Year 5: July Update

Unfortunately, I've not done a toy video since the end of June and I'm not sure when I'll get another done. The new Masters of the Universe cartoon debuted on Netflix a couple days ago so I played the Intellivision game Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man for the YouTube channel last weekend. Neflix also recently made an announcement that it is adding mobile games to its movie subscription service at no extra cost. Earlier today I posted an article about Epyx from Commodore Magazine and hope to get videos up of the developer's Summer Games II and The Games: Summer Edition during the Olympics but I might fail.

Playing the Commodore 64 (C64) games depends on a couple things, one is if I get an adapter I ordered months ago or if I take a chance on using Sega controllers without said adapter. I've used Sega controllers on the C64 for thousands of hours without incident but then some comments on YouTube warned me of possible damage so I sought out a solution. I ordered an adapter for Sega controllers from 64HDD.com which is run by a guy in Australia and that's why I haven't received the item yet. The problem is the pandemic which has impacted international shipping quite a bit. Australia Post put shipping of certain types of packages on hold so after a couple months of waiting for it to lift the hold I decided to upgrade the shipping and as of July 22nd it is in the U.S. Tracking stops in Los Angeles though and at this time I don't know where it is.

Nintendo finally announced a new Switch version, however, it's not the upgrade that was rumored. It has a seven-inch OLED screen, enhanced audio when outside of the dock, 64GB of internal memory, and a wired LAN port on the dock. There will be two colors available on October 8th at a price of $349.99: black dock with blue and red Joy-Cons and a new white dock with white Joy-Cons (pictured above). In other game news, GameMill is publishing a "Gold Edition" of G.I. Joe: Operation Blackout for $29.99 at GameStop that contains previously released digital items (soundtrack, art book, character and weapon skins) plus a couple outfits from the Snake Eyes movie that hit theaters last week.

That's all I've got this month, thanks for reading!

-Jonathan

All About Epyx (Commodore Magazine - August 1989)

With the summer Olympics just underway in Japan, I scanned this article about Epyx from the August 1989 issue of Commodore Magazine. In my opinion, Epyx made the best Olympics-themed computer games of the 1980s and possibly of all-time. Its early efforts did not carry the official Olympics license though a couple of its games do. These are all part of the "Games" series that includes Summer Games, Summer Games II, Winter Games, World Games, California Games, The Games: Summer Edition, The Games: Winter Edition, and California Games II. I've played all of those except for the sequel to California Games which was the last of the series to release and did not appear on the Commodore 64.

The article is a series of interviews that discusses the employees, company business, and a range of games. Unfortunately, despite the article giving the impression that Epyx is riding high in 1989, it declared bankruptcy later that year. It remained open for a few more years after layoffs and selling the rights to its in-development handheld system that would become the Atari Lynx. Also, some of the scans might look like the paper could be wrinkled but that's actually the design as it is meant to look like sand. 

ASCII News: Summer Issue 1991

This is the summer 1991 newsletter from ASCII Corporation which in North America consisted of its two subsidiaries: ASCII Entertainment Software and Nexoft Corporation. The main feature in the newsletter is the merger of the two subsidiaries to form ASCII Consumer Products. After that the Nexoft name did disappear but games and hardware continued to use the ASCII Entertainment name on the packaging. There is also a page about Wizardry from the guys at Sir-Tech Software, details on many ASCII products, and even a brief entry listing role-playing games from other publishers.

[YouTube] Die-cast Car Collection

https://youtu.be/3wOuqU--TyA

This is a look at most of my die-cast car collection that includes other vehicle types too, such as airplanes and boats. Although most of the toys are of the smaller scales, I've mixed in some of the larger ones. Recording and photographing this collection was challenging. Space and lighting were the biggest issues as I spread them out in the living room on top of some white boxes. There is no overhead light in the center of the room so I was relying primarily on the window which caused some shadows along the left side of the set up. In the video and photos they are grouped by company and then I tried to sort the Matchbox and Hot Wheels by year but only by eye, I didn't check the year on each one. While the first half of the video shows only vehicles from the 1980s and earlier, the second half includes some items from the 1990s. After I finished everything I condensed them all onto a couple less boxes and removed the signs resulting in the photo directly below. They aren't in the same order as Matchbox shows up in every row (8 of the 15 boxes).

Being the two biggest makers of die-cast cars, Matchbox and Hot Wheels do account for the majority of my collection. Lesney launched the Matchbox brand in 1953 and Mattel introduced Hot Wheels in 1968, and today Mattel owns Matchbox after acquiring it from Tyco in 1997. Corgi Toys was another big player in the die-cast car toy market that began in the 1950s and ended in 1983 though later reformed. I've got some Corgi vehicles, many of which feature some sort of licensing, such as Hanna-Barbera and DC Comics. I've got a handful of Johnny Lightning cars as well. Topper Toys started Johnny Lightning in 1969 and it went out of business in 1971 but has been revived a few times since then. Kenner released toy cars during its lifetime too, including a line called Fast 111's that have license plates, and Fast 111's was turned into a board game by Parker Brothers. The rest of my collection is made up of smaller bunches of vehicles from a variety of makers.

Once I finished the video I realized I'd forgotten the Hot Wheels car that appears in the header image and in the YouTube opening with Luke Skywalker's head in it! I'd never returned the car to my die-cast collection after taking photos for the creation of the blog more than four years ago so it was sitting upstairs on a shelf. It was added for the collection photos but it's not in any of the video footage aside from the intro. The photos have a lot of overlap and are arranged similarly to the video with the collection first and then some of the items I show in the second half which also includes scans. If you're skipping the video, in the second half I look at the Matchbox packaging I have that begins with a replica of the first release. Then I go up-close with Fast 111's, Kidco's Burnin' Key Cars and Lock-ups, and Hot Wheels' Crack-Ups. The last items are a Johnny Lightning replica and an early Hot Wheels Treasure Hunt Series car, both from the '90s. 

Part 1: The Collection

Part 2: A Closer Look