In the late 1970s, Americans began to realize how oppressive pants were when it came not only to running in track-and-field events, but also walking down the street, standing, sitting around the house, and kneeling.

The question on everyone’s mind was how can we achieve freer movement while still covering our shameful nether regions and not being seen as an abomination in the eyes of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?

After a few dozen lines of cocaine at 11:59pm on December 31^st, 1979, the answer became clear: remove the legs. Not the legs of the person, although that is a side-effect of some hallucinogenic drugs. No, the answer was to remove the leg of the pants until the material covered the bare minimum.

This fashion trend became known as running shorts, and it really took off! These ‘shorts’ became popular amongst all sectors of society, from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. School children, musical entertainers, and athletes all took to wearing shorts.

It was comments from athletes that led to this apparel’s refinement, as it was discovered that making them shorter and cutting a slit in the side would allow for a number of improvements:

• As a part of a gym class uniform, gym teachers would now have a reason to get up in the morning;
• The slits allowed for faster running; and
• The minimal use of material would make it difficult for young males to hide the visible signs of their frequent and often unexpected and uncalled for arousal

Shorts were one of the 1980s more racy fashion statements. But they have had much staying power, and even today people can still be witnessed wearing them, showing that they have risen to the heights of success just as quickly, easily, and poetically as they’ve risen up the butts of wearers everywhere.

Amazing!

Put on some Aviators, find yourself a whistle, and no questions will be asked, aside from, “When can you start?”

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Put some pine-tar on that wood – you’re going to need a tight grip in order to keep up with these balls!

Once Nintendo found success with its Bill and Ted series, developers felt that the space was opened up to allow them to take more risks with their video games. The trend was toward decidedly minimalist graphics and game play. The earliest example of this is when the final release of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was essentially the beta release of the game with very few things changed.

During the high noon of this philosophical approach, Baseball was released. The controls are unorthodox yet intuitive, as well as extremely simple to understand and master. In Baseball the controls – and graphics and sound – exist within the player, meaning the quality of this title is left strictly to the players.

This game is recommended for older audiences, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much full frontal female nudity in my entire life.

If you play one baseball game on the Nintendo Entertainment System, make it this one.

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If the first three Bases Loadeds weren’t enough for you, surely a fourth will quench your thirst.

In Bases Loaded 4, Jaleco Game Design Co. did away with the bells and whistles that made Bases Loaded 3 a fresh and interesting title.

Jaleco did try to secure the license of Major League Baseball for Bases Loaded 4. This was the first time MLB granted its teams and players’ likeness to a video game, and it’s not hard to tell that Jaleco took this seriously, as all the teams are present:

• New York
• Atlanta
• Boston
• Philadelphia

My personal favourite team also makes an appearance – the Utah Mormons. They’re a strict bunch, but they’re fair. What they lack in muscle mass due to steroids, they make up for in muscle mass from trying so hard to make Mormon babies all the time.

Your hard work will pay off some day, Mormons. Frankly, I think MLB will allow your honest and drug-free ways to flourish.

And while one might think a game would get boring after the fourth title, this thought is incorrect. Bases Loaded 4 remains just as fresh as the day Pac-Man, the first title in the series, was released

Yup, this sure is a baseball game.

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Welcome to the third installment of Roarin’ 80s’ four part series on the War on the War on Christmas where are doing our darndest to put the Christmas back in Christ. To do this, we are reviewing the overlooked Nintendo Entertainment System gem Bible Adventures.

In this particular episode, we will be focusing on David and Goliath.

This is a game that all fans of the underdog psychological archetype should pick up and never put down. This might prevent potential players from playing it, but that’s probably for the best.

David and Goliath grabs players by the throat and throws them into the heat of the action as they recreate the legendary story of the 5’5” David killing the 5’10” giant Goliath. Chapter by chapter and verse by verse, the story comes alive as players walk to the right, pick up a squirrel, and stand under a flashing arrow – a style of game play that differs drastically from the previous two titles on Bible Adventures.

I needed my pastor to put smelling salts under my nose in order to help me regain consciousness. Talk about intense!

Fans over the underdog should pick this game up and never put it down. Go forth, Christian soldiers! Unfortunately, if you’re unable to put it down, you won’t be able to load it into your NES – rendering the game impossible to play.

Actually, that’s not a bad feature.

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Mystery, murder, and more sexual innuendo than you could even begin to care to shake a stick at… Friday nights on Fox.

Murder, She Wrote is a twenty-four-hour reality television show that follows the life of the sultry Angela Lansbury (photo on right) – a young executive assistant working in the cutthroat city of Cabot Cove, Maine. Landsbury finds herself knee-deep in all kinds of hilarious as she travels about the city fetching items for her boss, Charlene Stapleton – played by Kirstie Alley and voiced by Sylvester Stallone.

Beginning with its first episode on March 7^th, 1980, one of the recurring gags that kept the show together was the death of a character, which, while often scripted by the producers, was sometimes accidental. The ever-concerned Lansbury would usually spend ten-minutes of the show breaking the fourth-wall, pleading with the director and camera operator to stop filming. It was unorthodox and unprecedented, but audiences ate it up like Lansbury’s famous ‘New England clam chowder’ (wink, wink).

Contrary to popular belief, scripted deaths and safety violations – present in any non-unionized (read: good) workforce – were not where the show got its name. At the end of each episode, Fletcher would sit down at her computer and type reflections about the day into her electronic diary: “I am so tired… All the time. I wish that falling beam spilled my brains over the set… Please kill me. This job is murder,” she wrote.

A-hah! Oh Lansbury, you lovable scamp.

Decades ahead of its time, Murder, She Wrote paved the way for the success of the snuff-reality television that viewers love today. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled after its 28^th season, when Lansbury found a stray pair of shoelaces and hanged herself in her dressing room/storage shed.

The show that helped generations of humans realize their humanity.

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Are you a bad enough dude?

Bao Xiao Tien Guo (Explosion Sangokushi) is the second release from our South Korean guerrilla Nintendo Entertainment System video game programming comrades Waixing Computer Science & Technology Co., Ltd. – the first release being Bing Kuang Ji Dan Zi: Flighty Chicken.

For Explosion Sangokushi, the developers decided to move away from the high school home economics project of taking care of an egg. Realizing that not everyone would become a parent and that most students at the school of Waixing Computer Science & Technology would become custodians, Explosion Sangokushi embraced the groundskeeper genre of gaming.

This worked for two reasons. If players were destined to become janitors, they were given an overhead view of the world that could be used to maximize their shift by allowing them to find shortcuts on the grounds. And if players worked their way up the chain, they would surely find themselves in a supervisory position: if they are smart enough to press the ‘A’ and ‘B’ buttons, they can figure out how to boss the other custodians around and become king of the schoolyard.

…Just beware of the Ides of March because you’ll get your comeuppance. Oh yes, yes you will.

Excellent point-and-click adventure game.

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