Fun facts!

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Any of y'all played classic early arcade games? How about Tempest?

The first prototype of the game had the shape wireframe spinning and the gunner remaining stationary, but that caused motion sickness after a period of time so it was changed around.

* The Creation of Tempest: Dave Theurer, who designed the game and wrote the software, said his original intention was to make a first-person perspective of the "Space Invaders" game, but he ended up doing something completely new and different. Rich Adam: "Dave implemented a first-person "Space Invaders". Everybody played it but they didn't keep coming back. You could tell when you had something cool, the engineers kept coming back. This was good and bad because there were times when you wanted to work on your game and everybody would want to be playing it. But when he was doing the first-person "Space Invaders", Dave didn't run into this problem of everyone wanting to play the game... and he said to himself: 'Well, maybe this isn't working. What can I do?' Then I came in one day and all of a sudden he had this round tube with these things coming up it. I said, 'What the heck is that Dave?' He said, 'I don't know. Aliens from the center of the Earth? I don't know.' I think he said something about having had a dream about it. I said, 'How does it work?' He said, 'I don't know. They're coming up around the edge of this thing and you're trying to blow them away.' He just sort of started out with this concept and took it from there. I can see why he would say that Tempest was certainly his proudest achievement. He worked extremely hard on that. It's pure creation from his own brain.".
 
Gender reassessment surgery was invented in Germany and may have been based off a plan proposed by Nazi scientists as a means for the ss and top brass of the Reich to escape persecution.

Apparently the krauts would rather hide out in south America or die In the father land with their kielbasas intact than go under the knife and hide as women.
 
Hop was released on April 1st 2011 and didn't get a home media release until March a year later. One of the longest times for a film to go from theatrical to home media in the modern world.

Bambi was premiered in 1942 and became available in the US in 1989 and five years after that in the UK/Europe. Check mate.

It's not a fair comparison, studios were deathly afraid of home releases and Disney especially so, but the lag between the US release in 1989 and the Euro release in 1994 shows the delay between markets, a delay made possible because there was no internet. So they could stagger marketing campaigns, dub or subtitle the movie and build hype if the movie did well in other markets.

The Blair Witch Project I remember as the first movie that had enormous internet hype from viewers before marketing had even started over here, people didn't even know anything about the movie but they became eager to see it due to the trans-atlantic word of mouth, it became obvious that simultaneous or near simultaneous release was necessary to capitalize on that.


A fun fact is that Sergio Leone's Dollar trilogy, 'A Fistful of Dollars', 'For a Few Dollars More' and 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' in Europe before the first one premiered in the US.
Clint Eastwood described it as surreal to suddenly get so much attention for movies that he had made years ago. John Wayne didn't like this new type of cowboy that would shoot someone in the back.
 
There's an early scene in A Fistful of Dollars where Clint Eastwood rides past a sinister-looking dead tree with a noose hanging from it. Sergio Leone saw the tree outside a house in Almeria, Spain and thought it would be perfect for his movie, so he knocked on the homeowner's door and said 'I'm from the department of public works, that tree is an eyesore and must be removed or we'll fine you.' The homeowner allowed it to be cut down, and Leone hauled it to the set, propped it up, strung a noose from it, and the rest is history.

IMG_1916-e1479396879393.jpg
 
some star wars trivia:
  • In the original script for the phantom menace, Lucas originally intended for Obi-Wan Kenobi to die and Qui-gon Jinn would have taken on both Obi-Wan's quest to train Anakin as well as take his name. This would have tied into episode 4 when Qui-gon saves Luke from Tusken raiders and talks about R2-D2 searching for Obi-Wan Kenobi. This was scrapped because Lucas didn't want 2 twists in the same movie.
  • Darth maul was at one point considered to be casted as a woman. Two actress that had the potential to be Darth Maul were Maggie Cheung and Briggitte Lin.
  • In the initial storyboards captain Panaka was initially drawn to look like Toshiro Mifune due to how closely Panaka sounds similar to the surname Tanaka.
  • The droid factory scene in episode 2 was added to the movie during post production
  • George Lucas thought one of the most disturbing scenes in the prequel trilogy was R4-P17 getting decapitated by buzzdroids in the beginning of episode 3.
  • When it came to introduction scene of General Greivous the storyboard artists wanted to use close up shots that focused on the details such as his eyes, claws and feet. George shot this down because quote "I don't want something to be special because of how it's filmed, but because of what it is. Just put the camera on it and let it play out in front of the audience. If it's amazing, they'll know." This was also the first time most would've heard about George talking about his 'style'.
 
In the original script for the phantom menace, Lucas originally intended for Obi-Wan Kenobi to die and Qui-gon Jinn would have taken on both Obi-Wan's quest to train Anakin as well as take his name. This would have tied into episode 4 when Qui-gon saves Luke from Tusken raiders and talks about R2-D2 searching for Obi-Wan Kenobi. This was scrapped because Lucas didn't want 2 twists in the same movie.
Even for Lucas, that's remarkably stupid. I'm glad that never happened.
 
Although he created Billy beer and was the spokesman for it. Billy Carter actually preferred drinking Pabst blue ribbon.

Despite his reputation for being a raging alcoholic. Ulysses S Grant couldn't hold his liquor at all. And only drank under very stressful situations when he couldn't handle the pressure anymore.
=
Ronald Reagan was a also a heavy drinker in his younger days but quit and turned to jelly beans. He had a giant jar on his desk for his tenure as president and specifically had the servants remove the coconut ones from the jar before they filled it.

Lastly on a semi unrelated note. More democrats than republicans voted in favor of the 19th amendment (that lead to prohibition on alcohol.) in both the house and Senate. And New Jersey took the longest to ratify prohibition into law, taking until March of 1922
 
There was an African emperor named Abu Bakr II in the 14th century who wanted to explore the Atlantic Ocean. He sent out two fleets. Neither of them came back and there's no evidence they ever reached either of the Americas. Abu Bakr II was on the second fleet!


The Ottoman Navy did make it to Atlantic Ocean around the 17th century, but all they did was engage in piracy.


One more! Ahmad al-Mansur, the last ruler of Morocco's Saadi dynasty, wanted to create a Muslim colony in the Americas with the help of England; however, that plan went up in flames when he died of the plague and there was a succession crisis in Morocco afterwards.

 
Last edited:
More old vidya trivia: -

Berzerk shares a rather chilling distinction of being the first known game to be blamed for an actual player's death. In January 1981, Jeff Dailey was the first person to die playing a video game, a 19-year old Berzerk player, died of a massive heart attack right after playing his favorite game. His score was 16, 660 (a very respectable score but disturbing for obvious reasons). On an equally distressing note, in October 1982 at the 'Friar Tuck Game Room' in Calumet City, Illinois : 18-year old Peter Burkowski, a physically healthy person who was alcohol-free and drug-free, inscribed his initials in Berzerk's top ten list twice in a matter of only 15 minutes. A few seconds after that, he collapsed and died of a heart attack.
Also note: - There is a version of Berzerk with kraut audio.
 
Ancient Romans used to brush their teeth with sticks and rat brains for “flavor”
Up until toothbrushes came around most civilization used to brush with sticks.
I was going to write out the list of sticks used per place but there's actually way more than I expected. Here's the wikipedia list.
fdsfsdf.PNG
 
I mentioned this In the George Floyd thread but it bears repeating here.

Martin Luther King Jr and several members of the NAACP would pocket portions of donations and funding on the side then use the proceeds to fund "private meetings," in members houses. What nobody knew for years is these meetings were actually full on swinger orgies between members. The logic behind them being "it's what all the rich white folks are doing in the 60's, so hey why not us? Equal rights right?. "
 
Okay last two vidya gaem stuff.

Crap arcade game: - "Water Balls"
YES, I SAID WATER BALLS. It's a crap arcade puzzle game.
The initials input music is John Philip Sousa's 'Liberty Bell March' (also recognized as the Monty Python theme).
At the game over screen, 'Game over, man!' from the 1986 movie Aliens is played.



Here a rare one I actually played many, many, many years ago.
Arcade Game - "Blaster"
The DuraMold modelwas a large circular arcade cabinet made entirely out of thick plastic. These cabs were very attractive and almost impossible to damage. They were, however, expensive to produce and had a fatal design flaw: they shrank slightly in the first few months after they were made. In some cases the shrinking machine would eject its monitor, and send it flying across the room. Williams quickly developed a fix for this, but no one wanted DuraMolds after hearing about them shooting monitors across arcades. The DuraMold Blaster was all black and had yellow graphics on the control panel and marquee.
It shouldn't be too hard to look up, but if anyone knows what this game is a sequel to without looking it up, Wraith's ♥♥♥♥乇乂ㄒ尺卂 ㄒ卄丨匚匚♥♥♥♥ Cat-Girl Points™©® for ya.
 
Back
Top Bottom