Nostalgia overload: Back in the 80s…
I was telling the kids about the days when arcade games were ubiquitous.
When we lived in Pine Avenue, Elwood in the early 80s, the local milkbar on Ormond Road had a Donkey Kong Junior machine, for instance.
But a short bus ride away in St Kilda was video game heaven. For starters, Luna Park (which in Melbourne was and is free to enter; unlike Sydney, you only pay for the rides), had a shed full of video games next to the Ghost Train.
In there I remember pumping my 20 cent coins into machines playing Donkey Kong, Popeye, Frogger, Elevator Action and Space Invaders. The latter was black and white, but with a colour overlay to give it a multi-coloured background.
A short walk down Carlisle Street was a laundromat with a Moon Patrol machine. The laundromat is still there, but these days shares the premises with solarium. Sign of the times?
Moon Patrol in the laundromat was great fun, for two reasons: firstly the machine was not in great demand, so there was rarely a queue. (The etiquette in those days was that if you wanted to play the machine next, you’d put your 20 cent coin on it; there was usually a spot where the screen met the console where a coin could be placed and it wouldn’t roll away.)
Secondly, it was one of the earliest games which would allow you to continue playing after losing all your lives, by putting in another coin. While I wasn’t the world’s best Moon Patrol player by any means, this meant that for 40-60 cents I could play right through the course (which went from A to Z), whereupon it would go back to the start, but with extra difficulty. Great fun.
Further down Carlisle Street, at the corner of Barkly Street, was a takeaway place with a Galaga machine. The takeaway place (or its descendant) still appears to be on the same corner. On my trip home from school in year 7 and 8, I’d often change from the tram to the bus at this spot, and play Galaga while I waited.
Other highlights around that part of St Kilda for a teenage geek included the computer shop on Barkly Street between which sold clone disk drives for the Commodore 64 (the Skai 64 drive, which I had, but which seems to have virtually faded into obscurity) and the two local newsagents on Acland Street, which sold all my favourite imported computer magazines, such as Commodore User, Compute’s Gazzette, Zzap 64! and later (when I switched allegiences from the Commodore 64 to a BBC Micro) Acorn User and The Micro User. Later when these publications got less mainstream, I ended up having to go into McGills (also now defunct) in the city to get them.
Further afield were Timezone in the City (apparently there are still a few of these around) and of course the Fun Factory in South Yarra (likely to be redeveloped in the not-too-distant future), where I sometimes played after school once I’d gone to Melbourne High… not to mention that one year rollerskating (also at the Fun Factory) was offered as a sport. I recall they had Joust, Gauntlet (great with four players), Gyruss and Dragon’s Lair (never my favourite).
There was also a place in Balaclava next to the railway bridge which, I recall, was called Sam’s Amusements. Mostly pool tables I think. They may well have had arcade games in there, but it looked way too scary, and I never went in there.
You may have worked out by now that I’m enormously nostalgic for the video games of this period. As it turns out, there’s a place in South Melbourne that sells multi-game versions of the old arcade games, in pretty authentic-looking cabinets, and there are others around Australia where you can buy them from about $1200 upwards. One day, maybe.
In the mean time, there’s always MAME.
Tags: arcade games, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Luna Park, Moon Patrol, nostalgia, St Kilda, Video games
20 comments
RIP Sarah Jane Smith
Right from the very beginning, the companions in Doctor Who were our (the viewers’) representatives on the voyage.
For me growing up, the archetype for this character was Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen. She was there just as I got into the show. The innumerable repeats of 70s episodes in Australia during the 80s and 90s, as well as her repeat visits (right up to David Tennant’s final scenes in 2009) just cemented her position.
As Doctor Who Executive Producer Steven Moffat said:
I once showed my son Joshua an old episode of Doctor Who, in which Lis appeared. “But that’s Sarah Jane,” he said, confused “In old Doctor Who. From years ago. How come she always look exactly the same?”
Overnight it’s been announced that Elisabeth Sladen passed away from cancer.
A couple of months ago we lost Nicholas Courtney, The Brigadier. So this is the second childhood icon of mine to go this year.
Sarah Jane returned in her own TV show, Sarah Jane Adventures. In this clip from last year, just after farewelling Jo Grant, she name-checks other Doctor Who companions who are apparently still fighting the good fight.
RIP Elisabeth Sladen, 1948-2011.
There’s at least a dozen ways to save our petrol
Marita was telling me about an ad from the 70s telling people to save petrol. I had absolutely no recollection of it, but sure enough, Mr Youtube had it…
What a cracker! I couldn’t figure out why they made the cartoon people nude, but a comment suggested it was to grab people’s attention.
Perhaps I just never took any notice because such concepts were irrelevant in my family.
I assume it was devised in the wake of the 70s oil shocks.
Despite the jingle, I only count six ways of saving petrol noted in the ad (and it mentions carpooling twice). Maybe there were others quoted in print or other complementary advertising.
Tags: advertising, petrol
9 comments
Butterfly ball (Love is all)
My recollection is this clip used to pop up on the ABC when they had five minutes to fill.
Nowadays they’d probably just run a bunch of promos and adverts for the ABC Shop.
The song is actually called “Love Is All”, from The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast.
I can’t make it along, but I believe Clare and Fahad’s wedding this weekend will use the music during the service — they were looking for some cheery music for the recessional. Very catchy. Almost appallingly catchy. Hope the wedding goes well guys, congratulations!
Tags: Butterfly Ball, friends, weddings
1 comment
Retired
The other day I retired one of my oldest web pages, an FAQ on Melbourne public transport.
It started life (I think around 1993, before the Web was around) as a Usenet FAQ for the misc.transport.urban-transit group.
In 1994 it was posted (with an incomplete attempt to convert it to HTML) on Railpage — where unfortunately it is still online, as I haven’t been able to find someone who can remove it.
When I wrote it, there was little information available online about public transport. But from about the late-90s, official sources of information on public transport became more prevalent online (and in the last few years, more accurate and useful), so now keeping a separate FAQ is largely pointless, and potentially confusing, so I’ve taken it offline, though it lives-on in the Internet Archive.
The page had a slightly awkward format (designed by someone on the Usenet group) to allow better comparisons between cities, but (like this old video) some of the detail means it is something of a time capsule.
Fare procedures: Tram: pay conductor (or show valid ticket). On Z class trams, when paying, place your money in the tray in front of the conductor. On driver only trams, pay the driver. Exact change is not required, although large notes may not be accepted. Keep your ticket as proof of payment until you alight.
Here, just for laughs, is the old FAQ’s rail map (remember, it was originally posted on Usenet, which takes plain text only).
MELBOURNE METROPOLITAN TRAIN SYSTEM
-----------------------------------
ZONE 2 .
*Epping .
ZONE 2 | *Hurstbridge . ZONE 3
Broad- * .....|....... / .
meadows| *Upfield. | ________*Eltham .
| ...|...... | / . .
ZONE 2 .|. | ZONE 1 |/ .. . *Lilydale
. \ | *Clifton .. . /
St Albans* . \ | Nth |Hill ..Box Hill . /
.\ \ | Melb | .. *_______*Ringwood
. \__*__\_\_*___*_*_ | Camberwell. / . \
Footscray/ | 3 4 | | *_______/ . \
. | 2* 5* |Richmond / \ . ZONE 2 . \
______*Newport \_*__|_/__*______*/ | . . *Belgrave
/. | 1 \Burnley\ *Alamein .
/ . * ~~~~~~~~ |\ \ .. .
* . Williamstown~~ ZONE 1 | \ \______*Glen Waverley
Werribee ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | \ . .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | *Caulfield ..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |\ . ..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..|...|.\.. ZONE 2 ..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Sandringham* | \ ..... ZONE 3
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | .\...
CITY LOOP~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...|.. *Dandenong
1 Flinders St~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | \
2 Spencer St~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Frankston* \
3 Flagstaff~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | *Pakenham
4 Museum~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
5 Parliament~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Stony Point*
\___ Rail lines
__*_ Major stations
.... Fare zone boundaries; overlaps generally apply over 2-3 stations
~~~~ Port Phillip Bay
John Lennon 1940-1980
John Lennon died thirty years ago yesterday. He was as old then as I am now.
It would have been the following day, thirty years ago today, when the news broke in Australia. I remember getting home from school and switching the television onto channel 9, probably to watch Skippy or The Curiosity Show. A news flash came on.
When I spoke to my mum at work a little while later on the phone, I don’t think she believed it.
Who else remembers where they were?
Windows 95 is fifteen years old today
Fifteen years ago today, Windows 95 was released.
(Who’s feeling old now?)
Many would remember the adverts, which hit TV screens around the world, to the tune of the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up”.
It was arguably the first modern version of Windows (despite it still apparently having DOS under the hood), and arrived just before the Internet went mainstream, so for many people it and the subsequent versions are what most people became familiar with.
It was certainly the first version of Windows with a Start Menu, and other features such as long filenames (not limited to the DOS convention of eight characters plus an extension), and Plug And Play (allowing you to plug in devices and have the system work out which drivers were needed) — which at the time didn’t work nearly as well as was implied in the literature.
Users of Mac and other platforms would argue that Windows was just playing catchup, and that’s probably true, but for those of us in the dominant Windows world, it was a big step forward.
I remember the launch day well because part of the hype involved lots of promotion, and via a radio station truck parked outside work, I won a copy. Which was good, because I’d intended on buying it for myself, to run on my mighty new computer, the one with the Pentium 60 MHz CPU and 8 Megabytes of RAM.
And here for your geeky viewing pleasure is one of the brochures…
Note that it promises “pre-emptive multitasking and multithreading”, another feature that wasn’t nearly as good as promised. They promised it again in Windows NT 4 a year later, but arguably it never really worked up to expectations until multi-core CPUs (eg hardware, not software) came along.
It was twenty years ago today
Exactly twenty years ago today, on the 12th of August 1990, I posted my first online writing — under the distinctly odd title the Toxic Custard Workshop Files. Being well before the Web, it went to a handful of people at uni via email.
As I later wrote (in 1997):
Well, back in them days of ’90, I was in the second year of my course, a Bachelor of Pretending Cobol Is Structured, failing Photocopying 215, and me and me mates had just discovered the Internet. We suddenly realised that there was more to computer networks than just using Phone and Talk to annoy people in the next room, or sending Mail to tell people to meet you for lunch and Tetris at the corner shop.
I was messing around with my mate Bw.. err Brian Smith. Hi Brian, if you’re reading. And another pal of ours, Ray Chan, who was in an Electronics, Robotics And Other High-Tech Stuff course, came up with an idea for an electronic magazine, called “The Serial Saga”. Hi Ray, if you’re reading. We thought this was great, and immediately mugged him in the corridor and stole his idea. Ray never actually wrote anything, but did manage to create a monster robot which went berserk the next semester, and killed 5 lecturers due to a faulty diode in its corduroy detection circuits.
Ray actually vanished completely, at least from where I’m sitting. I’m still in regular contact with Brian, though he went crazy and emigrated to the USA about ten years ago.
The wacky title dated back to my last year of high school in 1988, when Mark Bainbridge and David Holicek and I planned to do an amateur comic sketch video show. It never actually happened.
My early writing drew on inspirations from uni, as well as some recycled material from high school, with a good dose absurdist Pythonesque influence. Some of it was fairly juvenile. As was I.
The Internet as we know it today — an unparalleled worldwide high-technology time-wasting device — was in its infancy. I recall frequently having to explain to people the concept of this new-fangled “email”.
Over the years my writing slowly matured and moved from the surreal into the real world, the humour that was deliberately infused into everything was gradually toned-down, and now the blog has taken over just about completely.
I dabbled in a lot of technologies as they came along — never the first, but often early: the web site came along in April 1995, and shortly after that the first diary/blog entries. Tried what is now known as podcasting in 1997. Blogged the 1996 election. Issued an official screensaver in 1998. Online video? 1999… originally in RealVideo format, which probably nobody can play anymore, so here it is on YouTube:
Most (all in fact, I think) of my old pre-blog absurdist writing is still online.
And even now, I occasionally meet people who tell me they used to read the Toxic Custard list, or Usenet posts, back in the 90s.
Some of my favourite Toxic Custard highlights:
- Shakespeare — kicked off with Romeo and Juliet in October 1990, which made it into rec.humor.funny, the best postings from Usenet group rec.humor
- History of the World — based on a condensed world history I found in a 50s era compendium, from June 1994
- Ron and Jeff — inspired by Bottom, from March 1994. I still chuckle at my Red Shield Appeal gag.
- Doctor Who: Revenge of the Unrealistatrons — my Doctor Who spoof from May 1993, based heavily on the 1984 DW story Warriors of the Deep.
- The Year 2031 — an attempted sci-fi story, from January 1998.
- VCR destruction — in August 2001, Josh, Cathy and I went and systematically destroyed a troublesome old Sharp VCR of mine, by putting food and detergent into it, letting kids use it as a skateboard, smashing it with hammers, dipping it into a lake, attacking it with an axe and a crowbar, running over it with a car, and finally blowing it up. And yes, there is video.
And also:
- Your taxes are paying for this: This blog, archived at the National Library — “World Wide Web diary/weblog of: Daniel Bowen, a computer programmer in Melbourne. His web diary is a straightforward account of his daily life. The website includes numerous photographs, information about the author and links to his home page and to the weblogs of other diarists. It also includes an archive of the diary from its inception in 1994. Recent entries feature the comments of readers.”
- An early Usenet post (TCWF 6, 5th September 1990. The man referred to at the start, Ewen G MacPerson, was based on a lecturer, Ewen D McPherson.)
- Debate over whether Toxic Custard should have its own newsgroup (January 1991)
The twenty-year-old email list still exists, by the way, mostly as a weekly compilation of my blog posts here and at geekrant.org.
So, happy birthday, Toxic Custard.
