Year 5: January Update

NFL/McDonald's
1986 Promotion 

The fifth year of the blog has begun! I'm not sure how much I'll keep up on things which I know I keep saying in the monthly updates. Once 2020 wound down I ended up getting pulled into Assassin's Creed Valhalla and put a lot of my free time into that before completing it about two weeks ago. Now I'm taking a break before jumping into another long game. I should probably get around to completing the G.I. Joe game and maybe some others that are likely on the short side. Right now, I don't have any videos in the works. I've got an idea for baseball's opening day but nothing for the Super Bowl. While sports isn't a focus of the blog, I try to tie a few things into some of my favorite events and I do own a lot of sports video games and other sports-themed things from the '80s and '90s.

Being January, there hasn't been a whole lot of video game news to report on. LucasArts did announce a new Star Wars game in development at Ubisoft and a new Indiana Jones game being developed by MachineGames. No specifics were unveiled and I'd expect neither will be released for at least a couple years. This year's video game schedule doesn't look too appealing to myself, though there is still the upcoming launch of the Intellivision Amico. In case anyone doesn't know, Nintendo platinum points expire. I recently received an email that I have a few expiring and after viewing my account it looks like I've had more than 1,000 points expire in the past so I don't know why this is the first time I've been alerted to that. They can be spent on digital or physical items, and it appears some of the physical rewards don't stick around too long. Currently there are 13 out-of-stock listings, Pikmin decals, some Mario-themed things, and a couple Hyrule Warriors rewards.

How about some Star Wars toy news because we can never have too many different versions of Star Wars action figures, can we? Lucasfilm is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and to mark the occasion is releasing a series of new Star Wars action figures in classically styled packaging. The first three will be Obi-Wan Kenobi, Greedo, and a Jawa, and they'll be exclusive to Amazon.com at a price of $19.99 each on May 1st.

Thanks for stopping by,

Jonathan

Micronauts Catalog

The Micronauts, like Transformers, is another toy originally created by Takara. They first released in Japan in 1974 under the name Microman and were a smaller version of Takara's Henshin Cyborg toys (which were based on G.I. Joe dolls). Mego Corp. brought the toy line featuring 3.75" action figures to North America in 1976. I don't have any of the action figures myself though I do have a box and some of the parts to the Battle Cruiser and that's where I found this catalog from 1977. It is very wrinkled so the scans aren't great though I did clean them up a little.

Compute's Gazette for C64/128 Users: 89's Best Games

This is the first article I've scanned from Compute's Gazette as I don't have too many issues. It is fairly short and the last two pages don't have much color because that's how it was printed in the magazine. I may have stated previously that 1989 is a great year in gaming, certainly one of my favorites as that's when the Sega Genesis released in North America, as did the Game Boy and quite a few great games. Of course, being a Commodore magazine this best of list is all C64 games. From what I've played of Compute's Gazette's choices, my favorites include Kings of the Beach, Omni-Play Basketball, SimCity (FYI: Will Wright is 61 today), and Curse of the Azure Bonds (I played the DOS version rather than C64). At some point I'll definitely do a "Let's Play" video for SimCity as long as the disk still works. Commodore's version is limited compared to the features found on other platforms but I still had a lot of fun with it.

Actually, I've only played one other game here and it's an odd one to include. Sharing the spotlight with Curse of the Azure Bonds is Hillsfar, a game that disappointed me quite a bit when I was younger. It's a companion to the excellent Advanced Dungeons & Dragons "Gold Box" games from SSI of which Curse of the Azure Bonds is a part of. You basically import and export characters from the role-playing titles to gain some extra experience. If I recall correctly, there are four activities: ride a horse (side-scrolling action), rob homes (overhead view), shoot archery targets (move a crosshair), and fight in an arena (stand in place blocking and attacking).