Weekly Geekly for July 26, 2024

Another Week Another Geekout

Retrogaming for Fun and Education

I’ve worked a lot of interesting jobs in my life ranging from a 21/Craps dealer to a construction supply delivery driver, from movie theater Assistant Manager to Non-Profit Program Director. One of my favorite memories comes from when I was working as an undergraduate in the university’s IT department. I wasn’t studying computer science. I was a Political Science and English dual major. That didn’t stop me from applying for a job in the IT department. As is true of a lot of people my age, I grew up programming in BASIC and eventually C++. It’s a background that made the transition to doing data analysis in R pretty smooth and that has inspired me to build a SmartyKit with my daughters this summer. We will also probably try to add memory and upload BASIC to have some fun as well.

I remember chatting about Asimov’s Foundation books, Iain Banks’ Culture series, Tolkien, D&D, and more with the staff there. It was almost enough to get me to change my major and had things gone a little differently in those early undergraduate days I might have. In one of these conversations, I talked about how much I absolutely loved Interplay’s Star Trek 25th Anniversary game. I first played the game on the copy of Interplay’s 10th Anniversary I owned. I bought it for Bard’s Tale and kept playing it for Star Trek 25th Anniversary because it was such a great adventure game that capture the best of the adventure game genre with the feel of Original Series Star Trek.

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During that conversation, one of the staff said, “You know, we have an ancient Star Trek game on the server. You’ve likely never played it before.” I was intrigued, so I asked how to access it and loaded it up to play. It was a completely text based game, but one were the text represented graphics.

Image from Aaron Reed’s Code Archeology

While the interface was primitive, it was also functional and fun. It created a kind of “theatre of the mind” presentation of the Star Trek universe and I was an instant addict. I played the game during almost every moment of downtime I had. I also probably played it when I should have been doing other things. Super Star Trek, or as I knew it at the time Star Trek, was a 1975 and 1978 game by David H. Ahl and Mary Cole that was eventually published in the book Basic Computer Games.

Ahl and Cole based that game on an earlier 1971 game written by Mike Mayfield for the SDS Sigma 7 mainframe computer. Ahl and Cole’s initial updating of Mayfield’s game is very similar to the original, but they do add a significant change in the 1978 version for which Ahl secured the rights to use the Star Trek brand name.

You can find a text copy of the game in David H. Ahl’s 1978 book BASIC Computer Games and you can find the original BASIC code here. I plan on programming this, or at least copying it onto our “The C64,” with my daughters this summer using the code in Ahl’s book. If you don’t want to spend all that time typing into an emulator or onto a retromachine you can play a Commodore 64 version of the game right now on Internet Archive. The old game is tons of fun, but it recently got an update.

Emanuele Bolognesi, an amateur game designer and programmer from Florence, Italy, recently programmed an updated version of Super Star Trek which he then further refined by merging the classic BASIC game with the Interplay adventure game’s aesthetics. He calls his second game Super Star Trek meets 25th Anniversary. It’s free to play and absolutely fantastic. The image below was taken from his Super Star Trek and you can see how faithfully he merged the two games using the 25th Anniversary edition’s view screen as the playing area.

I’ve already spent more than a few hours playing this excellent adaptation of Super Star Trek and it’s a great demonstration of how Old School Gaming/Retrogaming is active, and creating great content, in the video game community as well as in the table top role playing game community.

Weekly Film Article Cavalcade

The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson

I’m featuring three reviews from Luke Y. Thompson this week. the first was a no brainer as it’s the review of The Fall Guy he wrote for me that I published earlier this week. It’s an interesting examination of the film as a discussion about actors as stuntmen. I reminds me a bit of the film High Risk that Jet Li did in the mid-1990s as a critique of Jackie Chan’s claims of doing all of his own stunts. Given that Jackie Chan punctured his skull in the filming of Armor of God, I don’t know how spot on that critique was but High Risk was a fun movie none the less and Luke’s discussion here is worth reading.

Maybe they should have called it The SUMMER Guy, amirite?

Like most of the critics I’ve been reading, Luke really enjoyed Deadpool & Wolverine. Given that Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool and Green Lantern are only distinguishable from one another by their profanity, I’ve always been of a mixed mind about the franchise. The movies are fun, but there’s a part of me that thinks they’d be just as good at a less baudy R. The eyeroll moments detract from what are otherwise amazing fanservice films. I still like them, and I like Reynolds’ Green Lantern performance, but I also find them pre-juvenile. I’ll still watch it and like it, but I’d like to see Reynolds do something more than rehash the character he’s played since Foolproof.

Speaking of Green Lantern, Reynold’s Green Lantern co-star Taika Waititi, has directed a remake of the highly divisive Terry Gilliam film Time Bandits. Gilliam’s film is one of those you either really love (and Luke falls into this camp) or that really annoys you for how cheap it looks and how harsh the final moment is emotionally. I’m not in the critical camp, but those I’ve talked to in that camp are just as passionate about how much they hate the film as those who love it.

I think it’s a film that alternates between brilliant deep emotions and low humor in a way that makes for a film worth experiencing again and again. The kind of typical Monty Python humor reminiscent of “It’s wafer thin” or singing about sperm being sacred, though nothing is that explicit in Time Bandits, being balanced against some really heavy emotions demonstrates Gilliam’s craft as a film maker (in my opinion). It’s not a favorite film of mine, but it’s one that I very much respect and think is almost as perfect as it can get.

So why remake it? Maybe to appeal to a new audience with different mythical references? Okay, that sounds legit. Getting Taika Waititi, a film maker who captures the balance of pathos and Monty Python style humor very well, seems a natural, as Luke points out in his review. Sadly, as Luke also points out in his review Waititi seems to have lacked the courage that created that unsettling ending to the Gilliam picture. As disturbing as those who don’t like the film find that ending, it is that ending and similar moments throughout Gilliam’s film that make it as powerful as it is.

Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat

I shared Courtney Howard’s review of Find Me Falling last week. She was pretty hard on the film, and made comparisons to My Big Fat Greek Wedding in which Find Me Falling was found wanting. I mentioned that because my wife and I liked Harry Connick Jr. in Hope Floats that it would still be on our list. Well, we watched it and our experience was much different than Courtney’s. I’m not saying that there weren’t echoes of My Big Fat Greek Wedding (and Mama Mia!), where Find Me Falling failed in comparison. Those echoes are there and Find Me Falling doesn’t measure up to the humor of Wedding or the singing of Mama Mia! (surprising with Connick in it but true).

As Courtney pointed out, the romantic comedy elements of Find Me Falling were formulaic and a little too pat. All of that is true, but we still very much enjoyed the film (B/B+). Why? Because of the non-romantic comedy moments that are eluded to in the name. It is the moments when Harry Connick Jr.’s character engages with people at their worst moments where the film shines because the message of the film, overall, isn’t about the love between two people, but about the love between us all. It’s about building community and being there for people at their worst. It is here that the film works best. My only critique is that Jody and I wished that the film spent more time on that and less on the romance. The romance should have still been there, but it was the human connections outside the romance that should have been the focus.

I mention this past film not to show that I know better than Courtney. I feature her reviews here for a reason. She’s an excellent reviewer and I respect her point of view immensely. I mention it because of how I think the reference points she used to ground her review (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) shaped her expectations and assessment and that her latest review is grounded in a pretty interesting filmic association.

Over at Variety, Courtney is reviewing the newly released, primarily on Vudu/streaming, The Girl in the Pool starring Freddie Prinze Jr. Her review of the film is pretty positive, especially in comparison to others I’ve seen online, and has as its primary filmic counterpoint Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Rope. Both films are about an attempt to hide a body, and solve a murder, during a party, so it’s a very natural association. I couldn’t help but think, with all of the mentions that Courtney makes regarding the humor in the film whether some references to Hitchcock’s humorous The Trouble with Harry. It also brought to mind Peter Berg’s Very Bad Things and Gavin Wilding’s Stag, both of which involve attempts to hide deaths that are inconvenient for a husband/fiancé.

My own filmic references make me think that Courtney’s positive review, and my eventual assessment of the film, will be very similar. I very much disliked Very Bad Things because it was too nihilistic and not comedic enough for my tastes. The killing was gratuitous and the characters unlikable. It became more a commentary about how bad people are at their core rather than a film about how desperate people will be in bad situations. It’s not hard to make a good movie about how bad people are at their core, but it is hard to make a good funny film about it.

From Courtney’s review, I get the sense that Dakota Gorman has a more positive view of people in general and that even as Freddie Prinze Jr.’s character is guilty of at least one terrible thing, cheating on his wife (played by Monica Potter), he may in general be worth hanging out with for a few laughs.

As an aside, because the inciting incident of the film was Freddie Prinze Jr.’s character finding his lover’s dead body floating in a pool, I couldn’t help but think about his role in Summer Catch and in my headcanon this film is now a sequel to that guilty pleasure.

Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse

The Summer Olympics are off to a good start this week and so what better them for the

Retroist

than to discuss Olympics past? While there is a lot of cool information in the post on the Olympics, I was pleasantly reminded of the animated film Animalympics from the 1980s. Retroist links a prior review and reminds us of how much fun the film is. I’ve included a link to a favorite sequence, the Diving portion at the second half of the video below, for you to check out if you’ve never seen it. It is very much worth hunting down, even if it is filled with some dated pop culture reference jokes.

Olympics, Animalympics, and the magic of Tug of War

Animalympics

Ethan Sabatella

continues his series on how to use One Piece as a model for you TTRPG campaigns, or as I call them RPG campaigns. Of particular use here is his discussion of alignment. Too often, in the modern era of gaming, we think of alignment as a proxy for morality. That wasn’t how it was initially framed in D&D, rather it was an allegiance (or alignment) with a particular cosmic force (Law or Chaos). In One Piece, the major antagonist represents the forces of Law and Pirates align with Chaos. The parallel here is with Michael Moorcock’s Hawkmoon books where Dorian Hawkmoon fights against the forces of Granbretan as that society represents an overabundance of Law and the damage that can cause. If one only reads Moorcock’s Elric, and first Corum, stories, one might think Chaos is that same as Evil. The Hawkmoon series disabuses readers of that assumption and One Piece does too.

Using "One Piece" as a Model for Running TTRPG Campaigns - Part 2

Role Playing Game Recommendation

Are you looking for a game that is easy to understand, has tactical complexity, has room for significant free form storytelling, and has a robust Medieval European (England really) setting with heavy doses of influence from Michael Moorcock’s Elric Saga? Then Dragon Warriors is your game.

Dragon Warriors can be played in a manner that emulates light hearted or grim and gritty Fantasy fiction, but given the lethality of its combat system it does lean more towards the grim and gritty. The game has a number of innovations, the weapon damage system is something you really should check out. Weapons do a fixed amount of damage and after you roll to hit an opponent you roll penetration dice versus an armor’s protection value to see if you damage them at all. Only then do you apply weapon damage. It’s an interesting alteration on the armor as damage reduction paradigm and while it does make combat more tactical and sometimes slower, given the relatively low hit points that characters have in the game that never becomes an issue.

The game’s mechanics are deeply rooted in the world design, so this is not a generic Fantasy rpg. The rules and setting have a particular feel to them and it is an interesting feel. Oh, and one interesting tidbit, the game was originally published as a series of pocket book sized paperback volumes. I don’t know if it was the first game to be issued that way, but it is a pretty cool way to buy your books.

Music Recommendation

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve included Progressive Rock in the week’s recommended songs, but I’ve always got room for Yes in my playlists. The song “And You and I” comes off of Yes’ fifth studio album Close to the Edge. It’s an album that featured songs that are extremely prog like the eponymous “Close to the Edge,” but also featured more pop friendly prog songs like “And You and I.” When “Close to the Edge” incorporates a lot of jazz elements and is a more challenging listen, “And You and I” combines older folk sensibilities with electronic and progressive elements in wonderful balance. As much as I love “Close to the Edge,” songs like “And You and I” are wonderful introductory songs to the genre. Drummer Bill Bruford quit Yes for King Crimson after this album as he sought to challenge his own ideas of the role of percussion in composition. He’d eventually find his way back to the band in a fashion when he and Steve Howe worked with the London Philharmonic on the album Symphonic Music of Yes.

To get a good example of how Progressive bands reinterpreted and pushed rock music forward, I don’t think there is a better example than Yes’ cover of the Simon and Garfunkel song “America.” Where Simon and Garfunkel’s song (below) is haunting, the version by Yes takes time to build up and is large in scope. The message is lyrically the same, and the music contains critiques and love within both versions, but the musical ideas expand beyond the folk in the Yes version. The addition of jazz and classical ideas don’t elevate the song, the original’s beauty and power are undeniable, but they do get the listener to think about the sense of loss differently. The sadness is there, but there is a chaos that highlights the love Simon felt for his fellow man in interesting musical phrases. Listen to the Simon and Garfunkel one first, then stay with the Yes version to at least minute 5. Around minute 4 you’ll notice some really interesting exploration of American musical ideas.

After all the high falutin’ classical music in the last entry and the Progressive and Folk rock in this week’s newsletter, how about a little punk cleanser? We’ll start with Broken Will by Corrosion of Conformity, a band who sadly transitioned from punk to metal after they learned to play their instruments. They are still a good band, but there’s less undirected rage.

Country music and Punk/Alternative often intersect in interesting ways. You’ve got industrial bands like RevCo who use Country as both an influence and something to critique, but you’ve also got bands like Dwarves (and Social Distortion) who incorporate Country and Rockabilly techniques into their music and become better for it. While Country music is often viewed as the music of the establishment, it is often a very rebellious music as well. For every “Sure Be Find if You Did,” there’s a “Folsom Prison Blues.” It’s the music of moonshine and outrunning the police as much as it is the music of beer, trucks, and broken hearts. That’s a perfect mix for Punk and while later bands took the cowpunk sound and refined it, Tex and the Horseheads are where it began.

Classic Film Recommendation

It’s been a long road this week, so the recommendation will be short and to the point. As readers know, or at least might guess, romantic comedies are a favorite of mine and I’ve been on a bit of a “Screwball Comedy” kick. The Screwball Comedy is typically viewed as a combination of humorous scenario and romance, but it’s a classification that I think has been too broadly applied over the years. Where a film like Bringing Up Baby, where Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn have to deal with an escaped leopard while building a romance is obviously a Screwball concept, a film where a couple divorces due to their own obstinance only to fall back in love as happens in The Awful Truth hardly applies.

For me, there has to be something “Screwball” for it to truly be a Screwball Comedy, which brings me to this week’s film the 1931 Frank Capra film Platinum Blonde starring Loretta Young, Jean Harlow, and Robert Williams. The set up is an interesting one. Ace reporter Stewart “Stew” Smith (Robert Williams) goes to the mansion of the wealthy society family “The Schulyers” in order to get the low down on a scandal involving the family. While he is there, he captures the eye of Anne Schuyler (Jean Harlow) who falls in love, or at least intrigue, with him after he turns down a bribe and a payoff and demonstrates integrity as a reporter. Stew and Anne get married, much to the sorrow of Stew’s best friend “Gallagher” (Loretta Young), and the roller coaster begins.

It’s not much of a zany roller coaster though and more of a ride of self-discovery where Stew finds out who he really loves and why. The film probably would have made Robert Williams a star, but he sadly died three days after the release of the film from infection due to acute appendicitis. His timing is perfect, as his ability to balance humor and genuine romance. He and Harlow never have real chemistry, but they aren’t supposed to as their relationship is shallow. It is the scenes with him and the film’s top billed star Loretta Young that really sizzle. Loretta Young had yet to become a superstar, but she is radiant and her performance is subtle in this film. She is so easy to fall in love with in this movie and when she smiles she steals all the limelight from a stunning Jean Harlow. That’s no easy task, but one that she does effortlessly.

As an aside, as with a number of the films of the depression era there is some subtle commentary on class here. The scene where it is revealed to Gallagher that that Stew has just gotten married to Anne, and wants to celebrate at her apartment, takes place in a Speakeasy. The lower class has to break the law and drink in the shadows. This is contrasted with later scenes where Anne’s family attends party after party in the upper echelons of society and where alcohol is freely and liberally available.