[Games] Retrofuturism, Paleofuturism, and Disney
PALEOFUTURISM:
I've been looking for inspiration for the Fallout campaign that I would like to run, but only one player seems to be interested in. Or, research/inspiration for the two Fallout-themed scenarios that I plan to run for Necronomicon. Along those lines, I've been looking up old "Closer Than We Think" newspaper comics from the late 1950s to early 1960s or so, which I discovered thanks to the Paleofuture blog.
Some of it's a bit TOO high-tech for Fallout, but it's still fun to look at this Jetson-ish view of the future -- especially all the entries dealing with automobiles.
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY:
Somehow, I ran across a few "Wonderful World of Disney" clips on YouTube from the late 1950s to 1960s. I'd provide links, but I assume there are copyright issues (even if it's over 50 years old), and who knows how long those things will stay around anyway?
* "Magic Highway, USA (1958)" was the first to get my attention. The bulk of it is a "history" of the development of highways in the US, with perhaps a little too much lingering on how bad traffic jams are (a long segment with lots of packed-in cars, and LOTS OF HONKING). Toward the end, there's a ludicrous animated segment about "innovations" for the future of highways ... including a few ideas that actually might mesh well with my ludicious "Long 15" Fallout concept, such as the rolling highway fast-food booth. The end wraps up with some more "serious" ideals about what the future might be like for transportation -- not exactly the sort of thing we actually ended up with in the far-off future of 1975 by any means (hee!) but some of the artwork was pretty nice.
(My favorite would be the sweeping suspended roadways bridging tall red-orange mesas in a spectacular desert landscape. Not that I'd seriously want highways bolted to picturesque mesas by any means, but it made for a cool visual. :) )
* "An Adventure in Color / Math Magic Land (1961)" was one Gwendel and I watched together last night. No, there weren't any futuristic cars or whatnot, but I was just looking for the cheesy late-50s/early-60s kitsch feel that I imagine would characterize the "Mimsyverse" theme park I want to portray for the end-game in my intended Fallout campaign. I noted to Gwendel that even though color TV had been around for a while, it was a big deal for my family when we finally got our first actual color TV set. (I think that might have been circa 1980 or so? For a while, I was using my VIC-20 computer with a black-and-white TV set in the basement.) And then "Professor Victor Von Drake" starts making a big deal in his presentation about how, despite the fact that he's giving a lecture on color, a number of viewers in the audience might still be watching it all in black and white. ;) What timing!
"Math Magic Land" comprised the second half of the show (basically two 20-minute-long segments roughly glued together with some awkward live action filler featuring "Uncle Walt" himself and three pretty ladies -- I emphasize the "pretty" part, because for some reason the writers felt obliged to play up this fact, to an end-result that doesn't really age all that well when viewed today), featuring Donald Duck and a weird celebration of "mathematics," including a lot of dubious claims about the golden ratio / golden rectangle, with an awful lot of what I'd dub "pattern-matching" in order to "prove" the point. Why, lookee here! If we try very hard, we can superimpose this rectangle in a bunch of spots on this sculpture or painting and pretend that it MEANS SOMETHING! Next, we'll explain how the Mona Lisa contains secret codes about the true identity of Jesus Christ and his SECRET WIFE AND PROGENY, and ... Oh, whoops. Okay, they didn't really go there, but it felt like the same sort of "logic" at work, on some level. It was intriguing to watch nonetheless. Both Gwendel and I had some odd, but fleeting familiarity with bits, and supposed that we each might have actually seen this segment before as very small children. (Gwendel noted that when she saw the animated "Alice in Wonderland" once, she was a bit confused in her memories, thinking that there was supposed to be some part in it involving mathematics ... but seeing this, with Donald being fitted out in an Alice costume, and a lot of references to "Through the Looking Glass," it could have been that she saw this cartoon and her memories got conflated. I've experienced that sort of thing here and there. Why, for a while, I had details about "The Sword of Shannara" and JRR Tolkien's works jumbled up in my head. ;) )
* "Walt Disney Presents: Pirates of the Caribbean to The World of Tomorrow" -- Okay, if this is still around, I think it's next up on my roster of old Disney things to watch with Gwendel. :)
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Anyway, I was going to post a few ideas about my Fallout Long 15 scenario, partly inspired by some of this ... but this is running long. So ... another post, then!