[YouTube] Starting Lineup Talking Baseball

                                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NZIvC8Ff2w

For the inaugural video I chose Starting Lineup Talking Baseball (SLTB) as the subject. Parker Brothers released SLTB in 1988, the same year that the baseball figures debuted from Kenner. Parker Brothers and Kenner Toys were actually part of the same company at one time as General Mills merged the two when it owned them, calling the division Kenner Parker Toys. Tonka acquired Kenner Parker in 1987 and split them back up with Kenner then being renamed to Kenner Products. A few years later in 1991 Hasbro acquired Tonka, Kenner, and Parker Brothers.

Second base is printed the wrong way; same error on the manual.

SLTB was quite advanced for 1988, featuring the ability to either control real teams or manage them while the computer plays against itself. Instead of simply following blinking lights to determine what is happening as most electronic toys did at the time, the device also features a commentator that provides play-by-play. This wouldn't be seen in video games until Sega's Joe Montana II Sports Talk Football in 1991 and then MLBPA Sports Talk Baseball in 1992. Speech was included in sports games as far back as Intellivision's Major League Baseball (1980) but not commentary. Although I cannot find evidence of it, I do wonder if Parker Brothers was involved at all in Sega's commentary development as the voices between SLTB and Sports Talk Football sound similar to me but then maybe that's just how all computers sounded.

View from the pitching side.

Batting keypad.

Pitching keypad.

Other unique options for an electronic sports game in the '80s is the ability to make substitutions such as pinch hitting, pinch running, changing fielders, and calling in relief pitchers. Players can also bunt, power swing, go for an extra base, and steal bases while on offense, and throw three types of pitches or a ball, attempt a pickoff, pitchout, intentionally walk a batter, move the infield in, and call for an instant replay while on defense. This is all quite in-depth and better than most video games at the time. The device itself has a keypad on the home plate side of the game for batting and a separate pitching/defense pad on the outfield side (defense is automated once the ball is in play). Whether playing against the computer or another player, SLTB must be rotated at the end of each half inning. The game does sit on a foam disc making it simple to rotate when on a flat surface.

The bottom of the game; center circle rotates though
my foam piece has flattened out too much.

Four "C" batteries power the game and there are two cartridge slots behind the outfield. The 1987 American League and National League All-Star teams are built into the game while a Hall of Fame cartridge was included in the package (all rosters are abbreviated to 20 players). To insert a cartridge users need only pop off a section of the stadium seating; two slots are available so that teams located on separate cartridges can be matched up against one another.

Cartridge slots with the Hall of Fame cartridge inserted.

Aside from the Hall of Fame team, all teams also have a set of baseball cards, one for each player in the game and a single card that lists the roster with corresponding numbers next to each player that are used when setting lineups and making substitutions. The All-Star team baseball cards feature MLB player photos while all team cards packaged with cartridges have artwork instead.

All-Star team baseball cards packaged with the game.

Eight cartridges were sold separately with multiple teams per cartridge that cover all 26 MLB teams from 1987:

American League Team Cartridges

1. New York, Boston, Baltimore
2. California, Oakland, Seattle
3. Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Toronto
4. Minnesota, Texas, Chicago, Kansas City

National League Team Cartridges

1. St. Louis, Chicago, Montreal
2. New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh
3. San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles
4. Cincinnati, Houston, Atlanta

The Kenner Starting Lineup figures were a big hit and continued for 13 years but SLTB did not fare as well as the figures and no cartridges were made beyond the first year so that only 1987 team rosters are available. I cannot be 100% certain on the original MSRP of the game and cartridges but I came across someone selling their game in the original box that still has a price tag on it of $99.99 and my cartridge boxes say $12.99 so those are likely the original prices. As cool as the game is, the $100 price is steep considering video game consoles were $199.99 or less in 1988 and the Sega Genesis was only a year away and would launch at $189.99.

Instruction manual cover.

Hall of Fame player sheet.

Instruction manual back.

Scorecard on back of Hall of Fame player sheet.

July Update

It hasn't been too long since my June update but I'm close to launching on YouTube now so I wanted to write a bit about that. Actually, the channel is up, there just aren't any videos yet and apparently I cannot get a custom URL until I get 10 followers on Google+ if I understand the policy correctly. Everything with Google is linked to a single brand account such as this blog and YouTube. Unfortunately, I had been ignoring the Google+ account so I have no followers there. Going forward I'll link my ad and article posts there to see if I can't grab a little more interest.

For some YouTube videos I will also provide a blog post with much of the same information for those that do not care to watch videos (I'll embed the video in the post as well). A few other benefits to accompanying videos with a blog post: I can cover anything I forget to say in the video; I can typically explain things better when I write; I can provide more details if anyone is interested; I can provide photos that people might like to see and share; and it's an alternative for people with a hearing impairment or for those that simply don't want to listen to me talk.

I've got the first post written and ready to go which is a little backwards since I have to film the video again. A week ago I filmed it and the poor audio quality bothered me a lot, plus it was too long at 26 minutes. Today's mail had a new adapter for my microphone and that appears to have solved the problem. My other adapter wasn't very good and caused a humming noise throughout the video. I'm using a stereo microphone with a 3.5 mm connection on my digital camera that has a 2.5 mm port which is why I need an adapter. I hope to film tomorrow afternoon and possibly have the video up before the evening if all goes well (if not then expect it on Wednesday or Thursday). It very loosely ties into the MLB All-Star game that takes place tomorrow night so I had hoped to originally post a video this past Sunday.

Since my last post I've completed Horizon: Zero Dawn and played a few more games briefly: Micro Machines World Series, Cars 3: Driven to Win, Tekken 7, and Valkyria Revolution. I like open world games and enjoyed Horzion: Zero Dawn quite a bit. It's set on a futuristic, post-apocalyptic Earth where people fight with bows and spears but there are also robotic creatures wandering the land. Although the publisher says it's a role-playing game, it's more of an action game with the ability to gain experience and distribute skill points (honestly, I'm not entirely sure how to define a RPG anymore). You'll mostly be running around fighting robots and other humans, and quite a few side quests have the protagonist using her tracking skills to run down leads. As soon as I finished the game the developers released a big update that adds new features, including a New Game Plus option, face paint, and new weapons and outfits so it has even more content now.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

The other games I didn't play too much of so I can't provide a strong opinion. Micro Machines has a Cobra H.I.S.S. tank in it which gets a thumbs up from me but it's not much fun playing solo. Multiplayer must help, though how much I cannot say. At least that game is only $29.99 whereas Cars 3 has more content and is okay, but it's not worth $59.99. Cars 3 has rubberbanding which in a racing game means you'll never get too far ahead of the computer so races are close at the very end regardless of how good you are. On medium difficulty I actually struggled to win some races; easy difficulty was relatively easy aside from getting blasted near the end on one particular battle race over and over. A couple of the modes have weapons while others are either straight racing with a turbo boost or require stunts to be performed. It's not a great game, it's passable though for kids once the price drops by at least half.

At least Micro Machines has a H.I.S.S. tank!

I'm not a big fighting game fan though I did play a lot of Tekken 3 back on the original PlayStation. I played through Tekken 7's arcade mode a few times which is short, five fights maybe. There is a treasure battle mode as well where you fight for loot to customize characters with. For the story mode I only tried the prologue and first chapter, and it appears to be about Heihachi and his family (no surprise). If you've played Tekken or other solid 3D fighting games from Japan then you probably know what to expect. Nothing groundbreaking here as far as I could tell. There are a lot of characters and plenty of customization with the outfits and hairstyles if you like that. One really nice bonus is that you can select music from any of the Tekken games (the music bonus is PS4 exclusive) and unlock the cinematics from all the older titles too!

Maybe I need to give it another try but I really don't like the
 combat in Valkyria Revolution.

Valkyria Revolution is the game I wanted to play most but no longer want to after less than an hour. Yeah, I didn't give it much of a chance however the combat is nothing like Valkyria Chronicles and that's a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. If you loved Chronicles don't expect to love Revolution as it's very different. The story is about revenge and the characters aren't like the fun-to-love group of the first Chronicles game. Also, cut-scenes that are not very interesting make up at least 30 minutes of that first 45 minutes. I read that there are a lot of story cut-scenes throughout the game that can't be sped up, only skipped completely. The combat is really the biggest problem as it's not turn-based. Instead it's all real-time with you controlling one character who can give orders to the other three following (the game does pause when issuing orders; also the other characters will do their own thing if you don't assign them actions). I've been so busy with other things that I don't know that I'll go back to it. I still want to try Persona 5 and next month is the Uncharted spin-off and Everybody's Golf that will likely steal a lot of my time.

Before June I had only borrowed a PlayStation 4 and didn't realize the console automatically takes screenshots every time a trophy is earned. Those are my auto screenshots above and now that I own a PlayStation 4 and know what's going on I'll try to start taking my own screenshots and videos if I'm going to talk about new games in the future.


7/11 UPDATE: Unfortunately, I may have gotten ahead of myself here. Although not as loud as before, the audio does still has a hissing noise that is driving me crazy. I'm not sure I can fix it as there are very few settings available on the microphone and I can't find any on the camera itself aside from a wind cut that only applies to the built-in mono microphone. I'll keep trying but I'm not confident that I'll be able to fix it and I'm afraid if my first video has bad audio then I'll lose any potential audience.

7/12 UPDATE: After six hours or testing every audio device I have I think I've reached a solution. I was about to settle on recording on a separate device and then syncing the audio with the video afterward but the microphone cable is tiny and the only extension I have causes a lot of feedback. One microphone that isn't too bad is the tiny lapel mic with earpiece that was packaged with the PlayStation 4. Sure, it's low end but there isn't the loud humming the stereo mic causes. However, a Turtle Beach headset I got for the Xbox 360 and my PC many years ago sounds decent. The only negative is the mic volume control is on a plastic piece molded for the Xbox 360 controller so I'm going to need to take that apart to see if I can get that to work with the camera. Without it I'm a little loud (if I wear the headset, I can also set it on the table), though that could be a good thing as nobody has ever accused me of being too loud -- I'm usually too quiet.

I'm sure these updates are thrilling but I felt as if I had to write them because I said I would have the video up Tuesday if all goes well (not much has gone well), or at the very least Wednesday or Thursday. I didn't sleep much last night and am yawning too much to film today. I'm confident I can get something uploaded before the end of the weekend! Someone did subscribe to the YouTube channel early but they might be more interested in the video game side, I don't know. As soon as I get my first toy video done I'll look into testing out the PS4's built-in recording and the best way to go about filming gameplay on the older systems (was going to record the TV directly but without the stereo mic I might have purchase a video capture device; I do have an old one now, quality might not be good enough though). I hope to do unboxings of Sega's consoles somewhat soon too. Thanks for putting up with my technical inexperience, sorry about the delays.

7/14 UPDATE: Believe it or not, it's done! I'll be uploading it at some point today as it's currently being processed by Windows Movie Maker. It's not perfect but I'm mostly pleased with it and I expect in the future I'll improve.

Gaming Ads: Cinemaware and Codemasters

Based in Westlake Village, California, Cinemaware was founded by Bob and Phyllis Jacob in 1985. The company's games have a strong focus on graphics quality as it aimed to make movie-like experiences. I played a few Cinemaware games on the Commodore 64 and they did look good. Of course, on the back of the box the Amiga screens looked excellent. I mostly played Defender of the Crown, though I've tried Rocket Ranger (similar to The Rocketeer movie) and Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon. Other well known games include The King of Chicago, TV Sports Football, and It Came From the Desert. Unfortunately, porting It Came From the Desert to the TurboGrafx-16 hurt Cinemaware's finances causing it to fold in 1991. A different Cinemaware was formed in 2000 that re-released and updated some of the original developer's games. It appears that the Cinemaware assets are currently owned by eGames.

Codemasters was founded in 1986 by Richard, David, and Jim Darling in the United Kingdom. A few weeks ago I posted about Camerica which was a company that published Codemasters' games and the Game Genie device (with Galoob) in North America during the 8-bit generation. For 16-bit games Codemasters self-published its games and used various distributors in North America before opening its own publishing branch in the U.S. Codemasters is still in business but no longer have a U.S. publishing arm and instead publish out of the U.K. again while using others for distribution. Currently Square Enix and Deep Silver distribute Codemasters' retail console games while Codemasters self-publishes its computer games digitally.

As we saw in the ads for Camerica, Micro Machines was a big property for Codemasters and just last month a new Micro Machines game was released, the first one in 10 years. Other popular games from Codemasters' past include the Dizzy games and Colin McRae Rally series. Today Codemasters' primary racing series are Dirt, F1, and Grid.

Cinemaware albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Codemasters albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Action Figure Alterations

Wizard #37

It should come as no surprise that I like action figures, always have and probably always will. It's unfortunate that so many cool characters from comic books, cartoons, video games, and other media never receive the action figure treatment. What's a person to do when that happens? Make their own toys of course. Well, not actually make one from scratch but you can take one toy and using some paint and creativity turn it into something else. I did just that a couple times many, many years ago. It was Wizard magazine (1991-2011) that inspired me to try such a thing as they had a column about toys called Toying Around and within that column they often highlighted fan creations in a section titled Homemade Heroes. The best creations would win a prize and people made a lot of great looking toys, nothing I could compete with so I never did submit my one completed action figure. The winner in the image I'm including used Barbie dolls rather than action figures which is more challenging since they had to make clothing and work on the hair. It's really quite impressive as they look as if Mattel itself made them.

The one character I actually completed is Valiant Comics' Bloodshot. Valiant has video game connections too as Acclaim purchased the company in 1994 which led to a few games, including Turok, Shadowman, and a crossover between X-O Manowar and Iron Man. Eternal Warrior was my favorite Valiant comic book in the '90s but Bloodshot, who made his debut in an issue of Eternal Warrior, is more interesting to look at and generally cooler overall. He is a former soldier that has nanites in his blood giving him regenerative powers, increased strength and agility, the ability to interface with machines, and the nanites even allow him to change his appearance. Although his white skin and the red circle on his chest make him look like a Japanese flag, he is an Italian American character that was in the mafia. However, the project that gave him his powers was led by a Japanese scientist.

Bloodshot carrying Storm Shadow's sword

Bloodshot in front of issue #1.

My decision to go with Bloodshot was also influenced by a G.I. Joe character that I had a duplicate of. The toy is Law & Order which is a M.P. guard (Law) and his dog (Order). I used my first Order in a school project and it was stolen (along with Snake Eyes' wolf) so I got another one to replace the dog and thus, ended up with two Laws. Law's clothing looked like it would be a good match for Bloodshot which was the primary reason I selected Bloodshot. There wasn't a lot to do with this one other than repaint the various parts of Law and select a couple weapons. Bloodshot fights with machine guns and blades making him simple enough to arm. It's not perfect and I'd rather he wasn't smiling, though I think it is obvious that the toy is Bloodshot. Some of the paint has since come off around the shoulders and the face looks a bit rough so there is probably a better type of paint that I should have used. 

Before and after: G.I. Joe's Law & Order side-by-side with Bloodshot.

You could say I completed two characters but the other was a simple sculpt out of Play-Doh that I made of Sludge from Malibu Comics. I doubt many people know who Sludge is and over the years the Play-Doh started crumbling so I tossed it. The last character I attempted to create I still have in the unfinished state and haven't touched it since 1995 I'd guess. It's actually not far from completion but I never purchased clay or found a good pig to cut a hole in. A pig you say? Can you guess what action figure would require a pig? He's probably a bit obscure as well but comes from a great cartoon that is based on a comic book. 

Although I've not read the comic book, The Tick is one of the funniest cartoons I've seen with a great cast of oddball characters. My favorite good guy from The Tick is Sewer Urchin but he got his action figure and that is the one toy I own from the cartoon. It's my favorite bad guy that I tried my hand at creating: The Deadly Bulb. Why the Deadly Bulb? I've not seen the cartoon in quite some time that I can hardly remember but his appearance is so ridiculous that it is still amazing. The Deadly Bulb has a light bulb on his head and the bottom half of his right leg is a pig. Yes, a real pig!

The base action figure used is Beldar of the Coneheads from the Saturday Night Live skit turned into a movie that also received a toy line from Playmates. I was working in a toy store at the time and we'd have bins of discounted toys. Once I saw the Conehead I thought that would be perfect and it was only 97 cents I believe, plus I got 25% off with my employee discount so not much of an investment was needed. My assumption was I could put a real light bulb over the Conehead's cone head but once I started taking apart a light bulb I realized that wasn't going to work. The action figure still turned out to be a decent choice, however, the head had to be cut. That said, the light bulb is way too big in comparison to the size of the bulb on the character's head so I should have chosen a smaller type of bulb, though I'm not sure if it would have fit over the head.

Beldar the Conehead minus the cone head.

After prepping the light bulb and painting the figure three things remain: the aforementioned pig, a goatee, and the cape needs to be extended. The Conehead already had a cape which works out well, it's just not wide enough. Modeling clay would probably work here as well for both the cape and goatee, though I'm not sure if I'll ever complete the action figure. As I mentioned the light bulb is too large and looking at it now, the white on the back of the bulb has faded in one spot. Also, I had the toy packed on Styrofoam for the past 20+ years that appears to have melted a little bit onto the cape. That can be repaired with paint if I still have the same color or it can be completely repainted. Putting on and removing the bulb from the head has marked up the face too.

This is a screencap from The Tick animated series. I couldn't
find an image of the Deadly Bulb from an official source so
this one is courtesy of a 2013 forum post at Comic Vine.

The Deadly Bulb without a lower leg pig.

After writing this I wouldn't mind creating some toys of video game characters and while I like G.I. Joes best, I really wouldn't want to paint over any more from my collection. Maybe if I see some other very cheap action figures I'll consider picking one up to paint into something else. If you've ever created toys post about them in the comments and provide a link if they are visible somewhere online. The comments section doesn't allow images or I'd suggest posting it there. Thanks for reading!

Gaming Ads: Catapult Entertainment and CH Products

This week I've got two hardware makers which is just a bit of a smaller update after uploading 80+ Capcom ads the previous Saturday. Although I've not written too much, both are interesting as one had a unique product for the time and the other has impressively been making controllers for more than 30 years.

Catapult Entertainment was a company located in Cupertino, California that is known for one product: the XBAND Video Game Modem. Distributed by THQ, XBAND (actual spelling has the "A" upside down) was released for the Sega Genesis in 1994 and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System the following year. The modem uses the console's cartridge slot with a supported game cartridge being plugged into the top of the modem. Subscriptions for online play cost $7.95/month or $39.75 for six months. It's a unique product for the time period and I'll discuss it in more detail at a later date as I do own one and played one of Electronic Arts' NHL Hockey games on it.

CH Products is a California-based company that began producing computer game controllers in the 1980s and continues to do so today. For computers CH specializes in precision controllers for flight simulation games and design software. It also makes joysticks for use in real-world applications, such as construction vehicles and video security cameras.

Catapult Entertainment albums: Facebook - Google Photos

CH Products albums: Facebook - Google Photos

The Bandicoot Is Back

After a 10-year hiatus Crash Bandicoot returns on Friday as the first three games in the series have been remastered in a compilation known as the N. Sane Trilogy from Activision and Vicarious Visions. The first Crash Bandicoot game was developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony in 1996 for the original PlayStation. Until I started writing this I did not realize that there was at least one Crash game released every single year from 1996 through 2007 for a total of 18 games. That's a lot of Crash Bandicoot! Not every game is of the platform variety as some are spin-offs, including kart racers and a party game, and only four of the games are developed by Naughty Dog.

When Crash Bandicoot was created Naughty Dog was under contract to Universal Interactive so although the character was the face of the PlayStation and Sony published the first five Crash games, it was Universal Interactive that owned the character at that time, not Sony. Vivendi later acquired Universal Interactive's parent company in 2000 and then in 2007 merged with Activision to form Activision Blizzard, and thus Activision now owns Crash Bandicoot. While there hasn't been a Crash Bandicoot game released in 10 years, (Spoiler?) 2016's Uncharted 4 does feature a level of the original game. At this point I don't know if that's a spoiler but I won't go into any details about it, and it's obviously not a key plot point to Uncharted.

For magazine scans I've got four items. First up is an interview about Crash Bandicoot with Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin from a Next Generation magazine article about many popular game characters titled "A Question of Character." After that is a preview of the original game from a 1996 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly.

Next Generation #46

Electronic Gaming Monthly #83

The only reviews I've got are both for Crash Bandicoot: Warped, the third game in the series. Next Generation and PSM said basically the same things about the game but one rated the game three stars and the other scored it a 4.5, both on a five point scale. In some issues of Next Generation you can find a list of past reviews that state the score and issue the review appeared in; if you're interested in scores I can tell you they rated the original three stars and the sequel four stars. Also, I didn't want to crop off the image of Crash in PSM so you'll find a Brave Fencer Musashi review as well.

Next Generation #49

PSM Issue 16, Vol. 2

(6/30) Slight update as I just remembered Crash did have another appearance not too long ago. He appeared in the Skylanders Imaginators: Crash Bandicoot Edition for PlayStation 3 and 4 last October.

June Update

June is just about over and I haven't had a whole lot of time to get enough done this month. I do have a couple items lined up for this week, though I still need to get images ready for the toy article. Yes, I actually have something for the toy section! Speaking of toys, and having already talked about the big video game convention so much, I thought it worth mentioning Hasbro is holding a convention in September called HASCON that looks like it could be fun. It's near the company's HQ in Rhode Island and is likely aimed at kids but for us older folks the voice actors of Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and Megatron (Frank Welker) will be in attendance, as will Stan Lee. I'd like to attend though I don't expect I will as it's not too close to where I am now. Anyways, if you have kids or like Transformers and Star Wars toys I'm sure it would be worth checking out. I'd hope for a G.I. Joe presence as well though there is no mention of that on the HASCON website.

As for E3, the game news was fairly standard and the press conferences weren't too great. I posted some comments under the part one post summarizing how my predictions turned out (hint: not so good). Also, an update for the G.I. Joe video games post is that a new Micro Machines World Series trailer released last week and clearly shows that Cobra's H.I.S.S. tank will be a playable vehicle in the game. That releases this Friday and I'll definitely try it out when I get a chance. In other video game news, today Nintendo announced the Super NES Classic Edition will release on September 29th with 21 games built-in, including the never before released Star Fox 2. The NES Classic Edition was woefully under produced and left many fans unable to get one. Nintendo says the SNES edition will have a many more produced though it will also cost $20 more at $79.99. It does include two controllers, however, whereas the NES Classic Edition was packaged with only one.

I may look into doing something on Instagram soon because Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr are simply not enough. Of course, I'm still trying to get started with a YouTube channel as well so I'm probably spreading myself too thin but those social media accounts are supposed to generate blog traffic. While I did glance at Instagram back in January, I didn't know if it would be of any use. Last week I was shown that it's not only for smartphone users and a single image can generate a lot of visibility so maybe a few ad posts or toy pics will help attract more readers. I'll target July as the time to launch Instagram (next week) and YouTube accounts but as always YouTube is a slow work in progress. Look for the new video game post mid-week as it ties into a Friday release (not Micro Machines); that one will be the typical magazine scans. The toy post might not happen until the weekend and involves some original creations.

Before I go let me thank Kotaku for posting a photograph of mine in their JPGs section a few weeks ago and for being kind enough to drop a link back to the blog. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone noticed the link but it was still cool to make it on there. If you're not familiar with Kotaku it is a video game blog site with a strong focus on Japan. While I enjoy most of their articles, I should mention that its target audience is around ages 18 and up.

7/2 Update: It looks like Instagram is a no go. I was under the impression it could be used on a computer but the official app on PC is only for viewing ( I do not own a smartphone or tablet!). There are third-party programs that may work though Instagram may suspend accounts that use those. Perhaps they will add the functionality to upload images from a PC at some point in the future at which time I will try again.