A middle-aged nerd from the UK. I like films and write about them, sometimes for Film Stories or my blog.

Have a great day.

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Cake day: Jun 27, 2023

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I only discovered it myself in the last month or so.

For example, I loved X-Wing CD edition back in the day for the real Star Wars soundtrack but I need to try it with MT32 midi emulation. I bet the iMuse system sounds fantastic.


It’s an emulator for playing the entire back catalogue of Lucasarts games. It’s very well documented and ready to use. As I said, if you had some kind of general midi set up or Roland MT32 back in the day, you’d be laughing. The music is awesome.

The program is called Dreamm.

DREAMM is a backronym for:

DOS
Retro-
Emulation
Arena for
Maniac
Mansion (and other LucasArts Games). 

I played the first, maybe not all the way through, on my Atari ST. Later on, I got quite annoyed that the Amiga got the sequel but Lucasfilm Games days it wasn’t coming to the Atari.

I remember getting the PC CD-ROM edition of the original game and the music was lovely.

The next time I played was game three, Curse of Monkey Island. I loved the art style and completed that one.

I plan on playing the latest installment at some point. I downloaded it onto my Xbox.

There’s also a great program for playing old Lucasfilm faces on PC. You can load soundbanks into it because it can emulated different midi interfaces that I dreamed of owning back in the day. The tunes sound amazing.


Back in the early 90s, here in the UK, a company called Cheetah produced licensed joysticks based on Batman, Terminator, Alien³ and The Simpsons. They looked great but they were terrible to use, especially the Alien³ model which I really liked but was incredibly uncomfortable. I never bought one, just tried then on the shops, awful things.


I’ve really enjoyed many of the IP based games over the years, Star Wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones and even Lego GTA. Oh sorry, Lego City: Undercover.

The one that really disappointed me was Lego: Worlds. I thought it would be fun to build with unlimited bricks virtually but it’s just not for me.

I like to have physical bricks in front of me which give me ideas as I build. Finding different bricks in the pile gives me new ideas as I build. That’s not something than happens with the game.

On the flip side, playing with the 80s Space sets was a huge nostalgia kick for me.


The problem is, several publishers don’t want to pay Nintendo for the larger storage cartridges. Many Switch games only have part of the game physically and you have to download the rest.

Diabolo III made a point of saying the whole game was on the cart for example.


I agree. There seems to be a job in the industry called “Professional Guesser”. It’s like those companies/people who say, “Barbie Vs Kong” is expected to make $76m at the box office this weekend. How can you possibly know?


The fact the Nazis are involved is obviously very cool considering it’s Indiana Jones but you can’t help (well me anyway) thinking that it is quite Wolfenstein-y.


Maybe it’s a strong case of nostalgia but a first person Indiana Jones game doesn’t feel right. But on the flip side, if it was a true third person game, people would complain that it’s a clone of Uncharted and Tomb Raider despite Indy being the original.

I have mixed feelings which make me happy as I don’t have an Xbox. 😁


What the article didn’t mention, and it says in the video, Alien: Resurrection was possibly going to be a multi cd game at one point and the dev was experimenting with the code to get that working.


LEGO City Undercover is a fantastic game. I always described to others as Grand Theft Auto: Lego. The only problem was the long load times on the WiiU. I don’t know if it’s any better for other systems.



Unless the drive physically scratched the DVD, it’s not corrupted. However, I’ve had a few discs that I’ve stored carefully for decades that just stopped working for no reason. The discs looked flawless with no signs of damage and they refused to work.

What region is the DVD and is your drive set to the same region?

Alternatively, download this DLL file and place it the same directory as your VLC installation. It will then be able to bypass simple region checks but not all.


I forgot to mention, this was specifically relevant to the UK version of Fraggle Rock as each country has different wraparounds.

The British inserts were filmed first at the TVS Television Theatre in Gillingham, Kent, and later at their larger studio complex in Maidstone (the former since closed and demolished) and presents Fraggle Rock as a rock-filled sea island with a lighthouse. Exterior footage was that of St Anthony’s Lighthouse located near Falmouth in Cornwall. The lighthouse keeper is The Captain (played by Fulton Mackay), a retired sailor who lives with his faithful dog Sprocket. In the third season, as MacKay had died in 1987, the role was played by John Gordon Sinclair as P.K., (the Captain’s nephew) and in the fourth and final season by Simon O’Brien as B.J. (son of the lighthouse’s owner, Mr. Bertwhistle). In 2014, 35 of these British wraparounds were still missing, believed wiped, although subsequent recoveries have gradually reduced this number.[7] As of December 2020, all 96 wraparounds have been found and handed over to the BFI, confirming that the entire UK production still exists in some shape or form.[8] Nickelodeon repeated it in the UK from 1993, as did Boomerang and Cartoonito in 2007. The episodes shown were the original North American versions.


This was a common practice, especially during a certain decade but I forget which. Old tapes were erased to be used again. No thought was given to preserving what was being wiped.


At least they realised Red Dwarf tinkering was a bad idea and the originals still safely exist. I think they said they used the original negatives for Star Wars which were spliced and used for the Special Editions. They kept telling the public the original negatives for untouched Star Wars no longer exist. I can’t believe that’s true though. George keeps a copy of everything. There even a cut of Star Wars that used rear screen protection instead of blue screen!


Reminds me of Fraggle Rock. Due to the television station that produced the show being taken over many times over the years, most of the original broadcast masters have been lost. I think all episodes have been found but they’re mostly at home VHS recordings.



I don’t like the whole Rotten Tomatoes thing or judging a film by it’s box office numbers. If it looks interesting, watch it yourself and make up your own mind. 😊


Back in the old days of 8bit computing, I remember a few magazines used to explain their scoring system.

Most magazines reviewed a game out of ten. A score of five would be an average. The game is just ok. Not brilliant but not terrible either.

A great game would be an eight or nine. Very rarely would a game receive a ten as that indicates perfection.

In today’s world, the way people talk, it feels like a game needs at least an 8 (or 80%) or it’s not even worth touching.


I’m loving this game. If you want, here’s the longer version of that answer. 😀 my wife has also become hooked and is playing it on her Switch.

Apart from the DeLorean, I wonder what else they’re could be? Biff’s 1955 car, the Toyota pickup truck, the Libyans VW camper van or maybe some locations? Looking forward to it.


I loved my minidisc player. My first was a Sharp but that was stolen in a robbery. So I replaced it with a Sony NetMD which I loved even more. Due to the new compression, depending on the length of the albums, you could fit 3 or 4 onto one disc. Also it docked with the PC, so labelling and ripping was really easy. I bought a compatible in line remote which had a backlit LCD display which I loved. The chewing gum stick battery lasted ages and if it did run out of power, I could screw on a little compartment that’s held a AA battery and keep me going.

I loved that little player.


I remember, way back when, I think it was one of Natalie Imbriglia’s first albums, I stuck it into my PC’s CD-ROM drive and something odd happened.

I could listen to a digital copy of the album via an included player and files that were in some locked weird format.

My CD drive couldn’t see the normal CDDA portion of the disc just this little data area with a digital copy.

Wasn’t impressed.


The mods were fantastic. One that always sticks in my mind was Quake Rally. I think you controlled a car and drove it through the standard levels or some new maps, I can’t remember, it’s been so long.


Complete Cinefex Collection
There always seems to be quite a few of the usual pdf's of the now defunct special effect magazine Cinefex floating around. Does anyone know of somewhere that has the complete collection I could acquire in one go? Cinefex did go digital via an iOS app and I always wondered if someone would somehow download the entire contents but I guess it never happened.
fedilink

I presume the Linux version is the same (I used the Windows version) but WiiUDownloader gives you a lovely graphical interface to download anything from the WiiU eShop servers. Even copies files straight to an SD card ready to install on your WiiU.


I’ve been using Poweramp since version 1.5 on my HTC Hero (Android 1.5!). I’m just curious as to why Musicolet is better. I’ve already noticed their statement about no internet access, so that’s a start.

Edit: Musicolet is louder on my Bluetooth headphones than Poweramp is, that makes 2 points. 😁


This is amazing. I think I watched this live at the time. I’ll always remember the “based on famous battles” line followed by footage of soldiers fighting a giant crab!


Recently I completed Crossing Souls. It’s a game overloaded with 80s nostalgia. The soundtrack is from two composers. The first has 80s synth tracks while the other providers John Williams / Amblin like scores as the story of a group of young friends and feels like a movie from that time.


I used to put this on to drift asleep to. Fantastic soundtrack.


I’m playing through The Last of Us: Part 2 for the second time. I was inspired by watching HBO’s adaptation, so I played through part one remastered and then started on Part 2 on my PS5. It’s even better this time around as the PS5 60fps patch was released about a week after I first completed it!

Then I’ve got a stack of other large games to get through including Death Stranding and Cyberpunk 2077.


I was quite happy with Newpipe, and I don’t know if it’s been fixed since as I went back to ReVanced, it couldn’t play 1080p 60fps videos on my tablet where as YouTube had no problems.

EDIT: out of curiosity, I just downloaded it again and it seems to work fine now.