Retro Thing

Can You Escape Fireball Island?

I've always been fond of board games, and tonight I was remembering some of the large games from the 60's. Lots of ambitious concepts in the era, and many giant sized 3D games. I remember an all plastic mountain game called King of the Hill. It was a 3D version of the classic "Snakes and Ladders" game, but played with real marbles and many random perils.

As we chatted, a younger friend remembered a board game from the early 90's that sounded a bit similar, and it turned out to be Fireball Island. The game is a 3D environment for the playing pieces to explore. A draw of the "fireball" card entitled you to roll a red marble though the 3D terrain, hopefully knocking down your opponents. I found a copy of the commercial, and from the looks of it this game could be tremendously fun even for adults.

Clearly inspired by Indiana Jones (just take a look at the main font), the game promises a gaming adventure free of any electronic gimmickry and annoying sound effects. Just an actual bona-fide non-virtual experience. I really want to try it out, but with so many pieces & easily wrecked gameboard, it's difficut to find a complete set in good shape. Ebay has complete sets ringing in at quite a bit of money... nut there are many finished auctions showing that there are still bargains to be had out there.  In case you're wondering, yes that's a lot for a game that's not even 20 years old.  I guess it must be the most fun game ever, but it looks like I'll never get to try. I'd better just stick with the ol' King of the Hill.

links:

A few more box shots & details of King of the Hill thanks to boardgamekeek.com
Want to grab one on Ebay and tell us about?

Wagner Portable Personal Clothes Dryer

 

One of the things I miss as an apartment dweller is hanging my clothes outside on the line to dry. Your clothes end up smelling terrific (depending on the neighborhood, I guess), they last longer, and best of all - it doesn't cost anything! Years ago some neighbors would look at me askance when I would do such a thing (Is it so déclassé to hang one's underwear outside?), but now lots of people are yapping about outdoor clothes drying like it's a new idea. It takes a worldwide financial crisis to de-stigmatize the time honored of drying clothes without electricity?

I'm sure that appliance manufacturers are a bit uneasy thes days. What if people get the idea they might not need a clothes dryer? Or perhaps by using it less, their current unit lasts 15 years instead of 8? Sure a new dryer might be more energy efficient than an older one, but is there anything that manufacturers can do to make dryers even more energy effective? The answer came decades ago from Wagner in the form of the Personal Clothes Dryer.

Did Jerry Lewis Invent And Patent Video Assist?

Yes, THAT Jerry Lewis, A friend of mine characterized the two phases of Lewis; the “schlemeil” and the “genius”. This would fall into the “genius” camp. A lot of film fans don't realize that Jerry was equally adept behind the camera as in front of it. For his films of the late 50's, he wanted to effectively direct himself in the picture but was held back by the 24 hours it took to develop the day's film (or “rushes”).

It's hard to be spontaneous a day later, so in 1960 he patented a system of mounting a video camera alongside the film camera, both sharing the same view. The video camera would record the same image the film camera saw, and Jerry could instantly play back the scene right there on the set from videotape. Today we call this “video assist”, and it has been an absolute requirement for filmmakers for decades. He's been lauded for this crucial contribution at film industry functions for years, but it appears after all these years that the story isn't exactly true.

Argus Wet-110 Camera Goes To Bottom Of The Sea... Or Pool

It's vacation time in the USA, and many take the warm-ish weather as a sign to head for water. Folks try all manner of new underwater sports in these days, and while memories are water resistant, cameras usually aren't.

Today you can find a lot of affordable underwater digital cameras, but back in the film era they were rare and expensive items. While a digital camera has few moving parts that need waterproofing, a film camera needs a waterproof door for film access, the winding mechanism needs to be water resistant, along with battery hatches, etc. A $10 hermetically sealed digi-cam for kids can visit the depths, but you had to work a little harder to find an affordable underwater camera a few years back.

The Briel PockeTerm

Vince Briel designed the PocketTerm as a low cost terminal for vintage microcomputers. It lets you use a spare VGA monitor and PS/2 keyboard for input and output.

Dual serial ports are included for debugging and development - you can transfer data to/from a PC while still attached to the host device. The tiny 4.5" x 2" board uses a Parallax Propeller microcontroller and is VT-100 compatible. The only thing it doesn't include is a case.

The DIY kit is now on sale for $60, or purchase your PockeTerm assembled and tested for $90. Blank PC boards are available for $18, if you happen to have a few spare Propeller chips lying around. 

The Briel PockeTerm

200 Years Of Electric Light

MAKE contributing editor Bill Gurstelle demonstrates how to build an arc light. It's based on the first electric light, crafted by Sir Humphry Davy in 1809.

Make a simple arc light

Woolen Lemmings

June Gilbank is now my crochet idol. She explains, "There are tons of Mario and Pacman crafts out there, but I think that one group of old-school video game stars has been sadly neglected (until now).

Gamers of the ’90s probably remember the classic Lemmings video game franchise – those hapless green-haired troops who followed each other in a line and would walk straight off a cliff to their doom if you didn’t create a path to safety for them.

My favourite part was making the tiny accessories - and the wire stand for the floater so he actually floats - do you see his dangling feet? I have more details and a free pattern to make the basic Lemming on my blog, if you're interested." [via technabob]

My Chemical Romance

When Super 8 film burst onto the moviemaking scene in 1965, it was a breath of fresh air. The format was designed to be as simple as possible - pop a cartridge into the camera, point and shoot. The world had never seen anything like it, and the resulting Super 8 revolution heavily influenced several generations of filmmakers and amateur movie buffs.

The simplicity of the technology helped to assure its long-term success, and the affordability of the format encouraged millions of eager filmmakers to experiment. Some even said it was magical. And - twenty five years after the "end" of Super 8 - this enchanted format continues to cast a powerful spell.

The Super 8 industry collapsed almost overnight in the early 1980s. I was a young and impressionable teenager when the army of sleek VCRs and camcorders rudely elbowed their way into homes around the world. Super 8 instantly became quaint and old-fashioned. Video, on the other hand, offered instant gratification and predictable results - just like a trip to McDonald's for a quick bite to eat.

Manufacturers shifted their focus to the new electronic technology immediately. Those that couldn't - Bell & Howell, Eumig, Elmo, Chinon and dozens of others - vanished. The film era had come to a sudden and premature end. Worse still, we had unwittingly stumbled into a technological dark age.

New Gakken 4-bit Micro Computer Kit

The Gakken GMC-4 single board computer includes a 20-key hexadecimal keyboard, 7-segment LED display, and a row of seven discrete LEDs. It includes seven built-in programs including an organ, sound game, whack-a-mole, tennis, music player, morse code generator and a simple timer. It requires 3 x AA batteries and minor assembly.

The tiny machine is based upon the 4-bit F-Maikon (microcomputer) R-165 that Gakken released in the early 1980s for their Denshi Block series. There are only 32 op codes to learn, making this a unique opportunity to hone your machine language skills. After all, if machine language was good enough for Woz, it's good enough for the rest of us.

The GMC-4 is bundled with Vol. 24 of Gakken's “Otona no Kagaku” Magazine that features advanced science kits for adults, available on eBay for a mere $32.80 plus shipping from Japan.

Gakken GMC-4 4bit Micro Computer [scroll down for English]

My Hong Kong Addiction

I know this has nothing to do with vintage technology, but I'm obsessed with a little mail-order technology shop in Hong Kong called Deal Extreme.

They offer an amazing array of gadgetry ranging from sensible things like batteries and electronic parts to kooky stuff like Neodymium magnetic spheres and magic supplies. Shipping is free, although you'll have to wait a few weeks for packages to reach North America or Europe by air mail.

I couldn't resist picking up the OneStation handheld game console (above). It emulates a variety of classic NES and SEGA Genesis titles and sells for under $30. The company also offers solid deals on flash memory cards. I picked up a Kensington MicroSD card for peanuts recently. It seems to be the genuine article and works perfectly in my camera.

All in all, I'm impressed. I've placed half a dozen orders with the company over the past year and always received what I expected within a reasonable time.

Deal Extreme: Cool Gadgets at the right price

NASA's Lunar Orbiter Photographs Apollo Landing Sites

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched in June. Its primary mission: to create a high resolution map of the lunar surface from a distance of approximately 50 km.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing, investigators at Goddard Space Flight Center have released the first images of Apollo lunar landing sites captured by the orbiter. NASA is quick to point out that these images were captured before the LRO reached its final mapping orbit; future images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution.

The timing couldn't be better. According to survey results published recently in the Telegraph, a quarter of Britons believe the Apollo 11 mission moon landings in 1969 were an elaborate hoax, and almost half thought the Apollo missions were a waste of money. I doubt these new images will do anything to discourage the conspiracy theorists -- nothing will ever provide sufficient "proof" for the tinfoil hat brigade.

However, perhaps NASA's renewed focus on lunar exploration will encourage a new generation of young researchers and push all of us to look beyond the inconsequential blue marble we call home. And if that fails, I'm sure there's gobs of money to be made strip-mining it.

The first Apollo landing site photos [NASA]

Travel To The Moon With Only Your Ears

This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the first US landing on the moon. There are lots of ways to study the historic adventure, but one of the most interesting is to experience it all in real-time. Check out wechoosethemoon.org. The site is playing back the audio of the moon mission in its entirety, counting down to the moment of the actual landing 40 years ago. You can follow along with the many accompanying diagrams and animation that illustrate where we are in the mission at any one time.

The audio helps reveal just how complex a mission this was, as well as how professional and surprisingly mundane it all sounds. We've all heard the historic audio from the moment of the landing itself, but now is your chance to hear all the important chatter that led up to that moment. I'll have the website open over the next few days on my computer's desktop so that I can follow along on this historic odyssey. You can even stream the audio alone via a popup player (great while you're doing other things with your computer), Shoutcast, and get updates via Twitter & more.

Feel free to share your thoughts & memories in the comments section of this post, or chat with other Retro Thing readers on our forum.

link:
We Choose The Moon webcast and interactive website

related:
Apollo mission commemorative matchbooks

NASA Unveils Restored Moon Landing Video, Original Tapes Still Missing

Apollo 11 launched from Cape Canaveral exactly 40 years ago today. It would be another four days before the iconic video of Armstrong and Aldrin stepping onto the surface of the moon would be broadcast back to earth. The slow-scan B&W video feed captured images at 10 frames per second with a mere 320 lines of resolution.

Sadly, the original tapes have been lost for decades.

Star Wars: Behind The Scenes Home Movies

David Berry shot some historic Super 8 footage while working on Star Wars at Industrial Light and Magic. The film offers a casual glimpse into the hands-on world of the cinematographers, model makers and artists who brought Star Wars to life in a Van Nuys industrial park during the late 1970s.

Dave Berry's Star Wars Home Movies [via OhGizmo!]

Retro Synth Ads

Retro Synth Ads is a blog full of scanned synthesizer ads from the 1980s. I'm ashamed to admit how much I looked forward to seeing new ads for instruments I could only dream of owning as a teen.

Mr. RetroSynthAds writes, "Growing up, synthesizer advertisements were the only way for me to find out about new synths. Gear advertised in magazines such as Keyboard Magazine and Electronic Musician. Its not that my local music shop didn't have knowledgeable staff, I was just scared of them until I was in my late teens. Please join me in my infatuation with vintage synthesizers, drum machines and sampler advertising."

Retro Synth Ads [via Matrixsynth]