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Author: Ty Johnston

Nerdarchy > Articles posted by Ty Johnston (Page 4)

Blast from the Past — Dr. Strange TV Movie

Everybody knows Marvel is releasing a Dr. Strange movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch next month, but did you know there was a Dr. Strange movie for television way back in 1978? It’s true. Peter Hooten starred as Dr. Strange, looking more than a little like Gabe Kaplan in the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter. Also, Hooten’s costume was more than a little goofy looking, at one point sporting a giant star and at another showing ancient Egyptian iconography, but it was the 1970s, so what could you expect? Just don’t get me started on that faux silky cape.

Carolina Renaissance Festival keeps alive history and fun

Carolina Renaissance Festival

Nobles and royals gather above the heads of the rabble at the opening of jousting for the Carolina Renaissance Festival. (all photos by Ty Johnston)

Carolina Renaissance Festival

A pair of Scottish soldiers are upbraided by their officer (he’s the fancy-looking fellow at left) at the Carolina Renaissance Festival.

This past Saturday the Carolina Renaissance Festival kicked off the opening weekend of its twenty-third season, all with 12 theater stages, more than 100 shops, and 25 acres of fun. Located in Huntersville, North Carolina, just north of Charlotte, the festival offers music, games, rides, comedy, costumes, and food. There’s even a falconry show, and what would a renaissance festival be without jousting tournaments.

This is a perfect venue for those of you who like to sashay about in public in your favorite historic costume, but if you should forget your costume or don’t have one, there is a rental office that can provide any look you want. If your costume tastes tend toward the more speculative, the festival offers a Time Travelers Weekend Nov. 12 and 13 where you can dress as your favorite comic book hero, wear that steampunk outfit, appear as a movie monster, or what have you.

The Time Travelers Weekend isn’t the only special event, either, as a Pirates’ Christmas is scheduled as well as a special Halloween weekend, a brewfest, and more.

Blast from the Past: Dungeons & Dragons Animated Series

blast from the past dungeons & dragons animated

The first 9 episodes only cost me 99 cents. May you be so lucky, if you choose.

1983 was a big year for me. Over the summer I turned 14, and in the fall I would begin ninth grade, kicking off my high school years as a freshman. But more importantly, it was a big year for my role-playing habits.

TSR’s sci-fi game Star Frontiers had been out for a year and was coming out with new products left and right. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was riding high with a ton of new modules, including the original Ravenloft module (the maps!), and even the D&D Basic Set was getting a slight reworking with a new boxed set. Then towards the end of the year there hints of something major coming from TSR in 1984, and eventually that would be known as Dragonlance.

So, 1983 had a lot happening in the worlds of D&D. But perhaps the most noticeable, at least for the 13-soon-14-year-old me was the Dungeons & Dragons animated TV series.

blast from the past dungeons & dragons animated

Our heroes. Yep, that’s Bobby the Barbarian at center.

Saturday morning cartoons were a huge deal then, and TSR big shot Gary Gygax had pulled off the unthinkable when he traveled to Hollywood and got Marvel Productions (yes, of the comic book Marvel company) and Teoi Animation of Japan involved with this new animated show.

Keep track of it all with Digital Character Sheet

digital character sheet

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Nathan Thurston, the creator of Digital Character Sheet, in order to learn about his product. Instead of me telling you about it, I thought I’d let him fill you in. My questions for him are in bold, followed by his answers.

What exactly is Digital Character Sheet?

Digital Character Sheet is software that replaces or supplements a Tabletop RPG player’s character sheet. It was created out of a desire to break away from the sometimes hard to fill, awkward form-fillable PDF character sheets, and provide a more elegant and sensible avenue to store character information.

Want more 5E D&D potions? Look No Further Than The Emporium of Uncanny Magic

For those who played Dungeons & Dragons prior to fifth edition they might have noticed some old, favorite potions no longer appearing in the 5E D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide. This makes sense as 5E D&D is the most streamlined version of the game so far. What to do, then, if you want to include those potions in your current 5E D&D game? Simple. You turn to The Emporium of Uncanny Magic – Lost Potions from Insane Angel Studios.

Comic Book University: YouTube for the super hero in all of us

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="326" class="zemanta-img"] The Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962). Cover art by Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption] I don’t normally do a shout-out for a solitary YouTube channel, especially one that is fairly new, but the channel called Comic Book University...

Blast from the Past: Mattel Electronics Handheld Games

Blast from the Past: Mattel Electronics Handheld Games
mattel
You see a kid walking down the street. His eyes are glued to the game in his hands, so he barely notices when he strolls across a busy street, and he doesn’t hear tires squeal and horns blare. Could he be playing Pokemon Go? Or is he doing something else on his smart phone?

Of course not. The year is 1976, after all.

How can that be? Believe it or not, way back in the dinosaur ages we actually had electronic handheld games, and they were quite popular. Sports games were probably the most common, but plenty of others were available. Companies like Coleco and Sears (yes, that Sears) had plenty of games available, and it seemed more came out every year, especially at Christmas.

But of all the companies which sold such devices, by far the most popular had to be Mattel Electronics. 14081202_10211248513267847_944445570_nThis company kicked everything off with the very first all-digital electronic game, Auto Race, which came out in stores in 1976.

By today’s standards, Auto Race was a simple game with red LED (light-emitting diode) lights. The player controlled a bright red line one the bottom of the tiny screen. The goal was to steer your race car (that red line) from the bottom of the screen to the top of the screen four times before a time of 99 seconds ran out. If the player made it, then the player won the game. The hard part was avoiding all the other race cars (more red blips) which came at you at high speeds, and if one hit you, then your car was forced back to the bottom of the screen. The main control moved your car from left to right, but you could also change gears to speed up or slow down play.

A Year of Writing for Nerdarchy

Because I keep track of such things, this is my 52nd weekly article for Nerdarchy. That’s a year. Nerdarchy Star frontiers  Actually, my first Nerdarchy article appeared on the site on August 19, 2015, so it won’t quite be a complete year by the time this is published, but close enough.

It’s been an interesting year for me here at Nerdarchy. Some articles have proven more popular than others, and some have been more fun to write than others. Hey, they can’t all be winners, but you do the best you can each week. I just hope I’ve given Nerdarchy readers a few thinks to think about, maybe a little news, and the occasional chuckle.

I’ve had a handful of interviews, a few news articles, some opinion pieces about D&D, and then there’s the series I started called Blast from the Past, which looks back at Nerdy things, mostly from the ’80s because that was my teen years, sort of my heyday of being a young nerd. While the Nerdarchy site as a whole focuses upon tabletop role playing games with the occasional foray into other nerdy material, I’ve been trying to stretch those boundaries a little to include other games and movies, etc. Sometimes I’ve succeeded and maybe sometimes I haven’t, but ultimately that’s for the reader to decide. Regardless, I’ve had a good time and hope to continue on here at Nerdarchy as long as they’ll have me.

In the spirit of looking back on the year of my articles, I thought I’d post links to some of my favorites and provide perhaps a few words about each of them. If you missed these, then you’ve got something new to read, and if you’ve already seen them, feel free to take a look back. I’ll post them in order from oldest to most recent.

How Gaming (and Nerdarchy) Helped Save Me

This was my second article for Nerdarchy, and it is the most personal piece I’ve written to date. I talk about some personal issues I was dealing with a couple of years ago, how I discovered online gaming and

Blast from the Past: Godzilla vs. Megalon

Blast from the Past: Godzilla vs. Megalon13942695_10211113762699167_27537422_n

My dad put up with a lot from me when I was a kid in the ’70s. It’s not that I was a bad kid, but he was more of a Roy Rogers and Lone Ranger kind of guy while I kept wanting Star Trek and Star Wars toys between dragging him to science fiction and horror movies.

 

 

In the summer of 1976, when I turned seven, I made him take me to yet another film I’m sure he did not want to see. We parked downtown and walked the distance to the only local theater that showed foreign films.

I don’t remember what it was that drew me to his movie. Perhaps I had heard of the main character, or maybe I had been mesmerized by the newspaper advertisement artwork which showed two giant monsters battling it out atop the World Trade Center towers (a scene which is nowhere to be found in the movie).Megalon

I’m talking about the epic Godzilla vs. Megalon, originally released in Japan in 1973 though it didn’t make it to the U.S. until 1976.

This is not everyone’s favorite Godzilla movie. In fact, it tends to be one of the lower rated of the big guy’s series of films, but for the seven-year-old me, it was simply awesome. See, this was my first Godzilla experience, and I would be something of a fan for the rest of my life.

And what wasn’t to like? First off, you’ve got the big guy himself, Godzilla, leading a monster-packed story with the likes of Gigan, a beaked and hooked horror; Jet Jaguar, a robot who can perform martial arts and change size (and looking vaguely like a later generation’s Power Rangers); and the other star of the title, Megalon, a giant bug-like monster with a star-shaped spike sticking out of its head and some kind of earth-digging drills in place of hands or claws. Even Anguirus makes an appearance, a somewhat rare site, with his dinosaur-like body with armored plates and spikes sticking out everywhere, along with Rodan, a flying, dragon-like beast.

Blast from the Past: Star Frontiers

[caption id="attachment_11744" align="aligncenter" width="776"] My original Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn books and maps.[/caption] A little history [caption id="attachment_11746" align="alignright" width="320"] The original Star Frontiers Referee's Screen.[/caption] In the early 1980s, the world seemed suddenly crazed for everything science fiction, especially space opera. Star Wars had been around for...