Year 10: October Update

I don't have a lot to say in this update, but it's the week of Halloween, so I need to post the McDonald's sign again! Shortly after I posted about the LEGO Sega Genesis in the last update, a LEGO PlayStation was unveiled. While the 480-piece Genesis is only $39.99, the PlayStation is 1,911 pieces, making the price significantly higher at $179.99. It also has Ape Escape and Gran Turismo dioramas that sit under the disc tray lid. Perhaps every popular video game console will get the LEGO treatment eventually. Aside from the Genesis and PlayStation, thus far LEGO has released sets of the Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari 2600, and Nintendo Game Boy as well.

Just last week it was announced that game developer BioWare has been closed. While it had been a part of Electronic Arts (EA) since its acquisition in 2009, BioWare was founded in 1994, making games for 15 years before EA ever got involved. It played a big part in the advancement of the role-playing genre, as it, alongside Black Isle Studios, created a number of hits featuring the Dungeons & Dragons license for publisher Interplay. I still remember trying to find a copy of Baldur's Gate when it first released. It was consistently sold out at stores; this was during the early days of online shopping, and I searched the Internet daily until I found one. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was another huge success for BioWare and an all-time favorite of mine. Players lead a customizable Jedi on a journey across the galaxy in their Millennium Falcon-like ship the Ebon Hawk, exploring planets, recruiting party members, and battling the Sith in turn-based combat. Here are a few photos of some old PC boxes, back when games included manuals, some quite long and spiral bound, along with multiple discs, and sometimes maps.

While looking at my previous Halloween posts, I decided to update the Remco Mini Monsters write-up with some black-and-white versions of the same photos that were already there. It's really something I should have thought to do at the time I took the photos; it gives them a classic monster movie look. Happy Halloween!

-Jonathan

Cascade by Matchbox

Cascade is a game for 1-4 players that was released by Matchbox in 1972. It's not exactly a board game because there is no board, though I expect most people would consider it one. Players try to score points with marbles as the electronic "Spiral Lift," powered by a "D" cell battery, takes the marbles up to a drop point where they fall onto a drum and then bounce across two more drums, before landing in the "Score Pit." The four-page foldout manual lists some variations on the basic rules, and suggests putting books underneath the lift to make the balls bounce higher. This was a game I used to mess around with at my grandparent's house in the early '80s, and eventually I took it home. Unfortunately, the electronic part stopped working over time, which is why I didn't record a video of it.

LJN's Wolverine Reviews

Marvel's Wolverine released for PlayStation 5 today, so I decided to dig up some old magazine coverage of Wolverine's first solo video game. Wolverine is certainly one of the most recognizable Marvel characters today, thanks in part to Hugh Jackman's portrayal of the popular mutant on the big screen in many X-Men movies, as well as the third Deadpool film. The clawed mutant debuted in a 1974 issue of The Incredible Hulk where he battled the green goliath, and he later joined the X-Men in 1975. In 1989 the Uncanny X-Men received its first two games, one a computer game from Paragon Software, and the other a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game from LJN. In the very poorly reviewed NES game, players could select from six heroes, including Wolverine, and battle enemies from an overhead viewpoint. LJN then gave Wolverine his own title in October 1991, a side-scrolling platform game developed by Software Creations. Wolverine faired better than The Uncanny X-Men, and is known for being difficult, which is common among retro platformers.

I scanned reviews from the November 1991 issues of GamePro and Video Games & Computer Entertainment (VG&CE). The GamePro review shares a page with Koei's L'Empereur, so there is a bonus review to read of a completely different type of game. VG&CE's reviews tend to run across multiple pages as they are printed one after another throughout one big column. Just before the Wolverine review, you can see the end of a review for the Sega Genesis game Raiden Trad from Bignet USA. I also moved the end of the Wolverine review from its second page to have the whole review in one image. Something I noticed is that both magazines list the game's MSRP, but both have a slightly different price: $44.95 vs. $47.95.

[YouTube] Optimus Prime

https://youtu.be/Yfo1x7GRVNI

We lost Optimus Prime's voice actor Peter Cullen on August 26th. Of course, he voiced dozens of other characters throughout his career, including Transformers' Ironhide, G.I. Joe's Zandar and Airborne, Dungeons & Dragons' Venger, and Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh. It's always sad to lose entertainers that had an impact on our childhoods, and we've lost quite a few since I began this blog, though I don't often post about loss. Peter Cullen is a bit different from others, however, in that his influence continued into our adulthoods for those of us who grew up on 1980's cartoons, because the Transformers franchise has been going strong for decades. In that time, there have been quite a few different Transformers animated series, live-action movies, and video games starring Optimus Prime, and it's always been Cullen's voice that we've heard. You can't think of Optimus Prime without hearing his voice; it's perfect and hard to imagine anyone taking over that role in the future.

The video is longer than I expected, as I somehow went on for ten minutes about the 1984 Hasbro toy of Optimus Prime. It's a simple one to transform, and has hands that need to be added when switched to robot form (unless you want fists for headlights). Opening the trailer reveals Roller and what the manual describes as a mechanic/artillery robot, which features a radar dish, claw arm, and rocket launchers. Roller can be equipped with a gas line for refueling others or it can hold Optimus' gun. While the manual shows Roller as gray and the rockets as silver, the first U.S. release has a dark blue Roller and black rockets. There are variations and I'm not certain if the U.S. had other colors, as all I could verify is that there is a European version with a gray Roller. Unfortunately, some of my stickers are peeling, especially the Autobot logos on Optimus' arms, which have a tendency to fall off.

I took a wide variety of photos, some with LEGO road plates and other Autobots, and sometimes I swapped Ratchet with Ironhide. Also, I tried to hide it, but it's probably obvious that I'm missing a piece of Wheeljack's rear spoiler. While I could have used another Autobot, I wanted to stick with main characters from the first cartoon and I don't own all of them, plus someo f my others have broken pieces too. You'll notice I was messing around with image filters as well, and added audio to a couple photos.

 

LEGO

LEGO + AUTOBOTS

AUDIO