I got my Ms. Pac-Man Plug and Play working again! In combination with an expansion cartridge, this gave me access to Dig Dug, as well as Pole Position. Join me as I play the first game of each of these in a year.
I did pretty well in Dig Dug, but turned in a disappointing Pole Position score. The controller is cool; if you twist the joystick it acts as your steering wheel.
I played two games of Ms. Pac-Man, with the first being the best.
Finally, I dug up the Atari 2600 Flashback machine and played a game of an Atari classic: Yar’s Revenge. Join me as I explain this game in extremely technical terms.
RECORD STORE TALES #1097: Why We Always Liked Christmas Eve Best – An Uncle Paul Story
Christmas was always a big deal in our family. It was a multi-stage affair: many dinners and many gifts at several residences. In my earliest years, the Christmas festivities would begin in Guelph, Ontario.
The Ladano clan originated in Amalfi, and then Sicily. When they came to Canada in the early years of the 1900s, they settled in the largely Italian town of Guelph. This is where my grandfather lived, and we would make our way to his house in the snowy afternoon of December 24. We journeyed from Kitchener, and my Uncle Paul and Aunt Maria came from Stratford. The first round of gifts would be given. A lot of “dinky cars”, Hotwheels and Matchbox. Eventually we would fall asleep, and at the end of the night, we’d be loaded in the car for the drive home. We would probably have slept in the car too, if not for my dad’s shenanigans from the driver’s seat. He always had us on the lookout for “Rudolph”. We had to beat Santa home to the house! “Rudolph” was in fact a red light atop a radio tower, but look for him we did. Radio stations would egg us on with “Santa sightings” on their radar. We’d always make it home before Santa arrived.
After my grandfather died, Christmas Eve changed. My uncle and aunt would arrive mid-day at our house from Stratford. This is where my strongest memories begin.
My sister and I would already be on holidays and we could not — COULD NOT! — wait for Christmas Eve! Whatever old Atari games we had were boring compared to what we thought was coming. Killing time was the name of the game. We watched whatever Christmas specials were on, good and bad. It seemed like an eternity, and it felt like those days crawled by like months. Then, finally, December 24 would come, and Uncle Paul and Aunt Maria would too! And they always brought the best gifts. No clothes from them. Only fun. Candy, puzzles, games, books, and toys only! We had to be showered and dressed, because they’d be here any minute!
We’d stare out the front window at every car. Nope, not them. Nope, not them. Wait! That’s them!! Their car would slowly turn through the snow into the driveway. Then they’d get out and start unloading the gifts! “Look at the size of that one!” I’d cry. “I hope that’s for me!” My mom would interject. “It’s not for you, now go down and help!” And so we’d race down the stairs and hug them and carry the bags and bags of gifts upstairs. They also brought food and treats. My aunt’s home-made pizza would be lunch for the following day.
There was one year that was so snowy, we didn’t know if Christmas Eve would have to be cancelled or not. It seemed unimaginable! The snow that night was some of the deepest I had ever seen. Uncle and Aunt had never missed a Christmas Eve before! No blizzards ever stopped them. One year, they came by train, but they never missed.
Once Uncle and Aunt arrived, it felt like Christmas had really started. Then and only then. Before that moment, there was tension and anticipation. My mom had so much to do in the kitchen before they got there! “If you’re not going to help then stay out of the way!” she would scold. We’d run to join my dad in the living room, waiting patiently watching old black & white Christmas specials. But then Uncle and Aunt would pull into that driveway wearing their warm sweaters, and Christmas would really begin.
After we got our first Schnauzer, the doggie would go crazy when they appeared in our driveway. The dog would bark and bark and bark from the front window, and then race down the stairs to greet them first. Of course, this happy was greeting was conditional upon treats, which were ready in pocket. The dog would wind around our legs as we tried to carry gifts up the stairs.
Uncle and Aunt’s gifts were always opened on Christmas Eve, just like they were back in the old days in Guelph. And they got us the best gifts.
My uncle would always tell us, “be patient!” but we couldn’t wait to rip into their gifts. As the 80s wore on, the nature of the gifts evolved. At first they were Star Wars guys and Atari games. Soon after, GI Joes and Transformers. This gave way to music. Cassettes first, and then CD, with some VHS tapes mixed in for good measure. There were never socks. No button-up shirts, no mittens, no slacks. They never bought us clothes, and they were proud of it! Stratford has some interesting toy stores, so we often received unique 3D puzzles and brain twisters. Stratford also has the best candy stores, and we would often get special treats too. They were so generous to us.
After a few gifts were relieved of their wrapping paper, my dad and uncle would go for a drive — an annual tradition. They would go check out the new cars for sale at the local dearlerships and admire the vehicles, imagining which they would buy next. The rest of us thought this was the most boring Christmas tradition ever! For a few years in the mid-80s, my sister had a paper route. For those years, the tradition was that my dad, uncle and I would pile into a car and help her deliver the papers door to door. One year the snow was so deep, it felt like we were blazing new trails through the Antarctic glaciers.
Dinner was always a fun affair. My uncle had a few beers by then, and was even more playful than usual. My sister and I would fight over who got to sit next to him. (My mom came up with assigned seating at one point, probably because of us.) He was always curious about our gifts. If it was music, he wanted to have a listen to a song or two. If it was a toy, he wanted to watch us put it together, or see how it worked. We received so many cassettes from them during the tape era! I can’t remember the exact tape, but I remember one store sold a cassette to my aunt with the big clunky security case attached. Let me tell you people, it took two grown men, one teenager, and two pairs of scissors to get that rubbery plastic shell off my Judas Priest. (It wasn’t Judas Priest, but I like the way that sentence sounds.) There was also a store in Stratford that could get unusual special orders, and my aunt often secured rare musical gifts that I couldn’t find in town.
The early 80s were particularly frantic. The years of Star Wars and Atari. So many games! Haunted House was responsible for one pretty fun Christmas Eves. During the Atari era, my sister and I would disappear into the basement for long stretches of time playing all our new games. Then we’d wake him up early Christmas morning, because they slept on the fold-out bed right in front of the TV!
Uncle Paul didn’t know or care a thing about Star Wars or Star Trek. He was a car guy. He gave his own names to our toys. “Tauntaun” became Toto. The nine-armed FX-7 medical droid was the “coffee maker”. We loved this about him. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know an R2 unit from a protocol droid. He didn’t care that we didn’t know our cars. Sometimes, we would just quietly sit next to each other without saying a word while we let others do all the talking. Then he might nudge me in the side and laugh. Those were good Christmas Eves.
Christmas Eve hasn’t been the same since my uncle fell sick. We’re older too, and a Star Wars figure doesn’t elicit the same tear-the-box-open kind of excitement. Plus, who can afford Star Wars figures these days? And don’t get me started on GI Joe. I know there are a multitude of reasons why Christmas Eve isn’t what it once was, but I can’t help but feel that a huge part of that is Uncle Paul. Their arrival on December 24 was the official commencement of festivities. Without him, everything seemed so much more…adult.
Over the years, my sister and I would invite friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends to join us on Christmas Eve. No matter who was joining us that night, there was one universal constant: everyone loved Uncle Paul. He was kind, attentive and most of all, he was fun. He was always the most fun of everyone. Even if he was just sitting quietly next to my dad, every so often you’d hear his distinctive laugh and know they just shared an inside joke.
That’s just Christmas Eve. Our Christmas was a long affair, involving a special Christmas Day, and a visit to Stratford on the 27th every year. But those are tales for another day, and as I remember my Uncle Paul, one memory triggers a cascade more. Of these, the many Christmas Eve memories are the strongest. And that’s why we always loved Christmas Eve best of all.
RECORD STORE TALES #1074: Have You Played Atari Today?
The Atari 2600 might have been the dominant video game system in our childhood lives in the early 80s, but it was far from “the best”. Intellivision offered better graphics. Colecovision was also impressive, and had a pretty good home version of Donkey Kong. Atari had a greater breadth of games available, though its graphics were pitiful by comparison. Atari boasted the blockiest graphics on the market! Did we care? Well…yes! We did care about graphics, but we also wanted all our favourite games on one system: Pac-Man, Asteroids, Defender, Space Invaders, Centipede, The Empire Strikes Back, Frogger…all of them. Though it should be noted, it was the parents who chose the video game systems in the neighbourhood, and price was also a major factor.
Domo arigato, parents of Owen Avenue, for spoiling the shit out of all the kids.
We had a 2600. The Schippers had a 2600. The Szabos had a 2600. George Balazs had a 2600. The Morrows had a 2600. The only kids that didn’t have a 2600 were the weirdos (just trust me) across the street, the uber-religious Dolph family, who had a Commodore Vic 20. With so many families in the neighbourhood owning the same systems, borrowing games was commonplace. The typical length of a game borrow from a neighbour was three days. Just enough time to get pretty good at a game, and often enough, to get bored with it as well.
No, those old Atari games didn’t have a lot of longevity. Most of them got a little monotonous after a certain number of plays. The games barely had any memory at all, so things tended to get…repetitive, shall we say. Most Atari video games just got faster as you played, repeating the same screens and obstacles. Eventually, you got fed up and died. Then you pulled out the cartridge to put in something else, because you were sick of that game!
The truth is, as iconic as the Atari was, we were often disappointed with their actual adaptations of the games. We did our research. We read reviews in video game magazines, and we watched reports on TV. We all knew in advance that we would be disappointed in E.T the Extraterrestrial well before we received it for Christmas in 1982. But we tended to get the games anyway, because we liked to try the games ourselves…and sometimes the choices weren’t really all that great! Occasionally, the low rated games like Combat and Adventure were our favourites. E.T., not so much. I know we received E.T. for Christmas….
Christmas! Atari and Christmas…they went hand in hand. Every Christmas, my uncle and aunt from Stratford would come to stay over. There was a nice finished room in the basement with a pull-out couch bed. Unfortunately…the Atari and TV were also down there! Which meant, when my sister and I inevitably woke up at, like, 5 AM to see what Santa got us (Atari games), we had to wait and wait to go downstairs to play them. Often we’d wake them up by constantly checking to see if they were awake.
So many disappointments back then! Pac-Man? That goes without saying. Beyond minor things like the annoying clangy sound effects and messed up colours, they also changed the layout and orientation of the maze. Usually Pac-Man’s escape tunnels are on the sides. Atari put them on top and bottom of the screen, which really felt wrong. It wasn’t…terrible…I mean, Pac-Man was still eating pellets, being chased by ghosts, before chasing them after eating a power pill. Same idea just…really poorly executed.
E.T. was all but unplayable at anything but the easiest difficulties, without agents and doctors chasing you. It was also extremely annoying, as you searched a large multi-screen play area for your phone’s pieces and the location of your spaceship’s eventual landing pad. The landscape was dotted with pits. Aren’t they all? Common problem in the suburbs. E.T. constantly falls in these pits, costing him energy when he levitates out of them. What, you don’t remember that scene from the movie?
Here’s the thing though. It was ironic that even though actor Henry Thomas was pictured on the box for E.T. the Atari game…Thomas himself was contracted by rival Intellivision, selling their system in TV ads! This irony was not lost on my dad, who thought we should have bought the system that Elliott himself was hawking on TV.
Indiana Jones’ Atari adaptation fared marginally better. Now this was a game we were able to beat, thanks to a detailed step-by-step instruction booklet. Yet…the game had no relation whatsoever to the movie. Oh sure, your character kinda looked like Indy with a brim-hat shaped head, but…when did Indy need to find a grenade to throw at a wall exposing a cave? When did he need to retrieve an Anhk (Vinnie Vincent fan?) to…oh shit, you know what? I cannot remember the convoluted plot to this game! There were caves with weird cells you could get trapped in. There was a cliff over a jungle, filled with thieves and tsetse flies. There was a black market where you could buy bullets and the all-necessary shovel to eventually dig for the Ark of the Covenant. There was also a “lunatic” there who would kill you instantly if you passed him. Eventually you find the map room, which has a narrow walkway you must not fall off, and if you are in the right spot at the right time with the right item activated, eventually the sun will come out and illuminate a specific mesa on a map that is concealing the Ark! You remember the mesa scene in the film, right? Indy must jump from mesa to mesa using his whip, an annoyingly frustrating task. Then, he must parachute off the mesa, and maneuver past an annoying treebranch, into a little hole in the side of the mesa. There, you must…dodge aliens…and go to the bottom of the screen where there is a mound of dirt. If you have acquired a shovel, then you can dig for the Ark. Just like in the movie.
It took us forever to beat some of these games. Of course, most Atari games back then didn’t have endings. Most just kept going on, getting faster and faster until you “died”. Some that did have proper endings included Adventure (another bizarre and primitive quest game), Haunted House, and E.T.
Despite the numerous…ahem…pitfalls of trying to find a decent Atari 2600 video game, there were some exceptions: A handful of truly great games on that primitive system. Many of these were made by another company called Activision. Activision typically made the best 2600 games, and had a really cool unified line of box art. Best of all, their video games were original concepts. Pitfall was one of the best games for any system of the era. A huge side scrolling adventure and treasure hunt, this game saw “Pitfall Harry” seeking gold and diamonds in the jungle, trying to navigate a series of obstacles such as fire, scorpions, rolling logs, quicksand, and alligators. You could try taking a shortcut through the tunnels below, but you’ll get there eventually just by falling through a pit! Activision really had a hit with Pitfall, but there were so many more. Chopper Command had you piloting a really cool helicopter, taking out both ground and air enemies in a side scroller where you had full control. River Raid scrolled upwards without any control on the player’s part. You had side-side freedom of movement, and a lethal forward gun. The necessity of stopping for fuel was a unique and challenging aspect. There was a clever game called Dolphin that involved the concept of sonar, and listening for tones to know your next move – which you must make in an instant. Many of these games came out later in the Atari’s life. That system really had legs. We were still playing it into 1986. Eventually, the Nintendo NES supplanted it.
Graphics and simplicity aside, the Atari 2600 had one weakness we don’t often hear about. It is generally said that the Atari had the superior controller over the Coleco and Intellivision systems. Intellivision had a sleek controller with a directional disc instead of a joystick, Coleco’s joystick was stubby and uncomfortable. Atari’s was just right. It fit perfectly in your hands, with a smooth-moving rubber-covered stick and a single “fire” button. Definitely the easiest, if simplest, of the controllers. But it was not sturdy. Inside that rubber outer shell was a fragile plastic skeleton. It only took my cousin, Captain Destructo, one visit to destroy two controllers. They were never the same after that. You could try to fix them, glue the inner frames back together, but the joystick’s response became mushy, as the frame flexed more easily in the weak spots. Eventually they’d break again. I think we went through six joysticks in total, including some third party models.
The Atari didn’t just have joysticks. It also had paddles – basically a wheel and a button. These paddles were wired in pairs, so some paddle-based games could have up to four players. Warlords was one such Atari game. The paddles were used for rapid side-to-side motion necessary for pong-like games such as Breakout. There was an addictive variant called Circus that was a lot of fun as well.
Then we had Star Raiders, the game I saved and saved and saved up to buy. The first cheque I ever wrote might have been for Star Raiders. It was expensive because it came with a third controller: a number pad. We always imagined what Atari could do with that number pad in new games going forward…but they never did. Star Raiders was a first person shooter that had you defending yourself from TIE Fighters and “Zylon” (Cylon) Basestars (I’m not kidding), while managing your shields, and warping in and out of different zones. As you take on damage, your shields, weapons and sensors can malfunction. Hopefully you have enough energy to warp to homebase and get repairs, before the enemy fleets destroy it! Though the combat scenes could be difficult, and annoying asteroids were frequent, it was an immersive game. The hum of your engines, the glow of your shields…the game did the best it could for what the Atari 2600 was capable of. In many respects this was a highpoint for the whole system.
The many hours and Christmases spent in the basement playing Atari peaked at the end of 1984. December 26th, in fact. While playing Atari in the basement, my best friend Bob “The Reset King” Schipper introduced me to something new called Iron Maiden. Life was never the same after that. Video games took a sudden back seat to cassette tapes.
Still, even after music took over, Atari had a comeback later in the 80s when I acquired Activision’s excellent simulator, Space Shuttle. By this time, I was in highschool. This intricate little game was impossible to win without paying exact attention to the instructions, and taking the precise steps in the correct order as needed. Just like a real shuttle launch. Landing it was even harder! Once you got the hang of it though, you couldn’t help but beam in pride at landing a space shuttle!
Even though Atari’s successor, Iron Maiden, taught me not to waste my time searching for those wasted years, I don’t look at those days in the basement playing Atari to be wasted time. While my skin may have grown pale playing Armor Ambush in the dark, I had a damn good time. And what’s wrong with a kid having fun and creating good memories in his own way?
Good morning, Harrison and Mr. 1537! One of you will remember these from the 80s and one of you will not! Still you must agree, pricetag aside, this is a pretty beautiful Lego set. The Atari 2600 is coming August 1 for $240 USD (ouch)! The dimensions closely match that of the original console. It comes with three iconic cartridges made of Lego, three mini dioramas representing art for these video games, and a little shelf to store the cartridges. The front of the console opens up to reveal another mini diorama, of a kid playing Asteroids in their bedroom. It even comes with an incredible joystick made of Lego.
You can insert a cartridge into the console, flip the switches, and plug in the joystick. If it wasn’t for the price, I’d want this in a heartbeat. Check this video by Balazs from Racing Brick for a detailed preview.
The always difficult-to-please Chris Sarre called this a “Top Five” show last night, and I’m flattered but have to agree with him! Thanks to Rob from Visions In Sound, and Harrison the Man Metal Man for showing off your music and entertainment collectables last night. From rare CDs, autographs and Australian exclusives, to board games, books and odds n’ ends, we saw a lot of cool items with great stories behind them.
Good morning and Merry Christmas! It sure looks like Santa Claus was here.
As usual I’m the first one up. Jen is happily snoring away, while I play with my new Kenner action figures – Johnny Storm the Human Torch, and the Silver Surfer complete with board. Probably my favourites thus far.
There’s still lots of Christmas to come, but even if there wasn’t I’d be pretty happy right now.
For Christmas Eve, I had a traditional Christmas activity of playing some classic Atari games while passing the time. Then we went over to mom & dad’s for a visit while Aunt visited Grandma in the hospital. It all worked out OK. I got to watch some TV with my dad which is all I really wanted. We were going to watch the Mr. Bean Christmas episode, but the one with him in the hotel started playing, and so we had to stick with that one.
I normally don’t post on Christmas Day but this isn’t really a normal year, is it? Besides, even though we’re kind of on Christmas vacation, we’re not on vacation from connecting with friends. So I say to you my friends: Merry Christmas. I hope you’re safe, sound, and happy this year.
Released to arcades in 1981, Vanguard didn’t catch my attention until it hit the Atari 2600 the following year. While I have never played the arcade game, the Atari version was in my hands as soon as I could afford it. Notably, the Atari game borrowed some of its music from Queen. Vanguard was a scrolling space game, but where it differed from other games was that it changed orientation from side-to-side to up-and-down at points during the adventure. There were a variety of adversaries, and power-ups to take advantage of. There was even a “boss” to take out at the end, and then it all repeated over again at a higher difficulty. We kids were in love with it, even the simplified Atari version.
Incidentally, Atari artwork and instruction manuals were excellent. They often began with a short story — this one of the “Vanguard Expedition” into the “tunnels of Aterria” looking for a semi-mythical “City of Mystery”. Enough to capture a kid’s imagination, especially when combined with the cool box art.
My best friend Bob and I, being the creative types, thought we could design a sequel. We painstakingly drew every screen in pencil, one after the other. There were 19 screens in total. We taped them together in order with Scotch tape, so that you could lay the whole thing out on the floor if you so desired. Each screen led into the next with attention to detail.
Bob and I had “designed” a dozen games already, drawing them on paper, but they were one or two screens at best. Our Vanguard 2 was 19 levels! Many heavily ripped off from Star Wars. It was only 1983 or 1984 at the latest. Although ours is completely unrelated to the actual Vanguard II that came out in 1984, out friends kept on telling us “You should send your ideas in to Atari”. We were big dreamers but we had a lot of fun pouring hours of creativity into these projects. I’m glad I still have some of them, including Vanguard 2.
I thought it would be fun to scan each screen and post the whole thing with commentary. I tinted the old pages to give them some variety visually. Check out the complete Vanguard 2 game!
Title page. Our “hero ship” basically ripped off from the Colonial Viper from Battlestar Galactica. Enemy ships show heavy Star Wars influence.
Screen 1. Scrolling to the right. Imagine continuous scrolling, as if all the pages were laid out on the ground. Entering mountain! Just like the first Vanguard, you must navigate a tunnel in your space ship. Enemy craft, mines and drones ahead!
Screen 2. A barrier to break through, and a choice of upper or lower tunnels to take.
Screen 3. Upper tunnel was a trap! Although you could possibly shoot your way through a weak spot in the cave wall.
Screen 4: Switching out your ship for a submarine.
Screen 5: More enemy resistance ahead, and a difficult choice of three tunnels to take.
Screen 6: Bottom tunnel would have been the best choice. Giant jelly fish and a 5 second force field power up ahead!
Screen 7: Now it’s giant Octopii! Your sub is running low on fuel, and there is a tempting fuel depot in the lower cave.
Screen 8: The only way through these narrow caverns is to miniaturize your sub. Then you must choose upper or lower tunnels, with the upper appearing easier.
Screen 9: The upper tunnel has heavier resistance at a poor attack angle, plus a classic Atari-style bouncing barrier block, that you must time just right. Success means deminiaturization and a new spaceship.
Screen 10: Whether you take the upper or lower tunnels, you have plenty of opposition and the opportunity for a 5 second shield. Either way — the Sarlacc pit awaits at the end of the screen. (We would have called it something else.)
Screen 11: Made it through the first mountain. Passing through the energy barrier automatically “beams” you to the next screen. (We called the mountains “Screen 1” and “Screen 2” since we envisioned it as a continuous side scroller, with only this one break in between. Here I am calling the individual drawings “screens” as it makes more sense when you look at them individually.)
Screen 12: Still scrolling to the right — entering volcano! A choice of two tunnels ahead.
Screen 13: Either way, both tunnels will lead you to a new ship, plenty of opposition, and a 7 second force field.
Screen 14: Your new ship has dual lasers and can stand the heat of the lava lake you are about to enter!
Screen 15: You’re heating up so don’t be long. Upper tunnel offers some squidly opposition while the lower has plenty of enemy subs.
Screen 16: You’re low on fuel, and a giant lizard is sitting right there by the fuel depot!
Screen 17: Boss Level! As in the first game, the Great Gond awaits you at the end. He is protected by enemy ships and cruise missiles. Once you beat Gond, we change orientation: now the game scrolls up! Make your escape through the cone of the volcano.
Screen 18: Scrolling up as you try to outrace the flames of the erupting volcano beneath you, while being harassed by enemy ships and missiles!
Screen 19: If you beat the flames, you win the game!
We could have had a hit video game on our hands! We loved to draw and a lot of this was drawn outdoors. I’m pleased the thing held together long enough for me to scan it. Imagine that Queen theme playing as you win!
We’re locked down, but not knocked down as this week’s live show proved! From 1977 to 1991, stories of Christmases past were unfurled for fun discussion. From the Star Wars years, through GI Joe, Transformers, and Atari, to cassettes, CDs and VHS, the greatest years of our lives were presented. Then, special guest LeBrain’s Mom joined the latter half of this episode for her first on-screen appearance…bearing wine!
I had a great night and I hope you did too. Lots of visual aids this time. Thanks for watching!
My obsession with Kiss was started in September of 1985. You all know the story. I knew that the neighbour, George Balasz, only needed two Kiss albums to complete his LP collection. He needed The Elder, and Hotter Than Hell. One day Ian Johnson called, wanting to trade some records for an Atari game: Superman, one of the poorest games in the Atari catalogue. He could have that stinker! He was trading me copies of Alive! and the much coveted Hotter Than Hell. I already knew that I was going to spin Hotter Than Hell over for more trades.
I played Hotter Than Hell once. Then I called George to negotiate a trade.
By the conclusion of the evening, I had acquired a Walkman, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid on cassette, an Abbott and Costello record and an Iron Maiden 12″ single. Not bad for a shitty Atari game.
Now, technically the Atari game belonged to my sister and I, and she was pissed that I traded it without at least consulting her, but today she understands the monumental significance of her sacrifice. My Kiss collection had begun.
I owned a record player, but it was a terrible one, so my Kiss focus was going to be cassette. I asked George to record that scratchy copy of Hotter Than Hell for me. Between that day in September of 1985 and summer of 1987, I taped just about every Kiss album from George. The ones I didn’t tape, I bought at the local Zellers store. Their selection was limited. For that matter, every store’s selection was limited. There wasn’t much Kiss available on cassette in 1985 Kitchener. I had to have them. I had to get them all.
I can’t remember the specific order anymore. I probably recorded Animalize off George next. I say this because it was on the flipside of the 120 minute cassette that also contained Hotter Than Hell. Those, plus my LP of Kiss Alive, kept me occupied for a few months.
There were only a few vintage Kiss albums you could find on tape in town. Dynasty and Destroyer were common. They had been reissued in something called The Priceless Collection, a low budget series of repressings. The vinyl edition of Destroyer in this series lacked the gatefold. I got Dynasty in one of the local stores, and a few weeks later, accidentally dropped it into a bucket of wallpaper water. My dad bought me a new copy right away. I have an amazing dad. He always took care of me.
It was a neat experience, getting those Kiss albums on tape as a kid. It was a whole new world to me. Imagine getting a Kiss album, and hearing for the first time who sang which songs. You’d try to guess from the titles. You couldn’t guess from the writing credits, necessarily. I’d listen to the words and try to figure out what Kiss were singing about. Wonder if, when I was a grown-up, I would have some of these experiences with the ladies that Kiss were talking about.
I taped a few more off George in the interim. Sometimes I’d just drop a tape off at his house while he was at work. I asked him to record Kiss, Dressed to Kill, Unmasked, Creatures of the Night, Love Gun, and Double Platinum. He wrote down the song titles as neatly as he could, and then I made my own covers. I had a system. I always had a big Kiss logo on the top half of the cover. I tried to draw them identically every time. If it was a single album, I would add a crude drawing of something to do with the album. On Dressed to Kill, I had Gene in a trenchcoat. On Love Gun, a pistol. On the back cover I’d write out the tracks. But for a double album, I used the bottom half of the front cover to list all the songs. There wasn’t enough room on the back for a double album tracklist once I cut (or punched) out the two holes for the tape shell. The back cover also had the year of release, and I drew a symbol on the tape label to indicate whether I recorded it from LP or cassette. The spine featured a “Dolby stereo” logo. I was meticulous about keeping all my Kiss tapes looking the same.
The only one of these Kiss tapes that I still have the hand made cover for is Crazy Nights, and I half-assed it because I knew I’d be buying a copy as soon as I could. I can remember recording Crazy Nights the day it came out from George, and this temporary cover was on the tape that tided me over until I could get a real copy.*
Of course, some were store bought. Lick It Up was a Christmas gift and I bough Asylum myself. Destroyer was another early purchase. I had it before I heard Double Platinum. I had never heard “Detroit Rock City” before. I was familiar with some tunes from Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, my first exposure to many Kiss hits. I found Destroyer to be weird and I was surprised how much George liked it.
A memory that I have of Creatures of the Night is how good that album made me feel. Listening to that tape in the garage after a day of bullying at school was a powerful experience. The music was defiant. The lyrics sounded good. “Get me off this carousel, you can do as you please, you can go to hell.” Yeah you can!
Once George got The Elder, I taped it pronto. I remember we couldn’t read all the song titles. “Escape from the Ish? What is that?” He couldn’t legibly squeeze “Island” into the line. Then I started seeing Kiss cassette reissues in stores. Creatures came out with Kulick on the cover. Most importantly, all the Kiss solo albums, which were otherwise impossible to locate on tape, were reissued in early ’87. I asked — nay, demanded — all four for my birthday. And because I was so spoiled, I received all four. I listened to them in alphabetical order three times each. A lot of the tunes weirded me out. Too much funky bass.
Last to land in my collection was Rock And Roll Over. And I recognized, that until Kiss out with a new album, this was the last time I was going to have this experience: hearing a Kiss song for the first time, guessing who sang what and trying to understand the lyrics. It was bittersweet.
It turns out, even when Kiss do put out a new album, it’s just not the same. I don’t feel like I am learning something of Kisstory, like I did with the older albums. I don’t get the sensation of “Wow, this is a classic song that I didn’t know before.” It is just not the same. But I’m glad I had the experience.
* When I got Crazy Nights, I recorded over this tape and re-used the paper for the cover. Mixed Songs replaced Crazy Nights, a compilation of singles by Dokken, Ratt, Anvil, Helix and many more.
Perhaps the greatest awakening I ever had in my life was the moment I first heard Iron Maiden. It was so important to me, it was the first chapter of Record Store Tales — Part 1, “Run to the Hills”. At that early age, music and video games collided I was never the same again. Since that time, music has always been intertwined with gaming and my best buddy Bob. All three combined were responsible for my rock n’ roll epiphany.
Bob and I played a lot of Atari on the weekends. Both families had the Atari 2600, but we both had different selections of games. Depending on whose house we were at, we’d play different games. “Gorf” was one game he had that I didn’t. It was a shooter like “Space Invaders” but with different kinds of levels. More than going for a high score, it was important for us to try and make it through all the levels. Atari games were so limited. “Gorf” had five distinct levels so it was more rewarding to see all five than to rack up high scores.
Same with “Frogger”. That was one of my games, and Bob was very competitive on it. As you progressed up the levels, more obstacles were thrown in your way, like snakes for example. It was exciting to make it to a new level for the first time, but “Frogger” was a hair-triggered game where timing was everything. And Bob used to get very, very excitable when a game of “Frogger” went wrong. That is how he earned the nickname The Reset King.
Here was his thinking. If you lose a level early in “Frogger”, the chances of making it to a new high level were greatly reduced. Bob would rather reset the game than try in futility. So, he’d dive for that reset button on the Atari console, usually while yelling something at the game. “The game is cheating!” was a favourite.
The game is cheating indeed, I suppose. It was easier to let him reset than argue that an Atari 2600 wasn’t sophisticated enough to “cheat” at a video game. “Frogger” was very touchy, but it wasn’t particularly glitchy. If you so much as touched a car, you were dead even if it didn’t technically “hit” you. So it could get frustrating, sure. We would have to eventually cut Bob off from resets or nobody else would get a turn.
And so, he was crowned the Reset King by my dad, who worried he was going to break the damn switch. It was a title Bob rejected because the game was cheating, and because David Dolph across the street was way worse with the reset button.
David Dolph was this bratty kid across the street. His weird family wouldn’t let them play with any toys with guns, like G.I. Joe. But David was no dummy. He had a Transformers collection, because he didn’t tell his mom they came with guns. He was also destructive, and if you let David Dolph near your toys, he’d probably wreck them. We didn’t like David Dolph, but one afternoon we found ourselves at his house playing video games in the basement. It was there that David Dolph faced the Reset King.
They didn’t have an Atari, but they did have a Commodore Vic 20 that you could play games on. We were playing there in the basement, when the Reset King decided to start a game over because it “cheated” early on.
“No fair!” yelled David Dolph. “No fair! It’s my turn now!” He tried to wrestle the controller from Bob’s hand, who didn’t budge. In fact he just continued to stare intently at the TV and play, with the corners of his mouth attempting to conceal a smile. Giving up the fight over the controller, David Dolph burst into tears and ran upstairs. Bob kept playing, a huge grin now upon his face. We stayed until Bob finished playing games!
David Dolph was a weird kid. His parents were really strict and wouldn’t let them listen to music, except for Bruce Springsteen. They approved of the Boss, but heavy metal was satanic to them. The kid was over at our house one afternoon when I was watching music videos on TV with Bob. He was visibly upset by “Rock You” by Helix, and left the house. About a decade later, he sure changed. I often heard him blasting Savatage’s “Hall of the Mountain King” from his bedroom window when his parents weren’t around.
Maybe it’s the narcissist in me, but who was he blasting Savatage for? By that time, Bob and I weren’t even talking to him, so I always wondered if he was blasting it at us.
As much fun as we had over the years, you had to be patient when gaming with Bob. If you wanted play with him, you had to let the Reset King have his way.
The reset button never broke. In fact we still have the same Atari 2600. It works, and we still have all the cartridges…except one. My sister never forgave me for trading away “Superman”. However, I traded “Superman” for my first Kiss (Record Store Tales Part 3: My First Kiss) so clearly I had the greater good in mind.
What did break…frequently…were the controllers. And that wasn’t Bob’s fault. Bob owned an Atari and took good care of his stuff. He was brought up in a Dutch household that understood the value of working for something and taking care of it. None of Bob’s things were broken like David Dolph’s. No, Bob didn’t break our controllers. They were broken by Cousin Geoffrey. Cousin Geoffrey broke…everything.
My cousin is now a father himself, and he understands things a little differently now. I think he doesn’t hold it against me when I say he was fucking annoying to play Atari or Nintendo with. More annoying than the Reset King or David Dolph!
Geoffrey destroyed about three Atari joysticks. I was pretty good at taking them apart and repairing them, but there was only so much I could do. An Atari joystick was a plastic handle that activated four switches on a circuitboard underneath. Geoffrey would push those joysticks so hard that the plastic inside would shatter. I could take it apart and use hot glue to give the inner plastic frame some strength but it was a temporary fix at best. You had to buy new controllers. My dad eventually decreed that Geoffrey was only allowed to play with old, refurbished controllers, not the new ones.
Geoffrey destroyed our original Transformers G1 Frenzy figure, on Christmas day, the same day we got it! He was just a destructive child, and what he didn’t destroy he simply lost. I’ll give you some examples of the chaos he caused.
First trip to Alberta, August 1979. l-r Mike, Geoffrey “Captain Destructo”, and Kathryn
In August 1979, the family took our first trip to Alberta. It was a two week tour starting in Edmonton and going through the mountains. My sister, my cousin and I were often given the same toys to play with, so we wouldn’t fight over them. My sister and my cousin were both given dinky cars of the Batmobile. Were they ever cool. They came with a little metal trailer and a plastic Bat Boat you could tow. We had a lot of fun playing dinky cars on those floors of Alberta motels. They were also small enough to carry around in your pockets.
Geoffrey threw his first Batmobile off a mountain in Jasper. He just wanted to see what would happen if he threw the Batmobile off a moutain. A second Batmobile was bought for him on the same trip. That Batmobile was flushed down the toilet of a rest stop in Canmore. He was eventually given a third Batmobile, which, as far as I know, survived a little longer than the other two.
Geoffrey “Captain Destructo” (in cap) sulking after sacrificing the Batmobile to the Mountain Gods.
Another incident of soul-crushing toy waste happened in the summer of 1983. This time, Geoffrey was visiting us in Ontario. It was the summer of Return of the Jedi. The new figures were out. My mom took us to Zellers and bought each of us a new toy. I chose Luke Skywalker, partly because he came with so many accessories. He came with a new lightsaber, a gun and a cloth cape. Geoffrey got the same figure. We then waited on a bench while my mom did her banking.
“Come on let’s open these,” said Geoffrey. My sister and I always waited until we got home.
Geoffrey ripped open his Luke.
“Why are you opening that now? You’re going to lose the gun. Just wait until we get home. This is our last stop.” I attempted to reason with my cousin but he had Luke out of the package.
Within the first five minutes, he lost the gun. Before we made it home, he lost the lightsaber too.
“I told you so,” was something I relished saying to him. My Luke, by the way, still has all his accessories 35 years later.
What these tales tell us is that cousin Geoffrey was a monsoon of chaos and utter destruction. He also had all the latest stuff, and that included video games. Fortunately for his parents, the original Nintendo Entertainment System had very robust, button-based controllers. He couldn’t break them. He was really good at “Super Mario Bros.” and “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out”. Unfortunately this meant my sister and I didn’t get much gaming time. We died early and often, and he played long lives while earning extra ones. His turns were much longer than ours.
We saw him make it to Mike Tyson once. That was pretty cool. Once he almost made it, but my dad walked in front of the TV during a fight and caused Geoffrey to lose. Boy he sure threw a fit that time!
Here’s the funny thing. When we were kids, my cousin took a lot of energy and patience to keep entertained. When he hit his 20s, he really mellowed out and we bonded like we never have before. And what did we bond over? Music and video games.
I took a trip out to Alberta for a week in 1997. He took me shopping to a couple music stores in Calgary, used and new. I found a rare CD featuring the early one of somebody named Dave Grohl. It was the band Scream, and the CD was No More Censorship. I was kicking off a love affair with Foo Fighters and it was a seriously cool find. Geoffrey was (and always has been) into to Tragically Hip, so I got him a CD by a similar sounding band called the Barstool Prophets. Meanwhile, he turned me onto the Gandharvas with their last album Sold For a Smile. Killer album that I still love (and own two different copies of).
At night, he introduced me to one of the best racing games I’ve ever played. For the N64 system, we spent hours on “Top Gear Rally”. It was such an immersive game for its time. We designed our cars, we discovered shortcuts, and had a blast seeing how far we could make it.
Once again, it wasn’t best scores or best times that mattered. It was seeing how far you could get. Getting to the third or fourth level was rare and required serious skill. It was the most fun I’d had playing video games in many years!
All these memories flow like a stream of consciousness, triggered by certain songs. Early Kiss, AC/DC and Quiet Riot will forever be associated with the old Atari 2600 in the basement. Bob was a constant gaming companion, and he sets off even more memories. Discovering music together, like Whitesnake and Kiss albums. All hail the Reset King. Long may he reign!
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