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Video Games in movies that I totally thought were fake…but aren’t

Posted in Atari, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, video games with tags Cavalcade Arcade, movies, pop culture, video games on May 18, 2011 by Paxton

So, the other day, I was watching one of my favorite movies, Midnight Madness.

In case you didn’t know, it’s about a group of college kids that take part in a city-wide game of chase. They are given clues that lead to specific destinations which eventually end up at the finish line. It’s a great movie and is one of Michael J Fox’s earliest roles. Anyway, about 3/4 of the way through the movie there is a great scene that takes place in a video arcade. It’s always been one of my favorite scenes, especially now, because you can see a bunch of old school video games as the camera changes perspective.

So, after arriving at the video arcade (which is run by a young Paul Reubens in a cowboy costume), the players discover they must play the game Star Fire, and beat it, in order to get the final clue. They gather around the machine with like a million quarters and start playing.

Star Fire 1 Star Fire 2

For years, I thought this game was a creation of the movie. The logo was obviously a rip off of Star Wars and the game play was disjointed and just looked manufactured. You could even see images of TIE Fighters in the game.

Star Fire 3 Star Fire 4

How could this crappy ass game be real? Am I right? However, just recently, while searching around the Internet I discovered that Star Fire was an actual video game. It was manufactured in 1980 by a company called Exidy. The graphics, game play and cabinet were slightly altered in the movie for the purposes of the script (which explains why it felt fake), but the game was most definitely real. Not only that, it is considered a ground breaking shoot ’em up. It was the first arcade game to use the sit down cockpit (however the movie used the stand up version) and was also the first game to keep track of player initials and high scores. Here’s a flyer from 1979 advertising the Star Fire arcade game.

(Via the Arcade Flyer Archive)

I was blown away. I couldn’t believe this was real. I’d seen Midnight Madness thousands of times and I just assumed Star Fire was fake. For me, this is nearly akin to finding out Mattel actually made hoverboards back in 1989. Earth. Shattering. I’ll have to see if I can download an emulator ROM for it.

This got me thinking about other movies with awesome video game machines that I assumed were fake but are, in fact, real.

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Looking at some movie branded food stuffs

Posted in advertising, Ghostbusters, movies, pop culture, Twilight with tags advertising, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, movies, pop culture, Transformers, Twilight on May 12, 2011 by Paxton

If you read this blog you know I love both movies and promotional food stuffs like new soda flavors and candies. I love it even more when they are combined.

Here are some candies, pastries, etc that were re-branded to promote a movie. I’m going to exclude the Star Wars saga from this article because, honestly, I could do a series of articles on Star Wars and food branding. Images are from my own Flickr stream unless otherwise noted. See all images BIGGER by clicking on them.

King Kong Hostess pastries – Back in 2005, Hostess did a big promotion for Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. They added banana to several of their products. In the pics you can see Banana Twinkies as well as Banana Walnut mini muffins. Interestingly enough, Twinkies’ original flavor was, in fact, banana.

(Via Jason Liebig)
Hulk Sour Lime Life-Savers – A Hulk branded Sour Lime flavor promoting the 2003 Ang Lee Hulk movie. I don’t actually remember these at all, I just saw the wrapper pop up on my buddy Jason Liebig’s Flickr stream. Jason states that it may have been a Canadian only product. I like this much better than I liked Ang Lee’s movie, and I haven’t even tried these.

Hostess Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pies – From 1991. This was sort of a dual promotion. The packaging used artwork from the cartoon, but it was released around the time of the second live-action movie. You can even see a movie promotion on the packaging. Matt from X-Entertainment did a great write up of this product. The pies were green and filled with vanilla pudding. There were four package designs each featuring a different Ninja Turtle.

(Via Jason Liebig)
Hostess Hulk Cakes – From 2008 to promote the Incredible Hulk reboot with Edward Norton. These were a Scary Cakes promotion for Halloween that featured green frosting and sprinkles on top. Hostess also added the Hulk to their regular cup cakes, donuts and Twinkies products, but left the actual cakes unchanged. There was also an Incredible Hulk branded Air Heads candy.

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Movie Man-a-thon: Piranha, sharks and martial arts masters

Posted in monsters, movies, reviews with tags monsters, Movie Manathon, movies, reviews on May 2, 2011 by Paxton

Steph was away last week. So I did what I always do when left to my own devices…take the opportunity to catch up on awesomely bad movies that Steph would never watch. Check out a previous man-a-thon article here.

So, here’s what I watched this past week. I made good use of Netflix Streaming as well as some freebie Redbox codes.

Piranha (2010) – I talked about this movie in my very first On the Shelves over on Strange Kid’s Club. I finally got to watch it. And it’s good. Surprisingly so. I’m not a huge fan of the McQueen kid in the lead, but Elizabeth Shue (she’s still hot) is great as is Jerry O’Connell who is chewing up scenery like crazy. I love they got Dreyfuss in a cameo reprising his role from Jaws. Just a fun little horror flick. Lots and lots of mayhem and gore. I look forward to the sequel. I’m a little pissed they gave away the final scare in the trailer, though.

Ip Man (2008) – I’ve been wanting to see this for years. It hit Netflix streaming last year and I finally got a chance to watch it this week. And it is AWESOME. This movie contains a f**king avalanche of awesome ass kickings. Donnie Yen is a BAD. ASS. I’m now going to have to revisit some of Yen’s previous movies like Iron Monkey, Once Upon a Time in China 2, Blade II (which he was only in for like 10 seconds), etc. Yen has Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen coming up and there was a trailer for it on the DVD. It looks AWESOME.

Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster (2010) – So after bathing in the awesomeness that is Ip Man, I rushed right out to Redbox and got Ip Man 2. However, it was a tad hard to find. I stopped by like 3 different Redboxes before I could find one that had it. But it was worth it. While not as good as the first one, this one is still pretty bad ass. Yen is back and this time he brings Sammo muthaf**king Hung with him. They both have a great fight scene at one point. This movie has less of a story than the first, it’s mostly fight setup-fight-fight setup-fight. Plus, there are only like 2 American characters in this movie and, of course, they are both insufferable douchebags. But it’s a lot of fun and a worthy followup to the original.

Jaws The Revenge (1987) – I had never seen this movie all the way through. I was listening to Now Playing’s Jaws retrospective podcast and it got me wanting to watch this movie from beginning to end. So I did. And it’s terrible. The acting, the story, the special effects. Pretty much across the board this movie is awful. Mario Van Peebles is in it and he speaks with a Jamaican accent. It’s that bad. And yes, it’s true, the shark has a vendetta against the Brody family so it follows them from Amity Island all the way down to the Bahamas. But it’s not made clear what the vendetta is. Is he pissed about the other sharks the Brodys killed? How’d he find out? What about everyone else that has ever killed a shark…EVER? They just get a pass? It’s just really, really dumb.

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Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire turns 15 years old

Posted in books, comic books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags anniversary, books, comic books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars on April 26, 2011 by Paxton

This month is the 15th anniversary of the release of the Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire multimedia event.

Shadows of the Empire was a huge undertaking by LucasFilm and LucasArts in the Summer 1996. It was essentially the release of a new Star Wars movie, but without the actual movie. The events of Shadows of the Empire take place in the years between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Up to this point, no other expanded universe material had ever taken place within the timeline of the original movies. This event would also serve as a springboard into the release of the Special Edition trilogy in theaters the following February. To give the whole event a more “theatrical” feel, LucasFilm released a trailer featuring footage from the movies and a voiceover. It was played in front of audiences at comic conventions across the US. LucasFilm decided to pull the trailer, however, fearing that people would think there was an actual movie being released.

The trailer was added to the official Star Wars website for the Shadows of the Empire 10th anniversary. Click here to watch the trailer on StarWars.com.

The Shadows event consisted of the release of a novel, a comic book, a video game and a symphonic soundtrack. You could get one or more of these things and get a complete story, but you had to get everything to get the full Shadows of the Empire story.

Released first and foremost was the Shadows of the Empire novel by Steve Perry. You would get most of the story from this book. All other media in the Shadows event was based in some way off this book. The events take place several months after The Empire Strikes Back. I bought and read this book when it was released in 1996. I then bought the paperback and read it again a few years after that. I think I even read it a third time after that. The book is good. REALLY good. I read it again last summer and it still holds up. The story is solid, the characters are written fantastically and it’s just a lot of fun. Prince Xizor is a fun villain and great foil for Vader. It’s really fun to see Vader being vexed by Xizor in their constant tug-of-war for Palpatine’s approval. It’s also fun to read the budding Jedi Luke before he becomes the supremely confident Jedi. Han is out, obviously, because he’s in carbonite on Boba’s ship, but we get a new character, Dash Rendar, to supposedly take the smuggler role. However, I hate Rendar as a character. He serves little to no purpose. First of all, he isn’t in Return of the Jedi so you know he can’t stick around. Second, he’s ridiculously immature and and a braggart. Thirdly, the novel also includes Lando Calrissian. Rather effectively, I might add. There was no need whatsoever to even have Dash. I think Perry was forced to use Dash because they needed a new character for the video game. That one gripe aside, I love this book and really wish Perry could have expanded the story a little bit more in a prequel or sequel novel.

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12 comic book covers featuring super heroes and their secret identities

Posted in comic books, pop culture, Superman, The Flash with tags Batman, comic books, nostalgia, pop culture, Superman, The Flash on April 22, 2011 by Paxton

I was perusing one of my favorite sites, Cover Browser, the other day. It’s great. It has hundreds of galleries of comic book covers. Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age as well as more modern comics, you can see it all. Some of the images are of great quality and some are blurry scans that look like they threw the comic book into the air and tried to take a picture with a cell phone from 2001. But it’s great fun to look at old issues of Superman, Batman, Hulk and Iron Man. You can find some real gems.

Looking through you can see all types of trends and gimmicks companies used when creating their covers. Anything to capture the public’s eye. One of the more prevalent gimmicks is to have the superhero appear on the cover alongside their secret identity. I’ve gathered 12 such examples of superhero and secret identity co-existing harmoniously on a comic book cover. Not only that, I’ve split the list into two sections. In the first section are 5 comic book covers featuring super heroes fighting their secret identities. The second section will feature the superhero interacting with their secret identity.

So here are the first 5 covers featuring superheroes fighting their secret identities. Thanks to Cover Browser for the majority of these images.

Action Comics #341 – Battle of the Alter Egos. Turns out the “extra” Clark Kent is another survivor of Krypton that DC loved to throw out in the ’60s and ’70s. He took over Clark’s identity and Supes had to straighten things out.

Flash vol 2 #15 – Wally West trashed by The Flash. This is the second Flash series. Wally West had taken over the Flash costume. There was a drug called Velocity-9 that gave the users temporary super speed. A junkie got a fake suit and totally sucker punched the living sh*t out of Wally.

Web of Spider-man #117 – Spider-man vs Peter Parker. This is the beginning of one of the most controversial Spidey storylines ever – the Clone Saga. A clone of Peter reveals himself. He’s this homeless vagrant who then names himself Ben Reilly. Arguments develop over who is the clone and who is the real Peter. Peter is discovered to be the actual clone and Ben the “true” Peter. Clone Peter becomes so outraged he “accidentally” hits Mary Jane in the face. It’s pretty much insanity incarnate and due to high sales Marvel’s upper management kept the creative teams churning out the story for much longer than was originally planned.