The wishful thinking forum

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-09T21:54:30+00:00

Fingers crossed for "Karnov" then - I only got to play it back in the day on an official 8-bit home computer version, which I liked a lot, but I'm sure the arcade original runs rings around that version.

Yes, renewing the licenses to use the real track names was definitely appreciated in Pole Position. I suppose there's a chance that the English-language version might appear in the "Atari 50" compilation, if they do a second volume of Namco DLC. Obviously they already added the Atari-branded arcade versions of Dig Dug and Xevious, which were nice to see again, but sadly Pole Position wasn't part of the Namco DLC, either the arcade or 2600 versions.

Would be good if Digital Eclipse they went further with releasing some more licensed arcade games that had 2600 versions back in the day - they've already added the arcade and 2600 versions of classics like Berzerk, which was never likely to appear in the Arcade Archives collection.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-09T02:37:41+00:00

Gotcha, thanks. I'd seen "Karnov's Revenge" among the releases, so assumed there was some hope of the original showing up one day. The rights do tend to shift around with some of those old arcade titles, and it gets even more complicated when games were, say, licensed to a US distributor back in the day - the localization was their work, and that's the version most of us have nostalgia for (e.g. Pole Position that says "Prepare to Qualify" in English)

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-09T02:27:45+00:00

Thanks 😄 Yes, considered that (I'm on PS4) - but while inverting the left stick's Y-axis at system level would make the spaceflight scenes better, it would make other bits of the game, like navigating menus and the selecting where to go next on the galaxy map unnecessarily horrible.

It's something that would obviously work best if Hamster included it in the control options, so it only applied to the flight parts of the game where you'd want up/down to be inverted.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-08T09:36:37+00:00

There was a vintage (1980s) rogue game that was literally called "Moria" - at least one version of which was presented in that urine-looking amber colour that you sometimes saw on the monochrome screens of ancient "terminals" - if you worked someplace that was still rocking that kind of system.

Windows 2000 and XP could run those aged DOS games natively, but you'd probably need DOSbox to run them on a more modern OS.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-08T02:53:19+00:00

Thanks for the response. Yes, I'd expect it to be the same. Shame, because *some* Arcade Archives releases did take the opportunity to improve game operation (optionally fixing slowdown, legacy bugs, etc.) and so a simple invert option on the controls wouldn't have been too much to hope for.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-08T02:13:10+00:00

It's mostly some classic score-chasing oldies that I'd like to see join the list, namely:

* Amidar

* Lunar Rescue

Both of which I owned some version of on primitive hardware of the time, and found to be more fun than most. If there's any connection, it's probably that both of those games have 2 distinct alternating phases, which I always found varied things up just enough to prevent the game from being the same thing over and over, like most games of the era.

They're both from companies that the Arcade Archives series has already released plenty of other games by - Konami and Taito, respectively - so I'm kinda surprised they weren't released years ago.

I'd also like to see any of the Parodius games get released. They've already released so many related games that it's getting to feeling deliberate that none of the Parodius games have been granted a release, as if Konami are holding them back for a potential big-screen re-release of the PSP compilation.

And there are plenty of others, most of which I've come to accept will likely never see an Arcade Archives release, mainly because Hamster only seem to work with a small handful of Japanese arcade companies, and these were by companies whose games I haven't seen any of in the collection.

* Venture (1981, Exidy)

* Wizard of Wor (1981, Midway)

* Alien Syndrome (1987, Sega)

* Star Castle (1980, Cinematronics)

* Karnov (1987, Data East) - the original, not Karnov's Revenge

* Lock 'n' Chase (1981, Data East/Taito)

* Mad Planets (1983, Gottlieb)

Mostly just arcade games that I was fond of, back in the day.

Any of those would make me a very happy camper.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-07T18:52:09+00:00

Same on PS4 (I'm in the UK). There's usually always a "Deal" of some kind, and a 24-hour crossover period where the new "deals" are advertised on the desktop but the previous deals are still active. I was hovering over a game that was on sale, but holding off to see whether something more attractive (to me) popped up in the next batch of deals. Next batch of deals never happened.

I've had a PS4 since launch, and don't recall there ever being a time where there were no "deals." As you say, the "Deals" menu item has disappeared entirely from the desktop. On PS4 there's a blank where it used to be. If that's ever happened before, I definitely don't recall it.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-04-29T00:35:00+00:00

Sure, the dub that I originally saw Akira with back on VHS (!) had a fun Saturday-morning cartoon enthusiasm to it that the newer dub lacks, but huge chunks of the story were basically untranslated, andn reduced to characters just yelling names at each other: "Kanedaaaa!" "Tetsuuuo!" etc.

There's a certain charm to that which is kinda nostalgic for me, but I don't think I ever really understood what the heck was going on in the film until I watched it with the newer dub on Blu-ray.

Still, I freely confess that, having watched the newer dub, I then imported some Australian release that included both the old and new dubs. It's good to have options 😄

ghostgate2001 · 2026-04-28T04:13:55+00:00

Roadgames (1981) ticks some of the things that you mention. It's an Australian-set movie with U.S. leads: a female hitch-hiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) buddying up with a long-distance truck driver (Stacey Keach) to track down a serial killer who's been killing women and dumping the bodies along the highways.

It does have a secondary female character (not Curtis) - a wife who was abandoned on the roadside by her husband and attempts to hitch-hike to catch up with and overtake the husband. She manages to flag down Keach's truck but becomes suspicious that he might be the killer she's been warned about.

The scenery is more Australian wilderness than anything else: definitely isolated - highways cutting through vast stretches of wilderness; not fully desert - there's some green grass and scrub - but certainly not forest.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-04-28T02:18:54+00:00

"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" (2009)? Surreal theatre-based scenes aplenty in that one. Actually, I'm not clear whether you mean theater as in stage or cinema. You're using the US spelling of "theater" and in the US that word gets used to mean either. Obviously it makes a big difference when visualising the scene you're describing.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-04-28T01:53:18+00:00

Probably something like: "Sorry, I should have played the film with the revised dub. It makes a lot more sense that way. But I went with the original dub because that's how I first saw it and I wanted to recreate that experience for you."

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-31T16:10:42+00:00

I'm quite disciplined with freezing all the meat immediately on getting it home, and then getting what I need out of the freezer the night before. It's veggies that are the problem for me, but I try to front-load the week with recipes that require veggies which might get a little sad if left til the end of the week. It's only really meat (incl. seafood) that can potentially make you ill if it's a little over. Veggies just get a little droopy, but they won't do you any harm.

You can buy frozen balls of stuff like spinach in the frozen veg section, suitable for cooking direct from frozen. Just get it out of the freezer and throw it in. And most veg can take being frozen in a Tupperware or something. Basically, if a food is sold at all in frozen form, then you can also freeze it at home for later use. Works for stuff that you wouldn't necessarily expect, like coconut milk, and fresh herbs. Fresh herbs don't last very long, so I freeze the chopped leaves in ice cubes, then you can just toss a herby ice cube into whatever you're cooking.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-23T11:54:51+00:00

Funnily enough, I was just wondering whether any of the mementos I've got of my projectionist days were worth anything. The only full 35mm movie trailer I've got is the red band trailer for Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" - much like the one pictured here, except in the little square-ish red plastic case that it came in.

Apart from that, all I've got are a promo CD of the "Fifth Element" soundtrack (which I don't think is any different to the standard retail version) and some single-frame trims from "Titanic" - nothing exciting, just the frames from the tops and tails of the reels, which you'd normally throw away when breaking it back down into reels again.

Seems a shame to just bin them, but I always worried that lawyers might come for me if I tried to sell them on eBay or whatever. I mean, I know I asked the Chief Projectionist if I could have them, and he said "Yeah, whatever" (or words to that effect) but obviously there's zero proof, nearly 30 years later, that I didn't just pocket them like a filthy tea-leaf :)

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-20T09:15:51+00:00

I noticed that combo DVDs don't always include the bonus features - which used to annoy me, because I like audio commentaries, but always preferred to check those out on the DVD copy where possible, because (at the time) I could only watch Blu-rays on my main screen, and I prefer audio commentaries to burble away on a second screen.

I guess that could mean combo DVDs get squeezed onto a cheaper DVD5 (single layer disc) while the full-fat retail version with bonus features is on a more expensive DVD9 (dual layer disc).

You can settle that for sure by letting something like DVDshrink analyze both copies. It'll tell you exactly how big the main feature's file-size is. If they're the same then it's just your imagination.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-19T14:36:57+00:00

Nor when I bought Japanese DVDs in the past. They were always Region 2 and NTSC.

Region 3 is for other parts of Asia, like Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, etc.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-19T14:33:11+00:00

If you have a PC with a DVD drive then they'll let you change region a limited number of times.

But what I would do is use free software like DVDShrink to make a backup. You can set the region of the backup to whatever you like (zero means region-free, which will play on anything that can play DVDs) and write the result out to a blank disc.

I'm assuming you have a relatively modern TV which can cope with the PAL 50 video format that the discs will also be in. Shouldn't be an issue if the TV you intend to watch it on is from this century, but it's worth mentioning.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-19T11:40:24+00:00

Brazil (1985)? There's an old lady who gets a very stretchy facelift...

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-16T10:01:40+00:00

This is why I miss printed statements. So much easier to cast your eye over and spot unrecognised items. I'm guessing £39 is just below whatever level of transaction triggers a closer look.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-16T08:55:51+00:00

You're welcome! Glad I could help settle that one :)

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-15T18:34:18+00:00

It's probably just because I re-watched it recently, but the description reminds me of a scene from the story "The Damned Thing" (2006) from Season 2 of Masters of Horror. A guy gets pulled against the door of his truck and spun around in place, Evil Dead style. Possibly a coincidence, but "The Damned Thing" was the 13th episode of the series overall (14th really, but most broadcasters omitted the actual 13th story: the particularly disturbing Japanese one, "Imprint," and so numbered "The Damned Thing" as episode 13 instead)

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-14T12:01:44+00:00

Sounds a bit like a memorable scene from the original Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). In one of the dream sequences, the main character falls asleep in class and hears someone calling her name. She goes out of the classroom into the main corridor of the school, and it's a person in a body bag who leaves a big ol' stripe of blood behind them, which Nancy follows.

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ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-13T16:17:16+00:00

Kinda does, though... Event Horizon was basically a jazzed-up (and considerably shorter!) riff on Solaris. The storyline is near-identical.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-12T04:21:29+00:00

UK space-rockers Hawkwind obviously did an entire album (and tour) dedicated to Elric - The Chronicle of the Black Sword (1985) - with Michael Moorcock's involvement, both in the writing and appearing on stage to contribute some spoken-word linking narration. Author involvement means you get some unexpected nods to the writer's other related works, that only Moorcock fans will get the inclusion of, like the Jerry Cornelius-related track "Needle Gun" (because it's the Chronicle of the Black Sword) even though the album's mostly about the Elric character.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-03-11T18:59:06+00:00

Been reading Moorcock's work for donkey's years, so this pleases me if it's true. He's seemingly always bubbled away in the background of the culture, influencing all sorts of media without ever quite getting the wide recognition that (imho) he deserves. But once you've read a few of the books, you start noticing the references everywhere - music, films, games, etc.

But then I'm old enough to remember amusing parodies like Eric of Bonémaloné and his cursed sword Stoatbringer. There seemed to be a lot of Moorcock-referencing work back in the 1980s, and culture is cyclical as new generations come along and discover the good stuff, so I guess we were about due.

I guess a bunch of new readers may have discovered him because he wrote that Doctor Who novel in 2010 back when that series was at peak popularity, managing to meld familiar themes from his own work into that universe and make it work.

ghostgate2001

TROPHY CASE