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At the moment that I’m writing this review, the writing is on the wall for America’s dwindling fleet of space shuttles, which were mooted in the early ’70s as the great white-and-partially-black hope of the U.S. space program. A new workhorse spacecraft is on the drawing board (but not even in the testing stages) which will supposedly pick up where the shuttle left off, and apparently before that first launch date the new vehicle will have the good graces to hurry up and be finished and perfected. And if the new vehicle isn’t ready? Oops.

Before embarking on the Apollo program, NASA knew it’d have to develop certain key abilities in the relative safety of Earth orbit. Dusting off plans for a two-man “Mercury Mark II” capsule, the space agency went from Mercury to Gemini, an intermediate series of flights designed to test those abilities. Since Gemini came after the first-men-into-space Mercury flights, and before the first-men-on-the-moon Apollo flights, it’s often consigned to the “also-ran” category of history, or the memory of space geeks like myself. This 3-DVD set from Spacecraft Films preserves the existing footage and adds a documentary that puts it all in context for those who have forgotten. (more…)

In the late 1990s, dial-up modems moved aside to make way for high speed DSL and cable modems. As broadband access spread like wildfire into homes across the world, websites streaming audio and video quickly began replacing simple, static web pages. Those who began putting original content online found a new audience of millions of web surfers looking for ways to max out their seemingly unlimited bandwidth. (more…)

It might surprise you to learn that some of the most cutting edge graphics, sound and programming created on computers doesn’t appear in off-the-shelf videogames, but rather in the form of computer demos – non-interactive programs coded by gifted artists, who do so for no other reason than to show the world what they (and the machines they love) are capable of.

Computer demos actually got their start in the form of cracking/intro loader screens. In the early days of computing, when programs were “cracked” (had their copy protection removed), crackers would often add an intro (a multimedia page of credits) that displayed each time the program was run. Many early intros were simply comprised of plain text and no graphics; later, intros became more technically advanced, adding graphical logos, music, and scrolling text in which cracking groups boasted about their skills and greeted (and/or taunted) their friends and fellow groups. (more…)

250 miles above us in outer space floats the International Space Station. IMAX: Space Station takes its viewers on a fantastic voyage, letting landlubbers such as myself experience the wonders of space.

Typical IMAX screens are 72 feet wide and 52 feet tall — in addition, IMAX: Space Station was originally filmed with IMAX 3D cameras. While initially I had reservations about how such a big film would look on the small screen, any such fears were alleviated once the film started. Regardless of screen size, this film is fantastic.

IMAX: Space Station documents the assembly and operation of the International Space Station. The film’s footage was recorded during the first and second expeditions to the space station in 2000 and 2001. The movie follows a logical order, taking viewers through astronaut training and through a launch before finally reaching the blackness of space. (more…)

In the interests of full disclosure, this may not be fair game for a review because I had a lot to do with the making of this DVD. Released by Packrat Video Games just in time for Christmas 2004, the Odyssey2 DVD compiles quite a bit of rare footage related to that underdog home video game system of the late 70s and early 80s in one place for your viewing pleasure. (more…)

I was ten years old back in 1983, the year my father put his first Bulletin Board System (BBS) online. To this day I can still remember sneaking into the living room in the middle of the night and watching users navigate their way through his menu system. It seemed like magic back then to think that someone sitting in the comfort of his or her own home could connect to our own home computer simply by using a telephone line.

Throughout the 80s and half of the 90s, BBSs were the place for computer users to meet, talk, and exchange ideas, information, and programs. It was the birth of “online” culture. Those who didn’t call BBSs could never understand the idea of talking to and making friends with people you had never met in real life before. The BBS world had its own culture, customs, and even language. And yet after a run of almost fifteen years, BBSs virtually disappeared overnight, submitting to a new technology - the internet. (more…)

It’s been such a long time since the original broadcst of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series that I wondered if revisiting it would be an occasion for wonderment, or an occasion for laughter. Just the fact that it’s been reissued in the past few years is amazing in and of itself. Someone - several someones, more accurately, including Dr. Sagan’s widow and frequent co-author Ann Druyan - felt like it was worthwhile. And after reviewing the entire 13-episode series, I find myself agreeing with them. (more…)

I thought that The Matrix had shown me the pinnacle of DVD cool. Then the Star Wars prequel DVDs raised the bar. The Doctor Who DVDs set a high water mark for TV on DVD. Babylon 5 sure didn’t hurt either. But get this: the Spacecraft Films archive releases are in the same league as all of the above, at least - and the closest approximation of any specific category that I can imagine is that of “documentary.”

Put simply, Spacecraft Films’ DVDs are digitally remastered, unedited archives of all of NASA’s existing footage from a given mission or series of missions. Apollo 8: Leaving The Cradle is a breathtaking archive of the first manned mission to leave Earth’s orbit and swing around another body in our solar system. (more…)

In 1999, former Atari programmer Howard Scott Warshaw (E.T., Yars’ Revenge, Raiders Of The Lost Ark) gathered some of his erstwhile game-making cohorts to embark on a home-made documentary about the pre-crash years at Atari. Warshaw, now an independent filmmaker, still stands by his claim that being an Atari programmer was the most amazing job he’s ever had - and by the end of the first half-hour installment on this disc, it’s hard to not believe him.

The four half-hour episodes on the DVD (paradoxically produced in the order 4, 1, 2, 3 - Mr. Lucas would be proud) detail the working environment at Atari, the perils of dealing with management and huge wads of cash, the difficulty in particular of programming the Atari 2600, and the simple joys of creating games the way Atari
used to (and the way that few companies or programmers do now). (more…)