They will be playing three albums in their entirerty – namely Three Imaginary Boys (1979), Seventeen Seconds (1980), and Faith (1981). Any die hard Cure fans will absolutely love the playlist. There’s nothing better than songs like 10:15 Saturday Night, A Forest or Play for Today being played live.

Look at the line up of who will be appearing – Awesome to see Lol Tolhurst back for this tour:

Three Imaginary Boys (1979)
The Cure Trio: Robert Smith (voice & guitar), Simon Gallup (bass), Jason Cooper (drums)

Seventeen Seconds (1980)
The Cure Quartet: Robert Smith (voice & guitar), Simon Gallup (bass), Jason Cooper (drums), Roger O’Donnell (keys)

Faith (1981)
The Cure Quintet: Robert Smith (voice & guitar), Simon Gallup (bass), Jason Cooper (drums), Roger O’Donnell (keys & percussion), Laurence Tolhurst (keys & percussion)

The Cure are playing at the Opera House which is unusual and new to the band, but I noticed that the performance will be recorded for distribution and broadcast so expect to see DVDs released in the future. Pity their other Oz tours from years back haven’t been recorded because they have done some good ones – hang on, all of them have been good! And it is being advertised as a 180 minute concert.

Can’t wait for this, and look for another post here after the concerts to report how good it was as I’m definitely going!

The first music video it played was the Buggles – Video Killed the Radio Star. How appropriate!

Enjoy the video:

These very simple games took the world by storm. The size and simplicity made these very addictive to all. It was always a challenge to beat the highest score – even if it was only by one point. There were normally ‘Game A’ and ‘Game B’ options on these units, with the latter being a much harder and quick paced game (nearly impossible to master in my opinion).

Although googling the history of these devices reveals a few titles I have never heard of or seen, I think Game and Watch’s first game to stardom was Parachute:

This game was released in 1981, and the aim is to move your rowboat left and right to catch the parachutists that are being dropped from the helicopter. You need to ensure that they are caught, otherwise the shark in the water eats them up. As time gos one, the parachutists become more regular and more of them are released.

Also released in 1981 was Octopus:

The aim of this game was to guide your diver down to the treasure chest and get the gold, and then bring it back into your boat. Sound easy? Oh, I forgot to add that there is Octopus with long tentacles trying to stop you

Many other titles were released, and Nintendo also then released multi screen games that were still simple but required keeping an eye on the action on both screens whilst playing. The most popular no doubt was Donkey Kong:

No need to explain what you need to do in this game, which came out in 1982.

Also in 1982, Oil Panic came out. Although not as popular as Donkey Kong, it wasn’t a bad game. I had one of these, and kick myself now for not keeping it all those years ago.

The idea behind this game was to catch the leaking oil from the pipes above with your bucket and drop them into your bosse’s oil drum. Missing oil or dropping onto motorists below caused you to lose a life.

If you wish to relive the fun of these games, some online versions can be found here.

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I’d call Galaxian a typical space invaders clone but taken to the next level where the aliens have much more movement when flying around.

Galaga goes one step further. The aliens fly in more daring flight patterns but are in no way random. Regular players know where to sit so the aliens can be shot when they initially appear.

A cool, new feature in Galaga is where a “boss Galaga” attempts to capture the player’s fighter using a tractor beam – if successful, the fighter joins the formation and must be freed by the player (using another ship and costing him/her a life), enabling him/her to control two ships simultaneously. That doubles the firepower but if you miss in capturing it, there goes (in effect) two lives.

Play it here:

Galaga

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I do, and of course it was the Space Shuttle. It seemed a big deal then (and it was). But I was only reminded today listening to the radio when it actually was…………….

The space shuttle Columbia launched on April 12, 1981 which happened to be the 20th anniversary of human spaceflight, and returned on April 14, 1981, after orbiting the Earth 36 times.

Another space shuttle to fly in the 80s was Challenger, whose maiden flight was on April 4, 1983.

It completed nine missions before breaking apart 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission on January 28, 1986, resulting in the death of all seven crew members.

The accident led to a two-and-a-half year grounding of the shuttle fleet, with missions resuming in 1988 with the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery (whose first mission was actually in 1984).

Bit of trivia – Discovery was the shuttle that launched the Hubble Space Telescope.

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Trying to stop you was the Qix, a randomly moving object (and quite adavnced for it’s time) and two sparx that would travel along the same lines the you would move your marker on. The Qix could only touch you while you were drawing a line, and once you started you could not stop otherwise the fuse would get you.

The were many strategies used in claiming your land/trapping the Qix and required much planning ahead of time in trying the avoid the Qix and sparx.

Play it online here ….

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The object of the game is to direct frogs to their homes one by one. To do this, each frog must avoid cars while crossing a busy road and navigate a river full of hazards including crocodiles and disappearing lillies.

Play it here ……