THE LAND OF NOD

 

I love this cover art on Nod, the gaming magazine issue 34 that I saw online.

It recalls the fantastic work of Kay Nielson, such as his Norwegian mythos and the Lad in the Battle, 1914.

How cool is that?

PUT A CORK IN IT! SPACE ROBOT AND SPACE BATTLE TARGET GAMES

As we've seen with Space Ace, those pop guns get everywhere in space. They pop up on auctions constantly.

The 80's was awash with target sets like this Space Robot set with a cork gun.

You could get it in different colours and with small plastic red pellets too.

Not sure if the rather snazzy card art is lifted from an arcade game. You?

Here's a more infantile illustration on more or less the same set too.

For larger ammo you could move up to ping pong balls and a particularly chunky see-through pistol.

Here's one boxed called Space Battle, which has some really great box art, some clearly 'inspired' by Star Wars but some not. I love the circular space station and the big ship up top; where are they from?

Here's another boxed Space battle target game. You can see the toothed rings on the pistols, which recall those on the Force toy gun we saw on MC last week.

This particular specimen is from the V&A collection no less, where the Star Wars riffing hasn't gone unnoticed!

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1371498/space-battle-target-game-target-game-unknown/

SPECTRUM HOBBIT

 

On one of my many missions into the depths of my our attic I found this I'd stashed away.

Its an old video cassette game for the 48K Spectrum. I picked it up years and years ago for the Hobbit connection and the artwork, which I really like.

Sadly the video game side of it completely goes over my head as the craze just passed me by. I've never played a Spectrum or any other computer game.

Have you ever played the Hobbit readers?

A GALAXIAN WORMHOLE

I'm not getting very far with ID'ing the strong but mysterious Galaxian Atari video game box art I posted t'other day.

I am as it were going up my own Galaxian butt with this.

Reader Knobgobbler suggested looking into the comic book it mentions so I did. Its a DC special they did for various Atari games called Atari Force.

Looking into Atari Force I found a site listing the comic artists. Its now clear that Galaxian contained Atari Force 5 as pictured here but nothing to help me ID the game cover.

Another article on Geek.com names Atari's box artists ... yes! but no mention of Galaxian itself. nevertheless it could be a galactic step forward. The names are Cliff Spohn, Jaekel, Rick Guidice, and George Opperman, names which mean nothing to me. You?

So until a reader or readers can illuminate this dark corner of box illustration I'll riff a bit more about Roger Dean as he used a similar font for Greenslade's LP art and I thought he was just ace when I was young.

Like the Galaxian cover, Dean could also create a darn fine flying insectoid spacecraft as shown brilliantly on his Motown Chartbusters LP cover.

Oddly enough though the Galaxian insect ship has the industrial look of our friend Ron Turner's mega machines like this 

So, Galaxians, who did your cover art for Atari?

Tell us!

ATARI GALAXIAN BOX ART MYSTERY

I saw this ATARI game box art online. It depicts these cool flying metal worm craft and I immediately thought that it looked reminiscent of Frank Hampson and Dan Dare art in Eagle.

But this box art is from 1982.

Does anyone recognise the artist?

I recognise the font used for Galaxian. Its the same as that used on an old Greenslade record LP sleeve art called Bedside manners are Extra. This artwork was done by Roger Dean. Is this a clue as to the Atari artist?

CREEPYPASTA: THE GHOSTS IN THE GAME

Sometimes I think that youngsters live in a separate world to me. I wonder if you do?

Take for instance a conversation I had recently with a young teenager about the modern computer game of Minecraft.

Now, bearing in mind I've never played a single computer or video game in my life, trying to understand the minutiae of Minecraft is no small challenge, especially when its being explained without the use of a computer.

I've discovered many things about this game, which one day will be a vintage memory for today's grown generation and a must-have on Ebay in 2038!

For me one of the most peculiar facets of the game is the concept of ... wait for it .... Creepypasta. 

Creepypasta, as far as I understand it, is a collective noun describing various nefarious beings that can appear from time to time. In other words, bad dudes who you don't wanna mess with on account of their scariness.

Minecraft creepypasta appears to focus on three main characters [apologies for any mistakes here]:

Herobrine: an almost god-like figure

Error 303: an elusive ghost-like creature

The Null: a dark being living in the shadows

The most interesting element of Creepypasta for me however is the seepage of urban legends into it. In particular, according to my source, Slenderman is a Creepypasta.

Slenderman is one of those urban youth crazes like Killer Clowns which bob up from the hormonal teenage tumult from time to time. Getting fat on success, Slenderman has even got his own movie this year.

If I was to suggest a new Creepypasta then it would be the Judderman, a spiky goblin who appeared in a Metz, a cold beer [?] TV advert years ago. He flickered behind the nordic forest's trees making him even more sinister. A creepy jagged woodland sprite!

Which urban legend would you put forward to the Creepypasta recruitment committee?

RETRO GAMING WRECKAGE?

Does anyone still play 80's cassette computer games?

I have loads of them from an old friend from years ago.

Is it dead tech now?

Are they collectable in their own right?

Would they make good birthday prezzies?

IS KIDS' TV DEAD?

Kids never mention TV to me anymore.

We lived for the telly in the 60's and early 70's.

The talking point at school was always what was on the box tea-times and Saturday mornings or the latest tv-related comic or toy you got.

Thunderbirds, Banana Splits, Double Deckers, Kung Fu, TV21 and Look-in to name but a smidgeon all ruled the day. We just couldn't get enough of kids TV.

These days schoolkids talk about computer games, You Tube and snapchat. No mention of terrestrial TV at all. I wonder in this kind of climate if children's TV can survive at all?

The whole format of kids culture is changing. Their heroes are YouTubers who show videos of themselves playing Fortnite and Minecraft or any other computer game topical at the time. Modern kids watch this stuff on their consoles all day and all night. Family TV viewing appears to be dead.

I cannot think when the last time was a kid talked about a TV show.

Like the household telephone. almost universally obsolete, I fear that childrens' TV for older kids will also go the way of the dodo. Maybe TV's themselves have had it too?

How can a kids' TV producer stop this receding tide?

What's your take on this readers?