Year 5: August Update

As I mentioned last update, I was waiting for a Sega adapter for the Commodore 64 which I did receive shortly after that post and used in The Games: Summer Edition recording. Unfortunately, the adapter does not work with Master System controllers or the rapid fire unit, only Genesis controllers which I hadn't realized when I ordered it. I suppose it doesn't matter too much but I do like using rapid fire for some games. Unfortunately, the Intellivision Amico has suffered yet another delay though it is still expected this year. Intellivision Entertainment also posted a video on YouTube at the end of July that showed games being packaged. While some physical games were expected and I thought on a limited basis, it appears that quite a few titles are getting the physical treatment.

Amico Games

As I write this, Europe's equivalent to E3, Gamescom, is wrapping up its digital show today. Much of the news is for the types of games I don't cover on the blog aside from these brief mentions with no images or links for M-rated titles. Despite the console shortages, Microsoft unveiled a Halo-themed Xbox Series X and a release date for Halo Infinite of December 8th. Sony put a date of February 18, 2022 on Horizon Forbidden West and officially confirmed the game is coming to PlayStation 4 in addition to PlayStation 5. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which I have discussed a few times in these updates, still doesn't have a set date though Warner Bros. is now saying to expect it in spring 2022. As far as new games, Deep Silver and Volition showed off a Saints Row reboot and 2K announced a Marvel game titled Midnight Suns that is being developed by Firaxis Games and is planned to release next March for Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, and PC.

Midnight Suns

I love Firaxis' XCOM games and Midnight Suns has tactical combat but it's more role-playing oriented than strategy from what I understand though no gameplay was shown. The game is based on the Midnight Sons (not suns) comic book which revolves around supernatural/magic types of characters (Doctor Strange, Morbius, Ghost Rider, etc.) and plots. However, the game will include some of Marvel's heavy hitters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Wolverine. Another new game announcement is Park Beyond from publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment and developer Limbic Entertainment (Tropico 6). This one is a theme park simulator not unlike Frontier Developments' Planet Coaster and will be available on PC, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5 in 2022.

Park Beyond

Something else I talk about here from time-to-time is baseball, mostly in relation to video games though I did make a trading card video as well. I read some news earlier this month that will hurt the Topps company quite a bit as MLB will not be signing a new contract with Topps when the current one expires which is at the end of 2022 with the player's association and 2025 with MLB itself (meaning it can use team logos for a few more years but not player images). Topps has been making baseball cards for 70 years and the new licensing partner isn't even an experienced rival like Upper Deck. Instead, the license is going to Fanatics which has also signed a deal with the NFL player's association that will begin after Panini's contract expires in 2026.

Thanks for visiting,
Jonathan

Photoshoot: Mego Hulk vs. Mego Superman

I set up a mini battle between Mego die-cast action figures of Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk and D.C. Comics' Superman. Some of the photos came out good but it was tough to get them in good action poses without the scale looking too far off or just getting them to balance well enough. Hulk is 5.25" while Superman is 5.5" and he also has a broken thumb on his right hand.

You may recognize the background from my Colorforms post and video as I'm using The Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk Colorforms Play Set along with a couple LEGO street panels for the base. More information on the Mego figures can be found at the Mego Museum website. The colors vary between photos as I chose different settings when editing them.

Superman Arrives

Superman knocks Hulk down who then punches the wall in anger.

Superman should not have landed... Hulk smashes him into the wall! 

(I like the first photo but you can see the table as the background slid backwards.) 

Hulk puts Superman through the wall!

Superman takes the offensive!

An accidental image that kind of makes it look like they are moving...or it's just a terrible photo.

Hulk wins...

...or maybe Superman wins? Most likely the Man of Steel does prevail.

Time for our heroes to shake hands!

The Games: Summer Edition

https://youtu.be/nosuYsEQ2nA

As the 2021 (or 2020 as they are still called) Olympics began I posted an article from Commodore Magazine about Epyx and last week I uploaded a video of Summer Games on the blog's YouTube channel. Today, as the Olympics come to a close, I have uploaded a video of The Games: Summer Edition which is the first game from Epyx to feature the official Olympics license. I rarely put "Let's Play" videos on the blog but I need more posts and wanted to add a review from Commodore Magazine. I was hoping to play Summer Games II as well, however, the disks are giving me some issues and I haven't managed to get more than a few events to load. This review is from the April 1989 issue which is a bit late for a game that released in 1988, plus it's quite long for a sports title as the writer covers each event in detail.

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