Mega Play was a Sega specific magazine covering mostly the Sega Genesis, Game Gear and related accessories. It was published by the same publishers as EGM so for a while they were publishing EGM, EGM2, Mega Play, and Super Play. The first issue of Mega Play was included as a freebie with EGM. The November/December 1991 issue includes:
Editorial - Things look rosy for Sega as Genesis hardware and software sales exceed expectations with the Mega CD/Sega CD coming soon.
Mega Mail - Letters from readers about RGB mode on the Genesis, a new Genesis design, playing Master System games on the Game Gear, and back issues.
Hi-Tech Sega - A look at a handy new third-party accessory called the 'Master Gear Converter' that will allow you to play Sega Master System games on the Game Gear.
Mega Tricks - Tips, tricks and cheat codes for Turrican (Genesis), Road Rash (Genesis), Spiderman (Genesis), Marvel Land (Genesis), Decapattack (Genesis), Saint Sword (Genesis), and Streets of Rage (Genesis).
Table of Contents from the November/December 1991 issue of Mega Play
Genesis Does... - A more detailed look at some games coming out for the holiday season. Games spotlighted include Growl (Genesis), a violent fighting game from Taito; The Terminator (Genesis), based on the movie of the same name; Trouble Shooter (Genesis), a shooter somewhat similar to Forgotten Worlds; James Pond 2: Robocod (Genesis), a platform game featuring a fish; Shadow of the Beast (Genesis), a fantasy based side-scrolling beat-em-up; Cal. 50 (Genesis), a top down action game in which you must rescue the prisoners; F-22 Interceptor (Genesis), a combat flight sim; Toki (Genesis), a translation of the arcade game; Sonic the Hedgehog (Game Gear), now on Sega's portable platform; Halley Wars (Game Gear), a sci-fi themed shooter; and Bio-Ship Paladin (Mega Drive), a shooter with a unique twist.
Review Crew
Y's 3 - Sadly, not as good as the Y's games on the TurboGrafx-16.
The Terminator (Genesis) - Take the role of John Conner in this action game based on the movie. Better than most licensed games.
Robocod (Genesis) - Better than the original James Pond.
Trouble Shooter (Genesis) - Play Madison and Crystal as they fly around blasting everything in their quest to find the king's son.
John Madden '92 (Genesis) - Back when the Madden games were really good.
Mario Lemieux Hockey (Genesis) - An average hockey game.
Cal. 50 (Genesis) - A translation of the arcade game. Reminds me of games like P.O.W. and Ikari Warriors.
RBI 3 (Genesis) - Not really an improvement over the NES original.
Game Over - A look at the ending of Batman...the game based on the 1989 movie.
Back cover of the November/December 1991 issue of Mega Play
In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that energy grid operators across the US were bracing for rolling blackouts heading into the summer.
“I am concerned about it,” MISO CEO John Bear told the newspaper, noting that green energy sources were struggling to produce enough supply to meet rising demand. “As we move forward, we need to know that when you put a solar panel or a wind turbine up, it’s not the same as a thermal resource.”
Nearly two months later, it’s clear that grid operators were not crying wolf.
On Friday, the Associated Press reported that California—a state desperately trying to “quit” fossil fuels—is seeking to tap fossil fuel to avoid blackouts.
“A sweeping energy proposal Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Thursday puts the state in the business of buying power to ensure there’s enough to go around during heat waves that strain the grid. But some critics say the method of getting there is at odds with the state’s broader climate goals, because it paves the way for the state to tap aging gas-fired power plants and add backup generators fueled by diesel.”
Unlike most states, California gets most of its electricity—nearly 60 percent—from renewable sources. But the AP notes the state lacks the storage capacity to dispatch sufficient energy when intermittent energy sources are not producing, something Newsom’s proposal seeks to address.
The governor’s proposal would help “keep the lights on in California,” The Los Angeles Timesnotes, “making it easier for solar and wind farm developers to sidestep local government opposition, and limiting environmental reviews for all kinds of energy projects.”
The proposal would also likely serve as a lifeline to beachfront gas plants, as well as the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, the Golden State’s largest power plant and only operating nuclear facility.
‘We Feel Double-Crossed’
At first blush, Gov. Newsom’s proposal makes perfect sense. But there’s more to the story.
As I noted in May, energy industry leaders had made it clear that grids are struggling to keep pace with rising energy demands as plants shift from thermal energy sources to renewables.
But California is already familiar with blackouts.
Following the blackouts, the state water board agreed to allow gas-fired power plants in Redondo Beach, Huntington to continue operating for three additional years, even though they were slated for retirement.
“We feel double-crossed,” Redondo Beach Mayor Bill Brand told the Times. “These retirement dates were set 12 years ago.”
Brand has a point.
Newsom has repeatedly called for the phasing out of fossil fuels and denied that doing so would have an adverse economic effect. His pivot to fossil fuels is prudent because it will reduce the dangerous possibility that Calfornians will again find themselves without power during the peak heat of summer, but it’s also a betrayal ideologically.
For progressives, California is America’s energy blueprint, the model showing the way forward on “green” energy. Turning back to fossil fuels is a move that runs against Newsom’s own rhetoric and the progressive vision of our energy future. It’s an admission that fossil fuels aren’t just important but necessary to human survival.
A Familiar Story
California is hardly the first state to realize that transitioning to renewable energy—which is not as green as many activists and lawmakers would like you to believe—is easier said than done.
In its eagerness to retire coal plants, for example, Hawaii recently found itself usingoil to charge the Kapolei Energy Storage Facility—essentially a huge battery designed to utilize green energy—after renewable energy projects were beset by problems.
The revelation was an embarrassment for energy officials, but it revealed an important reality. While many today see fossil fuels as immoral or even evil, the reality is they provide most of the energy in the US and are vital to human existence and flourishing.
This is not to say that renewable energy sources like solar power are not important and cannot serve a key role. They can (though the idea that they come with no environmental costs is untrue).
But the discussion gets at a key lesson of basic economics: tradeoffs exist.
“There are no solutions,” economist Thomas Sowell famously observed. “There are only trade-offs.”
What we’re seeing in California is that the tradeoffs of “green” energy are getting real for politicians. Having $7 gasoline is painful, but bearable. Having the highest energy bills in the country is not desirable, but it can be endured. Blackouts are where politicians seem to draw the line, and it’s not hard to see why.
Unlike many countries around the world, Americans are not accustomed to blackouts, and it seems the political price to them is simply too high—even for politicians who are green energy evangelists.
This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Clickhere to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.
Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are many thousands of these slides. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides from the late 1950s that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.
This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/
Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.
Click the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.
The first three photos appear to have been taken somewhere in Central or South America. The last photo was processed in August 1962 and features a woman singing with an orchestra. The first three photos were also probably taken some time in the 1960s.
processed August 1962
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.
I think that December 1994 represents the absolute peak (at least in terms of page counts) of video game magazines. Electronic Gaming Monthly, one of the most popular gaming magazines, actually had two publications each month at the time and in December 1994 and averaged close to 400 pages. the December 1994 issue of EGM2 (or EGM^2 or EGM Squared or whatever you want to call it) weighed in at 356 pages, covered at least the Super Nintendo, Genesis, Sega CD, 3DO, CD-i, Atari Jaguar, PlayStation and arcade games and included:
Features
Meet the New, Tough Cast of Samurai Showdown 2! - A detailed look at SNK's new Samurai Showdown 2 including the large number of fighters.
The Sony PlayStation is Making Waves in Japan! - A look at the PlayStation, first games available and an interview with Hiroshi Koyomoto fomr the marketing division of Sony of Japan's Computer Entertainment Division a few days ahead of the official launch in Japan.
Hear the Roar of the Jaguar and it's Games! - The Atari Jaguar was a terrific system for its time and quite powerful. It came out strong but sadly, Atari repeated its mistakes of the past and failed to put sufficient resources into first party game development and third party support. A look at Checkered Flag, Bubsy, Syndicate, Theme Park, and Iron Soldier.
Capcom Mania is Striking the Video Game World! - A detailed look at new and upcoming Capcom games including X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse and Mega Man X2 for the Super NES.
Table of Contents from the December 1994 issue of EGM2
Departments
Insert Coin - A positive look at the Atari Jaguar and indeed, the first batch of games looks pretty good...at least the ones mentioned here.
Interface: Letters to the Editor - Letters about playing Super Famicom games on the Super NES, Quarterback Club vs. NFL '95, how to get into the game business, Satan's snubbing from MK II, R-Type 3, and more.
Fandom Central - A look by Arnie Katz at the latest in gaming fanzines.
Press Start - Nintendo sponsors online conversations about Donkey Kong Country via CompuServe, Capcom announces Mega Man: The Wily Wars exclusively for the Sega Channel, who's on the Street Fighter 2 soundtrack, EA Sports and Catapult sponsor XBand superbowl of gaming, and more.
Gaming Gossip - Sony PlayStation prepares for launch, Namco announces support for PlayStation, Street Fighter III in the works, Mortal Kombat II and NBA Jam Tournament Edition rumored for 3DO, Wayne Gretzky signs deal for hockey game on the Super NES, Genesis and Sega CD, and more.
Tricks of the Trade - Tips and tricks for Mickey Mania (Genesis), Belle's Quest (Genesis), Roar of the Beast (Genesis), Lemmings (Super NES), Death Valley Rally (Super NES), Speedy Gonzalez (Game Boy), EXO Squad (Genesis), Daffy Duck: Marvin Missions (Super NES), Fire Power 2000 (Super NES), Pirates of Dark Water (Genesis), Super Game Boy (Super NES), Aero the AcroBat (Super NES), Ultimate Fighter (Super NES), Batman: Return of the Joker (Genesis), Urban Strike (Genesis), Mickey Mania (Sega CD), Earthworm Jim (Genesis), Final Fantasy III (Super NES), Shaq Fu (Super NES), and much more.
Next Wave - Previews of Eternal Champions CD (Sega CD), Mega Bomberman (Genesis), RapJam Volume One (Super NES), Brutal (32X), ATP Tour Championship Tennis (Genesis), Midnight Raiders (Sega CD), Ogre Battle (Super NES), Ecco: The Tides of Time CD (Sega CD), Marko's Magic Soccer Ball (Game Gear), Power Ranger (Sega CD), NHL All-Star Hockey '95 (Genesis), Home Improvement (Super NES), Flying Nightmares (Sega CD, 3DO), The Legend of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear), and Ignition Factor (Super NES).
Table of Contents from the December 1994 issue of EGM2 (continued)
Fact Files
Super NES Times - A look at new and upcoming Super NES games including Super Punch Out (Nintendo), X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse (Capcom), Mega Man X2 (Capcom), and Rise of the Robots (Acclaim).
Outpost Sega - A look at new and upcoming games for Sega systems, including: Ristar (Sega for the Genesis), NFL Quarterback Club (Acclaim for the Genesis), Exo Squad (Playmates for the Genesis), Great Circus Mystery (Capcom for the Genesis), Wolverine: Adamantium Rage (Acclaim for the Genesis), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Playmates for the Genesis), Star Wars Arcade (Sega for the 32X), Doom (Sega for the 32X), Flashback (Sega for the Sega CD), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Sony Imagesoft for the Sega CD), Popful Mail (Working Designs for the Sega CD), and Flink (Vic Tokai for the Sega CD)
In 1937, Boris Orman was working at a bakery in Russia when he shared a joke over tea with his colleague.
“Stalin was out swimming, but he began to drown. A peasant who was passing by jumped in and pulled him safely to shore,” the joke went, according to British writer Jonathan Waterlow. “Stalin asked the peasant what he would like as a reward. Realising whom he had saved, the peasant cried out: ‘Nothing! Just please don’t tell anyone I saved you!’”
The joke is hardly the funniest ever told, but Orman was nevertheless one of countless Russians in the Soviet Union who received a 10-year stint in a labor camp for uttering the jibe. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, got off a bit easier. He received a mere eight-year sentence in the Gulag after Soviet authorities intercepted a letter he wrote to a friend in 1945 that made a crack about Stalin and criticized the Soviet system.
One might be tempted to think the Soviets just had really bad senses of humor, but there’s a reason totalitarians and authoritarians seek to suppress jokes.
History shows humor is a tool that empowers. It can fortify humans during dark and deadly times, and it can destroy an idea just as effectively as reason, though it’s arguably most powerful when it’s combined with reason.
The most famous such example might be Jonathan Swift’s classic essay A Modest Proposal, a masterpiece of satire that exposed the impoverished conditions of the time by saying poor Irish families could alleviate their condition by selling their excess children to rich people for food.
Combining humor with pointed social commentary is a strategy employed by countless comedians—old and new—including Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, Dave Chappelle, and Bill Burr.
Which brings me to Mike Judge.
Beavis and Butt-Head on White Privilege
Judge, a writer, animator, and director, is probably best known for Beavis and Butt-Head, an animated show that ran on MTV in the 1990s and was turned into a feature film, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, released in 1996.
Since then, Beavis and Butt-Head have mostly been retired, as Judge turned to numerous other projects, including Office Space (1999), Idiocracy (2006), and the HBO hit show Silicon Valley (2014-2019). But Beavis and Butt-head—a pair of metal head morons who snicker at childish things and make crass observations about “babes” and “scoring”—are back.
Earlier this month, a trailer of a new Beavis and Butt-head movie dropped, announcing a June 23 release date (available exclusively on Paramount+) and a plot as bad as one would expect.
Our “heroes” stumble their way to space camp after destroying their school’s science fair exhibit. The lads’ penchant for sexual metaphors lands them a gig on a real space shuttle, and that’s where the time-traveling plot kicks in.
The boys sabotage the mission and enter a black hole. The snafu catapults them from the ’90s to 2022, but their space commandeer (Andrea Savage) is hot on their trail. She’s now a governor with political ambition to burn, and the boys’ survival threatens her ascent.
This sounds silly—especially when the trailer shows Beavis and Butt-head rehashing the same crude jokes and acts they were 30 years earlier (“I am Cornholio; I need TP for my bunghole”)—but that is precisely what is making it attractive to audiences.
“This is one of the stupidest concepts for a Beavis and Butthead movie I can imagine,” one YouTube commenter said, “it's perfect.”
Not all the jokes are rehashed, however. A subsequent clip dropped, and it explores a theme that Beavis and Butt-head audiences in the 1990s never heard of: white privilege.
The clip shows Beavis and Butt-head in college, where they appear to walk into class late and are reprimanded by their professor.
“This is a classic case of white privilege,” the instructor explains. “And you both have it.”
The duo have no idea what white privilege is, but several members of their class are kind enough to explain it to them.
“So, white privilege is when people, particularly men, automatically assume they can take whatever they want,” one young woman explains.
“And they never have to worry about getting stopped by the police,” another chimes in.
“And they have the inside track for any jobs …”
You get the idea. The funniest part of the clip is that, unlike most people, Beavis and Butt-head are not offended or ashamed when they hear this. They are excited.
“Whoa,” Butt-head says. “And we have that?”
“You sure do,” the professor answers.
Naturally, Beavis and Butt-head decide to use this newly-discovered power, but things don’t go as planned.
Why Beavis and Butt-head Are a Threat
For those less familiar with white privilege, it’s just one aspect of a larger intellectual movement known as Critical Race Theory (CRT). Writers at FEE and other prominent thinkers have explained at length why CRT is a dangerous and damaging philosophy, one that undermines individuality, fosters a victimhood mindset, and divides along racial lines instead of uniting us in our common humanity.
Making the philosophical case against CRT is important, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single scholarly article or lecture expose white privilege and its talking points as effectively as Mike Judge did in that two-minute Beavis and Butt-head clip.
Which brings me back to the power of humor.
Satire and humor still have the power to destroy ideas, perhaps more than ever. This is precisely why comedians like Dave Chappelle and sites like The Babylon Bee have become targets of the woke movement, which continues in its effort to suppress speech that violates its dogmas on race, gender, and class.
Fortunately, today’s commentators in America don’t face prison sentences like Boris Orman and Alexander Solzhenitsyn did when they make jokes criticizing the ascendant orthodoxy, but they still face risks.
Efforts to have Chappelle fired over his comedy show “The Closer,” which included the trans community among its many targets, failed. The Babylon Beehas been suspended by Twitter for referring to Health and Human Services Secretary Rachel Levine, a biological man who identifies as a woman, as a man, but the Bee is still publishing.
The actions against Chappelle, the Bee, and other creators have a clear chilling effect on expression, which is the entire point of cancel culture. Today’s elites, like those of the twentieth century, clearly recognize that humor has the power to undermine their ideas and power, which is why they work so hard to suppress it when it strays from the narrative.
Increasingly, however, creators refuse to be silenced. Beavis and Butt-head taking on white privilege is just the latest example.
With his two-minute takedown of CRT, Mike Judge didn’t just expose the absurdity of white privilege talking points; he won a victory for free expression and struck a blow to cancel culture.
This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.
Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are many thousands of these slides. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides from the late 1950s that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.
This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/
Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.
Click the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.
The first photo was processed in June 1966 and shows a place called "Oak Island Resort". There happen to be a lot of resorts wtih "Oak Island" in the name but I found a web site online (oakislandresort.com) that looks like it might be the place. It is in Minnesota.
processed June 1966
Here is a more recent photo taken from the website of what I believe to be the same place:
The second photo was also processed in June 1966 and was probably taken at the same place. Here you can see a sea plane and the tail number is clearly visible. I tried to do some research on it. Initially, I could only find a plane that was build in 1980. Apparently tail numbers get reused. Then I found the following on planephd.com:
Current tail: N32DB
Used to be: N8212V
Aircraft type: PistonSingle
Manufacturer: CESSNA
Model: 180H
Year: 1966
Serial number: 18051714
Owner: DIVE BOMB INDUSTRIES LLC
So that is possibly the same plane. Built in 1966 it would mean this photo was taken when it was nearly brand new.
processed June 1966
Apparently it is still flying as I found the following flight path from a flight in early March for tail N32DB:
The third photo was also processed in June 1966 and was probably taken at the same place (Oak Island Resort) and is another photo taken of the lake.
processed June 1966
The final photo is not labeled or dated but I'm guessing it is from roughly the same time period (late 1960s) and was taken in Central or South America.
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.
