Year 2: May Update

May is more than halfway over and like last month I still feel as if I'm not posting enough, plus I missed my first ads post since I began the blog. If you saw the Funspot post you'll know I had to go out of town and Funspot was a day I took for myself. I was in the car for 30 hours during those four days as I went from Michigan to Connecticut to New Hampshire and then back to Michigan. Here are some bonus photos from Funspot that are close-ups of arcade cabinet parts which I wish I had taken more of. I went with the grayscale on Rolling Thunder since it looked very orange from the lighting.

Atari's Star Wars controller.

Panel art from Namco's Rolling Thunder.

Last week I activated a free month of Netflix so I've been spending too much time watching a lot shows lately. One show I watched this week was The Toys That Made Us. The show covers toys that were hugely popular in the '80s; season one's four episodes consist of Star Wars, Barbie, He-Man, and G.I. Joe. On May 25th the second season debuts with four more episodes, this time covering Star Trek, Hello Kitty, LEGO, and Transformers. While this may sound like a great show to watch with kids, it actually isn't always. I think the Star Wars and G.I. Joe episodes are safe but the Barbie episode has adult content and there is a fair amount of swearing in the He-Man episode. Therefore, I'd recommend you view them first before deciding if you want to watch them with your kids. The show is definitely worth watching, especially if you love toys.

I've not played too many games since my last post though I did complete Yakuza 6. Recently Shenmue III was delayed but I never expected that one earlier than 2019 and it allows for more time to replay the first two Shenmue games when Sega releases the updated versions later this year. There have been quite a few game delays popping up this month with E3 fast approaching. Last year I had three days of pre-E3 coverage where I made predictions, posted Next Generation magazine's coverage of 1998's E3, and wrote about my time at E3 in 2003. The predictions were a mix of what I expected and what I thought would be fun surprises. I did get some easy ones correct and a bunch I predicted just a bit too early, like Shenmue I & II, the Spyro trilogy remaster, and a new Age of Empires. I think those posts were some fun reads and I'll try to put something together for this year's E3 as well.

The next Star Wars movie, Solo, releases this week too and I wanted to make a quick video of the Millennium Falcon toy. However, my toy has what appears to be permanent discoloration/stains, the sound effect doesn't work (as is very common with all of my old toys), and it is missing two pieces, the cockpit windshield and the removable floor panel. Quite a few stickers dried up and fell off as well though I found all but one and reapplied those yesterday. At the end of the month I hope to be able to complete the non-toy G.I. Joe video that I hinted at a couple months ago in the March update.

One thing I'm a little concerned about is that SmugMug is taking over Flickr. It's possible changes will be made that affect how the video game ads display but the frequently asked questions indicate nothing will change any time soon.

Once again, thanks for reading!

-Jonathan