Remember The Empire Strikes Back? The boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, protesting Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Airplane? Defender, Battlezone and Pac-Man? Zork? John Lennon’s murder? Iron Maiden’s debut? AC/DC’s “Back in Black” ? “Disco Sucks?” (granted that was on a sign in 79’s Disco Demolition Night but the sentiment still rings true) Mount St. Helens eruption? The US ice hockey team beating the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics? Who shot J.R.? Well all of these were in 1980, not just the 80’s but the turn of the decade. There was another thing that debuted in 1980 and that was the Rubik’s Cube. Invented in ‘74 by a Hungarian sculptor, it was sold to Ideal Toys in 1980. As Wikipedia describes it – In a classic Rubik’s Cube, each of the six faces is covered by 9 stickers, among six solid colors (traditionally white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow). A pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colors. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be a solid color.
(xblig) Cubage – Like, totally Rubik’s!
April 15th, 2009Titan Attacks – Only Futurama’s Fry can save us now!
April 14th, 2009
“Invaders! Possibly from space!”, exclaimed Leela.
“People of Earth, I am Lrrr of the planet Nintendoo-64. Tremble in fear at our three different kinds of ships!”, said the alien leader as if it were a statement of fact.
“Alright. It’s Saturday night, I have no date, a two-liter bottle of Shasta and my all-Rush mix tape! Let’s Rock!!” Fry looked up at the alien horde and then got down to business. Listening to Rush’s Tom Sawyer Fry managed to start blasting aliens by moving his giant war vehicle left and right with arcade like precision.
Meanwhile in the lead alien ship, The second in command possibly Lrrr’s wife shouts, “We’re losing ships sir! What are your orders?!” “Increase speed, drop down, and reverse direction!” shouted Lrrr in reply!
Fry continued to blast the alien retinue.
Midwinter Rites – Ahh winter, the season of Orc-love
April 13th, 2009
Remember back in the day when games were still 2D, and you had to use your imagination to make that lonely pixel turn into a space ship, or a human, or a mouse in a maze? Okay now remember earlier than that? You know back in the back in the day. You had to type everything and REALLY use your imagination to make that word conjure up images of daring sword fights, dangerous pirate battles, or exciting princess rescues? Yeah, okay so go back even farther, you know when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. ER maybe that was too far. Let’s fast forward to the days of wine and text adventures. The days where one wrong move could kill you, and if you didn’t have a save game you had to play the whole blasted thing over. Or where you could ultimately get stuck and not ever be able to finish the game and not know where you went wrong. Well those days are over, so get over it!