August 1983
DAN AYKROYD IS A VID-KID!
Come to think of it, maybe he's a Vid-Man! And why shouldn't he be? After all, super-celeb Aykroyd spends his spare time saving the Planet Earth when he's not busy filling theatre seats with fans of such hot flicks as Doctor Detroit and Moochie Must Die Vs. Donald Eats A Clam!!
CONTENTS
Upfront
We'd appreciate it if readers could take the time to write and tell us what they think of this issue. Vidgame fans might be slightly disappointed in the direction we seem to be heading—Monty Python? Video Art? Museums? What's that stuff doing in a magazine with Q*Bert on the cover?, some of you may be asking.
Vidiot Mail
I was really interested reading your article about Atari's financial woes. Poor Atari, controlling only 56 percent of the home videogame market. I feel real sorry for 'em. (Like boo hoo). Several months ago, I sold my Atari 2600 and bought a ColecoVision console.
VIDIOT NEWS
VIDEO, SPAGHETTI LINKED! BEVERLY HILLS-The First Annual American Video Awards were presented in early April, striking the offkey video equivolent of the ever-irreievant Grammys. Representatives of various music and video publications voted on the winners, honored for "outstanding" videos for 1982 records that reached the trade papers' Top 10.
THE (NEW) OLD BALLGAME
BILL KNIGHT
In the spring, a young man's fancy might turn to love, but a baseball fan's attention tends to head instead toward the ground-ball out (and there's no sex there, slugger). Baseball is meant for summer sun and dusty diamonds, but to every fan falls a little rain delay.
HARDWARE/SOFTWARE THE NEW WAVE COMPUTERS
RICHARD ROBINSON
After spending the last year establishing their basic product lines and promoting themselves so the public would know they were in business, the manufacturers of computer hardware and software have taken their second big step. Mixing consumer reaction to their products with what they hear from research & development, the circuit sellers have introduced their "Model Twos"—their second level products that "improve" the initial products with which they entered the market.
WHAT'S HOT AT EPCOT: DISNEY'S VIDEOGAMES FOR THE FUTURE
MIKE HOWELL
EPCOT, the billion-dollar dazzle opened by Disney last October, stands for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. You may or may not agree with Walt's heirs that the communities we'll one day find ourselves in will include hunks of zero-gravity lettuce and diversions like trips back to the days of the dinosaurs, but there's strong empirical evidence that tomorrow's communities-like today's—will still have video arcades.
THE ORCHESTRA IN THE ARCADE
P. GREGORY SPRINGER
Step into the arcade, try to find a piece of private space, and wait. Block out the visual. Close your eyes. Let an onrush of sound attack you. What do you hear? A blur of cacophony? The anarchy of a thousand microchips competing with each other?
VID-KID OF THE MONTH TODD RUNDGREN
He's Todd Rundgren, and he knows the world of video like the back of his hand! "Todd?" Yeah, "Todd?"—that is your name, isn't it? "Name?"... Oh well. Despite Mr. Rundgren's zany approach to life itself, rest assured that his prowers on Super Cobra defies all expectations and more! "More?" No thanks, Todd!
STEPPIN' OUT FOR VIDIOT!
Hey! Look who’s steppin' out of the tube! It's Boy Howdy, the lovable mascot of VIDIOT's sister magazine, CREEM. Boy's steppin’ out to find out what you—the reader—think of VIDIOT! Is there something you'd especially like to see in the magazine?
READ 'em and WEEP" Vidiot's Guide to Videomagazines
M.T. BOXX
Get ready for a laff riot! We’d like to share with you what are surely among the most foolhardy paragraphs ever written in the commission of a lead for this mag: A few days ago, I was playing channel roulette on my TV between videogames and stumble-flicked upon a CBS News graphic which read simply, WOMEN—NO IMPROVEMENT.
ARCADE ACTION
P. GREGORY SPRINGER
POLE POSITION—I really shouldn't have had that last beer, but, what the heck, it's Sunday, nice day for a drive, just hop right in here and take a spin around the track. Dum-de-dum-dumdum, and off we go...Seems to be some heavy traffic out today, I'm taking my time, lots of billboards along this stretch, you'd think they'd try to Beautify Japan a little.
ARCADE ACTION CLOSE-UP BUMP 'n' JUMP
Speed is king in racing. If—at those blinding and illegal velocities—one happens to collide with a brick wall, it's adios, Charlie. The Demolition Derby—the most dubious and American of all sports—on the other hand relies upon collisions.
THE MAGAZINE OF VIDEO LUNACY!
YOU CAN SEE IT, BUT YOU CAN'T HANG IT THE WALL
ROB PATTERSON
If I were to say to you "video art," you might just say, "Huh?" After all, in our video-inundated world, there's very little that's artful about the most common video forms— things like All My Children, Calvin Klein commercials, Ms. Pac-Man, Facts Of Life, Duran Duran posing anywhere on the planet, and anything hawked by George Plimpton, for o quick sampling.
BEACH BLANKET VIDEO: That's the Name of the Game!
Summer's here again—those days of soda and pretzels and beer, not to mention good vibes and bikinis! And when you're out on the beach soaking up those golden rays, what better way to pass the time than competing with yourself on the latest hand-held videogames?
WATCHING EVERYTHING THERE EVER WAS
DREW WHEELER
Television taught me just about everything. If I wanted to be a bigot, I could pattern myself after Archie Bunker, if I wanted to be a consummate hipster, there was Maynard G. Krebs, or if I wanted to be a snivelling creep, there was Eddie Haskell.
EYE-HAND WHAT'S NEW IN VIDEO
Joanne Zangrilli
MS. PAC-MAN Atari (Atari VCS) Wow! Four changing mazes! Floating fruit, from cherry cherr to banana! A cartoon at the end! It's enough to make the hardcore Pac Fan palpitate. And it's all true, Betty Lou—so how come it's boring? Atari has not seemed to catch on yet that the point of PacMan is to 1) avoid the monsters or 2) eat a power pill and catch the monsters.
Silly Days & Twisted Nights: The Art Of MONTY PYTHON
TOBY GOLDSTEIN
Somewhere in this wicked world, fish are laughing—peering through the plexiglass of their tanks and enjoying an absolute belly-bouncer about the incredible stupidity of the humanity walking by. Gills softly flapping, they jovially nudge one another, spying a particularly inane action on the other side of the glass, and variously chuckle, cackle, guffaw and giggle.
ROCK VIDIOCY ROLL AWAY THE STONES
DAVE DIMARTINO
It's natural that the first bands to make the transition to video would be rock's biggest. There's that name recognition factor, the built-in audience bands like Fleetwood Mac or ABBA command, that makes such forays potentially more lucrative and less of a risk—and then there's always that plush financial cushion to fall back on, in case of a flop.
Captain VIDIOT
Dear Cap, what's all this guff about stereo TV? TV hasn't even got decent one-speaker sound...so who are they kidding with stereo? —John O'Brien, Waltham, MA •While the Cap has to agree with John that TV sound is a complete joke— especially the people over at the networks, although some cable "rock" channels also seem a little weak in the audio dept, too—something is being done about it.
Places We'd Like To Play Videogames!
Who sez you have to play videogames in an arcade or the comfort of your own living room? With the video phenomenon sweeping the nation (and probably the universe), there's a whole variety of places you can whomp those little video suckers—on the job, on a boat, in a tree!!
DURAN DURAN ARE VID-KIDS!
During a recent stint as VJs for MTV, Nick Rhodes and Simon LeBon of Duran Duran got caught up in the American videogame craze! Simon tried some cheesy distraction maneuvers, such as "Look Nick! A thousand $10 bills floating outside that open window!", and the ever-popular "Look, Nick!
SUMMER'S HERE...