the player would interact by using a joystick and button, and had only a limited set of lives with which to complete the game. However unique to the arcade industry at the time, Dragon's Lair cost not just a quarter but a whopping 50¢ to play, which didn't sit well with a lot of gamers. Complaints also surfaced regarding Dragon Lair's gameplay as the pre-rendered video scenes only allowed the player to react to the canned events of the game, which meant that the player could not actually direct character movement or action as in traditional video games like Pac-Man, Galaga, etc.

The initial success of Dragon's Lair did succeed in bringing excited gamers back to the arcades and eventually resulted in a number of sequels, knock-offs and competitors entering the market. But it was a short-lived victory as the Great Crash (known in Japan as Atari Shock) eventually came anyway and obliterated everything in its path, leaving the landscape fresh and clear for a little company called Nintendo to take root and rebuild the video game industry from scratch. But that's a tale for another time.

In the meantime, please enjoy this video which contains all 22 minutes of the original Dragon's Lair footage, as well as about 8 minutes of prototype video, taken from the 2002 laser-disc reproduction of the game.

BONUS VIDEO #1: AN EPISODE FROM THE VERY SHORT-LIVED ANIMATED SERIES

 

BONUS VIDEO #2: DON BLUTH TALKS ABOUT MAKING DRAGON'S LAIR