Ask Lemmy

In honor of Xmas, I found this video a decade ago, and it is the version I hear in my head every year.

Last Xmas - Slugabed ruined it

Major Havoc.

Super cool arcade game c. 1988 featuring a simple line drawing type environment where the Major runs through hallways, a little like the original Prince of Persia. The controls were a cylindrical scroll wheel and a jump button. The really cool thing though was that there were pads on the floor that would trigger various effects, like a gun that shoots a star shaped bullet down the hall that you had to avoid. Many new and exciting challenges to face with every quarter. Ah, good times.

I'm still bummed that the band Splashdown was screwed over by the music industry. They were too jazz for pop fans and too pop for jazz fans but had an amazing sound and a brilliant vocalist in Melissa Kaplan. They released a couple EPs and a brief album (Stars & Garters) before their major label debut Blueshift was permanently shelved.

They posted a goodbye collection of demos & b-sides before dissolving into Universal Hall Pass, Freezepop, and Anarchy Club.

Edit: Got nostalgic and searched for news - happy Sol Invictus to me I guess! https://splashdown1.bandcamp.com/track/metamorphosis

There's also the Pine Salad Productions fan-dub of a few Dirty Pair and Macross episodes from the late-80s, I think? I had a 5th gen VHS of a few ("The Dirty Pair Does Dishes" was one). Insane dubs that were absurd and utterly unrelated to the actual plots or even characters. I thought they were hysterical when I was a young edgy person.

A friend found "remastered" versions a few years ago and...the humour has not aged well, to put it mildly. Watch at your own risk. Glad I'm no longer edgy I suppose.

Cherry Coke had a promotional game called something like The Lost Island Of Alanna they gave out in the mid 90s. There was a little attack of them in the waiting room of the principles office at my school.

It was a pretty well done short Myst-like.

When you beat it the reward was a guide to read secret messages that were hidden in the squiggles that covered the cherry coke label at the time.

Back in the 90s maybe into early 2000s, my family managed to acquire a lot of VHS tapes, and some of them were fairly obscure

Two that I remember particularly fondly were 2 animated movies

Epic: Days of the Dinosaur, which was about 2 kids raised by dingos, kind of a weird fantasy movie

And Return to Treasure Island, which was pretty much just a straight-up if somewhat comedic adaptation of Treasure island, which was apparently made the USSR, and the Russian version had live action sequences that didn't appear in the English version I had.

I remember a 3D version of Tetris on an early IBM PC clone. Very early like 8088 or 286 PC. Don't remember the name and it was only wireframe and 1color (amber or greenscreen?) but I was very impressed with it. Seemed ahead of its time.

Maybe not super obscure, but I loved BMX XXX on the original Xbox. It was overshadowed my the plethora of other games like Tony Hawk, Aggressive Inline and SSX but I still love it.

beyond ynth

A former roommate of mine had a DVD he had gotten from a friend who got it from a film festival. I believe it was Dreamscape but I haven't been able to find a copy to confirm this actually it.

There were four promotional songs put together to promote the 1960's Adam West Batman. One of them is Miranda sung by Adam West. It's, uh, something, yeah.

Ninja Bachelor Party. A goofy and mostly nonsensical home movie made by a few teenagers, including legendary comedian Bill Hicks way before he was famous.

Movie: Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man

Music: Buggie Techinica by Polysics

There was a dnd game for the intellivision