Have You Overpaid For Nostalgia Today?

Atari XP Unreleased Edition Games
Atari (2021)

Earlier this week, Atari announced that they were releasing official Atari 2600 cartridges for games that never received an "official" physical release on the console.

The three games that are included in the initial AtariXP lineup are Aquaventure, Saboteur and Yars' Return.  Each of these games have been included in officially released products in the past, including Evercade, Atari Flashback plug-and-play consoles, and in compilations available for recent consoles, such as Atari Flashback Classics, which was released on Playstation 4, Xbox One, Playstation Vita and Nintendo Switch.

Aquaventure is a game that I've never played before, but I've read a few highly complementary reviews.  Here is the description of the game from AtariXP:

The goal of Aquaventure is to dive to an undersea cavern and retrieve a treasure before running out of oxygen. As you make your way downward you must either avoid menacing sea creatures that harass and delay you, or kill them with your speargun. Killing them spawns replacements that are faster and stronger, so you need to pick your moments.

Sounds like fun.but hold on to your wallet until you get to the end of this post.

The second game is Saboteur, which was designed by the great Howard Scott Warshaw.  I first played this on the Atari Flashback, so I have a little experience with it, but I'm far from an expert on its gameplay.  I am told that the storyline takes place in the same universe as Yars' Revenge.  AtariXP had the following to say about it:

Saboteur is a creative, multi-level shooter developed by Howard Scott Warshaw in 1983 but never released. You play the game as a robot named Hotot. A strange race of blue aliens is using your planet to launch a galaxy-destroying warhead. With the help of a yellow birdlike race, you must destroy the rocket, disarm the warhead, and prevent your planets’ destruction.

To say that it was never released is a half-truth at best.  While it was not released as originally scheduled (in 1984, as The A-Team), a full cartridge release with box and instructions has been available for the past ten years on Atari Age with permission from its creator.  Frankly, the box art on the Atari Age release is much nicer, in my opinion.

  

Yars’ Return was created as an unofficial sequel to the Howard Scott Warshaw 2600 classic, Yars' Revenge.  It's the same style of game as its predecessor, but it significantly expands the playing field.

The official description on the AtariXP website currently describes the game as "invading alien insects that shoot at you from behind a barrier, and periodically dash across the barrier to nibble at your defensive shield".  The folks who wrote this are a little confused about the protagonist/antagonist relationship, because you're playing as the alien insect, and the object of the game is to nibble away at the defensive shield and destroy the ship inside.

Unfortunately, that's not the only thing that the website has gotten wrong.  They credit the design of Yars' Return to Howard Scott Warshaw and say that it was created and intended for release in 1983.  In fact, Mr. Warshaw confirmed that there was no Yars' Revenge sequel written or planned in 1983, and he had no role in the development of Yars' Return.  It was created two decades later by the late Curt Vendel as a rom hack of the original game, which was featured in the Atari Flashbacks consoles released as of 2005.  So, essentially, what AtariXP is doing here is slapping their logo on a rom hack from the 2000's with no credit to the person who did it and pretending that it's a long lost classic from the early 80's, while using the name of an iconic programmer to market it when he had nothing to do with it.

Each game is now available for pre-order on AtariXP.com.  There are two versions of each title: a standard edition for $49.99 and a Limited Edition for $149.99.  The website doesn't make it clear if the standard edition comes with anything other than the cartridge itself (no mention of box and instructions), but the Limited Edition will include a premium poster, a printed instructional manual with bonus material, a collectible pin and collectible badge, a certificate of authenticity, and a digital copy of the game playable on the Atari VCS.

Personally, while I loved Atari when I was growing up and still love the Atari games of the 70's, 80's and 90's to this day, I'm not at all a fan of the things that have been done under the Atari name over the past decade.  I will absolutely support the original designers of games who release cartridges of their work for vintage consoles, but I don't feel that this is what is going on here.  It feels to me like just another in a long line of shady practices from the current holders of the Atari IP to cash in on nostalgia.

As much as I love to play games on the original hardware, my recommendation is that you skip this entirely and get an Atari Flashbacks plug-and-play, or the Atari Flashbacks Classics on Switch (or whatever your primary console is).  Not only will you get all three of these games, but you'll get dozens more to play, and you won't break the bank on a "collectible" from a company that frankly doesn't deserve your money.

The Man Who Sprinted To A World Series Title

Herb Washington
Oakland Athletics (1974 - 1975)

Happy 70th birthday to a man who has had one of the most interesting careers in the history of Major League Baseball.  Mr. Washington was a track and field runner who held records in both the 50 and 60 yard dash.  He was 22 years old and had no experience in pro baseball when he was signed by Charlie Finley to serve as the Oakland Athletics pinch runner for the 1974 season.  It is the first, and only time in the history of the sport that a member of a team's 40 man roster was used exclusively for pinch running appearances.

source: Baseball-Reference.com

In his career, which spanned from April 4th, 1974 to May 4th, 1975, Mr. Washington appeared in a total of 110 games, including five post-season games (two in the ALCS and three in the World Series).  In that time, he stole 31 bases and scored 33 runs without ever having a single plate appearance or inning played in the field.  His Oakland A's went on to defeat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1974 World Series, so in his one and only full season in Major League Baseball, Herb Washington earned a World Series championship ring without ever once having to pick up a bat or a glove for his team.

Dial Up, Doc

Space Jam
Warner Bros (1996)

The first Space Jam movie was released nationwide 25 years ago today.  To this day, I still haven't watched it.  This is partially because I'm not really a big basketball fan, but mostly because I can't get past anybody voicing Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck except Mel Blanc.  Don't get me wrong, I have the utmost respect and admiration for Billy West and the other voice actors, and I'm sure they did a fine job, but I find it very jarring when any other voice comes out of those two characters than the one that I've grown accustomed to through five decades worth of cartoons.

The main thing that I found interesting about this movie has nothing to do with the movie itself, but with the website that was used to promote it.  From 1996 through early 2021, the website remained completely unchanged.  It was like a time capsule of what the world wide web was like during the days of dial-up internet in the mid 90's.  They finally updated the site in April of this year to promote the sequel, Space Jam: A New Legacy.  However, they have thankfully kept the original site intact.  You can access it by clicking on the Space Jam 1996 Site icon from the main page.

Aladdin's Castle In 1987

Aladdin's Castle
Laurel Mall - Hazleton, PA

This arcade was one of my favorite places in the world when I was a kid.  Every time my grandparents and I went to the Laurel Mall, grandpa would give me a few quarters from the little black change pouch that he carried around everywhere he went, and I'd go in and play some games.  In the early to mid 80's, my favorite games to play there were Jungle Hunt, Discs Of Tron, Pac Man, Crossbow, Bagman, and the Star Wars games, but my all-time favorite was Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom.  I could make a quarter last a pretty long time on that machine.

The Laurel Mall was expanded and remodeled in the 90's, so I can't say for sure if I have this right.  However, I'd say that I'm 90% sure that the Aladdin's Castle location in the mall is now occupied by a Subway restaurant.  It's either that or the hairdresser shop next door, but I'm pretty sure it's the Subway.

There aren't very many photos of the Laurel Mall from the 80's.  The Standard Speaker newspaper has a few images scattered throughout their archive.  Most of the ones I've seen are black and white and not especially clear, and there aren't many of them.  I haven't been able to find any pictures of the old Aladdin's Castle other than the ones that my grandfather took at my birthday party from when I turned 7 in July, 1987.  This party was my Nana's birthday present to me because she knew that I loved to go to the arcade.

I'm sure there were other birthday parties where people took photos, or maybe there are snapshots that were taken by employees at the grand opening or a Christmas party or something that are sitting in a shoebox somewhere in town, but I've never been able to find any evidence of them online.  If you have any, please get in touch with me on Twitter because I'd love to see them.  Otherwise, please enjoy the only photos of the Aladdin's Castle arcade in the Laurel Mall that I know to exist.

The doors you see above are the entrance to the arcade from the inside.  The photo immediately above was pieced together from two separate photos to show both doors.  You can see toward the top of the space between the left and right doors that I didn't do a great job of combining them. but it'll give you a good idea of what the entrance area of the arcade looked like.

That's me in the red and blue striped shirt playing on a Nintendo Playchoice 10 machine, with my grandmother standing behind me and a few friends from the neighborhood playing machines nearby.  To the left of the machine that I'm playing is Galaga and Galaga 3.  There's a crane machine on the right hand side of the Playchoice 10, and a Birdie King machine in the corner by the door.

These photos were taken in the same part of the arcade, but you can see a little bit more of the arcade machines from this angle.  The game that's to the left of Galaga 3 is the Capcom shmup classic, Legendary Wings.  It debuted in arcades in November 1986, so it was less than a year old when this photo was taken.  

This is one of my childhood friends, Sean, eating a piece of Senape's Pitza while playing Trivial Pursuit on a Bally Sente SAC-1 cabinet.  When I first started writing this post, I wasn't able to identify what game he was playing.  I asked on the Atari Age forums earlier today, and someone was able to tell me exactly what it was within an hour (thank you, Atari Scorpio).

In the background, you can just barely make out the Ring King marquee.  It's in the corner of the arcade on the other side of the front doors across from Birdie King.  I'm not sure what the other games are in between Ring King and Trivial Pursuit.  Likewise for the machine on the far right hand side of the photo, but there's enough of the control panel visible that I'll probably be able to figure it out eventually.

There were four pinball machines on the Trivial Pursuit side of the arcade.  They are, from left to right, Gold Wings, Raven, Cybernaut and Comet.  That's my mother in the bottom photo playing the Cybernaut table.

To the left of the row of pinball machines is a Sinistar game.  You can also see the side of the Trivial Pursuit machine to its left, but there's another machine in between the two that's completely hidden from this angle.  There's also a Ms. Pac Man that bookends the pinball machines on the right.

There's 7 year old me playing the 1984 Namco classic: Pac-Land.  This is a game that I don't think gets the recognition that it deserves.  First of all, the Pac Man characters are based on the Saturday morning cartoon series, so the game has the look and feel of playing a cartoon.  Also, it's a mascot-driven side scrolling platformer that pre-dates Super Mario Bros by a year.  However, it's controls take quite a bit of getting used to because, unlike most games of this style, it's not played with a joystick or a control pad.  You control Pac Man with three buttons - forward, backward and jump, but you don't hold the buttons down - you tap them.  If you want him to run, you have to tap either the forward or backward button quickly.  If you want him to slow down or walk, you've got to start tapping it slowly.  Once you figure out how it works, it's a really fun and challenging game.

To the left of Pac-Land is Ms. Pac Man and the row of pinball machines.  To the right is one of my favorite video games ever made, Discs Of Tron.  If you ever get the opportunity to play it, don't pass it by.  This is one of the first games I ever played in the arcade when I was a kid.  My dad told me that when I was about four or five years old, I would stand on the little stool that they had for kids to help them see the screen and play Discs Of Tron for a good 20 minutes to a half hour on a single quarter.  He said that on one occasion, I had a group of kids from Penn State standing around the machine watching me play.  I don't have any memory of this, but it's kind of cool to know that I had a Jimmy Woods moment in the arcade.

These games are on the opposite wall across from the pinball, Pac-Land and Discs Of Tron machines.  First of all, the game with the big round black thing sitting on the control panel is Crossbow.  It's my favorite shooting game of all time, and I could go on for several paragraphs talking about it.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to play it on my birthday because it was out-of-order.  That big round black thing that I mentioned earlier is the base for a large crossbow controller that you use to shoot at the screen.  As was often the case back in the day, the crossbow was missing, so you couldn't play the game.  I'm not sure if it was easily broken or hard to calibrate, but I'd estimate that the game was only playable about 50% of the time that I ever saw it.  It's a shame, because it's a really great game!

To the left of Crossbow is the Taito arcade classic, Elevator Action.  This is the game that I'm playing in the top photo, but you can't really see much of the cabinet in that picture.  It's more visible in the bottom photo.  The game to the left of Elevator Action is the mid-80's answer to Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II - the 1984 Data East game Karate Champ.  It's has bizarre controls that are the opposite of what you see in Pac-Land.  Instead of a game that has no joystick and all buttons, this one has two joysticks and no buttons at all.  The left joystick moves the character, and the right joystick is used to punch and kick.  This was the one and only arcade machine I owned in my life.  My Uncle Sarge knew a guy who had one that he wanted to get rid of, and I traded a used Sega Genesis console for it.  The arcade unit was in really rough shape with a power cord that was held together with electrical tape, but it played.  I had it in the living room of my first apartment that I lived in on my own in Beaver Meadows.  My friend Margie and I used to spend hours playing it back in those days.  It's really not a very good game, but playing it will always be a very happy memory from a very difficult period of time in my life.

I can't tell what game is being played in the bottom photo, and I don't remember much about the kid.  I think his name is Timmy and he lived down the street from me.  In the background, you can see the Aladdin's Castle Summer Specials sign that has a caddy with flyers.  If memory serves me correct, the token machine was against the wall near that sign.  I think you can see the corner of it directly to the left of the words "Summer Specials" on the sign.

The Summer Specials sign in the background of the previous photo is in the foreground on the left hand side of this photo.  Here, you can see the little caddy that has pamphlets for whatever promotions they're running, and to get prices for a birthday party.

That sign is up against the side of a Rush 'N Attack machine, with a Rampage game directly to the right of that.  I know I've played Rush 'N Attack on the NES quite a bit when I was a kid, but I don't remember if I ever tried the arcade game.  However, I can tell you for a fact that I played a heck of a lot of Rampage in the arcades over the years.  In fact, they still have a working machine at the Timeline Arcade and the arcade in Knoebels that I've played over the past few years.

 

The far left and right corner of Aladdin's Castle had sit-down cabinets for racing games.  I'm not sure which game was on the left hand side of the arcade and which was on the right, but the top photo is my mother and the literal girl next door, Dina, playing Pole Position.  The photo on the bottom was my friend from school, Tommy, playing Sega Turbo.  You've got to dig that wood paneling.  If I ever manage to remodel the basement or the garage to have my very own home arcade, I've got to remember the wood paneling.

This fold-out table was only set up for birthday parties so that families would have a place to put food and drinks and whatnot.  It was in the center of the room at the back of the arcade near the office.  You can see the door to the employee office in the background of the top photo.

It looks like I'm reading my birthday card in the bottom photo.  I'm pretty sure that's a stand-up Spy Hunter machine over my shoulder.  The color and the speaker placement of the machine next to it makes me think it's probably a Donkey Kong Junior machine, but I not positive about that one.

Last, but not least, here are some closeup photos of one of the signs and the office at the Aladdin's Castle in the Laurel Mall.  They were having a special for Independence Day weekend where you could get 15 tokens (normally .25 cents each) for $1.75 with a coupon that was probably in the newspaper.  That's a pretty good deal.  Ordinarily, you'd only be able to get 7 tokens for that price, so you're getting them on a buy-one, get-one-free arrangement, plus one extra free token thrown in for good measure.  Back in those days, every game at the Laurel Mall location only cost a single token, so you'd get to play 15 video games for less than two bucks.  Pretty sweet deal!

The office looked to be pretty small.  You can see that they had a time clock and a vacuum cleaner in there, and this is probably where the folding table was kept when they didn't have a birthday party going on.  The door to the office had a poster for missing children, but I don't know if these were local kids or if this was a poster that was sent to every arcade in the chain with kids from around the country.  I'm thinking it was probably the latter.

Finally, the wall to the left of the office door had a poster board with numbers hand-written on it.  If I had to guess, I'd say that this was where they kept a record of the top scores on some of their games, but the print is too small and blurry for me to make it out, so I could be wrong.

One of these days, I'm going to get some graph paper and try to map out the floor plan of the arcade with each game listed in their correct location.  Until then, I hope you enjoyed these photos of my 7th birthday party and a small glimpse at what a mall arcade in a small town looked like back in 1987.

A Cheeky Toy Line

Butt Heads
WowWee (2021)

Once in a while, I come across something that really makes me wish my grandfather was still here, just so I could show it to him and see his reaction.  The most recent example of this can be found at Ollie's Bargain Outlet in Hazleton, PA.

If you're not familiar with it, Ollie's is a store chain that got its start in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  A lot of the items they have for sale comes from closeout sales.  For example, if a store goes out of business, or if a distributor wants to clear out pallets of unsold merchandise from their warehouses, Ollie's will go in and buy them out and put it on their shelves.  They also get a lot of factory refurbished appliances, discontinued items, and limited edition food products that are still well within their shelf life, but out of season, like Pumpkin Spice flavored products in February, or Christmas candy in June.

The toy aisles feel like you're visiting a Toys R Us in Bizarro World because you'll find things here that you might not see in any other store.  For example, they currently have a Canadian line of action figures on their shelves called Butt Heads.

You've got to appreciate a straight forward product description like that.  They're called Butt Heads, and as their slogan indicates - their heads are butts ™.  I'm glad that they cleared that up.  The package is proud to also promote the other features of these cheeky toys.

 

Each of the action figures in this line come with a bonus smelly trading card.  I resisted the urge to buy one just to see if it really is a scratch-n-sniff card with a fart odor.  Speaking of farts, the right hand of these figures has an outstretched finger that, when pulled, makes one of over twenty fart sounds.  As an added bonus, the package teaches you how to say "pull my finger" in three languages!

The top of this entry has a photo of the royal representative of the toy line; his majesty, King Butt.  You've got to wonder what the workers in the Chinese factory where these toys are made are thinking when they see this coming down the assembly line.  "How was my day at work?  Oh, it was very rewarding.  We're cranking out Egyptian pharaohs with asses for heads so that Canadian children can pull their finger to make over twenty different fart sounds".

The other characters in the Butt Heads toy universe include the silent-but-deadly Grim Ripper, and the technological wonder of artificial inflatulence, Robutt.  And hey, look at that, the Ripper has a tattoo on his butt cheek.

But (haha) that's not all.  I saved the best for last:

 

When I saw the name of this figure, I literally laughed so hard that my eyes burned, and I'm kind of having a hard time typing this with a straight face.  The master of the martial farts is a ninja named... Tushi.

I swear to god, if my grandfather was still alive, I would've bought this thing and went to his house while he was sleeping just to set this toy on the kitchen table in the spot where he ate breakfast.  Then, the next morning, I'd just wait for the phone to ring.

So with the holiday season fast approaching, you might want to consider this as a gift idea for your own youngster.  Imagine the twinkle in their eyes as they integrate this new family of toys into the ones they already have.  In your very own living room, you can see a battle between the fearsome Darth Vader against the farting droid, Robutt, as interpreted by your offspring under the Christmas tree.  Perhaps Tushi will make an appearance as the new leader of your son or daughter's very own ninja army.

If you don't have kids, you'll have to wait for Hollywood to option Butt Heads into a movie.  We already have the Toy Story series, and movies based on Battleship, GI Joe, Transformers and Legos.  Whose to say that a young hotshot director doesn't stumble into an Ollie's one day and think "I wonder if I could get Steve Martin to do the voice of King Butt".  If it's a hit, we might even be lucky enough to have a crossover film where Sheriff Woody meets the discount store version of his Space Command pal, Butt Lightyear.  The possibilities are rear-endless.

Hanging My Ink On The Christmas Tree

Target is selling a Christmas ornament this year that looks a lot like my rocketship tattoo.

Pumpkin Spice Ramen Noodles

Pumpkin Spice Cup Noodles
Nissin Foods (2021)

I'm a sucker for weird foods and anything pumpkin flavored.  I've had Pumpkin Pie Kit Kats, Pumpkin Spice breakfast cereal (the Frosted Flakes and Frosted Mini Wheat were my favorite), Pumpkin Spice Cheese, Pumpkin Spice Apple Cider, Pumpkin Spice coffee, Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts, and god only knows how many other pumpkin flavored limited edition flavors of various products.  Hell, I've even went out of my way to order a can of Pumpkin Spice Spam, and it's actually not too bad.  So, when I found out that Wal-Mart would be carrying cups of Pumpkin Spice Ramen Noodles, I knew that I had t give them a try.

Feast your eyes on all of that pumpkin powder covered noodley goodness!  Just 6.4 oz of water and three minutes in the microwave was all that separated me from a bizarre pumpkin lunch the likes of which I could have never dreamed of as a child.  We may not be cooking our takeout Pizza Hut using hydrate level 4, but we're living in the future with instant Pumpkin Spice Noodles!  Take that, Lorraine McFly!

The package suggested that I top these noodles with some whipped cream for an even more satisfying pumpkin spice experience.  Unfortunately, I'm out of whipped cream, but I did have cinnamon in the cupboard and some Kozy Shack Rice Pudding in the fridge.  It seemed kind of appropriate.  Rice pudding takes a starch that's generally associated as a side dish for dinner and turned it into a dessert.  Pumpkin Spice Cup Noodles followed that same path to my stomach.

Don't knock it until you've tried it, because this was freakin' delicious!

Children's Literature Has Changed

Stopped by Target in Wilkes-Barre to do a little Christmas shopping where I stumbled upon the children's book section.  I remember reading The Giving Tree when I was growing up, however I can't say that I recall this heartwarming story by Dawn McMillan.

I'm beginning to believe that Idiocracy was an overly optimistic look at the future.

A Dark Valentine To London

Last Night In Soho
Universal Pictures (2021)

This movie covers a lot of ground, and it does so beautifully.  It begins as a coming-of-age story about a young woman who has overcome trauma to leave the countryside to go to London and chase her dreams.  That narrative continues to be told throughout the film, but it gets folded into a world that is part-ghost story, part-detective murder/mystery novel, part-science fiction time travel, and part-psychological horror, all set to an incredible soundtrack with one of the greatest cities in the world as its stage.

The title of this film is from the 1968 psychedelic pop song of the same name by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich.  It was the group's final song to reach the Top 10 in the UK.  Director Allison Anders called it "the greatest title music for a movie that’s never been made" in a conversation with Quentin Tarantino.  He passed this thought on to Edgar Wright, who re-titled the film he was working on and thanked both directors in his credits for the idea.  I think it's the perfect fit.

I'm not going to pretend that I know how to write a movie review that's good enough to compel total strangers to go out and buy a ticket, so I'll just close by saying this.  If anything about this film, whether it's the poster, or the director, or the performers, or the music, or any trailers you may have seen have grabbed your attention in any way, and if you find yourself on the fence when it comes to Last Night In Soho, please allow this entry to be a gentle nudge that pushes you on the side of going to see this movie in theaters.