Good Old Days: Noctropolis (1994)

I grew up on PC Gaming.  Sure, I loved playing on my original Nintendo and Gameboy and all that … but my real passion for gaming came not from Super Mario and Link, but from games like Space Quest, Wing Commander, Monkey Island, King’s Quest and, later on, Gabriel Knight.

Point and click adventure games were my absolute favorite, and as great as they all were, the invention of the CD-Rom made them all the better.  Not only did you not have to swap out as much as ten floppy disks, graphics got better with the added storage space, and games started incorporating video.  While some had stellar production values, like Wing Commander 3, others weren’t so lucky.

Right in between was Noctropolis, a point-and-click adventure that used video as cinematics, as well as featured live actors filmed over digitized graphics.  In the game, you play as Peter Grey, a bookstore owner who spends his lonely nights reading comic books, particularly his favorite comic “Darksheer.” Read the rest of this entry »

Written on January 12th, 2011 , Columns, Games, Good Old Days, PC Gaming
Good Old Days: Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future

Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future is a 1987-88 sci-fi/action television series  that ran for 22 episodes in Canadian/American syndication. A toy line was also produced by Mattel, and during each episode there was a segment that included visual and audio material which interacted with the toys.

Christmas of 1987 was ALL ABOUT Captain Power for me.  Captain Power pajamas, action figures, VHS tapes, vehicles…literally, I had just about everything Captain Power that you could get.  I adored the adventures of the Soldiers of the Future, the resistance against Lord Dread and his Bio-Dread Empire.

Shockingly, you can pick up the series on DVD or Blu-Ray (unofficially) at www.captainpower.com.  I decided to give the adventures of Jonathan Power and his team of rebels another shot, remembering them fondly from my youth… Read the rest of this entry »

Written on August 6th, 2010 , Columns, Good Old Days, Television
Good Old Days: StarFox 64

I have a soft spot for anthropomorphic animals in genre fiction, especially in space.  Rocket Raccoon, Bucky O’ Hare, and, especially Star Fox.  I loved the original Star Fox back on the Super Nintendo (the first game to use the Super FX engine) and this remake introduced the Rumble Pack to the N64, which vibrated the controller like a sonuvabitch whenever you got shot.

StarFox 64 is available for download in the Nintendo Wii Shop and, even though the Wii controller doesn’t vibrate, I knew I had to give the game another try to see if I could relive my fond memories of playing the game for hours, and with my brother in multiplayer arenas. Read the rest of this entry »

Written on July 23rd, 2010 , Columns, Games, Good Old Days, Video Games
Good Old Days: ALF

Every time I think of ALF, the furry little bastard who took the world by storm back in the last 80′s, I think of the Ben Stiller movie Permanent Midnight, about television writer Jerry Stahl, who was on drugs while working on the show.  Weird movie.

Anyway, this week for Good Old Days, at the suggestion of fellow Funnybooks host Wayne, I decided to give ALF another try.  After all, the character was a phenomenon almost the entire time he was on TV.  Surely, this was quality television…right?  Right?

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Written on July 16th, 2010 , Good Old Days, Television Tags:
Good Old Days: Defenders of the Earth

You know, very few cartoons that we loved as kids hold up when we try to watch them as adults.  Sure, there’s still charm to shows like G.I. Joe and Transformers, but even then, the animation is so dated, you feel a little ashamed for liking them in the first place.  Especially when it comes to lame slapstick characters and public service announcements – ugh.

I remember next to nothing about Defenders of the Earth, save for its catchy theme song (for which Stan Lee wrote the lyrics!), and a Flash Gordon and Phantom action figures that seemed to pop up in different places in my house (I’m sure they’re in the attic now) for years. Read the rest of this entry »

Written on July 9th, 2010 , Animated, Good Old Days, Superhero Tags: ,
The Good Old Days: Masters of the Universe (1987)

“I DARE ANYTHING! I am Skeletor!”

I still remember when I saw Masters of the Universe in a movie theater.  My family and I had gone out of town, but there was no way I was missing out on the friggin He-Man movie!  I begged and I pleaded, and we as a family went to a local movie theater (if I remember correctly, we were in Lake George, NY) to see the movie and please the whining seven-year old.

After all, I had been into He-Man for YEARS.  I remember buying the toys and being so happy because, even though the boxes said “Ages 5 and Up,” my folks still would purchase them for me.  And I had a ton of them – every action figure I could find.  It was almost like a regular event, hitting Toys ‘R Us to see if I could find a new action figure (and let’s be honest, all of them were just repainted He-Man toys anyway).  I remember standing in the middle of the street in front of my grandparents’ house one night yelling “He-Man!” because I had just gotten a new action figure.

Anyway, I digress.  We saw the Masters of the Universe motion picture in a local movie theater, and man, was it a piece of crap movie theater.  There had to have been less than a hundred seats, and the screen was no bigger than a bedsheet hung on the wall.  I had actually seen a bit of footage at a convention months before, and was super psyched for the film, but I think everyone was a little disappointed at the condition of that lousy movie theater.  Read the rest of this entry »

Written on June 18th, 2010 , Action Adventure, Columns, Good Old Days, Movies & TV
The Good Old Days: Battletoads

goodolddays_0611

Welcome to the first edition of Good Old Days, the new regular column at IoM where we take a look at the crap we loved as kids and give it another look as adults to see if it still holds up.

Have you ever had a situation where you just were so excited that something you loved as a kid was coming on TV, or being released on DVD, and you showed it to your friends or loved ones and realized that you were embarrassed for liking it in the first place? Yeah…we’re going to do that…weekly. Prepare for raped childhood memories.

Today’s discussion – BATTLETOADS!

Read the rest of this entry »

Written on June 11th, 2010 , Columns, Good Old Days, Video Games Tags: ,

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