I stumbled across this game "review" a while back. But it recently hit me how certain friends of mine would appreciate the twisted, campy humor of Turn it Around.

Enjoy!

I hosted a SWRAP hardware SIG this weekend. Only one project was worked on, but it was something. Actually, I was excited to finally see the guts of a Lt. Kernal SCSI adapter for the C64.

I think what surprised me the most was the simplicity. I mean, this adapter let you use a 100+ meg hard drive from your C64 back in the 80s. It had to have a flux capacitor or something like that in there, right?

Nope. There were only a handful of chips: two 8-bit bus transceivers, a 6800-series PIA, a PAL for addressing, and a ROM that told the computer how to run the thing. That's it! They basically just hung a 16-bit I/O interface with a DB25 connector off the back of the 64 and made the computer do the work! The amazing thing is how well it works. Well, not this one in particular, but just the general idea.

Sometimes the simpler solutions are best. And, if people were willing to live with less compatibility, I'm sure this made for an affordable interface. I mean, Commodore's floppy drives were 6502-based computers in their own right, but that made them pretty expensive. The Lt. Kernal design probably let them sell "huge" storage, with the drive itself being the bulk of the cost. Amazing.

I had Tivo record Gung Ho for me the other day. It's one of my favorite movies, going back to the mid 1980s when I was a kid and HBO was playing it practically every day.

It's a cheesy, feel-good Michael Keaton flick about a down-on-its-luck Midwestern town. Following the closure of the only other major employer in town, the auto factory shut its doors, leaving most of the citizens out of work. Enter Hunt Stevenson (Keaton's character). Stevenson convinces Assan Motors to take over the plant and start cranking out your typical 80s import compacts (complete with "sport" decals on the side that don't really convince anyone).

Cultures clash, hilarity ensues, and the movie ends with everyone from both sides pitching in to meet the production goal and keep the plant open. Oh yeah, and there's a great "let's build some cars" montage with a driving rock tune and everything.

Like I said, a hokey blue-collar feel-good flick. So why do I love it so much? I guess I love the values in it. The Americans learn to put their noses to the grindstone and work with their new neighbors. The Japanese learn the importance of spending time outside work with their families and friends. Together, they produce 15,000 cars in a month, matching the record set by a bunch of overworked men at Assan's plant in Japan.

That swell of pride and determination at the end, when the team works overnight to crank out those last few cars…I want that feeling. I miss that feeling.

*sigh*