Necrolog Kevin Keegan.

 One of those straight out of the blue posts. Someone you didn't think about for absolutely ages and then, bam, he's dead. A good sort by all accounts, and who's loss will be felt across Newcastle as well as the larger Tyneside area. 

The real reason I've highlighted Kevin Keegan is here is because of two games. Both the same titles, sort of, and both with surprising bits. 

The first is a home computer version of Kevin Keegan's player manager, a  middling management title officially released for the SNES back in the day, but thanks to games that weren't was going to get a PC and Amiga conversion. But that is neither here nor there. The real reason is this.

Half Keegan half Leslie Grantham

Saw this on Bluesky ages back when the proto surfaced, but this bug eyed Kev is one of the images that come into my mind from time to time. 

The next post set it all off for me. Its the PS1 update called Premier Manager 99 endorsed by Kev himself. That is not why I'm posting, though. 

Imagine logging onto Facebook after work and coming across a post by one of your favourite band's The Black Dog. There is a post saying that they worked with Kev on this in some capacity. Going down to the comments you find its artwork rather than the soundtrack. Although was hoping for something from their Spanners era. Anyway proof below.

Nestalgia

 Forgive me if I've done this one before but after 800 odd posts I've got the right to repeat myself. It seems the clowns at the Metro have done a piece on the NES. Some of it is accurate others are less so, you'll want to drop down to the comments for the true experience of what it was like being a NES owner back then. 

First of all pricing. 

Your average NES game was £30-40 here, only two games stick out as being priced at £50, this would be Star Wars and Maniac Mansion. The black box line of games and Donkey Kong Classics (in its orange box) were priced at £20. Oh and for the equivalence on 8bit home micros. £2.99 for budget stuff and £10 for full price stuff.  As games cost big bucks back then, it was essential to read reviews in Total and NMS (Mean machines originally) before purchase. Couple this with the rise of the Boot sale and you'd get games cheap, from stalls from like 1993 onwards. 

The NES was distributed by Mattel who also did Barbie as well as Nintendo themselves later on. It  was mostly sold through Argos and Index aka Littlewoods. The games were pretty much sold everywhere and while moderately popular weren't quite ZX Speccy or C64 popular, which were genuinely sold in the 80s. One final fact is that I may have misremembered from back then was that they had a HQ in Fleet, Hampshire. At least that's what was printed on the cards for Club Nintendo back then. 

Secondly popularity.

 It was never an 80's console here, it really hit around 1990, and twinned with the Ninja Turtle craze did well enough but was a distant second to the Master System which was a very distant second to the Home Micro's we had. Best I can say was it was locally popular and coupled with an extensive swapping system in place meant that you could play a lot of games and not get any you leant out back. I lost Donkey Kong Classics and Gradius which genuinely was a shame. 

Thanks to the half life of it all it remained a cheaper alternative to the SNES for a long time as was the Master System, can remember seeing games for both long after both systems were coughing up blood and the PS1 era came out. 

Thirdly. Games

Never owned the original of either Zelda, Megaman or Castlevania, did own the sequels and went down like this. Zelda 2 from a bootsale, Megaman 3 first ever import when I got my NES converted in Terry's games in Sidcup and Castlevania 2 I think was a full pricer. 

You skipped out on Bubble Bobble (Never a duff port) and Kid Icarus, which was tough but fair. Beat this when  Bryan Adams was Number one here for a decade or so back in 1991. Metroid I got from a swap with no instructions. It's also quite poignant as we had our family cat, Whisky put down on the day I managed to work out how to open the missile doors.

Oh and one final thing before posting. If I was to sell this pile of trash at CEX, I would get my money back. Rock hard and slow, and yeah, because you had no choice you persevered with it. One of those games I wish had been traded out then 

Back home round up.

 Now we are fully back home and don't have to rely on me tapping out posts on my phone, I can explain a bit more of how it went. Stayed in Palmanova in Mallorca, not far from the beach and near the supermarket. Which if you've seen my previous post, contains a chicken.

Sadly had to spend most of my time with the French, which seem to be prevalent in this part of the island. Some are hot, but mostly they are a drag and are the most miserable race on the planet.

We have three beaches, our main beach, the Playa de Palmanova, Platja Son Maties to the left and Punta Marroig which is our local dog beach and leads around the bay to another strand of sand. Saw a big Rotley there swimming in the sea with its owners and a lady with a Greg Mitchell on another occasion.   

 

Punta Marroig

 A few good places for drinks and such, the fish restaurant / bar Il Chiringo  and Diana's beach bar which is also nice but more expensive. 

We were served quite well for travel links and while expensive, you can get to Palma for under 5 euros via the local bus services.

We saw a few nice things out there. A few cats, an octopus, and a massive crab which means I've got sod all chance of finding this online. Also the usual fish plus a massive mullet.  Not so many plants this time, but what I did find wasn't bad, a few cacti and stuff to keep me entertained. 

TV. Never really had it on but, can confirm that, they were showing Doraemon still on Spanish TV, whenever I did. Oh and this channel (and link) turned out to be both German and folk music.

Hotel is good, and if you are into food, well worth a stay. Be warned the lifts are small and slow and you won't get a pool view (no one does) but the views we do have are great. 

Is this love?

Eroski carpark chicken.

 We're come to realize that our local supermarket here, has a big white cock living in the carpark.

It's  a big chicken with it's own bowl for food and I for one would love to know how it got there.

Is it someone's pet? (unlikely) Part of a farm? (there seems to be none local) Or something else entirely.

It's not there all the time, but when it is it seems to rule the roost.

Holiday

 So, we finally got away. We're in Palmanova in Mallorca and having escaped the heat back home are enjoying the weather here. Jumping through a billion hoops just to post, means a full write up will have to wait til I'm back, of course. But, let's just say it'll do.

Mummys case

 Getting down to the last 3 book released in the UK, here. FYI only Track of the Zombie and The Blackwing Puzzle to go. 

The boys are tasked with escorting a mummy back, via ship to Cairo, where it'll be unwrapped for the museum* but of course attract trouble along the way. One of those being, putting down a coup in the made up Mediterranean island of Rubassa, as part of a case their dad is investigating.

They also take in the sights of Egypt, getting a glimpse of the boy king, Tutankhamun's mask. Karnak and Luxor and later fly over Amarna, the heretic kingdom of the pharaoh Akhenaton or rather Ikhnaton as the book has him.   

Rubassa is an odd case that along with it's sister island Milbin, the book bills it as an ex British commonwealth possession in the Med. It seems to be a stand in for Malta and by dint Gozo, which are British territories in the Med. It's capital city is Loma and is on the cusp of a revolution. Probably when this  book was written it was referencing Cyprus, which the boys also visit as part of their guard duty. 

Sadly for them, Nicosia remains resolutely landlocked, which means their sailing up to dock is rather moot at this point.

There is only one change between UK and US editions, a line that says save your breath is now, don't hold your breath. You can read them here and here. 

Pi Slide scanner.

 Sorry to get your hopes up, but is this actually feasible*. Can we actually Frankenstein this out of parts such as  a light box and camera. I say this as I have an actual slide scanner that I use from time to time in windows. It does slides and some negatives along with some proprietary software to drive it and take stuff.

I've not taken it apart to see how it works, but I'm guessing its a small scanner with a light box at the base to highlight the slide and a button on top to capture. And I'm wondering, could this all be done with a Raspberry pi. 

Looking on line it seems I'm not the only one to have had this idea. See here, here and here, but the way I was looking at doing it was integrating a light box and a Raspberry pi with a camera module to capture stuff.  The caveat for this is, I've barely thought this through and most of the stuff uses an external camera for capture rather than the Pi camera module and board. 

I'm well aware that this probably won't work and would need some sort of external program such as S.A.N.E in Linux for it to run. But it just struck me whilst scanning in stuff. Couldn't they use the camera and mount to take shots of the slide and sent it to a pc for processing.