National Game Registry: K.C. Munchkin

K.C. Munchkin
key personnel
Ed Averett
original platform
Odyssey2 (1981, Magnavox)

In spite of appearances, K.C. Munchkin is not part of the Pac-Man series but rather a very high quality clone featuring several changes.   Unlike Pac-Man, there are only a few pellets in each maze but they move about in small groups, occasionally leading K.C. into trouble.  K.C. has only a single life to work with, so players must be extremely cautious while dashing around the maze.

Pac-Man was inducted on April 11th, 2009.

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National Game Registry 1983: Jr. Pac-Man

JR. PAC-MAN
original platform
arcade
developer/publisher
Midway

Jr. Pac-Man is the most ambitious of Midway’s semi-legal Pac-Man sequels.  Although the game engine and graphics are identical to the original, the mazes are now three screens wide.  The ghosts are very fast and aggressive, which is offset by a large number of power pellets distributed throughout the maze.  Even so, clearing a single screen is an accomplishment.

Jr. Pac-Man was inducted on April 11th, 2009.

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National Game Registry: Mr. Do!

MR. DO!
original platform
arcade (1982, Universal)

At first glance, Mr. Do! appears to be a Dig Dug clone, as they share the element of digging and even a similar look.  However, there are several gameplay differences that set Do! apart.  Instead of eradicating each screen’s pests, Mr. Do! must eat all of the displayed fruits, somewhat like Pac-Man.  Mr. Do! can dislodge heavy items to squash his enemies or he can launch a power ball, which takes some time to recharge.

Mr. Do! was inducted on April 16th, 2009.

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70 Aspects Of Batman: 2

MIKE MIGNOLA

Mike Mignola is mostly known these days as the creator of Hellboy,  but before the big red guy debuted in 1994 he was a freelance artist who worked mainly for the big two, Marvel and DC. Mignola didn’t enjoy working on the either company’s bread and butter (superhero books) much; he would much rather have been drawing something involving monsters and/or gothic atmosphere, desires which led to the eventual creation of Hellboy. One character he did enjoy working on at the time, however, was Batman. Batman stories allowed Mignola to play up his strengths (moody lighting, gothic atmosphere, bizarre characters), and he would return to work on the Dark Knight Detective long after Hellboy became a success, presumably because he actually wanted to.

Mignola’s first major work on Batman was Gotham By Gaslight:

Gotham by Gaslight was DC’s first Elseworlds story, which allowed for interpretations of their iconic characters outside of mainstream continuity. Gaslight detailed a Batman that operated in Victorian London instead of modern day Gotham City, on the hunt for Jack The Ripper (it’s a great read, but I’m biased because it was one of the first comics I have a distinct memory of owning).

He also drew Batman around this time in the Cosmic Odyessy miniseries with Jim Starlin (which also allowed him to illustrate his beloved Jack Kirby DC creations)…

and in an issue of Legends of The Dark Knight. He also did some Batman cover work around this time, including one of my absolute favorite Batman stories that has never been collected, entitled Dark Knight, Dark City, which was written by the perennially underrated Peter Milligan.

After going to Dark Horse and working on Hellboy for a while, Mignola returned to DC in the late 90s for a two-issue crossover featuring his creator-owned character with two of theirs, Batman and Starman. The books were written by Starman writer James Robinson and as that was and still is one of my favorite series of all time, it was pretty exciting for me.

(Gotham By Gaslight, the Legends of the Dark Knight story and Batman/Hellboy/Starman have all been collected in a Mignola Batman collection, but frustratingly it’s only available in Spain, and in Spanish).

In the 2000s, Mignola had enough confidence in his writing apart from his amazing art that he started writing scripts for other artists to illustrate. One of these was Batman: The Doom That Came To Gotham, another Elseworlds story. I’ve never read it, but judging from its covers it looks like it deals with his usual fetishes of pulp fiction, H.P. Lovecraftesque creatures and the like.

Mike Mignola has also had a statue made based on his Batman work….

…and his bold, minimal style allows for great tattoo artwork, as seen below:

So while Mike Mignola’s body of Bat-work is slim when compared to others in this series, it’s had a great impact.

G.

National Game Registry 1983: Pac and Pal

PAC & PAL
original platform
arcade
developer/publisher
Namco

The extremely obscure Pac & Pal reuses the Super Pac-Man engine but adds even more twists to the Pac-Man formula.  As in Super Pac-Man, fruits are distributed throughout the maze, contained in sealed compartments.  A shooting element is made available courtesy of a Galaxian crossover while the wokka-wokka sound effects from previous entries have been replaced with musical score for the first time.

Pac & Pal was inducted on April 11th, 2009.

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National Game Registry: King and Balloon

KING & BALLOON
original platform
arcade (1980, Namco)

King and Balloon is Galaxian in disguise, albeit a very clever disguise.  The aliens are replaced by rows of balloon while the player’s spaceship is replaced by a cannon operated by two guards.  Instead of divebombing, the balloons float down in a series of arcs, attempting to capture the king and steal him away to the skies above.  The only way to lose a life to allow the king to be captured; if the balloons destroy the player’s cannon, the player merely loses a few valuable seconds of defending the king.

King & Balloon was inducted on April 12th, 2009.

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National Game Registry 1982: Dig Dug

DIG DUG
original platform
arcade
developer/publisher
Namco

Dig Dug is a master of digging and pumping air, on a mission to to rid the underground of monsters.  Our hero accomplishes this task by piercing the monsters with his airhose and then INFLATING them until their flesh is ripped from their very bones.  As vicious as that sounds, the monsters can occasionally shed their corporeal selves, transforming into soil-defying ghosts.  The music provides an interesting twist, as it only plays while Dig Dug is moving.  The Game Boy version is worthy of special mention, featuring a New Dig Dug bonus game containing puzzle elements and even boss fights. 

Dig Dug was inducted on April 16th, 2009.

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Noising Machine Singles Club: 11

SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES

“SWIMMING HORSES”

b/w “Let Go”/”The Humming Wires”

Released 3/16/84

(Siouxsie & The Banshees)

“Swimming Horses” comes from the brief period in Siouxsie & The Banshees‘ existence when Robert Smith of The Cure was the group’s guitarist. Robert and The Banshees already had a bit of history together before he joined on as a full-time member in 1983 – The Cure opened for the then-bigger Banshees on a 1979 tour, a jaunt that saw Robert first fill in on axe duties for the band when their original guitarist bailed halfway through. By 1983, Smith considered his band all-but-finished after the emotional and physically draining tour for the band’s Pornography album the previous year, and though he agreed not to officially call an end to The Cure at the behest of his label boss, Smith was ready to be a background player for awhile. Enter The Banshees, who at the time had lost their most recent of what would prove to be a seemingly endless line of revolving door guitarists. Smith had been friends with Banshees bassist Steve Severin for a number of years and respected the Banshees musically, so the decision to join up and have the weight lifted from his shoulders was a presumably easy one. Except that he had to make it complicated.

Not happy to just be in the studio with The Banshees, Smith and Severin also decided to record an album of psychedelic pop in their downtime under the moniker The Glove. In addition, The Cure carried on, eschewing the extreme gothic doom of Pornography for the electropop of “Let’s Go To Bed” and “The Walk”, which were released as standalone singles in 1982 and 1983, respectively. Smith would literally travel from one session to the next while working on all of these various projects, grabbing catnaps in the back of the cabs that spirited him away to whatever session was next. This triple-duty left him understandably exhausted. By the time Siouxsie & The Banshees’ Hyaena album was released in June 1984, Smith had scored the biggest hit of his career with The Cure single “The Lovecats”, which charted at #7. The rest of The Banshees and Siouxsie Sioux especially became increasingly concerned that The Cure’s heightened profile would lead to scheduling and other conflicts. And they were right. Having been completely worm down by his work on three musical projects, Robert Smith was sickly ill and visited his physician, who told him that in his current state he was in no state to join the Banshees for their world tour in support of Hyaena. Thus, Smith exited the Banshees, the Glove was resigned to side-project hell and The Cure were free to begin their utter domination of the emerging alternative music movement. Siouxsie still holds a grudge and calls Robert Smith “Fat Bob” in interviews to this day.

But ANYWAY…”Swimming Horses”. Never ranked among The Banshees finest moments like “Spellbound” or “Peek-a-boo”, “Horses” still comes across as a delightfully bouncy slice of psychedelic pop, much in keeping with Smith’s influence at the time. The main piano hook was almost certainly contributed by him, as a very similar sounding line would anchor The Cure song “Six Different Ways”, released on The Head On The Door album the following year. Siouxsie lyrics add acid to this backing, with lines like:

thrown back again to drown
kinder with poison
than pushed down a well – or a face burnt to hell
feel the cruel stones breaking her bones
dead before born

….but with the song’s playful music bed it’s easy to miss these dark lines, and most like the chorus:

he gives birth to swimming horses

….is what sticks with the listener. Though you or I might be interested in a pop song where the chorus mentions the fact that it’s the male seahorse that gives birth instead of the female, the general U.K. public didn’t seem to agree and “Swimming Horses” made little impact on the charts. A shame really, because’s it a nice little song and acts as a good example of the music that came out of the Banshees’ brief Robert Smith era.

G.

Top Of The Pops performance, circa ’84.

National Game Registry Atari 5200 SuperSystem

The National Game Preservation Board selects the best video games for permanent maintenance in the United States Library of Congress National Game Registry. Only games of the highest standard are chosen. Fame and popularity are not factored into selection decisions. The NGPB maintains that many great games have been commercially unsuccessful. On the other hand, popularity and commercial success do not guarantee admission in the Registry.

 

1982
Centipede
Galaxian
Pac-Man
Space Invaders
Super Breakout
Wizard of Wor
1983
Berzerk
Defender
Frogger
Gorf
Joust
Jungle Hunt
Mario Bros.
Miner 2049er
Montezuma’s Revenge
Ms. Pac-Man
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
Q*bert
Qix
Robotron 2084
1984
Ballblazer
Frogger II: Threeedeep!
Gremlins
Mr. Do!’s Castle
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
Rescue on Fractalus!
Zone Ranger

National Game Registry: Pong

PONG
key personnel:
Nolan Bushnell (concept), Al Alcorn (design/program)
original platform:
arcade (1972, Atari)
notable conversions:
Pong consoles (1975, Atari)
Telstar consoles (1976, Coleco)
Atari 2600 (1977, as Video Olympics, Atari)

In the Spring of 1972 Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell attended a public demonstration of the forthcoming Magnavox Odyssey.  The Odyssey Tennis game made an impact on Bushnell and he charged his new employee, Al Alcorn, with reproducing it, supposedly as a training exercise. The result, Pong, defined and dominated the fledgling video game industry throughout the 1970s. It may have been a plagiarism but it launched the arcade industry and gained exposure for Magnavox’s creation in a way that Magnavox itself failed to do.  Bushnell and his unwitting dupe Alcorn made several changes and even some improvements when they adapted Tennis. The Odyssey game’s ability to move the paddles toward and away from the net and the ability to place spin on ball services was removed, simplifying the game to some degree. In an improvement, the angle of the ball’s rebound is determined by the portion of the paddle that it contacts. Additionally, the ball speed gradually increases as rallies progress. Atari made two more alterations that proved to be quite shrewd; the addition of an on-screen score and the implementation of sound effects. Unfortunately, like the Odyssey, there is no ROM or CPU present, meaning there is no single player mode. Still, the game proved to be a wild success and was followed by several variations.  Pong Doubles allowed for 2-on-2 play while Quadrapong introduced every-man-for-himself four player action.

arcade

Pong was inducted on March 12th, 2009.

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