Old-School Gazette: Your source for the "latest" in technology and entertainment.

Friday, November 19, 1982.

Technology

As a clear demonstration that personal technology really has become big business, Bill Gates has been featured on the cover of "Money" magazine.

Gerry Rocke, a headhunter acting on behalf of Apple Computers, has contacted John Sculley, the president of Pepsi-Cola, asking if he would be interested in the position of CEO at Apple. Steve Jobs reportedly said to Sculley, "Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

Video Games

Atari has signed an agreement with Nintendo for a world-wide license of the popular arcade games Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. The two games should then be made available for play on Atari home computers.

A new game for MS-DOS has been released by Microsoft, called "Microsoft Flight Simulator." Microsoft contacted Bruce Artwick to develop this game based on his experience at Sublogic creating "FS1 Flight Simulator" for the Apple II. The game uses the real-life locations of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle. The game strives to be as realistic as possible, with advanced graphics, changing weather patterns and day/night cycles, and the same dials and displays that you'd see in a real airplane. Advertisements for the game say "If flying your IBM PC got any more realistic, you'd need a license".

Film

Last Wednesday saw the release of "Creepshow", a horror and comedy anthology collaboration between two horror giants-- George Romero as director and Stephen King as screenwriter. It features five horror shorts. Romero is already legendary in the film space as the director of "Night of the Living Dead" from 1968. King is also legendary in the film space as the author of the original novel on which the film "Carrie" was based in 1976. This, however, is the first movie for which King has written the screenplay.

A comedy titled "Jimmy the Kid" was released a week ago today, featuring a number of comedic legends. We have Gary Coleman of "Diff'rent Strokes" fame, Pat Morita from both Happy Days and MAS*H, Cleavon Jake Little who rose to prominence in Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles", Don Adams of "Get Smart" fame, and others. "Jimmy the Kid", unfortunately, has not been well-received by critics.

The same day also saw the release of three different horror movies: "Alone in the Dark," "The Slumber Party Massacre," and "White Dog."

This week had quite a different balance of creepy-to-comedy, with the release of "Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales", a collection of Warner Bros cartoons, and "Heidi's Song", an animated musical based on the 1881 novel "Heidi."

There was still a creepy release this week though, as a movie starring Roy Scheider and Meryl Streep called "Still of the Night" was released just today. Scheider plays a psychiatrist with a recently-murdered patient and a love interest, Streep, that may be the murderer. The movie is said to be an homage to Alfred Hitchcock.

Television

Sad news this week as a boxing match held Saturday between Ray Mancini and Kim Duk-koo sent Kim to the hospital, where he died yesterday. Shortly after the end of a very close and extraordinarily intense fight that left both fighters badly beaten and Mancini winning only by technical knock-out, Kim had collapsed and became comatose. He was then transported from Caesar's Palace to the hospital on a stretcher, where doctors performed emergency surgery. Regardless of their efforts, he died five days later.

Sources, all of which are awesome and worth exploring independently:
http://kpolsson.com/comphist/comp1982jul.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sculley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_video_games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_1.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_film
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creepshow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_American_television
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Duk-koo