|
|
|
Can’t Find Your Favorite Movie Poster?
Many of us have that one special film we can’t quite get out of our heads. More likely there are several movies that have taken their turn in your “favorites” category. These could include an epic feature like Gone with the Wind. Or they might...
Choosing a Satellite TV Provider
The satellite tv industry has made huge gains on the cable tv industry in the past several years. With the price of cable tv skyrocketing every year, many cable subscribers are making the switch over to satellite tv. Okay so you've decided to...
Films, television and acceleration:
What if dark side film and television creations are the result of writers who channel divine energies? What if each one released information via entertainment, so that the concept of considering the implausible, the mystical, the metaphysical, was...
Movie: 21 Flavors
Picking their brains for years and they couldn't find any similarities between the fairy tale worlds of Peter Jackson's imagination and the quirky zigzagging of Quentin Tarantino's films. While there are so many opposites in the two filmmakers'...
Straight from Fashion Week: the Best Fashions for Fall 2005
Affordable Fall Fashion 2005: Use Hollywood as Your Guide This Fall, fashion mixes the glamour of old school Hollywood with a few new school twists. The teenie bopper icons of the past few seasons, like Paris Hilton and the Olsen Twins, have been...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
Schreiber, Johansson Build A 'Bridge' To A Classic
Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson are starring in a widely praised revival of Arthur Miller's <em>A View From The Bridge</em>. They tell reporter Jeff Lunden that as in all great tragedies, this one's clashes and catastrophes have something of the inevitable about them.
Stargazing At The Opera
The Hayden Planetarium in New York takes opera to the moon with a new production of <em>Il Mondo Della Luna.</em> Diane Paulus and Philip Bussmann talk about merging cosmos footage with music, how science can enhance the arts and the future of technology and theater.
Obama 'The Musical' Opens In Germany
A new theater production <em>Hope: The Obama Musical Story</em> opened this week in Frankfurt, Germany. It tells the story, in song and dance, of America's first black president. It is likely to be a big success in a country where President Obama is still immensely popular.
|
The Allure Of Solvents and Chip Shops
I was five when I saw this older kid racing stock cars. Admittedly, he was playing Stock Car Star and it was a Pocketeer ™ game. There were none of the graphics you get with PS2, granted. But that probably has something to do with there having been none, just a magnet inside a little hand held game forcing four pieces of plastic round a course. It was revolutionary.
This goes some way to describing the collective playground orgasm that shuddered across the land by the end of the seventies when magnets were replaced by batteries and LCD displays, allowing collective prepubescence to stop an alien invasion.
It was Christmas 1981 when I got one of these games. Grandstand, a foreign company that distributed a lot of games from other companies was at the centre of this revolution. They brought out a couple of their own games. One was Invader from Space. Repeatedly firing the missile button caused the display to jam - it wasn’t meant to be salvo-operated obviously. By the end of Boxing Day, level three, the hardest, had been completed. But I loved it. Muting the sound and playing this game under the sheets was a Technicolor onslaught.
It broke a few months later from repeated usage and that would appear to have been the last of my association with these games. But when I was in a charity shop a couple of years ago and saw Astro Wars, a hobby began. Admittedly, seeing one doesn’t cause me to rub my knees like Vic Reeves, but I’ve collected a few since.
I remember a mate of mine coming round once. He took one look at my Astro Wars – and due to a shocking mixture of Stella Artois and Pink Champagne (yeah, that sort) - offered me £50 there and then. But I kept it. Yes, I’d bought it for £2.50 but I wasn’t giving in to someone’s nostalgia rush, just because his girlfriend had a Chopper in her hallway. He left a broken man.
Someone else I know was sold by my Space Blasters (Vtech) game, simply because it “talks.” So he recorded the machine announcing: “Aliens Invading!” into his mobile for his voicemail message. Whether this will cause the person on the other end to react as if Orson Welles was
It's 'Shatner's World' And He Wants You To See It
he wild range of roles played by William Shatner over the past half-century goes well beyond Captain Kirk. Host Scott Simon speaks with the pop culture icon, who's returning to Broadway for a one-man show, <em>Shatner's World: We Just Live In It</em>.
A Cruise Through Royal Caribbean's History
Copyright 2005 http://royal-caribbean-world.info
* Introduction *
Ever heard of a luxury hotel that moves every half hour?
You guessed it: it's a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, a mass of
one hundred thousand tons, that glides on the...
beginning his narration of War Of The Worlds is doubtful.
Then there was Simon. I’ve got Pocket Simon. Rubbish. Simply a jumped-up memory game. Christ, you only have to look at the picture of the kids on the box to know the type who went in for this anathema of amnesia. Just staring at the four colours was confusing enough. That was without trying to remember the order in which they flashed before depressing the buttons in the correct sequence. One kid I remember was unbeatable at this. But then he wore specs and didn’t find the smell of UHU fascinating. Unfair advantage really.
Juxtaposed with the Simon travesty was the game I always wanted. Galaxy Invader 1000. Though the shade of yellow is what I can only describe as Renault Clio yellow, don’t let that put you off. Distributed by CGL (Computer Games Limited) the shape was, in retrospect, merely a forerunner of the penis extension. The E-type Jaguar of the playground world.
These were the games I remember most fondly from school. I’ve got a couple of others. I have Safari (Bambino). This comes in a yucky™ green but I don’t remember it at all. But this might have something to do with the fact that you spend around 10 minutes boxing animals in before it dawns on you that you ought not to bother quite frankly. Obviously some kids must have owned it but never bought it in to school for fear of ritual humiliation.
And I now have Firefox F-7 (Grandstand, licensed to Tandy/Radio Shack). I don’t remember this one either but I don’t know why. Someone must have had this one and it makes Astro Wars look like Safari. Or Simon. (Now there’s a put down.) It’s kind of like Star Wars. Only you’re not at the cinema and things … Buy it, still in its box and you’re talking around £85.
And writing this, it is now the 25th anniversary of Space Invaders appearing in video game format. Hand-helds were now just the new Pocketeers™. The local chippy would never be the same again.
© Copyright Holmes Charnley mmiv
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Freelance Journalist: more articles available at my website - http://www.articles.me.uk
|
|
|
|
|
|