Only the 80s

The 80’s were the decade that started the trend in what we enjoy today in handheld games – thanks to Nintendo.

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.

Last night I saw Human League live here in Sydney. It was my first I have seen them even though I love them. All the previous occasions they have visted I have missed them for various reasons.

Last week the venue and date were changed. Not sure why but the venue where it was at is a smaller place which I enjoy more. We arrived at 8.30pm when the support band was playing. The League werent due on until 9pm for a 2 hour set.

We got some great standing room about 4 rows from the stage in front of Phil. How great for some decent pics!!

Prior to them coming on, I was wondering what song they would play first. I t had to be something boppy but not on eof their major hits. When the concert started, I realised ‘of course!!!’ – They started with ‘The sound of the crowd’ to get everyone going.

I wish I could remember the full playlist, but I do recall the songs that went off – the first one being ‘the things that dreams are made of’. Everyone really got into it.

Also, huge crowd reactions came from ‘the lebanon’, ‘mirror man’, and ‘electric dreams’. Everyone really got into these three songs. My favourite Human League songs are ‘fascination’ and ‘love action’ which were also played.

Here are some of the shots I took with my mobile phone (not great but better than nothing)….

Joanne Catherall

Susan Anne Sulley

The Human League

Phil Oakey

Phil looked great, Susan better(!) and Joanne had put on a bit of weight but I loved the concert very much. The gig only lasted about 90 mins (was supposed to be 2 hours?) and my only criticism was that ‘louise’ and ‘darkness’ weren’t included in the playlist :-9.

That aside, I would highly recommend any 80’s fan seeing Human League live. I reckon they are getting better with age!

Peter Gabriel, yes the same guy who founded the band Genesis, went solo in the mid 70s.

His most popular work was from his 1986 album titled ‘So’. Such songs as Big Time and Sledgehammer were iconic of the 80s. Big Time topped at #8 on the Billboard top 100.

The music video had muc to live up to after Sledghammer, and he did it well with effects such as stop motion, claymation, and strata-cut animation which showed Peter leaving his small town for the big city.

Bit of trivia about the song:

Big Time was the official theme song of WWE WrestleMania 22.
Big Time was used in the trailer for the film Big.
Big Time was used in the film Spaceballs.
Big Time is featured in the Wii video game Imagine Fashion Party

Enjoy the (extended) music video here:

Missile command was a very simple (as far as graphics go) yet very addictive arcade game released in 1980 by Atari. The aim of the game was to defend your six cities against a never ending barrage of missiles, and with your three anti-battery stations, you had to stop them.

To do so you had a trak ball to move your cross hair, and three buttons to shoot from your three respective anti-battery stations. From memory, it was one of the first arcade games that used the trak ball. If not, it was certainly the only game where it was the main control that was heavily relied on to play the game. From my youth, I remember slamming the ball at an angle, as hard as I could, to get my cross hair from one side to the other as quick as possible.

The game is split up into levels, with each one getting harder as more and more missiles being sent down the screen – faster and faster too.

The game ends when all your six cities have been destroyed. An amusing part of the game was the flashing, huge block lettered ‘game over’ message displayed on the screen. Typical retro stuff.

If you would like to play it online, go to the Atari site and have a go.

All that Neal Page (played by Steve Martin) wants to do is to get home for Thanksgiving. His flight has been cancelled due to bad weather, so he decides on other means of transport.

As well as bad luck, Neal is blessed with the presence of Del Griffith (played by John Candy), who is a shower curtain ring salesman and all-around blabbermouth, never short of advice, conversation, bad jokes, or company.

And when he decides that he is going the same direction as Neal, that’s when the fun starts.

As the title suggests, to get home they try via three main modes of trasnport with hilarious results. Another famous actor is in this movie, being Kevin Bacon.

Similar to Ferris Bueller, this is an iconic movie of the 80s, as is the promo picture for the movie shown below:

1987 iconic movie

A very popular arcade game of the 80s was Galaga. It was the sequel to Galaxian and was released in 1981 by Namco.

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

If you are like me, you would be kicking yourself for throwing away a lot of you old toys/music/clothes etc that you used (and enjoyed) back in the good old 80’s.

I still have most of my old vinyl records but the ironic thing is that I have nothing to play them on! That aside, I have no plans to get rid of them mainly because of the memories they hold.

Everything is back in vogue now, and some of it is even worth serious money if you’re into that type of thing.

But what if you wanted to get some of that old stuff back? Where can you get it from? Well, I have a couple of ideas to help point you in the right direction.

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Where do you buy 80s memorabilia

Remember when you were were younger and you heard that NASA were going to space in this new aircraft that looked like a plane, and when the mission was finished the craft would then glide bac to Earth and land like a plane?

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…………….

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Space shuttle flights in the 80s

Believe it or not (depending how old you are will bring back memories), but Microsoft Windows started it’s life in the 80’s.

In November of 1983, Bill Gates showed IBM his new operating system, Windows. It went down like a lead balloon, but Bill realised that a proper GUI based operating system would be the way of the future.

Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985. It wasn’t a complete operating system like today as it was an extension of MS-DOS (which was released in 1981), the ‘command line’ or text based operating system.

From 1985, the selling details were as follows:
Price: $99
Hardware Requirements: 80386 CPU, 256KB RAM, 1MB Storage
Media Size: five 360KB 5.25″ floppy disks

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Microsoft Computing in the 80’s

For you Aussie readers, Rage which is the music video show on the ABC is going retro this month.

As they have done in previous years around this time, reruns of the the classic music shows countdown and rock arena are being shown this month.

As always with Rage, you can look at the playlists beforehand to see what is coming up.

Checkout the RAGE website.