“Dang, that gives me the creeps. … I wish she’d hurry up and scoop that guy out.”

FREEZE-ZX issue 02 Coming December 2025 Pre-order your copy TODAY from: freeze64.com/freeze-zx-is... #ZXSpectrum #Speccy #Z80 #Sinclair

I’ve posted this before but the light was perfect today- a little Victorian cat paw in a brick at the front of the old Norfolk & Norwich Hospital. As this is on the front-facing corner of the main gates, the bricklayer quite clearly put it there on purpose, at a height where children would spot it.

In 1986, Andrew Braybrook made one of the UK's most acclaimed arcade-style home computer games of the mid-'80s. And he made it working to a 37-hour-a-week schedule. New post on Uridium: www.superchartisland.com/uridium

A deeper dive into the world of Bookware. An article about some of the assorted UK book publishers who followed Mosaic into the software business. whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2025/12/peng... #Commodore #ZXSpectrum #BBC #MSX #RetroGaming #RetroComputing

"YOU'VE PULLED OUT MORE THAN COD, FISHERMAN!" - #Discourse2000 struggles to discuss the B-Movie inspired COLONY EARTH! - by Jim Watson, and the first ever writer/artist strip in #2000AD. Will a horde of angry Colony Earth stans come after me? freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2025/1...

I love The Visible Man. The perfect way to give kids a PG rated page full of body horror. I've been looking forwards to reading this article and it doesn't disappoint.

Dave Gibbons

BBC Genome has flagged this entry for Monday 3rd December 1990 as containing "language that some may find offensive." Is the algorithm worried about the presence of Googie Withers?

A new #Discourse2000 post - DAN DARE is back, and he's here to tell #2000AD readers "we have Star Wars at home". Plus horror in space and the unspeakable menace of - THE SNAPPERS! freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2025/1...

Pet Shop Boys fans. Your thoughts please on this Top of the Pops performance from 29/11/1190. m.youtube.com/watch?v=EGp0... 1/2

A 1984 arcade game of a Jackie Chan movie kicked off the beat-'em-up genre. Then those who made it and its ports took what they learned to Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros., and a Windows rival that briefly had Microsoft worried. New post on Kung-Fu Master: www.superchartisland.com/kung-fu-master

#Discourse2000 is back! This intro post sets the scene for the 1978 posts with an overview of the different tribes of early #2000AD creators - the professionals, the rebels, the fans and the outsiders - and their visions of what the comic is freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2025/1...

A blog update about Orpheus who released a game based on The Young Ones back in 1986. whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2025/11/orph... #Commodore #ZXSpectrum #Amstrad #MSX #RetroGaming #RetroComputing

Riding high after The Way of the Exploding Fist, Gregg Barnett and Greg Holland turned to pro wrestling. They made "the first truly 3 dimensional" combat game, complete with player wrestler Gorgeous Greg. The results were... mixed. New post on Rock'n Wrestle: www.superchartisland.com/rockn-wrestle

ZX Spectrum software. A story in two acts.

Reddit is making me feel impossibly ancient today.

Mick McMahon

I've had an idea... Someone told me that cos there are nearly 800 episodes of the Simpsons, it's possible to describe all other shows with a clip from a Simpsons episode. So with that in mind, I'm going to use a freezeframe/gif to describe every classic Dr Who serial 😁 1 season per day...

Forget the news about that *other* mascot, not everyone played Nintendo growing up! Unlocked for all, I finally play Alex Kidd in Miracle World and compare it to my own childish assumptions:

In 1984/5, a spectacular Konami arcade game carved out genre norms for what we'd now call fighting games. Ocean had conversion rights, but were stretched enough that one version ended up subcontracted to a 14-year-old. It still became the UK's bestselling game of 1986. New post on Yie Ar Kung-Fu:

The Daily Mirror takes a wild stab at estimating of the cost of BBC programming for the 9th of November 1981.

"We don't need the software profit," was how dk'tronics described their games to CRASH in 1985. A weirdly dismissive attitude considering some of their games were very good indeed. whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2025/11/dktr... #C64 #Spectrum #Amstrad #RetroGaming #RetroComputing

Unlocked! I've genuinely written the most detailed article there is in English on Ubisoft's very first game, Zombi. The Guillemot family expanded from selling farming equipment to getting a teenager to rip off Dawn Of The Dead for them, and the rest is history:

Studios Enter Bidding War Over Napkin Stephen King Wrote ‘Ghoul’ On

In the UK, the 1984 game Raid Over Moscow provoked a few protests and angry letters. In Finland, it stoked a diplomatic crisis. This is a fascinating Cold War story.

Aug 1967 / TV Radio Mirror / A great profile on Leonard Nimoy where he recounts meeting JFK in 1956 when he was a taxi driver—JFK encouaged Nimoy to pursue his dream to become an actor! Read the full interview here:

Massimo Belardinelli

Unlocked! I dig into the history of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween for Atari 2600, actually play them (and take them seriously) and learn Charles "Evil Bong" Band's strange, important part in video game history:

An All-New Cinema Limbo takes a journey into the future - a world of towns fuelled by pigpoo, bungee fights and an inadvertant Tommy reunion. @shammountebank.bsky.social joins me to discuss the thrilling adventure and tragic backstory of MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME! www.podnose.com/cinema-limbo...

If you're a National Trust member, it's that time of year again: Midnight tonight is the deadline. It's a shame people have to keep doing this to keep a toehold on historical truth in this country, but here we are. Voting link: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-we-are/a...

If you see this, quote with a robot that isn’t from “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” “Doctor Who,” or “Transformers".

A second (still unsuccessful) go at finding the too damp to burn office of Tynesoft. New bits about spoilsport Jimmy Nail and notorious programmer Harry S. Price. whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2025/10/tyne... #Tynesoft #C64 #Spectrum #Amstrad #BBCMicro #MSX #Amiga #Atari #RetroGaming #RetroComputing

This is genius

It's Episode 17 of The Doctor Who Missing Episodes Podcast - THE HIGHLANDERS With the brilliant Gav Rymill and Rhys Williams. New info and our best to date! All shares much appreciated. Links below 👇

The Beano kids are investigating the haunted Pizza shop in this week's Beano. The Pizza shop on Hobbs lane. Because if there's one thing kids love it's references to Quatermass and the Pit.

I love the use of panels here. A single frame divided by a line. It turns one big picture into both a wide shot of Dredd and a close up of the button being pressed. There's a sense of time pausing before Dredd presses the button which gives the request denied line so much impact.

BBC Archive just uploaded The Lonely Shore (1962), a surreal 15-minute short that takes the form of a scientific report from an abandoned and desolate future Britain. Written by Jacquetta Hawkes, an actual archaeologist, and directed by Ken Russell, an actual madman.

First Star licensed Boulder Dash to at least five different UK companies for home computer versions. 1. C64, Statesoft 2. ZX Spectrum, Front Runner. 3. Amstrad (and Atari 8 bit), Mirrorsoft. 4. BBC Micro, Tynesoft 5. MSX, Orpheus

Mick McMahon

A 1996 game called Harvester. It thought it had something important to say about violence in computer games. It didn't. It was painfully stupid.

I don't think it was Steven Moffat's place to resolve RTD's Time War story.

The Chairs of Doctor Who - new chair day! In fact, two from 'Dragonfire'. This first one is an ‘Etruscan’ chair, by Danny Lane, designed in 1984. Also, the elusive French wire chair, circa 1950. Post updated. pinkforyouractualpterodactyl.com/2020/02/24/t...

3 key members and trustees of the Film is Fabulous! team joined Tim of the 'Missing Episodes Podcast' Film collector John Franklin, De Montfort University’s Prof Justin Smith & Sue Malden, renowned former Head of Broadcast Archives at BBC YouTube Link youtu.be/CK02j_Mi6iE?...

Commando, directed by Capcom's Tokuro Fujiwara, was a big 1985 arcade hit. Elite Systems won the bidding for the home computer rights, staking their future on it succeeding there too. Now they just had to make those versions of the game by Christmas... New post: www.superchartisland.com/commando

Two different computer games both called Aliens: The Computer Game and both released by Electric Dreams. It was confusing. whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2025/10/elec... #RetroGaming #RetroComputing #Amstrad #Commodore64 #ZXSpectrum #Amiga #AtariST

I really like Castrovalva but I think the ending suffers because what's on screen does not sell the idea that space is folding in on itself. I've had a go at adding some visual distortion, hopefully, in line with what was technically possible in 1981. www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Oq... #DoctorWho

Terry Burnett’s Collection Film is Fabulous! are cataloguing the private collection of the late Terry Burnett, who was famous for returning two missing episodes of Doctor Who to the BBC in 2010, and later returned a missing episode of Hugh and I. filmisfabulous.org.uk/terry-burnet...