When I was little my parents had an Amiga 500 computer. My mother was never into gaming except for one. It was a boulder-dash clone called “Emerald Mine” (in which you collected emeralds, not diamonds) made my an obscure German studio. I think it was never widely spread and mostly stayed within Western Eu, but who knows, I might be wrong.
Back in the late 70s and early 80s, when I got to stay home from school, I remember that around 11am the local PBS channel would air short videos from regional public service stations around the country, or low-budget cartoon shorts with an experimental vibe to them, who knows where they were made or by whom.
One example was of a short fella who sang the same “Ey yey-yey-yey” refrain over and over again, those around him got increasingly annoyed but he wouldn’t stop. At the end, a mob slowly converges around the character, encircling him… and he just keeps on cluelessly singing the “Ey yey-yey-yey” refrain.
The mob covers the guy, there’s a quick collective roar, then it recedes to show a tombstone. The last shot is of the “Ey yey-yey-yey” echoing as we see the image of the grave, frozen on the screen.
Another one, which I vaguely remember was filmed by a North Carolina public television station, a live action short of a kid that gets bullied at school, at the end the bully or bullies have some sort of accident in the woods, the kid is witness to this, and the shot freezes on the kid looking straight at the camera, with a voiceover along the lines of “What would YOU do in this situation?”… and it ends, right there, not with a resolution but with a cliffhanger and a moral question.
There was a curious video game I played for a week straight in the early 90’s before my copy got stolen at a party.
It was called Scrongjhul and featured a fish with legs who had extra big knees with spikes. It was sort of a platform game but then part mystery story and part choose-your-own-adventure.
I think you had to get to the top of a mountain for something special. If you did it enough times and collected codes the game would generate then you could send off for some special prize.
Made for the Commodore C128 computer (which oddly ran Microsoft Basic), it was a simple single-screen platform shooter with the twist that you could pile up the bodies of your enemies and use them as platforms.
Ninja Bachelor Party. A goofy and mostly nonsensical home movie made by a few teenagers, including legendary comedian Bill Hicks way before he was famous.
My brothers and I had a handheld game in the 80s that was basically a star wars knock off. It even started each attack sequence with a fast version of a star wars theme. The enemies were all Tie Fighters (all digital pieces that lit up when active been off when not), and you shot them with lasers Galaga-style. If you died, it played part of Jupiter from The Planets by Gustav Holst.
Ok I’m back with another but I have the answer to this one.
I sent $20 inside a greeting card to Amon Amarth back in like 2000 or so. I’m a melodic death metal nerd and Gothenburg really set the tone. anywho, I’d heard their drummer had a side project, called “Curriculum Mortis”
I got a burned CD from the band. Unmarked. I uploaded it to soulseek. The iPod it was on eventually died.
I went a solid decade with only memories of this band.
I recent found someone uploaded the whole demo to YouTube. Of you enjoy melodic death metal, especially older, grittier less.refined, and also know Amon Amarth, just know, you know something very few know about: youtu.be/H1JWaADbcsA
My grandparents knew the guy that produced this music video for a local band. I’m pretty sure the VHS copy they had was one of few in existence. It’s been on YouTube for over a decade and only has 122 views, but it’s a gem.
Spent countless hundreds of hours playing Icicle Works on my Commodore +4 when I was a kid and I’ve never met anyone who’s even heard of it, or remembers the +4 over the 64
I used to have this game for the NES called Xexyz. It was this really strange game that tried to be several different genres in one, and I actually had a ton of fun with as a kid. I don't think I've ever met anybody else who has ever heard of this game, let alone played or enjoyed it. I'm not even super sure how I came to owning it in the first place; I think it was in a box of random games my aunt got from a flea market at one point, maybe.
If any of you are sitting on an NES emulator with an archive of every official ROM and haven't tried this game, it's definitely worth checking out. Weird little gem that nobody seems to know about, it seems.
There were four promotional songs put together to promote the 1960’s Adam West Batman. One of them is Miranda sung by Adam West. It’s, uh, something, yeah.
The film Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! is reminiscent of early Parker & Stone or Troma, and the title basically says it all. In spite of its non-existent budget and inexperienced cast, I recall it being competently paced and downright hilarious (on purpose!), including multiple memorable quotes such as “don’t be making fun of my hoe-saw,” “dude, she’s twelve,” “comparative literature,” and naturally, the titular “hey, stop stabbing me!”
There was this one game called calling for the wii. Since the Wii controller had a speaker, it would ring like a phone and you would answer it, then followed by game’s sound out of it as if you are talking on the phone. Plus it had a story I found interesting.
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