80s News Today

It was a Friday, the kind of gray, late-February afternoon where the winter is tired of being winter but spring hasn’t yet found its courage. February 27, 1987. A day like any other for the folks in Westin Hills, maybe, but for the rest of us—the ones who spent our pocket change on popcorn and terror—it was the day the Boogeyman finally got a face. Or at least, a history. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors didn’t just slouch into theaters; it kicked the door down. We’d seen Freddy before, sure. We knew the sweater, the hat, the glove that looked like it had been forged in the basement of some hellish hardware store. But Dream Warriors was different. It was the moment Wes Craven came back to his creation and whispered, "Let’s show them why he’s really mean." See, horror is a funny thing. It works best in the dark, but if you want it to truly haunt a man, you have to give the monster a soul—even if that soul is as black as a coal chute. This movie did the heavy liftin...

February of 1987. The shadows are long, and the winds are brisk in Maryland. And a new tome from Stephen King has arrived at Crown Books. A book quite unlike his others, a story that still lingers in the smoke and shadow of my mind. That day saw the publication of The Eyes of the Dragon in a grand, illustrated hardcover by Viking.  The Eyes of the Dragon wasn't a story to curdle your blood or make you jump at shadows (not mostly). It was a fable. A high fantasy. A story written, as the legend goes, not for the millions of horror hounds who ravenously consumed his tales of possessed cars and vampiric towns, but for his own daughter, Naomi. She had asked her father to write something she could read. Something not too scary. And so, he did. He traded the dark, grimy streets of Castle Rock for the medieval kingdom of Delain. He set aside the monsters from beyond the graves and the stars and gave us the classic archetypes of high fantasy: a noble king (King Roland), a beautiful a...

The wind off the Chesapeake has a way of biting through a denim jacket like a piranha on meth, and on February 24, 1987, it was howling. But inside that sprawling slab of brick and glass in Glen Burnie, the air smelled like buttered popcorn, Orange Julius, and the kind of high-octane optimism you can only find in a suburban shopping mecca. Marley Station Mall was finally open. It sat there on Ritchie Highway like a landed mothership, all gleaming neon and promises. For the folks in Anne Arundel County, it wasn't just a place to buy a pair of Toughskins at Sears or a blender at Hecht’s. It was a temple of the New Age. You walked through those sliding glass doors and the world turned from February gray to a kingdom of chrome and potted ferns. Inside, it was brighter than day. Skylights poured white light across marble-look tile. Escalators moved like patient rivers, carrying laughing teenagers up to the second level where the arcades waited with their Pac-Man beeps and the first whi...

Imagine, if you will, the electronic landscape of February 14, 1987. While the rest of the sentient world is drowning in a saccharine sea of Hallmark cards and overpriced long-stemmed roses, a different kind of passion is erupting in the glowing cathodes of the American living room. Culture shock! Culture Brain has dropped a silicon firecracker into the NES slot: Flying Dragon: The Secret Scroll . It isn’t just a game; it is a frantic, flickering collision between the neon-drenched 80s martial arts flicks and the mystical antiquity of the Middle Kingdom. Culture Brain is tapping into the deep, resonant marrow of Chinese history and the Wuxia (martial hero) literary tradition. The game’s obsession with "The Secret Scrolls" mimics the Wuxia obsession with the Manual of the Unseen, a recurring theme in the works of Jin Yong where the loss of a manuscript equals the loss of a civilization’s soul. The gameplay features a revolutionary "mark" system—a flickering circle ap...

Good Lord, people! Do you remember the sheer, unadulterated buzz? The hum of the VCR! The pristine, plastic clamshell case, hot off the factory floor, promising glory! Yes, on February 5, 1987, the very air itself crackled with a new, distinctly American energy. It was the day Top Gun , that shimmering, testosterone-fueled ode to speed, swagger, and the sheer, intoxicating power of the United States Navy, landed not in theaters, but right in your suburban living room. And it wasn’t just any landing. Oh no, my friends, this was no gentle taxi to the gate. This was a MACH 2 POWER DIVE into the very heart of how we consumed, how we owned, our cinematic dreams. This was a WATERSHED MOMENT so seismic it reshaped the very topography of Hollywood’s profit margins, sending shockwaves through every mom-and-pop video store from Bethesda to Burbank! Before this fateful day, buying a movie on VHS was an act of almost monastic devotion. These were not impulse buys, these were investments. A single ...

In the shadowed annals of a world not yet bowed by the weight of endless sequels and remakes, there came a day when the gods of code and pixel decreed the birth of a new epic. It was the twenty-sixth day of January, in the year nineteen hundred and eighty-seven, when the iron gates of Enix swung wide, unleashing upon the Famicom—a.k.a. the Nintendo Entertainment System—a tale of bloodlines cursed and kingdoms imperiled. Dragon Quest II, or as the bards in western realms would rename it, Dragon Warrior II , emerged not as a mere game, but as a chronicle of heroism fraught with peril, where the descendants of legends must forge alliances or perish in the attempt. The first Dragon Warrior, a modest affair, had planted the seed. It told a simple tale, a single hero, a princess to rescue, a Dragon Lord to slay. But with its sequel, the world of Alefgard, once thought vast, was revealed to be but a sliver of a greater tapestry. The blood of the hero Erdrick, once so potent in a singular cham...

One must pause, occasionally, in the relentless, illogical march of human history, to appreciate moments of truly splendid absurdity. And few moments in the mid-1980s achieved such a perfectly poised balance of brilliance, frustration, and sheer, delightful pointlessness as the saga of Kit Williams' Masquerade . And so, on January 13, 1987, the peculiar, tantalizing aroma of a mystery—already famously solved, mind you, but more on that later—wafted across the Atlantic to the unsuspecting shores of America. This was the day Schocken Books released the American special edition of Masquerade. Now, Masquerade was not a normal book. Most books are content to sit on a shelf and be read, occasionally serving as a coaster or a way to level a wobbly table. Masquerade was different. It was a book that actively encouraged you to leave your house, buy a shovel, and dig up large portions of the English countryside in search of an 18-carat golden hare. The American edition, published years after...

It was a Monday, and rather an unremarkable one beyond the icy temperature. However, on an island nation in the Pacific Ocean known as Japan, a small electronic box was preparing to do something quite remarkable. This box, affectionately known as the Sega Master System, was about to unleash a universe. And not just any universe, but one teeming with three planets, advanced technology, ancient evils, and a protagonist who, astonishingly, wasn’t a barbarian with a rather oversized sword and a penchant for shouting. Yes, on December 20, 1987 , a small cartridge containing the digital essence of Phantasy Star was released. Sega, in an act of staggering spatial efficiency, managed to cram three entire planets—Palma, Motavia, and Dezoris—into a four-megabit cartridge. This was, at the time, considered an achievement of such monumental proportions that it briefly made the invention of sliced bread look like a minor clerical error. The story begins in a way that most things do—with a cert...

Let us now journey back, not to the gilded towers of Manhattan, nor to the sun-baked cliffs of the West Coast, but to the neon-drenched, pixelated cosmos of a late-1980s American living room. The year, if you please, is nineteen hundred and eighty-seven, and the day, a brisk, pre-Christmas Eighteenth of December. A date, mind you, that was already etched in the digital firmament by the simultaneous arrival of two titans: the labyrinthine saga of Final Fantasy and  - just 24 hours earlier - the relentless, blue-clad robot hero of Mega Man.  But ah, amidst this glittering firmament of nascent legends, a more ruddy star, if you will, blazed into existence. Not from the pristine laboratories of Nintendo’s Kyoto, nor the sun-dappled campuses of Capcom, but from the slightly more gritty precincts of Data East. And his name, my dear friends, was Karnov . Billed by many as a "Russian strongman," the arrival of Karnov in arcades and home consoles might have been seen as a last gasp at...

Ahhhhh...December 17, 1987! Picture it: Osaka, the humming heart of Japan's electronic empire, where salarymen in crisp suits dash through rain-slicked streets under the blaze of pachinko parlors and towering kanji signs...VAROOOM! And there, in the backrooms of Capcom—a scrappy outfit still shaking off the arcade dust— a small band of young Turks, fresh-faced dreamers led by the visionary Keiji Inafune, unleashes upon the Nintendo Famicom and NES a cartridge that will... KAPOW!...redefine the very pulse of home gaming. Mega Man ! He wasn’t just a character; he was a Philosophy in 8-bit phosphor. He was the Blue Bomber, a cobalt-clad cherub with a plasma cannon for an arm and a look of wide-eyed, Vacant-But-Determined resolve. But oh, the audacity of it! The sheer, unadulterated hubris of the designers! They didn’t just give you a linear path—a simple A-to-B trudge like those plumber-worshipping masses were used to. No! They gave you Selection. They gave you the Power of Choice. Si...

Human beings are different. They care about timing. In December, they care especially about presents, overcooked turkey, and the curious phenomenon of a jolly, red-suited man defying several fundamental laws of physics. And so, somewhere between worrying about Aunt Enid’s pudding and the precise location of the batteries for a talking doll, a software house known as Activision decided the time was now. Knightmare arrived for the Commodore 64, not with the fiery majesty of a collapsing sun, but with a quiet, plastic rustle. Now, for those unfamiliar with the labyrinthine joys of British television in the late eighties, Knightmare was not just a game. Oh no. It was, in its original televised form, an experience. A glorious, utterly bonkers spectacle involving a blindfolded child, a giant, talking disembodied head, and a series of dungeon rooms that looked suspiciously like someone's garage after a particularly ambitious theatrical clear-out. The goal? To guide the blindfolded child...

Star Wars fans got their first taste of a dastardly phenomenon that would only accelerate over time on December 4, 1987. It's the phenomenon of new products based on the most quintessential American franchises and cultural touchstones being made available exclusively in foreign countries. One of the earliest and best examples was the Japanese-only release of Star Wars , a side-scrolling epic adventure title published by Namco for the Nintendo Famicom. A Star Wars game not available in the country where the franchise was born? Much cursing ensued among the few Americans who were even aware of this corporate cultural appropriation. The most criminal aspect of the denial is that the game was awesome for its time. It appears to have been the first side-scrolling platform Star Wars game for any system. Who needs Mario, when you can control Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars universe? The Force is strong with this one, with John Williams' iconic Star Wars theme providing players with an...

November 26, 1987 Somewhere in the Kingdom of Kroz – Level 28, I think Today I descended into what an eccentric software executive-turned-hermit has told me is called the Kingdom of Kroz . He babbled something about a Magical Amulet that controls reality itself, hidden at the bottom of an endless maze of whips, gems, and creatures that look like they were drawn by a sadistic kindergarteners with a grudge. The entrance was a nondescript stone door behind a 7-Eleven in Garland, Texas. One minute I’m reaching for a Big Bite hot dog on the rollers, the next I’m falling fifty feet into a pit that smells faintly of ozone and broken dreams. My fedora stayed on. Of course it did. I've been on the trail of the Magical Amulet of Kroz for three years, following cryptic hints left by that rascal Scott Miller, founder of Apogee Software. Miller claimed the amulet grants true wisdom, but all it seems to grant so far is a nasty habit of running into monsters resembling umlaut-crowned vowels and h...

One of the greatest moments of the 1980s came to pass on a Sunday, November 22, 1987. It was the kind of evening where the wind off Lake Michigan could slice right through you, promising a bitter winter. Inside, folks were tucked in, probably nursing a last cup of coffee or a beer, watching the flickering blue light of the television. Television, you see, is a comfort. A numbing hum. It tells you stories you expect, sells you things you don’t need, and keeps the darkness at bay. A familiar voice telling you the news or a beloved alien doctor battling some rubber-suited menace. It's a guardian, a promise of order in a chaotic world. That night, the promise broke. Channel 9, WGN, was running its nine o’clock news. Then the picture stuttered. Just a hiccup. Snow for half a heartbeat. You’ve seen that a thousand times, right? Bad antenna, Russian satellite, whatever. You reach for the vertical hold. But this time, the picture didn’t come back right. It came back wrong. A face filled th...

Two summer blockbuster martial arts movies and 17 months later, the homebound game player finally got a chance to slip into the gi and become Daniel LaRusso. The Karate Kid delivered a digital karate chop to owners of the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Atari ST computer in November 1987. The Karate Kid films had already woven themselves into the fabric of the culture, as the Rocky flicks of the Pepsi Generation. Now, its digital doppelgängers landed on our consoles and computers.  They were imperfect translations, certainly, but they were a testament to the irresistible pull of a good story, a compelling hero, and the boundless, sometimes bewildering, desire to step into the screen, however flat and pixelated that screen might be. The silicon sensei had arrived, and the kids were ready to wax on, wax off, and button-mash their way to glory. At the checkout counters of toy and neighborhood video stores, the sound most often heard was not hi-YA! but KA-CHING ! The lon...

If Dokken wasn't going to make the final leap to super-stardom, they should have stopped here. Stopped on October 27, 1987, the day they released the last of the truly great Dokken albums, Back for the Attack . Dokken fans, the true believers, already knew, and still know today, that Dokken was one of the best bands to emerge from the "hair metal" melange of 1980s Los Angeles. There was no shortage of hair, no shortage of hair spray, but unlike so many other Aqua Net aspirants, there was no shortage of sheer talent in Dokken. But somehow, headliner status continued to elude a band that was so often blowing headliners off the stage as a bridesmaid opening act during the Reagan years. Back for the Attack was designed to finally change that - but improbably, it didn't. Beyond Eddie Van Halen and Yngwie Malmsteen, was there any guitar hero greater than George Lynch in the 1980s? No. Nyet. Nein. Lynch fused virtuosic speed and technique with lines of Van Gogh-esque fluidi...

October 5, 1987. A day like any other, one might assume. The planet Earth, in its infinitely-peculiar wisdom, continued its pointless hurtle around a rather unremarkable star. Somewhere, a kettle boiled. A bus arrived late. And in the labyrinthine, probably Dorito-strewn offices of Lucasfilm Games, something… improbable …was unleashed. Maniac Mansion . Now, the very concept of Maniac Mansion is, in itself, a testament to the bewildering complexity of the human (and occasionally, extraterrestrial) psyche. Imagine, if you will, a young chap named Dave. Dave, in a moment of entirely-understandable hormonal delirium, decides his girlfriend, Sandy, must be rescued. From whom, you ask? Oh, merely from a mad scientist, Dr. Fred, who lives in a decaying California mansion with his rather unusual family, including a sentient purple tentacle with aspirations of world domination. One might think a simple phone call to the authorities would suffice, but no. That, you see, would be entirely too se...

We're talking about movies, specifically horror movies, and I got to thinking about September of '87. You remember '87? Hair metal, calculator watches...good times. And in that glorious month, something rather...unique arrived on the scene. We're talking about a little film called Hellraiser . Hellraiser. Good Lord - who came up with that? Well, some guy named Clive Barker. What's he doing? He's got a puzzle box. A little square thing, like a Rubik's Cube for Satanists.  You open it up, and next thing you know, you've got these...well, let's just say a group of very enthusiastic individuals show up. And they're not there to fix your plumbing.   Folks, when Doug Bradley stepped onto the screen as Pinhead, it was like someone took a Goth nightclub bouncer and gave him a PhD in pain. This guy wasn’t just a villain; he was a Cenobite with a capital “C,” delivering lines like “We have such sights to show you” with the gravitas of a Shakespearean actor...

Something crawled out of the digital primordial soup on September 11, 1987. Not here in our sleepy corner of North America, mind you, but across the big pond, in the land of the rising sun. That's the day Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei clawed its way out of the Nintendo Famicom's cartridge slot. This wasn't just a game; it was a gateway, a crack in the wall between our safe little pixelated dreams and the real monsters that lurk in the code. Developer Atlus had a wild idea: take a trilogy of science-fantasy novels by some guy named Aya Nishitani and twist them into a role-playing nightmare. Published by Namco, this thing hit the shelves on September 11, 1987, right in the heart of Tokyo's bustling electronics districts. Picture it: salarymen rushing home, kids with pocket money burning holes in their shorts, all unaware that they were about to invite Lucifer himself into their living rooms. The story? A hotshot programmer kid named Akemi Nakajima cooks up this ...

In the late summer of ’87, the world was restless. Reagan was in the White House, the Berlin Wall still stood like a scar across the heart of Europe, and somewhere in the ether, the ghost of Thriller lingered— Michael Jackson ’s 1982 monster that sold millions and rewrote the rules of music. Michael himself had been a ghost for five years. Five years is a long time in the pop music world; enough time for the ground to shift, for new pretenders to rise, for the public to grow restless.  There were whispers, of course, always whispers around Michael. He was building an amusement park in his backyard, they said. He slept in an oxygen tent. He was turning into something else, something…not quite human. People thought he’d peaked, that he’d danced his last moonwalk. They were wrong. Dead wrong. Bad hit the shelves on August 31, 1987, and it wasn’t just a follow-up. It was a declaration. A gauntlet thrown down.  Michael, the King of Pop, wasn’t here to play nice. He’d spent fi...