Popular poetic rumour has it that eyes are the windows to the soul. So shouldn’t the eyes also have shutters?

In the 1980s, fashion designed Alain Mikli sought to fuse the usefulness of seeing with the uselessness of decorative window  shutters.

After several prototypes (see top right), Mikli settled on a design in which the lens of the sunglasses would be covered with strips or ‘shutters’ of the same material as the frame. And thus Shutter Shades as we know and love them were born.

While highly impractical as far as ‘being able to see’ is concerned, Shutter Shades do provide two valuable services to the public:

• Pedophiles have become easier to spot
• Pedophile success rates have dropped due to both the inability to see and go for the gold.

Thanks for keeping our children and sexy pre-teens safe, Alain!

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Place your bets! I’m betting that Konami hit another slam dunk homerun with this one!

Released during the great reform of how a menu-simulator ought to be programmed – with proponents of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Dragons of Flame and its ‘actual game’ trajectory battling it out with proponents of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Pool of Radiance on the Live Action Role Playing fields – Caesar’s Palace takes ‘simulators’ in an entirely new direction.

In Caesar’s Palace – known as Super Mario Bros. in Red China – players get to experience what it is like to walk into a room full of slot machines and what it’s like to stand outside a washroom door and eagerly await one’s turn to expel some urine or eject some feces.

Unlike my feces, though, Caesar’s Palace is an all-around solid experience. It offers an interesting interface that makes use of some sort of arrow ‘cursor’ which really has potential. It also might use the ‘A’ and ‘B’ buttons.

Also lacks corn.

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Konami tries its hand at looking into the future for this one, Capcom Barcelona ’92!

Barcelona ’92, released in 1989 by Konami, appears to be a collection of squiggly text and some sort of gaming event where people from all around the world gather in order to show their athletic ability and express their love for oppressing minorities and the poor.

To play the games in Barcelona ’92, players must alternate between pressing the ‘A’ and ‘B’ buttons and sometimes pressing a randomly selected direction on the ‘directional’ pad.

The control scheme accurately depicts the existentialist dread experienced since World War II, showing players the seemingly random meaninglessness of the universe and the non-existence of its coders.

A valuable insight into our frightening future where governments spend billions of dollars to train individuals to do mundane actions with the hopes of being rewarded with metal medallions, which will then be traded for oil. Hash oil, that is. Puff, puff, pass.

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Hailing from the muddy banks of the Uganda, James Harris got his start in the United States by actually being born into an upper-class family in Connecticut. After attending Harvard Law, Harris decided that he would rather earn a degree from the school of hard-knocks, so he moved to Florida to pick fruit, then to Michigan to be a part of the booming automobile industry.

It was in Michigan that Harris met his future trainer Houston “Bobo Brazil” Harris. The two lovers departed the harsh atmosphere of Michigan for the more open-minded state of Arkansas, where the two could train and pick fruit together unimpeded.

Harris made his rounds in the various hobo wrestling circuits that Arkansas had to offer, wrestling under the names of “Sugar Bear”, “Ugly Bear”, and “Big” Jim Harris. Harris got his big break, however, when Vince MacMahon invited him to join the WWF in 1984, where he would become popular as the Ugandan head-hunter “Kamala”, but he continued to wrestle as “Sugar Bear”, “Ugly Bear”, and he often reprised his role as “Miss Elizabeth”.

Harris had several runs in the WWF, but he gained notoriety in 1986 during a photo shoot for the magazine Sports Review. In an attempt to construct a feud between Harris and Hulk Hogan, MacMahon wanted the magazine to feature Hogan’s head on Harris’ head-hunting spear.

Due to an error in communication, this is exactly what happened. Hogan’s head managed to be reattached to his body, but with his brain having gone 3-hours without oxygen, his mental capacities were greatly reduced. Harris was picked up by police outside the photo shoot and he was eventually sentenced to death by an Arkansas jury for inappropriately touching a white man. There have been many appeals by Harris and his lawyers for the case to be re-opened, as Harris has claimed that “Hogan was retarded long before I got here”.

Despite this evidence, to this day Harris awaits his punishment on death row.

Harris never won a title during his stay in the WWF, but he does have the recognition of having been sat on twice by André the Giant – a truly heroic action.

Congratulations.

Perhaps the most excellent of all the Castle series – aside from Castle Most Excellent 32: The Final Journey of Adventure and Glory.

In this classic Action-Adventure-RPG with flight-sim elements you take on the role of Rip Stevens, a professional door unlocker based out of New York, New York.

Rip has agreed to take on the ultimate challenge in door unlocking – a haunted castle. Are you a bad enough dude to unlock several doors per level while being haunted?

After an incredible 59 hours of playing I finally beat the first level – or what I like to think of as the first level, which is actually just the very first door that needs to be unlocked.

The difficulty can luckily be ramped down by taking the game out of the NES and using the components of the cartridge to unlock doors within your house.

It was one hell of a ride, but I’d do it all over again if required to by local and/or state law.

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Captain America returns in the exciting sequel to Argos no Senshi.

For those who have forgotten since the previous game, Captain America is perhaps the most famous character in Japanese mythos. He is not only a brave and mighty ninja warrior – but also a protector of the sacred island of Japan.

There is a fictional war taking place referred to in-game as “World War II” wherein a number of global superpowers have declared war on one another. In Captain America and the Avengers, or CAATA for short, Captain America is tasked with protecting the Japanese mainland from foreign invaders.

Unfortunately, every step you take in the game advances a countdown known as “The Bomb” in reference to the atomic bomb, which will inevitably drop, ending the game and your life.

True patriotism is playing the game knowing the outcome. Are you ready for the ultimate sacrifice?

Captain America may not survive this journey but the Japanese ideals he stands for will live on forever.

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