Time for a hiatus.
8 months ago
@Rogalian https://t.co/rROjRJDCOC
8 months ago
@Tomleecee Nice bike! You erm...you look different though. https://t.co/KINmN3m9Nz
8 months ago
Regarding the current trend of 'properly' minifying consoles and computers, is there a good reason to own the original hardware any more?
8 months ago
I’m reasonably sure if you are a regular to my little corner of the connected world you have a fair idea what a Laserdisc is. Round silver thing. Looks like a CD the size of a vinyl record? Good.
Now how about 20cm and 12cm Laserdisc singles? No? Read on to learn more!
Macross. Beloved anime of literally trillions of people the world over. Who would have thought that Shoji Kawamori’s sci-fi epic created in 1982 would go on to spawn 857 jillion film and television sequels, spin-offs, universes, lunchboxes, novelty slippers, earbuds and Hannukah menorahs?
Yet amongst all that tat (most of which I made up), there lies a true oddity. An oddity that is actually quite rare to find today. An oddity I was very lucky to stumble on purely by accident. That oddity, is the Macross SF Challenge Game (超時空要塞マクロス SFチャレンジゲーム).
“What goes better with an intense snack than an intense film? Eat this. Watch this.” uttered the late Phil Hartman to an unsuspecting UK television audience in 1993. What followed was a 40 second visual assault on the senses as Hartman instructs the ‘Golden Wonder Pot TV’ network to “hit the max”.
From within the confines of a neon, multi-coloured television studio, the fictional broadcaster attacks the unsuspecting viewers eyes with a barrage of aggressive, rapid cuts of neon computer graphics, glitches, text, 3D renders and film footage. So expeditious, and bellicose was the strobe effect from the cutting speed that reports of viewers suffering seizures flooded the Advertising Standards Agency. Golden Wonder, the company behind the Pot Noodle snack being advertised, responded by producing a second version of the same advert, only this time with the cut speed of the computer graphics slowed down in the hopes this would smooth over the furore generated at the time. The re-edit proved to be unsatisfactory to the Advertising Standards Agency and sadly the advert was canned and banned.
It’s a rainy, dreary Saturday here in Ireland today. I figured I would spend my morning setting up a video capture rig and begin transferring some of my prized video cassettes and Laserdiscs to digital format for safe keeping. I dug out a box that holds my small, but perfectly formed collection of cassettes and began filing through to select what to record first. A petite cardboard slipcase was snuggled in between a couple of Gamest DoDonpachi cassettes, I reached in and dug it out to reveal some glorious artwork by Masamune Shirow. What I had retrieved was a promotional cassette tape for Lords of Thunder (Japanese title: Winds of Thunder/ウィンズ オブ サンダー ). With a runtime of just 7 minutes, I figured this would be an ideal cassette to capture first and so I popped in the tape, hit record and settled in to watch this short video.
The photos I have taken specifically for this article are possibly historic. For it is possibly the first time ever that these 4 (not so) little Laserdiscs have ever been photographed together. As a group. As a full set.
It has taken me just over 2 years to complete this small set of Laserdiscs. The first title, Darius Gaiden, I acquired merely by stumbling upon it from a ‘typical online research’ session (definition: entering a search term and an hour later realising you have about 90 browser tabs open as you delve further and further to the outer boundaries of the vacuous Internet).
“I became curious as to whether other Darius titles had appeared on Laserdisc or other formats. My obsession started right there and has not waned.”
Initially I thought Darius Gaiden would be the easiest of the four to acquire. It is certainly, in my opinion, the most desirable of the four titles as it is the only disc to feature a live action Darius movie. I believe I have been proven wrong. At the time of writing, I have not seen this title appear for sale on Laserdisc since. A VHS release appeared for sale once but that is it. In fact the only photos I can find of it are photos I have posted online myself! In my opinion I believe Darius Gaiden to be the most difficult of the four titles to track down.