#nes

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #180: Reflections on Childhood Video Games Part 2

Episode #180: Reflections on Childhood Video Games Part 2

https://archive.org/download/Podcast180_201901/Podcast%20180.mp3

My brother joins me on this trip into the past as we look at some of the computer games we grew up with (this week and last).  I’ve written and talked about this before but have been meaning to have a longer discussion with my brother for a long time.  We touched on a number of things that I hadn’t thought of in awhile, like some classic adventures games like the King’s Quest series last week as well as emulation and a number of other games we enjoyed but hadn’t thought of in awhile.  Jeremy made a grid of some of his most influential games here but it too some thinking to come up with enough to fill a 3×3 grid. I did it, though! Here they are:

On Instagram, I’ll go through each one with a little blurb.

If you haven’t checked out “Arcade Days,” the song and video Jeff Finley, Brent Simon, and I have been working on the past year, click on the link below to do so!

 

You can find more pictures and preview clips of “Arcade Days” on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.

Also check out a preview of a new album from Starfarer, who was on the show back in episode 143.  Stay tuned for an upcoming t-shirt contest!

Lastly, the podcast is now on Spotify!  Check it out.

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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #179: Reflections on Childhood Video Games Part 1

Episode #179: Reflections on Childhood Video Games Part 1

https://archive.org/download/Podcast179/Podcast%20179.mp3

My brother joins me on this trip into the past as we look at some of the computer games we grew up with.  I’ve written and talked about this before but have been meaning to have a longer discussion with my brother for a long time.  We touched on a number of things that I hadn’t thought of in awhile, like some classic adventures games like the King’s Quest series.  Here are a few screenshots I found from the game, King’s Quest 6, the first one we were able to play through fully, and the one we remembered most fondly.  My brother and I distinctly recall being blown away by the graphics at the time:

King’s Quest 6 had a full CD-quality ballad on the disc that played during the ending credits, “Girl in the Tower,” a very 80s/90s love ballad with verses done in piano, an electric guitar solo, sappy lyrics (in other words, all the qualities for a stellar song in my mind).  If you click on the picture above, you can listen to the whole song with scenes compiled from KQ5 and KQ6.  Apparently, the song was reused in parts of updated King’s Quest adventures:

The final fight Alexander has in King’s Quest 6.  I distinctly recall at one point when he gets tired, he says something like, “Zounds, this sword weighs a ton!”

Some pictures associated from other games mentioned in the episode that I photographed from old Nintendo Power issues and box cover art.

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If you haven’t checked out “Arcade Days,” the song and video Jeff Finley, Brent Simon, and I have been working on the past year, click on the link below to do so!

 

You can find more pictures and preview clips of “Arcade Days” on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.

Also check out a preview of a new album from Starfarer, who was on the show back in episode 143.  Stay tuned for an upcoming t-shirt contest!

Lastly, the podcast is now on Spotify!  Check it out.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #163: Reflections on Rewatching Flight of the Navigator (1986) 

Episode #162: Reflections on Rewatching Flight of the Navigator (1986)  

Today, we’re talking about the 1986 film, Flight of the Navigator. I recently rewatched it start to finish for the first time in probably a few decades,a at least to me, the decades in between did not to diminish its enjoyment. The many scenes where David (the Navigator) and the ship he is controlling are flying above the clouds, the design of the spaceship, and the overall idea of a child, not an adult, holding the key to unlock a great mystery were all ideas that influenced the writing of The Thirteenth Hour as well as some of the illustrations contained within the book.

Click on the poster below to find a copy of the film:

The face of the alien ship, which the main character names Max. I was both delighted but not surprised to find that the voice of the ship was done none other then by Paul Rubens, a.k.a. PeeWee Herman!

A young Sarah Jessica Parker also has a small role in this film as a NASA intern that befriends our protagonist. There are a number of funny interchanges between them which highlight 80s culture.

• Carolyn: “All right, listen, um, I gotta go, um, is there anything else you want when I come back?”

• David: “How about a Big Mac, large fries, and a Coke? They’re still around, I hope.”

• Carolyn: “Well, now, that all depends, Do you want New Coke, Classic Coke, Cherry Coke, Diet Coke, or Caffeine-Free Coke?”

• David: “Huh?”

• Carolyn: “Nothing, forget it.”

During one of those scenes, David is introduced to music videos. They happened to pick one of the weirdest movie music videos that I’ve ever seen in my life to highlight MTV/new wave. It’s actually a really great song done by British synthpop duo, Blancmange, though the music video is something else. It rivals the video for “True Faith” by New Order.

Enjoy a little collection of animated gifs from the film:

This little guy loses his home planet to a comet, and David ends up (on purpose or accidentally) bringing him back to 1978 with him.

The podcast now has a page on Facebook, so head over there and to Instagram to check out some scenes from the film.

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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hourplaylist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #162: Summer Schwarzenegger Series 4: Reflections on Rewatching Predator (1987) with Adam from @mom_gave_them_away 

Episode #162: Summer Schwarzenegger Series 4: Reflections on Rewatching Predator (1987) with Adam from @mom_gave_them_away 

https://archive.org/download/Podcast162/Podcast%20162.mp3

This week marks the fourth in a four-part summer Arnold Schwarzenegger 80s action fest where Adam from the Instagram page @mom_gave_them_away and I rewatch four classic Arnold movies we originally saw as kids and discuss our reflections (listen to episode 159, 160, and 161 here).  Today, continue where we left off last week with Predator.  Like The Terminator, it’s a film that fits multiple categories (sci fi, action, horror), and in some ways, it’s pretty hard to beat in any of those categories.  Enjoy a little collection of animated gifs from the film:

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The podcast now has a page on Facebook, so head over there and to Instagram to check out some scenes from the film.  To end on a humorous note, despite the fact that these movies had a degree of badassery that no one could deny, the video games that came out in association with them with pretty horrendous.  But I’ll let the AVGN do the honors:

 

Adam, you’re welcome to BE BACK anytime!  In the meantime, check out all the excellent custom action figure work he does for a taste of some truly heroic work.

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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hourplaylist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #161: Summer Schwarzenegger Series 3: Reflections on Rewatching Commando (1985) with Adam from @mom_gave_them_away 

Episode #161: Summer Schwarzenegger Series 3: Reflections on Rewatching Commando (1985) with Adam from @mom_gave_them_away 

https://archive.org/download/Podcast161_201809/Podcast%20161.mp3

This week marks the third in a four-part summer Arnold Schwarzenegger 80s action fest where Adam from the Instagram page @mom_gave_them_away and I rewatch four classic Arnold movies we originally saw as kids and discuss our reflections (listen to last week’s show here).  Today, continue where we left off last week with Commando.  Released only a year after The Terminator, this one is an entirely different kind of movie.  There are even touches of comedy, and Arnold even says, “I’ll be back.”  Enjoy a little collection of animated gifs from the film:

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The podcast now has a page on Facebook, so head over there and to Instagram to check out some scenes from the film.  And if you’re wondering what song is playing over the ending credits of the film (the one we used for Adams’s theme song), it’s this one:

One of my favorites I’ll link to here. To end on a humorous note, despite the fact that these movies had a degree of badassery that no one could deny, the video games that came out in association with them with pretty horrendous.  But I’ll let the AVGN do the honors:

 

This arcade and NES game wasn’t related, but it was better than an of the official sanctioned products and was around at the same time:

Adam will BE BACK next week for Predator.  In the meantime, check out all the excellent custom action figure work he does for a taste of some truly heroic work.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hourplaylist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

 

 

 

 

 

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #160: Summer Schwarzenegger Series 2: Reflections on Rewatching The Terminator (1984) with Adam from @mom_gave_them_away 

Episode #160: Summer Schwarzenegger Series 2: Reflections on Rewatching The Terminator (1984) with Adam from @mom_gave_them_away 

https://archive.org/download/Podcast160_201809/Podcast%20160.mp3

This week marks the second in a four-part summer Arnold Schwarzenegger 80s action fest where Adam from the Instagram page @mom_gave_them_away and I rewatch four classic Arnold movies we originally saw as kids and discuss our reflections (listen to last week’s show here).  Today, continue where we left off last week with 1984’s The Terminator, which of course is one of the films that continued Arnold’s push into the stratosphere of stardom but also birthed one of his most famous lines (“I’ll be back”).  Part sci fi, part fantasy, part film noir, part cyberpunk, part horror, it’s a film that defies easy categorization, though, as we discuss during this episode, it’s part love story as well.  Neither of us felt that Kyle Reese (played by Michael Biehn) really got enough credit in the film (or the series), so we spent the better part of the episode on Reese.

The podcast now has a page on Facebook, so head over there and to Instagram to check out some scenes from the film.  One of my favorites I’ll link to here.  It’s a rare moment of respite for Reese that is not surprisingly disrupted – always felt bad for him in this scene since he loses one of the few things he has to comfort him:

If the music in between the introduction and when Adam and I start talking sounds familiar, it is, of course, the rendition of The Terminator theme that we made back in episodes 146 and 147.  More information about the making of the soundtrack for the film and the different ways the theme was used in the film can be found in the show notes of episode 146.

To end on a humorous note, despite the fact that these movies had a degree of badassery that no one could deny, the video games that came out in association with them with pretty horrendous.  But I’ll let the AVGN do the honors:

These ones are specific to the Terminator games:

Speaking of NES games, check this out:

File:Snake reese.jpg

Yup, the painted cover of the original NES version of Metal Gear Solid is basically Kyle Reese with slight variations.  He may have died in this movie, but he lives on in other ways.  Not sure if this was a homage or just a blatant rip off, but hey, imitation is the best flattery, and it’s not the only instance where NES game art did this (more soon).

Adam will BE BACK next week for Commando  In the meantime, check out all the excellent custom action figure work he does for a taste of some truly heroic work.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hourplaylist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

 

 

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #124: The Robocop Show (30th Anniversary Tribute with Jeremy and Brent Simon)

Episode #124: The Robocop Show (30th Anniversary Tribute with Jeremy and Brent Simon)

https://archive.org/download/Podcast124RobocopShow/Podcast%20124%20Robocop%20Show.mp3

Last show of the year! Happy holidays! Brent Simon and my brother, Jeremy, came on the show this week to cap off 2017 to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1987 film, Robocop.  We also touch on the recent remake and a number of other things from the era, like some Saturday morning cartoons (there was a trend of making kids’ cartoons out of hyper violent 80s action films, like Conan, Chuck Norris flicks, Rambo, and, of course, Robocop – click on the highlighted links or the pics below for youtube clips of the show intros).

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The original Robocop was an interesting film in many ways since it was sort of aimed at kids … yet not (in that it was over the top violent and barely squeaked by an R rating)! However, robots were all the rage at the time.  Kids, adults, we all loved them.  Remember that this was the age of super robots cartoons (Transformers, Gobots, Robotech, Voltron, M.A.S.K., and a skew of others, mostly from Japan that didn’t get as much exposure here in the US) and ones in films like Star Wars, Short Circuit, and Terminator.

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We also covered a number of Robocop spin offs, like the games and some crossover comics.  Jeremy, who has encyclopedic knowledge of comic books and is behind the Classic Batman Panels Instagram page, contributed a lot of great info on the show about comic crossovers (many of whom were published by Dark Horse), including the Robocop / Terminator miniseries written by Frank Miller.

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Of course, one must check out the AVGN videos on the games spawned by the Robocop franchise.

The originals for the NES looked pretty shite.  In this epsiode the AVG Nerd also comments on the interesting 80s/90s phenomenon of making kids games’ out of R rated movies.

The Robocop v Terminator SNES game looks like it might have been ok to while away a few hours.

I originally intended to purchase a used gas blowback airsoft replica of Robocop’s auto 9 machine pistol on eBay for the show and include a video clip of it letting loose like in the movie but decided against it when I saw the price tag. 🙂   Ganking a clip off youtube was much cheaper!

(The auto 9, as a heavily modified Beretta 93R, doesn’t actually exist in real life, so a replica is the closest you can get if you want to legally own something like in the movie.  Even so, a gas blowback airsoft pistol will still set you back ~200 USD.  If you are in the States, a retailer like Airsoft Atlanta is a good option, and you won’t have to pay international shipping charges.  However, the latter may be worth it in some cases.  The HK retailer Redwolf Airsoft has a good selection and generally reasonable prices.)

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This pixelart animation of Lara Croft for the Tomb Raider game I intended to make once upon a time shows her shooting an auto 9.

Find more Brent Simon here (parts 1 , 2 , and 3 here) or on Jeff Finely‘s channel (below, Brent’s interview and Jeff’s – they were both multipart episodes, and Jeff compiled them into these videos):

A day in the life of Brent Simon, “The Brentumentary,” done by Jeff, and Brent current project, Aerial Focused.

Giveaway:

Nirvana Pilot Yume is a recently release PC game now available on Steam created to answer the question: what happened if the 1993 space racing MS-DOS game, Skyroads, were a visual novel with 80s anime visuals and a synthwave soundtrack?

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The team who created it, Dev9k, came on the show last week (12/18/17) to talk about their influences and have graciously supplied a free copy of the game for a lucky entrant into this contest!  It will go on until next week. 

Happy holidays.  See you in the New Year!

CLICK HERE TO ENTER

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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!  Thanks for coming on the show, Brent!  It was a pleasure!

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