Taco Bell.. Bring Back the Sante Fe Gordita.

Nothing has more urgency than this.

    I made a post on Reddit about it, and I created the petition in question. Taco Bell - Bring back the fucking Sante Fe and Baja menu again. Give us a reason to visit outside of the Luxe box options. Not even a new flavor of Baja Blast will bring me and my money back faster. 

• Reddit post
• Sign the Petition  

1991 TSR Trading Card Set (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons)

Premier! Counterfeit proof!

     In 1991 TSR sold packs of collectable cards that you could trade and have fun with, contained all the accurate stats and a bio on the back, and printed on good quality card stock with a hologram. All your favorite characters from all the popular books of the time, with items and "common" low level monsters and consumables of varying types. Rares were the main characters from the book like Drizzt and Raistlin, commons were ogres, goblins, and potions. Cards from this set have a silver border, cards from the packs have a gold border. 

This card would be considered uncommon

     750 cards in total, with the majority of them AD&D, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance. I noticed the art on the Ravenloft cards are in black and white, but still really fun to look at. Lots of the main characters come from the covers of popular books they were mentioned in.

So fresh, so clean, also.. musty.

     I found these on Facebook marketplace for $5 around 45 minutes north of me, from a storage unit sale. The guy that sold them to me was confused on why I would drive 45 minutes for them, but jokes on him, I would have drove further for less.

Front and back of some of the cards

     What a cool little oddity of the day. I'm really jazzed about seeing some of the lesser characters from the Clerics Quintet and Dragonlance series that I never had a visual to match to the person described in the books. It would have been badass being 12-13 again, playing AD&D with my friends, and having this cards as quick reference and a visual representation. 

Grayhawk & Spelljammer!

     I'm going to put these in a box and not look at them for a few years; I hope you enjoyed this little time capsule as much as I did. Comment below if you want to see more D&D/TSR content. 

Highlander - Rare Japanese Movie Program

James Bond - A View to a Kill - Rare Japanese Program

Kenwood KRC 999 - The Most Insane Car Cassette Audio Money Can Buy

 

Studio level Hi-Fi, in your car.

     People take car audio very seriously. The old Crutchfield magazines of the 80's and 90's are a stark reminder that you could spend an infinite amount of money on your car audio system, and be absolutely blown away by the quality of sound. Look at the list of bullet points in the magazine blurb above. What can't it do? Well if you're a smart ass, and you're thinking it can't play CD's, guess again- they made a CD add on for this head unit as well as a single din amp and graphic equalizer combo. Not like you needed it, as this has it all. The KRC 99 even had one unique feature, it had a retractable EQ, where you could edit the graph on the fly.Watch the video below and watch it in action:

Behold, the Kenwood KRC999 Mark II!

     Even the sweet sweet tunes of Nite and Day by Al B. Sure sound better on this glorious over the top piece of equipment. Currently running for around $1200-$1500 on ebay for a working example, The Kenwood line of KDT and KRC head units are a really cool glance into the past, and how insane technology was at the time. Full motorized and servo driven. Dolby B&C. Sensors to increase and lower audio depending on road noise. I could go on forever. 

Full DAT version? Sure, why not. 

     Not pictured in the above video and the small advertisements is the amount of computerization required to control it all, which was housed in a "Brain Box" you install somewhere else in the car. Amps, crossovers, wiring, some of it proprietary to Kenwood tuners, all completes the absolutely insanity that is the KRC-999. 

The pics above are the accessories you need to get one of these running.

     I wish I had one, and I wish I was more knowledgeable about the subject, but this is just one great example of retro technology at it's crazy-best. Does anyone need this? No. Did we all want it? Of course.

AD&D Second Edition - 26 Books, 5985 Pages.. Free!

 

God I love Archive.org - Download the archive now!

     It's like all the cool shit is free now. Just search around for anything.. anything at all, and it's on there. Entire archives of books and games, all for me to read and fall asleep with the phone in my hand, and my wife there to pry it from my limp drunken fingers. I once read all the Forgotten Realms rule and adventure books, thousands of pages, over a series of plane flights and layovers during conference season. Priceless!

1980's Stereo Advertisements

 

Bastard!!! - Full OVA Series!

 

Bastard!!! OVA Full Original Series

     I've been watching the new Bastard!!! on Netflix, and it's been a hot minute since I've seen the original 6 episode OVA series from the early 90's. I think that last time I saw it was on VHS with my sister, and we rented it from Blockbuster. Surprising visuals and tons of nudity and gore, you could say it made me a fan. I've since read the Manga online, which I really enjoyed. The Netflix show is missing some of the charm of the original series, some of the nudity, and a little of dark feeling. I still liked it, and hope they release season 3 in the future. 

Either way, enjoy this classic in all it's Heavy Metal Dark Fantasy glory!

Dirty Pair - Affair of Nolandia - Full OVA!

 

Not as popular as Project Eden and Flight 005, Affair of Nolandia is still a good entry in the series and needs to be watched. Click the Japanese video disk to start watching now!

Kyoto Video (Kaiserbeamz) did a legendary review on the movie, and if you have some time, please give it a watch. 

The Wolf Returns - Thoughts and Concerns

White Wolf Rebrands their World Of Darkness Enterprise

Press release here, press kit available here.

     I don't know if anyone wants my thoughts on this, but I'm giving them anyways. For context, I started playing Vampire: The Masquerade in 9th grade, in Summer School 1996. My friends and I would pass the same book around, makes notes and characters, then at lunch, talk about the game we were going to play that weekend. One book, one set of dice, and hundreds of hours of sleepovers perfected our obsession- which lead into the other spheres of the White Wolf universe: Werewolf, Vampire Dark Ages, Mage, Wraith, Changeling, and more. I felt like we graduated from the unique and complex rules of AD&D to a much simpler story telling heavy and immersive world that felt like it was set in one of Anne Rice's books. The art was unique, the world was horrific and fascinating, the rules simple to understand... I was hooked.

The Art from The Masquerade was something else.

     Why do we care about this change? I think people have a nostalgic feeling for the original White Wolf  Publishing and the way they did things. They bought live action role-playing to the forefront of the gaming community, which set the basis for modern cosplaying. The Mind's Eye Theatre was a free addition you could pick up at any games store, and used the existing rules and set some guidelines. It was a cool time to game when it was not popular to do so, and White Wolf and World of Darkness has not has it's time in the sun like Dungeons & Dragons is currently having. In short, the change back to the old logo is fan service to the people who played prior to 2006.

        To me, the new editions are less gritty, visceral, and seem to be too polished.  It's time to get back to the dark and grimy roots, and this may be something great for people wanting a return to form. Shit, they are even putting their names on Bloodlines 2. I'm excited to see what happens, and it will be great to get excited about new releases again. However, I have one concern with the announcement post. Not so much my concern, but those in the comments on Facebook:

     I'm not much of a politics person, and tend to stay away from anything that leans too far in either direction, however, some of these comments are pretty concerning; They are nearly split. I'm honestly surprised about the commentary in general. Top and trending comments are against the highlighted statement above, and worry about the (for lack of a better term) woke or sensitive community involvement in the change or brand development. The reality is, mentioning anything about some kind of political or gender movement in your games or products these days is just (or could be) suicide for brands. Look at all the new games and once popular IP's that have failed in recent months, losing 100's of million of dollars for huge companies. Essentially, showing some kind of favoritism to either side could potentially alienate a huge portion of your fanbase, and potential buying customers. It's a risk. My hot take, I could care less- but I'll say it; Sometimes people just want to pretend to be Vampires and play games and leave the real world behind. Take note game companies, just make the fucking games and make them good.. the rest will come. 

Edit - I posted this to the WhiteWolfRPG subreddit for commentary, follow that here. Great conversation and I'm learning a ton. I'll take my downvotes and see what people are talking about then come back here to report. 

Edit 2 - Whelp, my post was removed from reddit for rule number 11 of the WhitewolfRPG sub community rules: I'll do whatever I want. No seriously, that's the reason why it was removed. I deleted the post, but the link should still work. I did not realize that community was so hypersensitive to some regular commentary, and I was down voted right out of there. One person even said I had a bad blog! Okay well, it's not the best so we can agree there.. From what I can tell, unless you whine about something or post fan art, you just get downvoted and insulted. What a welcoming community! This seems to be the norm in there: Ignore what's going on (look at the social media comments), gate-keep the fanbase community with censorship (delete my post for reporting on community reaction) and push some kind of narrative (top 1% commenters are rewarded for bias aggressive comments). This community will never grow past what it is (56k subs?) unless they can be less toxic and more welcoming to all. Strange, that goes against community guidelines. It's worth noting, my upvote ratio on this post was 33% before removal, but when posted on another sub (a much larger one) The upvote rate was 97%. 

8mm Movies Almost Became a Thing.

 

Movies but smaller!? Sure!

     I'm sure everyone remembers those Camcorders from the 80's, 90's and early 2000's that used some kind of small tape to make movies. 5 different companies invested in the format in 1984 (Panasonic, Sony, JVC, Hitachi, and Philips), and at one point, decided it would be awesome if they would release premium movie releases to the format under the Video8 moniker. 

They did their best to bait the consumer

     Sony at one point took their portable music series of audio equipment, and even had a Video8 Walkman available for purchase. Overall customers never really got behind the format, being that the VHS could have long recording times of 5+ hours, and the shelves at rental stores were already built for one size. Honestly, I can see a compelling reason to switch over if there is already something in place that works. They did find some success for use on planes for in-flight movies, as they took up less space, and could be handed out easily. The players were portable, small, and lightweight. 

I mean, it does look cool.

     With all the different 8mm formats, Video8 had some level of backwards compatibility with other 8mm tapes and devices- depending on encoding and such. This was followed by Hi8, which was marketed towards the home video market, and then later by Digital8. There was enough of a need to have professional editing and audio equipment for the format, which occasionally shows up on eBay.

A comically small Rocky V? Count me in.

     There were hundreds of movies produced for the format, and for whatever reason, it was not discontinued until 2015. I guess for international flights it was still a popular medium, but now with digital screens and huge storage options that weight mere grams- it's just not needed anymore. It's really a cool little overlooked format, and if you see any out in the wild, you should pick them up. 

The Strange But Amazing Pioneer MPC-GX1 & CLD-PC10

 

A Pioneer branded Macintosh with attached Laserdisc player.

     Nothing excites me more than strange and almost useless tech from the 80's and 90's, especially vintage Macintosh stuff, and defunct forms of media. I'm totally infatuated by the Pioneer Laser Active, a Laserdisc player with plug in modules to play LD based Sega Mega Drive games, and PC/TG16 games exclusive to the system. Super rare today, such oddities rarely come up on ebay, especially the games. Imagine a Laserdisc player that utilized the media like a giant sega CD, and no one knew about it. Even more insane and rare, was a PAC cartridge for the Laser Active that allowed you to interface with Macintosh computers via serial port, and give the ability to write software to it using the included program editor. Well do you know what is even MORE rare and crazy? A dedicated Laserdisc Macintosh addon and branded PC.

No one asked for this, but we want this. 

     The MPC-GX1 is a licensed Japanese Macintosh clone from the 90's, using the PowerPC 601 processor, popular at the time. Large powered speakers and a subwoofer were added to the case, which was a very unusual option for the time. One feature however was much more crazy than the rest; the ability to connect to a pioneer Laserdisc player, the CLD-PC10. Several programs were made for this crazy combination of technology, all education and Kiosk based. The Computer history museum made a 2.5 hour video on The Visual Almanac, and it explains how the PC controlled the player, and it how to worked in depth. Someone recently setup a collection of this technology for display at the Vintage Computer Festival East, 2025- where LGR stopped by and was given a quick demo.

     Essentially- It's a giant Apple/Bandai Pippin. The PC controlled the LD player much like you could control a DVD player today. You could chapter through the disc, record the screen if you had certain upgrades, and also build hypercard stacks that could control the tracks on the player. The MPC could also be outfitted with an MO (Magneto Optical) drive, another rare and expensive, senseless upgrade. This combined with some other needless upgrades (Full TV Tuner card and upgraded Video) spawned the MPC-LX200, another MPC series Apple clone with a Power PC 603e on a daughter card, running at a reasonable clock speed of 100mhz, so it's somehow better and aimed at the prosumer market.