Tag: 1980s

Review: Labyrinth

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Labyrinth

An early Jon Land novel that somehow escaped my eye until now, Labyrinth has every note I know him for. There’s a super conspiracy with super weapons to take over the world, infighting within said super-conspiracy, and a crazy plot that ends in a crazier set piece (this one involves old warbird propeller planes).

This by Jon Land’s standards isn’t the best simply because it’s too conventional. If this was my first Land book I’d probably have loved it more, but I know he can do goofier (and thus better) in hindsight. Oh well.

A Thousand Words: NARC

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NARC

The 1988 Williams arcade game NARC is probably the most 1980s piece of interactive media developed. Playing as super-cops in biker helmets Max Force and Hit Man, you blast your way through a drug empire of hobos, dealers, weed-growing Rambos, prostitute-kidnapping clowns, henchmen who couldn’t decide if they wanted to dress like mobsters or construction workers, and attack dogs, ruled by a giant biomechanical head-worm. None of that is exaggerated or false.

There is nothing subtle or easy about this game. It’s meant to have you win solely by pushing in quarters. (Who’s the addiction inducing dealer now?) But it is fun and is well, incredibly 1980s.

Review: Airlords of the Ozarks

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Twilight 2000: Airlords of the Ozarks

Twilight 2000 had the problem of reaching a good stopping point (escaping Europe) but then being commercially successful enough to continue. Airlords of the Ozarks is a very blatant example of how the style shifted, to the point where I once used the phrase “Arkansas vs. the Blimps” to describe other settings doing the same.

I feel now that GDW might have written itself into a corner and for better or worse had to change tack instead of copy-pasting classic adventures only in different continents. But to go from brutal survival to almost Jon Land/Mack Maloney level conflicts against airships with nuclear missiles? It may have been too far in the opposite direction. But I don’t fault them for trying.

Plus Airlords is still vastly, vastly better than the abomination that is Kidnapped!

A Thousand Words: Tough Turf

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In 1989, Final Fight revolutionized the arcade brawler. In that same year, a game called Tough Turf showed just how much Final Fight revolutionized the genre. The game has… no story. Just a well dressed person beating up a bunch of less well dressed people.

Do you like stupid arbitrary game-over restrictions even by arcade standards? Controls terrible even at the time? Platforming that Final Fight mercifully stopped? Then Tough Turf is the game for you. About the only good thing is the jumpy upbeat music. That and the weird conclusion where the would-be damsel in distress is actually the final boss and the ending is just a picture of her slumped body.

Just play Final Fight instead.

Review: Flight of the Intruder

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Flight of the Intruder

Well, I finally did it and read a classic Vietnam War aviation novel, Stephen Coonts’ Flight of the Intruder. The joke before its infamous film adaptation was released was “Fighter pilots make movies, bomber pilots make history.” Afterwards, it was “Fighter pilots make movies, bomber pilots make bad movies.” Having not seen the film yet (and not likely to sneer, as I enjoyed Iron Eagle of all things), do they make bad books?

The answer in my opinion is kind of but not really but also kinda? Coont’s first novel, this is basically Herman Melville but with A-6s. Read the long, long sequences of a plane doing plane things. The sequences of an attack run. The sequences of a carrier landing. The sequences of doing naughty things in the Philippines. You get the idea. Thing is, even though I didn’t really care for these, I could see the appeal, especially to a non-expert reader back in the past.

So this is another one of those “have I been skewed against this?” books. And there could be worse.

A Thousand Words: OutRun

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OutRun

Sega’s legendary car driving game OutRun was an arcade time attack game where you control a couple in a Ferrari trying to make it to the end of a series of branching paths before the clock runs out. That is the least impressive thing about it. The most impressive thing is that a game in 1986, even an arcade game, manages to still look fresh and well animated to this day, and have things like a changeable radio and diverging paths. Remember, the console stuff at this time was the likes of Mach Rider.

It took over a decade to finally be able to make an arcade-quality home port of it. Which speaks to how limit-pushing it was/is. While today its most direct legacy of giant arcade machine driving games with steering wheels and frequently even pedals is viewed as outdated kitsch, every game with vehicles owes a lot to this.

A Thousand Words: Mach Rider

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Mach Rider

Like many video games, Mach Rider was a minor hit for Nintendo in the mid-1980s and then languished forgotten until Smash Bros. revived it. The game is a pretty crude but impressive-for-the-time ride along a twisting track and dodge and destroy the evil giant tricycles until you eventually fail, but it has a couple of quirks.

The first is that it was one of the first games to have a level editor, even if it was only in Japan and very limited in practice there. The second is that it has a vague story (there’s minor justifications for you fighting back against an alien invasion in the various track missions) but no ending. The third and most interesting is that the titular rider has been alternately depicted as male and female (the former being in screens showing a helmeted but clearly male figure and the Smash Bros. Melee trophy using ‘he’ while the latter is a female biker in a piece of official art and a woman in the arcade version that’s implied to be a Mac Rider). I guess the different color riders are different people.

Of course, back in the day I remembered the Mach Rider theme as an alternate stage track in Smash Bros. that I loved and nothing else. Which can be said about a lot of things.

Review: Icebreaker

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Icebreaker

Perhaps Viktor Suvorov’s most infamous work is Icebreaker, a revisionist historical book that claims that Stalin was juuuuuust about to invade the rest of Europe from the east when the Germans launched a preemptive attack in 1941. What makes this not just wrong in the sense that his book on the hyper-Spetsnaz was inaccurate but outright disturbing is that someone else publicly stated such a claim repeatedly. Said someone else was famously portrayed in a movie by Bruno Ganz.

Thankfully, the book itself does not make the best case for this incredible claim. It’s not just that with hindsight and primary sources (that Suvorov inaccurately claimed were destroyed to cover them up) the image of the shambling wreck in peacetime formations that was the 1941 Red Army facing off against the bunched-up offensive force of the 1941 Wehrmacht. (Fun fact BTW: The Germans actually had a 3-2 numerical advantage in the early part of Barbarossa, and even more in practice if you account for the terrible logistics of the Soviets then).

The only evidence besides ‘trust me bro’ that Suvorov puts forward is basically “The Soviets had lots of ____ [such as fast tanks and/or paratroopers] that clearly meant they were meant for an offensive into western Europe.” It couldn’t just be that their doctrine was on mobile warfare and that they tried and failed to implement it defensively.

I knew about how bad its premise was, but I wasn’t expecting so weak an argument. Which is probably a good thing. Unlike this book.

Review: Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army

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Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army

David Isby’s 1988 edition of Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army is perhaps the missing link in the OPFOR puzzle. I have to give the obligatory “this is a Cold War western source” to get it out of the way. That being said, once basic prudence is applied, this is an amazing compendium.

It covers every single major weapons system in the 198X Soviet army detailing not just the paper specs but also the intended doctrinal use and actual combat experience in Afghanistan or with foreign armies. This comprehensive look at the whole and not just the sum of the parts is sadly too rare and is very welcome here.

This is a rare, expensive, and massive book. But it is well worth it to any scholar of the Fuldapocalypse.

A Thousand Words: Clue

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Clue

As proof that movies based on bizarre IPs are not a new thing, 1985 saw the release of a film based on the board game Clue. Thankfully the board game has a basic plot of “murder mystery”, which the movie uses. It ends up killing a lot more than Mr. Boddy.

This movie is not “good” by any means, but it falls into the category of “a lot better than it could have been” and is perfectly fun for a time waster. Its multiple ending gimmick at least tries to be experimental and interesting (it was intended to have different theaters show different ‘definitive’ endings). And the John Morris score is underrated and excellent.