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Back to the Future The Video Games

Posted in Back to the Future, movies, pop culture, video games with tags Back to the Future, Cavalcade Arcade, pop culture, Time Travelogues, video games on May 28, 2010 by Paxton

So, we come to the end of my celebration of Back to the Future Part III’s 20th anniversary this week. On Wednesday I looked back at the Back to the Future Fan Club which debuted late in 1989 and lasted throughout 1990. Now, let’s take a look at the video games that were spawned by these movies.

The first game we are looking at was released in 1990, the same year as Part III. It was The Back to the Future Pinball Game by Data East. Here is a 1990 trade magazine ad for the Back to the Future Pinball Game.

The graphics and images on this machine are awesome, but completely counterbalancing that awesome is the absolutely ridiculous looking models they used for Doc and Marty. W. T. F?! They look like Abbot and Costello (or Costello and Costello…because they are both “fat”). Is Doc wearing black, white and blue leggings?! I don’t remember Marty ever wearing a ball cap…oh, except in 2010 when he was disguised as his son, but that hat was rainbow colored. My eyes are watering just staring at this thing. Horribly awesome. That’s what this is.

Here are some pics of the actual, live machine without the ridiculous looking models.

(pics via Pinball Rebel)

There are more pictures over at Pinball Rebel. Go check them out.

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Movie Flashback: Back to the Future Part II 20th Anniversary

Posted in 80s, advertising, Back to the Future, movies, pop culture with tags advertising, Back to the Future, movies, pop culture, Time Travelogues, video games on November 24, 2009 by Paxton

Man, this year has been crazy with pop culture anniversaries. We had the 10th anniversary of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, the 31st anniversary of the Star Wars Holiday Special as well as Star Trek the Original Series’ 43rd anniversary. Now, it’s time to celebrate the first sequel to one of my favorite movies of all time, Back to the Future. Yes, Back to the Future Part II turned 20 years old on November 22, 2009.

The original Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies of all time. I saw it over 12 times in the theater the year it was released (1985). The theater by my house played $1.95 movies on Monday nights (as a promotion with the local radio station I-95) and my dad would take my brother and I almost every week. And every week I’d go see Back to the Future again and again. Then when Back to the Future hit VHS, I had my dad go to Blockbuster the day it was released to rent it. I watched it that night, and you can only imagine the moment the final screen on the VHS popped up:

To Be Continued...

I nearly crapped my pants in excitement after letting out a shamefully, girlish squeal of delight. HOLY CRAP! THERE’S GOING TO BE ANOTHER BACK TO THE FUTURE MOVIE!! My 13-14 year old mind couldn’t comprehend something that awesome. It nearly shut down. What I didn’t know is that it would be another few years before the sequel would be released.

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The Grocery Aisle of long forgotten breakfast cereals Pt I

Posted in breakfast cereal, Cap'n Crunch, cartoons, food, nostalgia, Pac-Man, pop culture, TV shows with tags Batman, breakfast cereal, Cap'n Crunch, Ghostbusters, nostalgia, Pac-Man, pop culture, TV shows, video games on March 31, 2009 by Paxton

My good friend Steve emailed me a few weeks ago and asked me to write an article on a subject he and his wife had recently been discussing. He wanted me to talk about breakfast cereal. More specifically, he wanted me to talk about some of his favorite breakfast cereals he remembers when he was a kid. Now, Steve and I have known each other since first grade, but I won’t know all of his favorite breakfast cereals. So, I thought I’d take the general topic of cereal, and look at it from the nostalgia perspective.

There is a surprising amount of cereal box enthusiasts out there. If you go to Flickr, there are two main groups dedicated to cereal from the ’50s up through the ’90s. There are more groups than these two, but the two I’m talking about contain the majority of the images. So, scanning these groups, I thought I’d discuss some forgotten and long discontinued cereals that we may all remember. So, let’s head on over to your local Western Supermarket or Safeway, and walk down the Nostalgia aisle (Aisle 7c) and see what we all used to eat when we were kids. FYI…There were so many awesome, awesome cereals that I found that I decided to split this article into two parts. Come back later this week to see Part II. For any of the pictures below, click them to go to a bigger version (most likely on Flickr).

All set, then let’s begin with the first batch…

No talk about breakfast cereals is complete without talking about Capt. Horatio Magellan Crunch (aka Cap’n Crunch for the noobs). And if we are talking about the Cap’n, I’m going to have to talk about the elephant in the room. It is a harsh truth that all cereal enthusiasts are aware of. Cap’n Crunch is an incurable media whore. Currently, there’s like five versions of Cap’n Crunch on the shelves. That alone is enough, but if you look into the past, and include special editions, we are looking at a number north of 17 versions of Cap’n Crunch. Seriously. He will pimp his image/cereal out to any idea that comes across the table. Here are 9 versions of Cap”n Crunch you may have never seen.

Deep Sea Crunch? Vanilly Crunch? Seriously? And that’s not all of the images. How about Treasure Hunt Crunch? Or maybe you would prefer Choco-Donuts Crunch? This never ending parade of Crunch madness has got to end. The Cap’n is sick, he needs help.

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America’s love affair with a man named Pac

Posted in 80s, Pac-Man, pop culture, reviews, video games with tags Pac-Man, pop culture, video games on August 6, 2008 by Paxton

Okay, this was meant to be the article I posted after my July 3rd opus on the Perfect Pac-Man game. However, circumstances being what they are (me = ADD) other things grabbed my attention and I’m just now getting around to posting this followup. In the last article I discussed a little bit of Pac-Man’s history and also covered Billy Mitchell’s achievement in 1999 obtaining the first perfect game of Pac-Man. There’s a lot of pop culture crap that happened between Pac-Man debuting in 1980 and Billy Mitchell cementing his status as “king of the nerds” in 1999. And this is the stuff I love to cover; pop culture crap.

In the ’80s, Pac-Man was HUGE. He was everywhere. The Pac-Man logo and video game character were licensed on hundreds of products to capitalize on what would become the most famous video game of all time. We’ll take a look at some of these products, but first, let’s look at the video game’s lineage.

Pac-Man Sequels

I’m sure you know a few of them, but I doubt you knew there were about thirteen of them, many being exclusive releases on home video consoles. Let’s take a look at some of the more notable sequels in the pantheon of Pac-Man gaming.

After realizing they had a hit on their hands, Bally-Midway decided to sell the video game rights to Atari to develop a port of the game on the extremely popular VCS 2600 in 1981. The media blitz surrounding the impending release was monumental to say the least. Ironic, because next to ET the Extra Terrestrial, this was the worst game ever created for the Atari 2600. And yes, I owned it. The music was awful, the graphics were terrible, the ghosts were dumb and the fruit you normally eat in the middle changed to a “vitamin pill”. Awful. Needless to say, this game was one of the three reasons, in my opinion, that Atari went bankrupt. The other two? The games ET the Extraterrestrial and Donkey Kong. No company could recover from that Trinity of Unholy Suck-i-ness.

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Pac-Man Perfect: 1st Perfect game of Pac-Man played on today’s date, 1999

Posted in 80s, Pac-Man, pop culture, video games with tags movie review, movies, Pac-Man, pop culture, video games on July 3, 2008 by Paxton

On today’s date, July 3, in 1999, the first perfect score was achieved on the arcade game Pac-Man. This feat was accomplished by the very controversial figure, Billy Mitchell, at the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. Mitchell was competing with a partner in a US vs Canada video game competition over the Fourth of July weekend. It took him over six hours to complete his “perfect game”.

What, you may ask, goes into getting a “perfect score” on Pac-Man? To reach the maximum score of 3,333,360 points, one must navigate 255 mazes, or “boards”, eating all dots, power pellets and point giving fruit. You must also devour all four ghosts every time you eat a power pellet. After successfully navigating the first 255 boards you will reach the final 256th board, or what is known as the “kill screen” (see pic below). On the 256th maze, there is a bug in Pac-Man’s internal code that affects how the screen is drawn. Half the screen is perfectly clear while the other half is a mess of random characters and symbols. The interrupted drawing of the maze renders this final maze nearly unplayable. You finish your game by acquiring as many points as possible on this “kill screen” before you eventually die.

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