Rants & Raves of Jasmine’s Fiction

“What movies have you watched lately Jasz?  Are you looking forward to anything?”

“Well, the last movie I caught was Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer but what I really want to watch is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Transformers.”

“Errrrrrr, Transformers.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know, seems to be a kiddy movie.”

“HAHA!  It’s only a kiddy movie to YOU luv.  You weren’t a part of the generation that grew up with those cartoons…  When those were popular you were already grown up!  HAHA!”

“Aw shaddup!”

“Not my fault you’re an old man.”

~~~

For the record, my mate is only 38 this year.  But I am right about him not being a part of the Transformers generation. 

He couldn’t remember cartoons like:

Voltron (5 robot cats that combine into a super humanoid robot);

Thundercats (raise your hands if you can name them all and remember Mumrah’s transformation chant);

Silverhawks (which was to me a futuristic space version of Thundercats);

Saber Rider & The Star Sheriffs (Anime style action cartoon and I‘m humming the theme song in my head);

G.I. Joe (I still have the little action figure with the grappling hook and the jet pack back pack!);

M.A.S.K. (how many of those cars did you collect?);

Dino-Riders (reptiles & humans warring in prehistoric dinosaur infested earth with alien technology);

He-Man (who can forget Skeletor on his

Snake

Mountain

);

and his long lost twin sister on another planet She-Ra (I still can’t get over her stupid name);

Robotech (anime style Transformers) and that’s just to name a few.

It’s just like how my nephews & nieces now are all about the 3-D Rolly-Polly-Ollie, Jimmy Neutron & Finding Nemo…  GAWD!  When I was their age I was watching hand drawn Disney cartoons that took 6 years to produce,

Sesame Street

and Fraggle Rock.  Yes puppets were big then.  CGI wasn’t invented yet.

What a long way we have come.  One of my girlfriend’s 4 year old doesn’t even know what a VCR is.  All he knows is TIVO and DVD.  And my 38 year old mate?  He doesn’t know what a blog is, and I had to educate him on the finer points of bidding on eBay and how to sign up for a PayPal account.  Heck, I even had to tell him what “LOL” meant!!!

What is also eye opening is when I chat to my students about the newfangled computer games they play – I love how they call games made in the 90ies like Diablo and Doom ‘Old School’.  To me, old school is games like Alleycat (on DOS, remember that?) or Prince of Persia or Lode Runner or even Legend of Zelda.  Basic graphics, basic storyline, repetitive scenarios & challenges and its IMPOSSIBLE to finish.  The game just got harder and harder till it became humanly impossible for you to keep up.  But nowadays, it’s all about preserving the fragile egos of the child psyche so games are all easy as pie.  It’s all just about the awesome graphics.

Speaking of awesome graphics – these new PS3, Wii, X-Box etc has games that look like movies!!!  Super Mario will never be the same for me again!!!  And some of you Atari loving folks would remember the first ‘tennis’ game – PONG.  That consisted of 2 little platforms opposite each other and a bouncing 4 pixel little SQUARE.  Not sphere.  Square.  Now THAT’S Old School!

Now Wii has this über tennis game with a handheld, motion detection sensor that actually physically allows you to ‘swing’ and ‘hit’ the ball.  Don’t even get me started on Guitar Heroes.  So I thought I’d share a comic from Penny Arcade regarding the Wii and playing Sports on it…

In the meantime, I’m going to finish reading my books (yes I read off paper – none of these newfangled PDFs for me!) while I wait for the premiere of Transformers.  Enjoy the poster.  AUTOBOTS, ROLL OUT!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 1:25 am and is filed under Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.