80s News Today

March 3, 1980 The wind that came clawing across the Missouri River that Monday morning had that specific Midwestern edge, the kind that seeks out the gaps in your woolen coat and whispers things about hypothermia and the brevity of life. But nobody in the line looping around the corner of 110th and Metcalf seemed to care. They were vibrating. Not from the cold, but from the kind of feverish, electric anticipation that usually only precedes a new Star Wars movie or a new menu item at Taco Bell. They were waiting for the doors to swing open on a brand-new concept, a sprawling, fluorescent kingdom built from cardboard, grease, and dreams. They were waiting for ShowBiz Pizza Place . Inside the brand-new ShowBiz Pizza Place, the air was a different animal entirely. It was thick with the scent of bubbling mozzarella, scorched arcade capacitors, and the peculiar, ozone-heavy musk of hydraulic fluid.  It was the first of its kind, you see. The original. The alpha predator. We didn’t know i...

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — MARCH 2, 1980 You feel the money here before you even see it. It’s in the air—a subtle, aerosolized scent of alpine ozone, refined petroleum, and fury. You’re at the Geneva Salon International de l’Automobile. The Palexpo hall is a shimmering sea of European refinement, a hushed cathedral of velour and wood-grain. Forget the champagne—though, God knows, it’s flowing like the Rhône—forget the couture—every woman in the room seems to be made entirely of silk and diamonds—because what we have right here is a revelation. They call it the Audi Quattro . Now, look at it! It doesn't have the languid, serpentine curves of a Pininfarina dream. No, no! It is all V-form and flared arches, a squat, muscular Teutonic bruiser that seems to be gripping the carpet with its very soul. The engineers from Ingolstadt—men with slide-rule eyes and hearts of pure silicon—have brought forth a beast with four-wheel drive. The gathered gentry of the automotive press, the men ...

Benny Hill was one of many British cultural phenomenons to cross the Atlantic during the 1980s. But while TV viewers on this side of the pond were limited to wondering if Mr. Hill and Ozzy Osbourne had ever been seen together in the same room, Brits were busy becoming the ribald scamp via their home computers. On March 1, 1986, Benny Hill's Madcap Chase began to play out on the ZX Spectrum.  While the game begins with a photo-realistic scanned image of the comedian, the surprisingly large sprite of Mr. Hill players controlled looked more like Austin Powers when scrolling sideways - a remarkable feat, given that the swinging spy character wouldn't even be conceived of for another five years. Only when he turns to face the camera is he somewhat recognizable, chiefly on the basis of his desperate grin and granny glasses, and the aura of impending disaster that surrounds him like cheap aftershave. Benny lopes along with a gait that suggests both unholy enthusiasm and imminent card...

Now, friends, gather ’round while I tell you of a most peculiar contraption that has found its way into the parlors of the nation this February of 1989. It is called the Nintendo Entertainment System, a grey box of electronic wizardry that promises to transport a body into worlds unseen without ever having to scrub a single fence-post. It seems the folks at Seta have seen fit to take the American hero Tom Sawyer—a boy who, I can testify, has a natural aversion to anything resembling honest labor—and trap him inside a plastic cartridge. They call it The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , though I suspect Tom himself would find the whole business far more exhausting than a Sunday school lesson. In this digital diversion, you take up the role of Tom, though he’s looking a bit more square-edged than I remember. He’s wandering through his own dreams, it seems, which is just like a boy of his temperament. But instead of the peaceful Mississippi, he’s beset by all manner of fantastical nuisances—...

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 snow had started again that February, the kind of late-winter storm that comes in sideways and stays, blanketing the little Maryland town in white silence. Kids trudged home from school with heads down, boots crunching, dreaming already of the weekend and the glow of television screens. But in one basement on Maple Street, the kind of basement that smelled of damp concrete and old Christmas lights, something beyond their imagination was waiting to be born. The date was February 25, 1986. A company called Konami released a Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge— Gradius . Now, Gradius was a mean piece of work. It was a scrolling space shooter that didn't just want your quarters; it wanted your dignity. The arcade version had been out for months, a cruel, beautiful machine that ate quarters like a dragon hoards gold. Too hard, they said. Too punishing. The ships exploded in seconds, shredded by enemy fire, and the pilots—those pale teenagers with shaking hands—walked away cursin...