TechnoRetro Dads: Zaxxon, Rain, and The Rescuers’ Reign

by RetroZap Staff

Bernard and Miss Bianca team up to find a little lost orphan girl in southern swamps in 1977’s The Rescuers, Don Bluth’s last Disney film.

JediShua and shazbazzar remember The Rescuers and replay Zaxxon at Flashback Games Retro Arcade in Loganville, Georgia for your retro enjoyment.  PLUS: Ready Player One and Star Trek are in the news.  We’re getting excited!


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Zaxxon, Rain, and The Rescuer‘s Reign

Sitting in our favorite position, doing nothing, is what we really do best.  Other people concentrate a lot on doing something, we just concentrate on our rest.  We’re happy with an old guitar in the shade of VW bus.  We don’t bother worries and they don’t bother us.  We’re just sitting in our favorite position — doing nothing — and that’s doing what we really do best!  Perhaps we’re lazy.  Maybe we’ve got “Peoplitis”.  But we’re surely having fun — even in the rain.  So if your day is gray or you’re feeling kind of bluer, tune in for TechnoRetro Dads and remember The Rescuers.

In the NEWS…

Production on Ready Player One is well underway and Sorrento may not be exactly like readers imagined him, according to Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One).  Mendelsohn caused some stirrings online when he said that his approach to the character is vastly different from the character’s portrayal in Ernest Cline’s novel.  T.J. Miller calls i-R0k a comedic Boba Fett.  If that’s the case, does that mean that Sorrento is Darth Vader (or would that make Krennic choke on his aspirations)?  Star Trek Discovery will premiere on CBS 24 September online as well as on “old-fashioned TV”.

TechnoRetro Arcade

JediShua and shazbazzar played Zaxxon at Flashback Games Retro Arcade in Loganville, Georgia about a year ago.  This week we remember playing it then as well as in their youth (while shaz gets distracted with TRON right beside the Zaxxon cabinet). Zaxxon was the first axonometric arcade game and was ported to home consoles relatively quickly for games in those days. Giving players a third-person view from a diagonal point-of-view, the axonometric design provided a basic 3D perspective for gamers.  Controlling a ship on the X, Y, and Z axes was a novelty in 1982 and continues to be an iconic game among video game aficionados.

The Rescuers

Who can forget Bernard, Bianca, and Evinrude?  Evidently, shazbazzar can.  At least he had forgotten that The Rescuers was the first movie he saw on the big screen.  Before seeing Pete’s Dragon in the theater, before seeing Star Wars at the drive-in, shazbazzar and his family went to see The Rescuers in the summer of 1977.  The Rescuers was Don Bluth’s final project with Disney before embarking on his own projects like Secret of NIMH, Space Ace, and Dragon’s LairThe Rescuers went through many iterations for over a decade before finally becoming the movie we all loved back in ’77.  JediShua and shazbazzar reveal some interesting tidbits of information about this movie with a couple of “lost” tunes by Louis Prima that never made it into the film due to a significant change in the plot and the death of Prima.

Feedback

We love hearing from EarBuds and especially new EarBuds.  @ObiRothKenobi asks if the ‘Dads had seen The Goldbergs, so shazbazzar begins watching the series.  Our old friend Sheldon gets a wooden spatula for his grill and we wonder whether it catches fire when he uses it.  PLUS: E.T. VoiceMails from Sheldon and Jeremy the Spider-Pan from The Neverland Podcast.

Lend your voice to our discussion about The Rescuers, Zaxxon, wood spatulas, monsoon season or anything else on social media or give the ‘Dads your feedback by calling our voice mail line at (209) 878-7323 or sending us a message or mp3 via electronic-M to podcast@TechnoRetroDads.com.  Please rate and review TechnoRetro Dads on iTunes and Stitcher.

Share and enjoy!


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Join shazbazzar and JediShua each week for a look back at the ’70s and ’80s as they share the fun and also fandom of their youth with their families, friends, and EarBuds. Topics include TV, film, music, toys, and games of the ’70s and ’80s as well as franchises which have continued into the 21st Century, like Star WarsTRON, Buck Rogers, and Battlestar Galactica. TechnoRetro Dads is a blend of new stories as old legends are then passed down from one generation to the next.

If you’re a TechnoRetro Dad, the child of one, or appreciate the ’70s and ’80s, then this podcast is definitely for you!

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