retro

A few months ago, I stepped into Retro Games Plus in Lawndale, CA for the first time. Originally there to ask about putting up a flyer for Draakula (my debut 8-bit album: more details here!), I was struck by two things. First, an unexpected wave of 90’s and 2000’s nostalgia. Second, after the starry, shimmering sheen of memory had faded: an urge to get planning. Let me explain.

If you talk to me long enough (admittedly, not that long), I will open up my “wild ambitious goals” folder, and inside is, in either my future house or office, the plan to make a “90’s room.” More specifically, a room where everything inside it had to be released between January 1, 1990-December 31, 1999. If I am allowed to continue, you’ll discover one themed room is not enough, and I need a one covering the years of 2000-2004 as well. Please note, these are not meant to be museums. Rather, they are places to hang and chill, and are mere “snapshots” of rooms at those times.

In a trice, I realized Retro Games Plus would be an excellent resource for stocking these as-of-yet unrealized rooms. So join me in this briefing, as I boomerang between memories of yore and blueprints of tomorrow!

VHS TAPES

These racks are more or less the first things you see when entering the store, and here was nostalgia’s first genuine right hook. The memory of when I last saw this many VHS tapes in one spot is long gone (20 years ago? 25 years ago?). For my 90’s room, VHS tapes are absolutely essential, as these things were absolutely everywhere. Seeing so many multi-colored spines like this reminds me the bygone visits to my aunt and uncle’s house, where VHS tapes took up an entire wall. Enough space even to house a collection of what seemed like a hundred Shirley Temple clamshells. I’m not a fan of clamshells (or musicals, mind you), so those can be left out! These VHS tapes here, with the standard box, are glorious.

THIS NBA JAM MACHINE

Look at how 90’s this thing is! Honestly, I wouldn’t catch up with NBA Jam until many years later, after college, when I would play with my frequent creative creative collaborator Ralph Blanchard. For the most part, our games ended in the utmost frustration, with Ralph (loudly) accusing the game of cheating. Turns out he was right, as an Ars Technica mini-documentary on YouTube would later confirm (the game is programmed to help out the opposing team if you’re winning). Even if this machine was not made in the 90’s, you still have the 90’s players and team logos, which is a plus.

JURASSIC PARK FIGURES

Jurassic Park, the Greatest Film of All Time, will always be welcome in the 90’s (or any) room! I actually owned the tanned-clothed figure when I was a youngin, so he’d be fun to reclaim and have sitting on the coffee table. Whether this man is intended to be Alan Grant, I am still not sure. By 90’s action-figure-facial-sculpting technology, it could pass as Sam Neill, but then again, is this supposed to be Alan in the employ of Jurassic Park? Who is this man?

WILLIAM T. RIKER ACTION FIGURE

I would hate Star Trek until my late twenties, and am still surprised that I am now a big giant nerd for it. “Why isn’t it action-packed like Star Wars? Why is there never any fighting? All they do is talk!” said my stupid younger self. Well, I have since seen the four lights and would gleefully welcome Trek, either TNG, DS9, or Voyager, into the 90’s room. I should get this particular figure not only because I love Riker, but this disguise is in the episode that also stars Bebe Newirth. For those sadly unitiated, she was Lilith on the 90’s sitcom classic Frasier. Being a follower of, and commenter on, multiple Frasier social media accounts, this is something I need!

THIS SNES CARTRDIGE FROM SAFEWAY

Look at this glorious relic. I absolutely adore authentic rental copies. (I still have an Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me VHS with my hometown video store’s stickers on it!)

I do not recall my childhood Safeway having a video rental department, but a few other grocery stores did. My friend and I rented Star Wars: Rouge Squadron for N64 from Albertson’s (if that sentence doesn’t date me, I don’t know what will). Since NCAA Final Four Basketball came out in 1995, this scrawled “1987” must refer to either the Safeway Store number or the SKU for this item at that rental department (I imagine customers were trying to return cartridges to any and all Safeways). Absolutely outstanding. Real rental copies like this would lend authenticity to the 90’s room, and must be acquired with all haste!

THE 2000’S ROOM

Moving onto my second themed hang-out room. Originally, I had planned to “time-stamp” the 2000’s room at December 2003, right before the theatrical premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Nerd hype was off the charts in this moment, not to mention that I, as an aspiring filmmaker, was still high off The Pirates of the Caribbean, Underworld, and the two Matrix films that had come earlier that year. It was a great time (I’m surprised I did not explode!) But to cap the room at December 2003 would be to miss out on one gaming goliath of the early 2000’s, Halo 2.

HALO 2

If The Lord of the Rings was something I filled my solitary time with (re-watching the films, reading the books and lore, creating games, writing fanfic), then Halo 2 might have been of equal significance, just in the social realm. The campaign was fine, but the overwhelming majority of Halo 2 was played with friends. And not just playing with some friends some times. I mean to say that Halo 2 was being played at nearly every single social gathering from release to my graduation two years later. Didn’t matter whose house it was or what dungeon-like bedroom we were in, Halo 2 was there. Friends hauled their giant CRT’s across town and plugged their AV cables into fickle televisions. Sometimes we had up to 12 people playing at once!

My budding-filmmaker prowess allowed me to record and sync both the video and audio from these playing sessions. Upon re-watch for this article, they are exactly what you’d expect: Varying skill-levels of trash talk, with a heavy dose of “dude!”, and the standard serving of Northern Californian “hella” (note: a lot of “hella”). I’ve said it before, but truly, what a time!

I have not gamed seriously by any means for nearly 20 years, and am therefore confused (and saddened) to hear that split-screen multiplayer is no more. Is this really true? As I said, nearly every single social gathering was accompanied by Halo 2. Halo and Halo 2‘s massive influence will have to loom large in the 2000’s room.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS ACTION FIGURES

I was and still am obsessed with The Lord of the Rings. I did not have any of these action figures, but my friend Michael did. He had the entire Fellowship! (He also had a For Your Consideration VHS of The Two Towers for all of 2003, which he NEVER let any of us borrow or watch and I still do not forgive him for that!) These figures would be, to borrow a line from Aragorn, “most welcome.” I must state, however, that I would open them up and have them posed around the room. The packaging is a little bulky for my taste, and don’t you remember, Éowyn hates cages.

EARLY 2000’S STAR WARS GAMES

When I wasn’t blasting my friends with sticky grenades, I was most likely playing against bots in Star Wars: Jedi Outcast. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic might take the cake for the best story in a Star Wars game, but Jedi Outcast is right up there, and it might have also been the first game to actually make you feel like a Jedi. A Kyle Katarn stan ever since I can remember, this game is true tentpole of Casey Poma gaming history. It’s a game I still play today and a game I will borrow heavily from if I were to make my dream game (more on that in a future article!)

The Albertson’s-rented copy of Rogue Squadron impressed my friends and I enough that we were soon dutifully playing the Gamecube sequel, Rouge Squadron II: Rogue Leader. I was let down by the game’s narrative being a retread of the original trilogy (again), but the graphics were a great improvement. I would never play Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike, but I do remember the excitement around the idea of a game having both flying levels and run-around-on-foot levels. At the time, Star Wars games were flying only or run-around only, so it was a brand new day when you were able to do both (even if it turned out to not be so good)!

I MUST LEAVE YOU KNOW, BUT . . .

. . .there are a very many things I did not mention: a wall full of PS2 games. Glass cases of figures and rarities. A basket overloaded with loose game manuals. How fun! If you want to see more, you’ll have to go there yourself and check it out (or maybe I’ll write another article about my next trip!). For California, they have a location in Lawndale, as well as Huntington Beach. In Connecticut, you can find them in these 3 cities: Norwalk, Newington, and Orange.

Visit the stores, go to their website, and check out their entertaining and informative YouTube channel!

Hello there, everyone. I’m back with a quasi-update about how things are going with my debut novel, y’know, editing and all that. Last year, I wrote about the trials of editing, and this year, I’ll have even more editing to talk (complain) about. In fact, I just posted something about how I was exited to jump into the next draft and how it (hopefully) won’t take as long. (Seriously, I hope it won’t take as long. But who am I kidding, really?)

Filled with the giddy excitement that this thing might actually be done soon, I was brainstorming about the cover. They tell people not to judge a book by its cover, but people TOTALLY DO. I mean, I do it. We all do it. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. In the past, I never really thought about my posters or covers for albums and stuff, but recently noticed that the projects with better covers went more places than those projects whose covers sucked. So really, your cover, which is really like a poster for your book/cd, etc, is HELLA IMPORTANT.

As with anything, I first try to think about what I like. So, what covers do I like of fantasy books? I don’t know why, but I’m more into the retro/adventure type covers. It might be because this is the first epic fantasy book I ever read, but the original cover for the The Elfstones of Shannara is awesome. And so is the one for The Sword of Shannara. Just three people on the front during some cool scene of the book. They even did this for the original cover of The Crystal Shard. Take a look:

covers_theee_people standing — I like that old-school text, too.

They also did this for some of Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis’ Dragonlance: Chronicles books, but for these, instead of looking heroic, the people were just STANDING THERE. They’re not even adventuring. They’re literally just posing for a picture. That’s great (and kinda hilarious).

covers_Dragonlance_retro — Fine Christmas card photos.

Modern covers are all right, although the trend right now seems to be just like one person in the center, with a weapon, or a hood, turned away from us or toward us. Modern covers of Dragonlance are more or less the same, except now urr’body’s GOT THEIR KNEES BENT:

covers_Dragonlance_KNEESjpg — See? Even the horse is doing it.

Why is that? Something about having your knee up that evokes power or strength? Or do they just really love Captain Morgan? I’m going with the latter theory.

Going back to retro designs, take a look at these old Redwall covers, which are BADASS. In all honesty, has there ever been a bad Redwall cover? They are all so cool. Of course, I could spend an entire blog post just going over the Redwall covers, so I’ll restrain myself. But really:

So, all right, we’ve gone over what I like, but what does this mean for the cover of my book? I’ve said in previous posts that I was going to self-publish this thing, and in doing so, would need a badass cover to break out of the trend of self-pub books having ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE covers. But before I think too hard about a cover for a self-pub, I’m also thinking of trying to get a small press to pick this up. In that case, I don’t really have much choice (I think), but we’ll see. (I’m back and forth on this, I’ll probably write something on this in the future).

So what should the cover of my book be? To give you a little taste of what the book is, it’s heroic fantasy that is both whimsical and adult. Think The Princess Bride or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with a bit more curse words. It’s intended to be read like a fairy tale, with silly, magical creatures and high points of adventure! It’ll have those flowery block letters to start off chapters and etc, etc, etc. So what kind of cover would this book need?

It would no doubt be fun to do something that calls back to those old times, but, unfortunately, I need a cover that will both POP AND SELL. No one’s going to appreciate your homage-cover if the only person getting the joke is you, y’know? Since my book is adventure comedy, I might be able to lampoon any style I want, modern or old. But will a girl in a t-shirt with a goofy wizard and either a knight or archer standing there be enough to get people to check it out? Or should they be staring at something off-screen, with bent knees and swords at the ready? Or should they be like Drizzt do’Urden and be fighting on the cover?

Covers_drizztfighting — Seriously, this guy fights a lot.

I’ve thought about it this a bunch, and while I go back and forth about it, this hasn’t stopped me from doodling out concepts. There’s just so many ways to go, and in my never-ending pursuit to be a masochist and TRY EVERY AVENUE EVER, I GIMP’ed this little proof of concept picture, which is a hack-job from at least six different sources:

The sky, ground, and rock are random Google searches. The city back there is made from a picture of Oia, Greece and a clock tower from some other city. The girl in front is from a Hildebrandt Brothers’ painting of Eowyn and the Witch-king. The bald part of the wizard’s head is Bruce Willis’ head, and so on.

And sure, this does look interesting, and DOES kind of look like a fantasy cover. And since I apparently had nothing to do the other today, I spent a bunch of hours drawing over it and creating this. Another proof-of-concept test, trying to turn it into something a little more comedic/funny:

ADH_COVER_DOOLE_with_outline — The rock looks pretty great. . .

Of course, the scary creature looks absolutely not scary and some of the drawing is off. That’s all right, this was just a test. I have a dude who I’ve contacted about the art who is way better than me and might be able to make something like this really stand out.

But be honest book fans, would this cover be interesting to you? If it were drawn a little more cartoony and better?

I understand that book covers should do a couple things. Explain your whole novel in one image. In essence, it’s about a group of heroes trying to get to a city, but they’re being stopped by deadly shit on the way. (But does the cover convey they’re trying to GET to the city? Maybe a road leading to it would help?) Does it say anything about the characters? Hmm…their facial expressions could probably say more. Does the city in the back at peak interest? I noticed that almost every cover of “The Wizard of Oz” has the Emerald City in the background, because it’s so damn important. Not to say that my book is like “The Wizard of Oz”, but. . .holy shit, guys, it might be just a little bit. O___O

So what do you think? Please once again note that this is a ROUGH DRAFT and not the final thing, but is this design interesting? What would you like to see in a book cover for a story like this? What do you like on book covers in general?

If all else fails, I’ll just have them all bend their knees.

Stay tuned for more updates!

-Casey

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OTHER GREAT LINKS TO THIS TOPIC:

Debut Novel Editing Update: January 25, 2014 (01.25.2014)
“A Distant Horn” Novel Editing Update: September 26, 2013 (09.26.2013)
“A Distant Horn” Novel Editing Update: July 20, 2013 (07.21.2013)
“A Distant Horn” Update: May 9, 2013 (03.09.2013)