Arcade-Inspired Astronaut

Here's the first human figure, "Packman," I've painted from the first Star Schlock Kickstarter. Naturally, I chose colours inspired by Pac-Man. 

Here he is with a couple of robots from the same Kickstarter.

Rear view. 

Arcade Cabinet

This is the second or third 28mm-scale arcade cabinet I've painted, but this time around I tried something different. Instead of attempting to paint the cabinet's screen or sides, I opted instead to cut up some bits of paper with interesting printing and glued them into place. It's not a particularly realistic illusion, but on the table it looks okay--certainly better than any cabinet art I could have attempted to paint manually. 
 

Insert Coins

Well, this is a mess. It started as a perfectly decent sculpt of a 28mm-scale arcade cabinet, but my slapdash paint job took all the charm out of it. My original vision was good, I think; I imagined a 1980s first-person shooter called ZBs (pronounced Zee Bees). You flew through space and used your joystick controller and buttons to navigate and shoot down the ZBs, giant golden alien spacefaring bees. 
 

ZBs

Here's a 28mm-scale arcade cabinet I painted a few days ago. It's called ZBs (pronounced "Zee Bees); the player aims the crosshairs on the screen at the evil, golden Zee Bees and attempts to blast them from the stars. 

Not one of my better efforts. 

 

Random Thoughts on Cloak & Dagger

Richard Franklin's Cloak & Dagger (1984) is certainly a lot more violent than I expected from what seems to be a film targeted at kids. Our tween protagonist (played by Henry Thomas of E.T. fame), hunted by spies after he accidentally winds up with an Atari 5200 cartridge that has top secret military blueprints hidden within, is directly or indirectly responsible for at least four deaths (bad guys, but still), gets stuffed in a trunk with the dead body of an adult friend (shot through the back of the head a few minutes earlier), sees his girl friend kidnapped, gets held at gunpoint more than once, and thinks for a moment his dad's been blown up. There's also an uncomfortably realistic moment where some innocent airport worker gets shot in the leg at close range; his agonized reaction is incredibly effective. Great acting from a bit player! 

According to Wikipedia, Atari and Universal were working on an arcade game and a film, respectively, called Agent X. When the creators of the two projects got wind of each other, they agreed to cooperate, changing the name of the game/film to Cloak & Dagger. Atari supplied graphics from the arcade game, though in the guise of a (never-released) 5200 version of the game. There's also a ton of Atari project placement in the movie, concentrated in the computer store where the two kid protagonists hang out. 

A strange movie from a strange era. I don't believe I ever played, or even saw, the arcade game. I wonder if it's any good . . .

Donkey Kong Has It Going On

I found myself with an extra unpainted giant ape miniature, as one does, and I initially thought I would paint him black to serve as Gorilla Grodd to go along with the Ultra-Humanite (see a future post for how he turned out). But Sean immediately had a better idea: Use some of my many barrels and some basing material to create Donkey Kong. So this becomes the second miniature I've based and the first I've modified, in this case by gluing a barrel to Donkey Kong's upraised left hand. Even though his fist is closed, it works pretty well. 
 

Here's how he looks from behind. 

Whither Polybius?

It's over an hour long, but if you're interested in hoaxes and 1980s arcade games, Ahoy's Polybius - The Video Game that Doesn't Exist is a fascinating watch. 

Stranger Things 2 Think About

Tonight I finally started watching season two of Stranger Things. While I understand that Stranger Things is designed to evoke feelings of nostalgia, I was almost frightened by the strength of my visceral reaction to tonight's episode. My response had nothing to do with the plot, and everything to do with the feelings the show evokes through its cinematography, music, sound design and set design.

Everything is so analog, even when the kids visit the video arcade to play Dig Dug. No one has cell phones; the computers use Commodore 1701 monitors, just like the one I had in the 80s. The pace of life feels so much more relaxed and carefree--but then again, it's told from the point of view of junior high school students.

While I love today's modern communications and the potential for good they harbour, I can't help but miss the days when you could be truly out of touch and alone for a few hours. It was the kind of freedom I'm not sure humans will enjoy ever again. 

My Favourite Games (Arcade Edition)

Over the years I've played a lot of games, and they've brought me a lot of joy. It only just occurred to me that I've never chronicled my appreciation for those games, so over the next few days I'll share some memories of my favourites.


Whenever I visited my cousin Darwin Jones in Devon, we'd head downtown to play Space War. I loved this game for its complexity; you could choose all kinds of variables, including inertia, gravity, how the edges of the screen behaved and so on. It didn't hurt that one of the ships looked like the Enterprise, and the other like its symbol.


Pac-Man seems pretty old hat now, but when Keith Gylander and I first encountered it at a fish and chips restaurant in Leduc one summer in the very early 1980s, we were hooked. Gameplay is simple but challenging, with the pace growing more frenetic with every level.


At the height of the video arcade craze, Leduc had at least three or four dedicated arcades, plus other machines scattered throughout the city (the roller rink, the used book store, the convenience store, etc.). I played Wild Western pretty obsessively in the arcade closest to Leduc Junior High school; it was nestled on the first floor of an apartment complex. I liked Wild Western for the music and its relatively complex gameplay; not only could you ride and shoot in all directions, you could jump atop the train and gunfight the desperadoes from on high.


I played Berzerk at the 7-11 on 50th street in Leduc. I was amazed by the robot voices, and fighting my way through the mazes gave me the feeling of being on a real adventure, though of course there was no way to truly escape the robots; eventually, you were doomed, as was the way of things in most arcade games.


I loved the movie Tron, and when the game came out I leaped at the chance to enter its world, user-like. Four games in one! You couldn't beat that in 1982. The lightcycle chase was my favourite, even though I wasn't very good at it.


Defender was probably the most challenging game I attempted back in the day; its multiple controls and relentless enemies ate up my three ships with astonishing speed. But having a noble mission - rescuing the spacemen trapped on the planet - provided excellent motivation for me to keep on pumping quarters into the machine. I played Defender in the arcade that used to exist on the top floor of the then-new theatre on 50th street, not far from the 7-11 where I played Berzerk.


Galaga had great audio effects and a really neat feature that kept me coming back: the bad guys could capture your ship, but if you managed to set it free with another ship, it would join with your second ship for double the firepower (and double the exposure to enemy fire, of course).


Star Castle wasn't as popular as a lot of other games, but I enjoyed its clean vector graphics and free-flowing gameplay.


Discs of Tron was played in a neon-lit wraparound cabinet that really drew you into the game. The immersive experience was helped by smooth controls and simple but challenging gameplay; just knock your opponent off his perch with your flying discs, while preventing him from doing the same thing to you.


If I had room for one arcade game in my home it would be the Star Trek Strategic Operations Simulator; specifically, I'd want the sit-down version with the controls on the armrests. Star Trek has a hit-and-miss history when it comes to game adaptations, but this is a great-looking, great-sounding space shooter, with authentic effects and great voiceovers from Spock and Scotty. "Entering sector 1.6..."


Atari's Star Wars simulation was another excellent adaptation, this time giving players the chance to assault the Death Star itself, complete with emulated John William's music and character voices. The cabinet featured a very solid two-handed flight control stick that made you really feel like you were flying an X-Wing.

Of course I played dozens of other arcade games during those golden years of the 1980s, but these are the ones that stand out in my memory. I shudder to imagine how many quarters slipped through my fingers during those years, but they led to many hours of great entertainment. 

Jungle Kirk

Perhaps if arcade game manufacturer Taito had released Jungle Kirk instead of Jungle King, they wouldn't have gotten in so much trouble with Burroughs, Inc. On the other hand, I suppose Paramount probably wouldn't have been too happy... 

Space Invaders Tie

Tomorrow I'm attending an event identified as "business formal," which means I have to wear a tie. I have chosen this cool Space Invaders tie, which came as one of my LootCrates. Thanks Sylvia!

They should really make a T.I.E. fighter tie. 

Pursuing Trivia, Rock Bandmates

Ready Player One: An Ode to the 80s

Born in the sixties, a child of the seventies, I came of age in the eighties. If you too were a teenager during the Me Decade, Ernest Cline's Ready Player One will resonate. Cline's first novel is heavy on charm and pop-culture references, if light on powerful prose; it is nonetheless charming and yet cautionary.

Earl in the 80s, when video games were loud and shirts were louder.

When I recall the 80s, I remember the bloops and bleeps and disco beats of one of the dozen video arcades strewn across Leduc, Alberta. I wasted many hours and many quarters evading the ghosts of Pac-Man, blasting away at the alien Space Invaders, rescuing humanoids in Defender and Stargate, running down pedestrians in Death Race, defending my cities in Missile Command and all the while getting distracted by teenage girls with big 80s hair in painted-on jeans. At the same time, I was learning how to program in BASIC on my Atari 400 computer, listening to Journey, Kool and the Gang and the Tubes and playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends. At the movies I marvelled at Tron, the Star Trek films, Return of the Jedi, Aliens, Valley Girl, Weird Science, Buckaroo Banzai, Terminator, Big Trouble in Little China and The Thing, not to mention the teen angst comedy-dramas of John Hughes. Our family never owned an Intellivision or an Atari 2600, but my friends certainly did, and we whiled away long afternoons playing Adventure, Discs of Tron  and Yar's Revenge.

Cline's novel is set in the near future, but draws upon all the 80s touchstones I listed above - and more - to form its nostalgic narrative. In the year 2044, most of humanity lives in poverty. Both the environment and the economy are a catastrophic mess. Many people, at least in the developed nations, have just enough money to lose themselves in the OASIS, a kind of super-Internet virtual reality system that serves as both promising educational tool and dangerous diversion for the lower classes (and in this future, virtually everyone belongs to the lower class). OASIS creator James Halliday, a sort of Bill Gates/Steve Jobs amalgam, dies and leaves his vast estate to whoever can solve the ultimate video game, an epic adventure that requires contestants to navigate a perilous virtual world.

Wade Watts is a plucky but poor adventurer, an orphan with nothing to his name but a cheap virtual reality rig, a few credits and an encyclopedic knowledge of 80s pop culture - and lucky for him, too, for Halliday, like me, was a teen in the 80s and was profoundly influenced by the pop culture of the era. With no realistic options for improving his lot in life, Watts joins the great game and through a combination of research, skill and luck manages to uncover the first clue to unlocking the mystery of the game. But doing so puts him at odds with a sinister multinational corporation bent on subverting OASIS for its own greedy ends, and they'll stop at nothing - not even murder - to be first to complete Halliday's quest...

Cline's novel is really a tale of two worlds: the technological video-game utopia of OASIS and the run-down urban nightmare of 2044. With money and net access, people can enjoy wonders such as flying their own X-Wing fighter to new worlds or transforming into a giant robot to fight other giant robots. You can even attend a first-class virtual public school, thanks to Halliday's generosity and vision. But what you can't do is help change the real world, a world that is winding down in the background as people devote more and more of their lives to the facile pursuits of a virtual world. While most of the action occurs in the OASIS, important segments of the narrative thrust Watts back into the real world, and each visit heightens the stakes of Wade's virtual actions. If he doesn't win the game, he'll live out his life as a poverty-stricken fugitive with no hope for a better life. But even if he does win...what then?

Ready Player One doesn't answer that particular question, implying that even a nest egg of billions and a pure heart full of good intentions may not be enough to repair the damage humans have wreaked upon the world. But it is, nonetheless, a novel full of hope. While there are antagonists, most of the characters, even the rich ones, are good people trying to do the right thing; it's the situation that's bad, not the actors. Thus there is a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, there's a chance the world can be redeemed. There's even a teenage romance echoing the themes of those old John Hughes movies.

More than a simple 80s homage or adventure story, Ready Player One asks important questions about personal responsibility, self-image and identity and all the possibilities, both good and bad, open to an evolving human culture. Highly recommended.

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Crude schematic for the Earl J. Woods CarTank (TM)

On the way home from work yesterday, I started to wonder how people with disabilities drive. I know that some are able to use hand controllers, so that the brake and accellerator are mounted on the steering wheel (or so I imagine). I don't think I'd have the necessary coordination to drive that way, but then I remembered Battlezone, the old Atari arcade game:


In Battlezone, you used two joysticks to move your tank. Pushing both joysticks forward made  your tank move forward; pulling both backward put you in reverse; holding one stick forward and one back would make your tank pivot. I wondered if this simple control scheme could be applied to vehicles - think how easy it would be to make rapid turns if you could pivot! Plus, driving with treads seems so much cooler, not to mention more stable, than plain old wheels.

Of course, this configuration would probably make cars heavier, more expensive, more ecologically damaging, and would almost certainly wreck roads fast. But wouldn't it be fun to make your car spin around on a dime until your passengers all got dizzy?