The Grand Emperor's Retro Video Gaming Blog

Star Trek has received at least one title on many video game consoles for last 40 years now. It’s a testament to the shows enduring legacy, as well as its fan base. These are fans who let the shows originality stir their imaginations and made them carry “ The Final Frontier” into the world of video gaming only a few years after the show ended. Some of the earliest versions of Star Trek games appeared as text adventures shared on the early internet in BBS’s, or in the form of short games meant to showcase graphics rather than any kind of actual gameplay. Eventually though game designers and publishers knew a true game would have to be made. In 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released thanks in part to Star Wars: A New Hope ’s success two years earlier and the constant push by Star Trek fans to bring the show back.   Star Trek: The Motion Picture , although in retrospect hardly the best of the Star Trek movies, was groundbreaking in itself, and set new territory for...

Could truth get any stranger than a fictional tale about a homemade A-bomb? The weekend before last, trying to keep on the theme of watching at least one 80’s movie per weekend this summer, I decided to watch The Manhattan Project on Netflix. If you’ve never heard of it before, than let me first tell you it’s not a historical drama about the development of the atomic bomb, that was left to 1989’s Fatman and Littleboy . Rather, this is an interesting little flick about a teenager who creates his own atomic bomb for a science fair, using plutonium he stole from a local laboratory. The film itself is somewhat obscure, and really wasn't a huge box office success either. No doubt part of the reason was that releasing a heavy drama in the summer of 1986, amongst such classics as Top Gun , Short Circuit , and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (the latter opened the same weekend) probably wasn't the best timing on the studios part. The other issue was the general theme of the mo...

Drop by and check it out I have a few other videos coming out soon, and an upcoming article on some Star Wars  games. 

Writing a blog about things that are considered “retro” obviously requires a lot of trips down Memory Lane and the nostalgia that comes with it. Not only do I think about the decades and years of my own life, but I often feed off the nostalgia surrounding decades that came before those within my lifespan. Often times these decades have had an influence on the decades of my own life, or have had an influence on me directly. Although I never lived during them, the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s have always been of interest to me, since they were my parents decades and since they seem to have a real impact of the world around us, and the way we think and perceive the world. On Friday night after another long week drew to a close, I decided to watch American Graffiti. I’d seen the movie several times during my life and at one point my Dad had it on video cassette, and I’ve had the soundtrack on CD since I was just shy of 16. Each time I've watched the movie it's been while I was at a...