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AWESOME-tober-fest 2019: Elvira video games

Posted in AWESOME-tober-fest, Blog Series, Halloween, holiday, video games with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2019, Elvira, Halloween, pop culture, video games on October 10, 2019 by Paxton

So, the last few days I’ve covered Elvira’s pop culture appearances in movies, TV shows, and comic books. Today, let’s take a look at her appearances in a few video games.

Elvira by Accolade was a PC game from 1990. It followed the events of the 1988 movie, Elvira Mistress of the Dark. After the death of her Uncle Vincent (spoilers for the movie! Sorry!), Elvira has inherited the castle and plans on opening it as a tourist attraction for horror fans. In doing so, Elvira has inadvertently awakened the monstrous followers of a powerful witch, Emelda. The followers have imprisoned Elvira in the castle and plan to use her to resurrect Emelda. The player is tasked to help Elvira stop the witch’s resurrection.

Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus was the 1991 sequel to the above game. It seems a bit odd to me that the previous game was successful enough to get a sequel, it’s named ELVIRA, and yet Elvira is barely on the cover. If you look close she’s in the lower left. Well, that may be because the main character is Elvira’s boyfriend. And the task is to save Elvira. The player must navigate through a horror studio that has had it’s movie props turned into actual monstrosities.

Elvira was also the star of two pinball machines from Midway (images from Internet Pinball Machine Database).

Elvira and the Party Monsters was released in 1989. It was one of the first pinball machines to require 2 quarters instead of one. The flyers for the machine announced this by saying that “Elvira is no cheap date”. Scared Stiff was released in 1996 and since pinball wasn’t as popular then as it was in 1989, that table is a bit harder to find. Both Midway machines offered vendors a special “modesty decal” that they could optionally attach to the backglass to cover up Elvira’s famous cleavage.

Tomorrow is the final day of Elvira Week(s) and I plan on reviewing Elvira’s second movie, Haunted Hills.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

Walking through The Fun Hub arcade from Ping Pong Summer

Posted in movies, nostalgia, pop culture, video games with tags arcades, Cavalcade Arcade, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, video games on July 22, 2015 by Paxton

Back in June the Cult Film Club watched a movie from last year called Ping Pong Summer.

Ping Pong Summer

It’s a quirky summer comedy set during the summer of 1985 in Ocean City, Maryland. We all loved it. Well, one of the locations that is lovingly showed throughout the movie is a community center/arcade called The Fun Hub. It has air hockey, ping pong and a ton of video games. So, I think it’s time for one of my patented video arcade walk throughs, don’t you?

If you haven’t seen the movie, I urge you to watch it. It’s pretty great. Now check out the awesome, awesome arcade in which most of the movie is based, The Fun Hub.

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Brad (nicknamed Rad) and his family arrive in Ocean City, MD for their summer vacation. While there, Rad walks into town and finds Anthony’s Beer & Wine. Here our hero, gets schooled in proper Icee pouring etiquette. Then he’s told about a door hidden in the alley behind Anthony’s.

That door leads to the Fun Hub.

Fun Hub

Within the Fun Hub are games galore for all types. There are skill games like air hockey and ping pong as well as arcade games lining the blue cinder block walls. Let’s see how many games we can identify. I get lots of help from The International Arcade Museum.

Super Chexx Hockey SCH flyer

As you can see in the establishing shot of Fun Hub above, our first games to see are the air hockey table on the right as well as this Super Chexx Hockey table from 1983. This game may look familiar as it was seen previously in the Golf n’ Stuff arcade in Karate Kid.

Karate Champ and Commando
Here’s a quick shot of Data East’s Karate Champ (right) and Capcom’s Commando (left) machines. The former is one of my favorite fighter games and I recently got to play it at The Galloping Ghost arcade in Illinois. The other is the precursor to the much more popular Bionic Commando game.

DK Jr and Harlem Globetrotters
Here are the heroes of our movie, Rad and Teddy. Just over Rad’s right shoulder is Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Jr from 1982. Just over his left shoulder is the amazing Harlem Globetrotters On Tour pinball machine by Bally from 1979. I love pretty much all things Harlem Globetrotters, so this was a nice one to spot.

Harlem Globetrotters pinball
The guys actually play the Globetrotters pinball later in the movie and you get a great shot of the awesome art and lights in the table.

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Crashing the Galloping Ghost, The Largest Arcade in the United States

Posted in nostalgia, personal, pop culture, roadtrip, video games with tags arcades, Cavalcade Arcade, Nerd Lunch Podcast, nostalgia, The Atomic Geeks, video games on May 1, 2015 by Paxton

It’s not often I get to profile an actual arcade on Cavalcade Arcade, but that is my pleasure today. While you’ve probably seen and heard that both the Nerd Lunch and Atomic Geeks podcasts united in Chicago for C2E2, a few of us broke away from the convention nuttiness to live out a boyhood dream of playing in a dedicated video arcade. And one just happened to exist in the suburbs of Chicago. And it’s called the Galloping Ghost Arcade, reportedly the largest indoor video game arcade in America.

So, without further ado, here is a journal of my adventures with Jeeg and Christian traveling to outer Chicago to find the mythical Galloping Ghost Arcade.

The day started off with breakfast at McDonald’s, then Jeeg, Christian and I had to hightail it to Union Station to catch a train to Brookfield. We were cutting it close, but we made it. Here’s Jeeg running for the train.

Jeeg, Christian and me. Train buddies. Traveling to a mythical nirvana of pixels, CRT monitors and nostalgia.

Right off the train stop in Brookfield, there was this awesome little ice cream shop called Cock Robin. I was afraid to walk over to it because I didn’t want to ruin the illusion of a time warp to a 50s diner in perfect hibernation.

And after planes, trains and automobiles, we finally arrive. The Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, IL. HALL-LE-LU-JAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!

Walking through the door for the first time, you literally have to stand back for 5 minutes to even process everything that you’re looking at.

Then expect another 10-15 minutes just walking around open mouthed looking at the games. You’ll literally say over and over again in your head, “They have THAT?!” or “I haven’t seen that in YEARS!”

So you shamble over to the counter, pay a $15 cover and begin your own personal spirit walk. Everything is set to free play. No quarters. No tokens. Just bliss.

After taking stock of the situation, it was really hard to decide which game would come first. What should start off this massive orgy of electrical consumption? The arcade made that decision for us. Or at least, for Jeeg and me.

We had literally just done our Krull episode for Nerd Lunch and I discussed how 100% of my knowledge of that movie comes from this game. We had to play it. And play it we did.

That game was a fun blast from the past. And with that, the seal had been broken. Before we split up after playing this game, Jeeg and I stated that our goal before we left the arcade was to play each other in Karate Champ, a very favorite of both of us growing up. Making that pact, we split up and explored the wonders that lay within The Galloping Ghost.

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Nerd Lunch Episode 140: Video Arcades

Posted in podcast, pop culture, video games with tags arcades, Cavalcade Arcade, Nerd Lunch Podcast, pop culture, video games on July 14, 2014 by Paxton

This week we are down a CT so Jeeg and I invited our good friend and my Cult Film Club co-host Shawn Robare to sit in CT’s chair as his fill-in. With Shawn in place we got The Retroist to come back for his third appearance on the show. #HatTrick

(Via arcade-museum.com)

With the Retroist on board we are discussing video arcades. We talk about our first experiences with arcades, we talk about our favorite arcade games, we even have lively discussions on Showbiz Pizza Place and the controversy surrounding Dig Dug and Mr Do! It’s a pretty fun discussion, won’t you join us?

Download this episode from iTunes, Stitcher or listen to it on Feedburner. Or listen to it online right here.