Computer Spot

January 29th, 2022

For a few years before I left Australia, my gaming life was all about the PC. Bernard had purchased his first computer in the early 90’s (for an ungodly amount in those days) and even though it was in his room I played games on it every chance I could get.

I mostly played RPGs and strategy games, and this was the era of the SSI ‘gold box’ AD&D series (all of which I played), classics like Eye Of The Beholder and Ultima 7 (thanks, Bernard, for helping me set up a boot disc to run that beast!), the Might and Magic series and… this game:

That’s a postcard for the 7th Wizardry game. I found it the other day while doing some random sorting through stuff we had in a crate. The postcard is in astonishing condition considering it’s age, for it was given out in a store to advertise the imminent release of the game. Remember those pre-internet days when shops were full of catalogues and handouts to advertise upcoming releases? It was fun grabbing all the free stuff and looking through it afterwards. What makes this postcard particularly interesting is the reverse:

Incredibly, this is an original card I picked up myself before the game was released! Some time in mid 1992 I waltzed into Computer Spot in Charlestown and would have grabbed this, possibly when I was there to buy something else. The vast majority of my game purchases were made at this particular store, which was a few doors down from the fish-and-chip shop where I first played Ghosts’n’Goblins and Exed Exes many years before. At this very store I bought the previous Wizardry game, all the SSI games, the Ultima games and a few others like Battle Isle and The Summoner. Bernard bought his flight simulators here as well.

Those were the glory days of boxed PC software, when the boxes were loaded with bonus items (‘feelies’, as Infocom called them) and the box art was wonderful. Computer Spot was loaded with games, and to an avid player like myself it was always fun to go in and browse the titles. For those few years I devoured what would become some of the best PC RPG’s of all time, and I have very fond memories of that era. The pinnacle of the games was Crusaders Of The Dark Savant, a challenging and lengthy dungeon crawl that I was proud to eventually beat, which was no small feat in the time before internet FAQs.

At the time I left Australia Computer Spot was evolving away from exclusively PC games into a general game store as they added consoles to their stock. At some point since then they’ve ceased to be. My guess is, assuming they even lasted that long, that like most stores of their type they didn’t survive the transition to online computer game distribution. I wonder when exactly that Charlestown store that I loved so much closed it’s doors for good?

I used to keep my games in perfect condition fully boxed, and don’t remember what happened to all of them either before or after I left Australia. I imagine I left them with Bernard or passed them on to someone, and they were all eventually sold and/or trashed. I wish I still had my two boxed copies of Wizardry V and VI, but even though I don’t, it gives me a warm feeling inside to know that for some reason I kept this postcard, and even brought it to America with me so long ago 🙂

Posted in Australia, Blog, Collecting, Games, Time | 2 Comments »

Pirates vs Robots!

January 22nd, 2022

We recently watched all five Pirates Of The Caribbean and all five Transformers films in order. Both series were massive hits, spanned around the same time period (2003 – 2017) and made about the same total amount at the box office (about 5 billion). Let’s compare the series film-by-film!

The Curse of the Black Pearl vs Transformers

The first Pirates film holds up quite well, although seems weirdly subdued by today’s action-film standards. Johnny Depp is likeable enough as Captain Jack Sparrow, but only at a distance, and I wonder if the series would have served better riffing on the setting rather than the character. The other actors do a good job, and the film does a great job resurrecting the swashbuckling genre for a modern age. The special effects are ancient today, but still look good. Lots of fun even twenty years later.

Transformers is bombastic and frenetic but was such a massive hit that it led directly to the action-over-plot films of today. The robots looks great, even if the transformation sequences are needlessly complicated, but the human actors are superfluous and even at times repulsive (I’m looking at you Shia). The film is also obsessed with shots of the US military, to the point it becomes disturbingly like a recruitment film. A fun watch, but mostly forgettable.

Comparing the two, I’d say that Curse of The Black Pearl is easily the more entertaining.

Dead Mans Chest vs Revenge Of The Fallen

Pirates 2 is where the franchise really took sail. The filmmakers cleverly improved on every aspect of the original and raised the stakes in every way. The character of squidlike Davy Jones is one of the strongest the series ever had, and the decision to make this well-plotted story a two-parter, was a good one. Visually it’s extraordinary, and it still remains the best Pirates film.

By comparison, Transformers 2 is a mess. The characters (and human story) take even more of a backseat to mad robot action to the extent that the scenes with Shia Lebouf or (even worse) Megan Fox are so ridiculous you can almost hear the scriptwriters desperately trying to make their lines relevant. Of course the robots are still great – special mention to Devestator eating a pyramid – but it’s a mostly disposable film that failed to improve on the first.

Compared, Dead Mans Chest is easily the better of the two.

At Worlds End vs Dark Of The Moon

Pirates 3 wrapped up the story of 2, but cleverly introduced a few new twists and characters. The always watchable Geoffrey Rush returns as Barbossa, and a lot of screen time is given to the delightful Naomi Harris as Tia/Calypso. While not as sublime as the previous film, this is still a masterclass in Hollywood action movies and would have been a fitting end to the entire series.

Transformers 3 is where the series descends into madness. Leonard Nimoy plays Sentinel Prime, a villian that quotes Star Trek (I kid you not) as he tries to turn Earth into Cybertron. Shia Lebouf is back as Sam Witwicky, and he’s managed to get himself an even more irritating (and beautiful) girlfriend. It’s all lunacy, but the action scenes are so over the top (a gigantic transforming robot worm tunnels through buildings) it’s strangely watchable. This is where you start accepting that the scripts are trash and turn your mind off and enjoy the pretty images. It’s objectively a terrible film, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Once again, comparing the two I’d hand it to At World End.

On Stranger Tides vs Age Of Extinction

Pirates 4 is a misstep for the franchise. This is ‘the mermaid one’ and features the pirate Blackbeard as he (and a mostly new band of heroes) search for the fountain of youth. By this film Captain Jack has become a weird gibbering fool, and contributes so little to the plot I question his inclusion. Blackbeard steals every scene he’s in, so it’s puzzling how underutilized he (and his magical boat) is. This is a Pirates film that occurs almost entirely on land, and raises some difficult questions about the ‘Pirates universe’ that we still don’t have answers for. Still fun, but not as much as previous films.

Transformers 4 is so crazy it’s hard to believe it was made. It’s a bit of a series reboot, and the hero is now Marky Mark. The opening sequence where he finds a dormant Optimus Prime is subdued and works quite well but just when you think the filmmakers have decided to dial back a bit it goes off the rails with a nanomachine-based resurrected Megatron and then further off the rails with dinosaur transformers that could be millions of years old?!? There’s gaping plot holes aplenty, and lots of characters that don’t have any valid role in the film, but those shots of Optimus riding a T-Rex into battle whilst wielding a massive broadsword are cinematic gold. The best Transformers film yet.

For the first time I’d say that Age Of Extinction beats On Stranger Tides for entertainment value.

Dead Men Tell No Tales vs The Last Knight

Pirates 5 tells a tale of an undead pirate on a quest to defeat (guess who?) Captain Jack Sparrow. Of course our heroes devise a plan to prevent this, and it requires them to retrieve Poseidon’s trident?!? Yes apparently the god Poseidon exists in the Pirates universe (and he’s not even the first god in this film series), and you can imagine how bonkers this plot is to fit that in. The special effects are breathtaking and the visuals at times gorgeous, but this film is overly loaded with CGI and in some way feels fundamentally different from the previous ones. Props to the cute new girl, who we learn is Barbossa’s (yes he’s back) daughter, and the way this film ties up a few loose ends from previous films. But once again Depp is a weak link and overall the film fails to recapture past glories.

Transformers 5 is famously insane: this is the one where the filmmakers apparently thought gigantic intelligent transforming robots was too bland so they had to work in the entire Arthurian myth as well. It also weirdly retcons previous films (transformers fought in the World Wars?), has way too many characters, plot holes aplenty and by its end all but destroys the world. There are glimpses of greatness in this film, like the scene where Megatron negotiates the release of his goons, or (as always for this series) whenever Optimus is swinging a sword, but the action scenes overall are just stupidly over the top and the grim ending (and post credits sequel opening) leave a bad taste.

Two weak films then, each arguably the worst of their series. Comparing both, I’d give the slight edge to Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Overall then, by my reckoning in a battle of Pirates vs Robots it seems the Pirates win, and easily, with 4 victories to only 1.

And yet… there is a sixth Transformers film, and to the surprise of everyone it was genuinely great. Yes I speak of Bumblebee, the charming reboot with a story about Bumblebee arriving on Earth. Maybe I was just dazzled by Hailee Steinfeld, but I loved this film and would rate it above every Pirates film!

And there’s also apparently two more Pirates films in some level of development, and a seventh Transformers film (Rise Of The Beasts) has been filmed and is due for release next year. Maybe one day I’ll have to follow up this post with further critique 🙂

Posted in Miscellaneous, Movies | 1 Comment »

Mozzarella Time!

January 17th, 2022

KLS got a cheese-making kit for Christmas, and already used it to make some halloumi cheese. She did that so quickly I didn’t have time to take photos, so you can bet when it was time for the next cheese I did. Today she made ‘fast mozzarella’!

That’s most of the contents of the kit. It also came with a lengthy manual (you can make over a dozen types of cheese), a thermometer and a cheesecloth. You can also make butter using the kit!

The mozzarella began with a gallon of milk which was heated and then (tiny amounts of) most of the ingredients from the above photo were added periodically.

It started solidifying after the first few items were added, but once the rennet and calcium chloride was put in the process sped up considerably:

All told it was only about an hour on the stove before it was removed for the next step, at which point it looked like this:

If this had been a traditional mozzarella recipe the cheese would now be pressed for about an hour to remove the whey, but the fast version utilized the microwave to do this. In three steps it was microwaved for a minute and each time more of the liquid came out:

It’s almost done! The remaining addition was to stir in a bit of salt, after which it looked like and had the consistency of bread dough:

The penultimate step was to form balls and brine the cheese for 10 minutes. During this step the cheese cooled and solidified:

And then it was done! The three mozzarella balls are now wrapped and in the fridge, waiting to be eaten (by KLS only since I’m not a fan of this type of cheese):

She’s already tried some and says the consistency and taste are both good and she’s looking forward to using it in a recipe! That’s two out of two cheese successes from this kit 🙂

Posted in Food | Comments Closed

Chris Achilleos

January 12th, 2022

Somehow I missed that fantasy artist Chris Achilleos passed away about a month ago. He was an artist that helped shape my image of fantasy worlds via the many properties that he created art for in the 1980s.

He painted the cover art for many Fighting Fantasy books, to the extent his style became ubiquitous with the world in my mind. Ever since I first saw it, I’ve been a big fan of the piece he did for the Titan book:

He was also a prolific artist for fantasy novel covers, including many ‘sword and sorcery’ examples that I devoured in my youth (and still do today in fact):

And while I don’t think I actually knew it at the time, he was also the cover artist for a lot of Target Doctor Who novelizations. This range of work would bring him renown in later years, and I was happy and surprised when we stumbled upon an exhibit of his original Doctor Who paintings when we visited Wales years ago.

Achilleos was the man who painted the iconic Heavy Metal poster (and the designer of the character Taarna):

And who did the cover art for the first edition of the popular Talisman game:

When I was a youth, I had an Achilleos poster on my wall, taken from either an old White Dwarf magazine or an issue of Warlock magazine. I also attempted to copy his art myself in my juvenile scribblings, and even used to sign it using his trademark A in C.

And still today I have two prints of his work framed and hanging on the wall of my home office. When I bought these from a dealer at NYCC many years ago he told me a few nice anecdotes about the man himself, and how (at that time, when Achilleos was in his late 60s) he was eternally delighted that work he had done in the 1980s was still appreciated. There are many great fantasy artists, but Achilleos has always been one of my very favourites. He’ll never know how important his work has been to me, but I thank him for it nonetheless.

Posted in Art | Comments Closed

Shellfish Mermaid and Suicide Gudetama

January 11th, 2022

We recently obtained three examples of toys that expand in water. Have you ever had one of these? Do they work as advertised? Let’s see…

First was this shell that contained a cute anime mermaid! Here’s the instructions, handily translated by google:

Couldn’t be easier: submerge the shell in water and wait a few days. So we did, and here’s what happened:

That’s about 72 hours in those photos (and the weird lighting is because our kitchen light broke in the middle). As you can see it worked exactly as advertised, however the… creature that birthed from the shell is quite different from the packaging!

Oh well, maybe this one will be better:

What’s this? A Gudetama comes out of the shell and there’s a chance for a gold one?!! What do the instructions say:

Oh my god there seems to be a clause that requires the user to kill themselves – by hand no less – if something unexpected happens! It also seems to suggest we’d need 81 containers of water and there was something about mold collapsing! It was with no small trepidation therefore that we submerged the egg and waited a few days:

And out popped Gudetama! This one also worked exactly as advertised and the reward was much better than the weird mermaid. He was bigger than the egg as well, so he definitely grew.

If you’ve had one of these you know the instructions say if you dry them out they’ll return to their shrunken size and can be grown over and over. While it’s true they shrink, it’s never to the original size. After a week out of water for instance the (cute anime) mermaid would never fit back into her shell:

We even had a third one, which came as a Christmas gift:

Up to four times his size you say? I’ll spare the montage of growing photos, since it’s hard to appreciate the difference, and instead present this pair of photos:

On the left is immediately before the water, and on the right is after about five days of soaking. Four times the size? I’ll let you be the judge 🙂

Posted in Crafts, Miscellaneous, Science, Toys | Comments Closed

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