When I was a child I saw a stop motion animation called 3 Little Pigs Sing a Gig. It was this rather surreal, felt puppet musical of the aforementioned nursery rhyme.
The original Death Race 2000 starring Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine. It may have had a small comeback when the Death Race remake came out but this isn’t the kind of movie you’d see randomly on tv.
“What’s that?” “A hand grenade” best pun in cinematic history, un-toppable. I’m a huge Death Race fan, and CarWars, and the Twisted Metal game. Gun cars are just cool
Fun story, my dad met a guy who talked about a movie he had seen once, where racers ran over people to score points, my dad thought this guy was taking the piss and never considered the movie might be real. Until one day he was watching TV randomly and stumbled on the movie. But as people from the era of cable TV might remember, it was hard to know the name of the movie you just caught midway through, unless the channel showed the name of the movie you were out of luck, so I grew up knowing that this movie existed, but never knew the name. When the remake came out the plot seemed familiar enough for me that I immediately went to check what it was based on and finally put the final nail in the coffin of a long family mistery.
The 1976 arcade game called Death Race (seemingly no relation) is one of the first to ever spark controversy over violence in video games. It’s not too well known today, being almost 50 years old and fairly primitive.
And fun movie fact, Death Race 2000 is Sylvester “Sly, The Italian Stallion” Stallone’s first non-pornographic film role.
When I was a kid I went to a Primus show and they were playing music before the acts came on. One was “Smoke On The Water” covered by Tom Jones and I’ve never been able to find it or even any information about it. I know it was this song and artist as I asked the engineer, it was a great rendition and I wish I could find a copy
It might be on In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy. Track 3 is smoke on the water. And if I recall correctly Tom Jones was on this album. But I can’t be sure he is singing smoke on the water
Several years back I watched a Japanese film called Fish Story. It’s a pretty weird movie, and the first time I watched it, I hated it, and almost turned it off. It was just kind of boring, and it was really confusing because it kept jumping between different stories, and it was not in chronological order. Then, right at the very end, a short segment tied everything together so incredibly. It blew my mind and I immediately wanted to watch the movie again. I have never experienced anything like that before or since. I don’t know anyone else who’s ever heard of this movie.
That seems interesting, you’ve probably already watched it, but in case you haven’t Memento is another movie that’s told in not-chronological order and ties together at the end.
When that movie came out on VHS I painfully duped the movie in chronological order just to see what it would be like. Not nearly as interesting a story.
I really enjoyed Fish Story too! I sought out other films by the same director/writer, Yoshihiro Nakamura, and found a few others i really enjoyed. I can’t claim they’ll have the same wow factor or impact as Fish Story but i love these films for similar reasons i love Fish Story.
Golden Slumbers was crazy, weird, beautiful, and fun. Awesome ending! Highly recommend. Much different from Fish Story but with a similar sort of quirkiness. Another one i found around the same time was The Foreign Duck, the Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker. That’s a really weird one, but again with beautiful scenery and a sort of mysterious air. Another one i caught more recently and really enjoyed was called A Boy and his Samurai. I wasn’t initially that interested in watching it but gave it a chance and I’m really glad i did. Such a sweet and charming film.
It was a very cool spiritual successor to the older Ultima Underworld games, which are surprisingly interactive for their time. In many (many) ways they are the precursors to the immersive sim genre, and Arx is an interesting if isolated branch on that family tree.
My mind went straight to the SNES too, but with Chaos Seed, the feng shui dungeon building oddity. I have a feeling people might be familiar with SNESdrunk around here, though.
One of my cool older cousins was playing this one christmas when we went to his house! I was vaguely disappointed when we went back the next year and he was like “oh yeah that was fun but i beat it and don’t play it anymore.” Little kid brain assumed the game just went on for much longer than it does. Playing it together (ie: taking turns) is a fond childhood memory for me, though.
All 3 games got official English translations. Soul Blazer and Gaia were released in the US and Europe, but Terranigma for whatever reason was only released in Europe. I’m so glad emulation came around and opened up access to so many region-locked games.
Terranigma is one of my favorite SNES games! It is a truly awesome adventure and so underrated!
I played through a lot of fan translations and obscure games when I first discovered emulation. E.V.O Search for Eden is another weird, unique RPG from that era, which I highly recommend!
I don’t believe I played it, but I remember that box art. They probably had it on the shelves of my local blockbuster video. I think it might have also been a cover feature in Nintendo power.
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