80s News Today

Donkey Kong seems to have been around forever, but he's not even old enough to collect Social Security. The big ape turns 44 today, on this anniversary of the release of his eponymous Nintendo arcade game in the United States. Pull up your Buster Browns and tuck in your Izod shirts, because back in the summer of '81, the real action, the seismic cultural thrum was crackling, it was fizzing , it was a supernova of phosphorescent light and tinny sound emanating from the dimly lit sanctums called...the arcade! And on this very day, July the Thirty-First, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-One, a new deity, a simian of staggering pixelated power, descended from the digital heavens to forever alter the adolescent landscape: Donkey Kong! Forget your earth-toned wallpaper and your sensible station wagons, Daddy-O. This wasn't your father's pinochle night at the Elks Club. This was a primal scream rendered in glorious, low-resolution graphics, a ballet of barrels and a paean to Pau...

The largest mall in South Carolina opened 45 years ago today, on July 30, 1980. But it seems like only yesterday... It’s a scorcher, a real Carolina crème brûlée of a day, July 30th, 1980, down here in Greenville, South Carolina, where the air hangs thicker than a debutante’s pearls and the cicadas are zinging a high-pitched drone of anticipation. Because today, my oh my, today is not just any old day. No sir. Today, the concrete leviathan, the air-conditioned agora, the shimmering, chrome-and-Formica Taj Mahal of retail – Haywood Mall – is opening its gargantuan maw for the very first time! And the people, ah, the people ! They’re streaming in like ants to a picnic, a vast, undulating river of polyester and perm, of pre-Air-Jordan sneakers and the first blush of designer jeans. They’re coming from Spartanburg and Anderson and even way up in the misty Blue Ridge foothills, all converging on this glorious monument to… well, to stuff . To things. To the glorious, unapologetic pursuit of...

Why, just the other day, I found myself in a veritable fog of cinematic nostalgia, at a suburban cineplex showing a midnight screening of… Krull . Yes, Krull, that 1983 fantasy flick that, for a brief, glorious moment 42 years ago today, convinced a nation newly-blessed with Star Wars , Dungeons & Dragons, and pay television that there was still room in the cosmos for a prince named Colwyn, a five-bladed love child of a boomerang and throwing star called the Glaive, and a supervillain so dastardly he could get away with being named The Beast. And, wouldn’t you know it, this wasn’t just some dusty old VHS tape we were talking about; no sir, this was a genuine, honest-to-goodness *theatrical* revival, complete with the requisite gaggle of ironic hipsters, aging Gen-Xers misty-eyed with forgotten childhood wonder, and at least one character who showed up in full cyclops regalia. Now, I’m not about to sit here and tell you Krull was "King Lear." The dialogue...well, let’s jus...

Jason Voorhees took a trip to New York City thirty-six years ago today, July 28, 1989. George H.W. Bush had tried to usher in a kinder, gentler America, but Voorhees was having none of it. Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan was the last to sustain the vague continuity of the film series. Voorhees ended the previous installment underwater in Crystal Lake, and that's where a boat manages to revive him via an electric shock in this film. It's no more farfetched than the idea that said boat can navigate a maritime route from Crystal Lake to the Big Apple.  Part 8 also continued the trend Part 7 established of the lead female character having some psychic ability, here explored through visions "final girl" Rennie Wickham has of a younger Jason. The low budget meant that Jason's tour of New York City was underwhelming, and ultimately largely underground. But the slasher icon memorably destroyed another icon of the 80s - the boombox - before his vacation ende...

You remember it, don't you? Oh, you must remember it! July the Twenty-Seventh, Nineteen Eighty-Eight! The very air, thick with the scent of microwaved popcorn and the faint, unsettling *whirr* of your VCR rewinding that glorious, glorious footage of the '88 Olympics. The world, humming along, a carefully calibrated symphony of consumer desire and suburban aspiration. And then… *BING!* A new sound! A new promise! Not from the stock market ticker, not from the glittering, neon-drenched arcade! No, this sound, this vision of the future, would emanate from the fluorescent-lit, slightly-too-quiet aisles of your very own RadioShack! Yes, on this very day, from the quiet heart of Fort Worth, Texas, burst forth a veritable titan of the desktop. The TANDY 1000 SL! Forget your clunky, monochrome, command-line-only monstrosities. Forget your bewildering arrays of DIP switches and jumper settings. Tandy, that stalwart purveyor of electronic dreams had cooked up something different. Somet...

Pac-Man fever claimed its first nationwide victims in Japan on this day 45 years ago in 1980. Perhaps the most significant arcade game of the 1980s, Pac-Man would lure male and female gamers - and most importantly, non-gamers - into darkened game rooms and pizza parlors worldwide over the next several years. Tested in a few locations in Japan starting in May 1980, it was on July 26 that the white "Puck Man" machines would roll out across the country. A name change and a yellow cabinet later, Pac-Man would arrive in the United States in December 1980, a Fort Knox of coins and tokens tinkling through the slots, and a thick layer of joystick pizza grease sending our hero careening to his death in the wrong corners of the digital labyrinth. Pac-Man was far from the first arcade game, but it was the one that took arcade games mainstream. Let's get down to the essence of it - the pulsating, quarter-gobbling phenomenon that was Pac-Man in the glorious, neon-drenched decade of t...

Today, July 25th, takes us back to the summer of 1980, the day the cinematic world was introduced to the chaotic, irreverent, and utterly hilarious world of Caddyshack . This film, the directorial debut of the brilliant Harold Ramis, initially received mixed reviews, but has since become one of the most beloved - and most-quoted - comedies of all time. A popular summer sport, combined with a popular summer job for many young people, turned out to be a template for a popular summer movie at air-conditioned theaters and drive-ins alike. Caddyshack centers on the exclusive Bushwood Country Club, a bastion of WASP-y pretension and snobbery. At its heart is the ongoing battle between the working-class caddies and the wealthy, eccentric club members. Young Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe), a caddie trying to earn enough money for college, navigates the bizarre personalities of the club, including the pompous Judge Smails (Ted Knight), the suave and enigmatic Ty Webb (Chevy Chase), and the ...