Rare Atari Game – Starwombat
Starwombat was released for the Atari 2600 in March 1978 but was withdrawn very soon afterwards owing to two mistakes with its production run. The first issue was that the back story to the game – that of the fictional history of the titular Starwombat, its role in future space warfare, and the honour and responsibility of the people tasked with caring for these magnificent creatures from birth to death – was sadly missing; the story, originally written in Japan, was shipped across to America for translation but lost at sea (along with several thousand cartridges of the game) when the ship it was sent on disappeared. When those games that had already been distributed to America and Europe were released anyway without much in the way of explanation as to what to do the result was a confusing experience for everyone. The second issue was the now infamous Game 18, the Starwombat Vaccination game, the purpose of which was to administer a series of vaccinations through the creature’s thick pelt. Sadly, without an adequate description the game more closely resembled an early porn game as one player tried to ram a long spike into the opening of the creature controlled by player two. This led to a raft of complaints and a rapid withdrawal of the game from circulation. The Atari 2600 video game cartridge Starwombat is highly sought after by fans of the console. In 2011 a cartridge sold on eBay for over...
Bad Space Hotels
Subtitled Reviews from another world! and published in 1975, Bad Space Hotels was quite likely partly the inspiration for the Space Vacation novels by Joachim Tung-Deprezant of a few years later. Unlike those novels, though, Marshall Wickstomp’s foray into literature disregards storyline in favour of fictional reviews of hotels (with problems) on planets throughout the galaxy. The book is quite funny to start with – although the use of the word “space” as an adjective does wear thin after a while – but gets darker towards the end, a result of problems in the author’s personal life: house repossession, liquidation of his company manufacturing Space Frisbees, premature baldness, and most influentially, a messy divorce. This is easy to see with a comparison of one of the early bad space hotel reviews with a later one. Early: The Triton Excelsior is perfectly located for the Space Convention Center but our room was too close to the rooftop launchpad. While we appreciated the great view of Space City Gamma and the bonus sight of the entire Spacegridball field during the tournament final my tertiary wife felt the deafening roar and retro rocket plumes that cascaded onto us during our digital candlelit dinner on our 829th floor balcony spoiled our anniversary. Later: I thought this would be the only hotel I’d ever need. I thought I would be able to stay here forever. I was wrong. It looked good on the outside, at first. But inside there was not enough space illumination. The darkness seemed to grow like a cancer. The bed was hard, cold, and unforgiving. The windows were covered in astrosoot. Looking out from inside made everything seem bleak. There is a foulness in the corridors that permeates everything it touches. I would not recommend the Hotel Caroline on Arcturus IX to my worst enemy, although I understand my former best friend Dave likes his regular room in the basement. Wickstomp disappeared in...
Morris Men, Stealing Sheep, And An Apparition
A fabulous music video for the song Apparition by Stealing Sheep featuring the Abingdon Traditional Morris Side and the Oxford City Morris Men. I’ve got some history with Abingdon Traditional Morris having photographed them on one or two occasions before (Mayor’s Day 2011, Mayor’s Day 2012, and the Abingdon Extravaganza) and from having a wife and a best friend, both of whom are cousins of one of the dancers (the bearded one you can see stepping over the broom at the start of the video). The song is great and it’s made greater by the video which is wonderfully choreographed and expertly directed by Dougal Wilson with some lovely effects and a fantastic attempt to feel like a one-take video, without actually being one. Extra points go to the band for learning some of the steps too. Stealing Sheep is Rebecca Hawley, Emily Lansley, and Lucy Mercer. Their sound in general and the sound in particular for this song fits perfectly with this video. Quirky is the...
Movies I’ve Made My Wife Watch
Over twenty years ago, in the period before I met the woman who would soon move in with me and much later become my wife, I used to watch movies quite a lot. This was the golden age of VHS video and small video shops with quality making way for quantity meaning there was a neverending stream of films to rent of every genre imaginable. Some were great, some were appalling, some were both great and appalling. In the period since I met my now-wife I have introduced her to some of these films as they’ve sprung to mind or I’ve accidentally rediscovered them somehow. I love all these films for their nostalgia factor or because I genuinely think they’re fabulous. My wife does not always share my opinion despite repeated attempts to change her mind. Cry Baby My wife – being a woman with eyes – already had a bit of a thing for Johnny Depp. Thus, she had no problems at all agreeing to watch Cry Baby and there was no need for The Restraining Device. This, along with Hairspray, formed my introduction to my wife of the wonderful world of John Waters. Is there a more enigmatic film director on the planet? There is not. The film is a great 1950s-style musical with great songs and wonderful cast. “Look!” I said to my wife. “That’s Traci Lords.” “Should I know her?” she asked. “Er.” “Where do you know her from?” “Er.” Wife’s review: So good. John Waters can do no wrong. The Beastmaster My wife describes this fantastic fantasy adventure (my words; not hers) as my “Hawk the Slayer”, meaning I feel about The Beastmaster in the same way she feels about Hawk the Slayer; she has fond memories of the latter while accepting its many flaws and assumes I feel the same way about the former. I do not feel that way, though. She is wrong. It has Marc Singer, witchcraft, human sacrifice, Rip Torn, scary leathery bird things, and ferrets. That’s the sort of pedigree you won’t find anywhere else. The Beastmaster shits all over Hawk the Slayer. That’s all you need to know. Note: under no circumstances ever watch Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time. Just. Don’t. I’m not kidding. Wife’s review: It’s nice that you like it but it’s not very good. Running Scared Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines. Cops. Sick and tired of getting nowhere with the criminal elements of Chicago they decide to retire to Miami. They’ve just got to survive the homicidal tendencies of Jimmy Smits and a montage to the sound of Sweet Freedom by Michael McDonald....
Close Encounters And Other Movie Title Translations
I happened upon an old Japanese poster for the science fiction movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind recently (pictured below) and was pleased to see it contained the title that the film was released under in Japan. If you’re not familiar with the Japanese language then it roughly says “The aliens who keep stealing our stuff are back” which, I think you’ll agree, is a much more descriptive title for the immensely flawed (yet enjoyable) film. Close Encounters isn’t the only film with a better title in a foreign market release. Here are a few others you might already know: 1972’s science fiction movie Silent Running was known in Iceland as Crazy Space Gardener. The distributors of 1980’s Caddyshack in Portugal knew they’d get better attendance with a film called Disruptive Golf Course Rodent. Also from 1980, the comedy 9 To 5 became known in Saudi Arabia as This Is Why Women Should Not Work In Offices. Fantastic Voyage was given a 1966 release in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) as Very Small Donald Pleasence Movie. It was the same reverence for the actor that also saw Upper Volta give a 1980 release for The Pumaman as Donald Pleasence Versus The Flying Man And The Giant. The excellent 1982 Steve Martin movie Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid has a wonderfully surreal title in English but in Nepalese it makes far more sense as Monochromatic Film With Most Amusing Coffee-Making Scene. In 1989 the modern classic Road House was released and the following year saw the film make an appearance in Honduras as Incompetent Doorman Keeps Getting Employed. The distributors of Afghanistan were obviously a little confused with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris in 1972, hence the title of its limited release, Not Entirely Certain What Is Happening Outer Space Film. Of course, you can’t have a list of oddly-translated movie titles without including (and finishing off with) 1977’s surprise hit, Star Wars. In Lesotho: The Princess In The Sky Ball. In Tonga: Colourful Sword Warriors In Space. In Czechoslovakia: Gold Robot And White Robot In Robot Story. And, finally, in Guyana, demonstrating that sometimes cinema distributors just use the posters as guidelines: White Couple Erotic Adventures In The Great Black...
Orbital Snooker 2000
The late 1970s saw a flood of speculative sporting instruction manuals hit book shelves including some of the more well-known such as Mixed Tug O’ War (Punk Edition), Rally Car Jousting, and Table Polo. Those books, at least, had some chance of actually being played but the same couldn’t be said for the end of the decade’s Orbital Snooker 2000 by Irish author Lee Ayres. Ayres was a reasonably well-respected futurist and extrapolated then present day materials and technologies into the heady days of the twenty first century to come up with the rules of the game he considered would become the opium of the world’s populations. It was his intention to become the father of the sport and cash in on global licencing rights but his vision of coloured mile-wide spheres of graphene piloted by the criminal masses of competing nations attempting to knock their opponents into the sun and gain their freedom was just a little too expensive to...
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