Nostalgia kick

I don't know why, but I've been on a bit of a nostalgia kick lately. Yesterday I sat down and watched the very first two episodes of the seminal Robin of Sherwood. I own every series on DVD now (I wore out the VHS versions long ago) but it's been a while since I watched them - years in fact. But I intend to watch the whole lot again in order over the next few weeks.

As well as the 80s I also love my iPod - I recently bought the theme music to that other 80s classic of television, The One Game. I used to only be able to satisfy my desire to listen to Saylon Dola by leaving the menu page on the DVD running but now I can listen to it wherever and whenever I like. And you can listen to it right here...



And then there's Knightmare. I loved this as a kid, which was hardly surprising seeing as how I was a Fighting Fantasy fan and this was the closest I was ever going to get to living my dream. But thanks to Mark Charn Newton I also came across this the other day - scathing and funny, and just a little bit rude. You were warned.

Spell-casting! Y-O-U-T-U-B-E

Knightmare nostalgia

If you were a child at the end of the 80s or start of the 90s, then you probably remember Knightmare. It was, for its time, an innovative virtual reality adventure set within a magical dungeon world, and it was on children's television.

Being a loyal devotee of the cult of Fighting Fantasy it seemed obvious to me that the programme was born off the back of the success of the gamebook phenomenon (oh, and RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons - you might have heard of it).

It was a much tamer experience than your average FF adventure, of course, there were no orcs to gut or horrifically described death scenes, but there was still the wandering around a labyrinth of gothically-decorated rooms, weird quasi-medieval characters to chew the fat with, and even some monsters (like the green-screened pet tarantula).

For those of you who remember Knightmare and the dungeon Treguard (the fantastic Hugo Myatt), then the following will probably fill you with feelings of nostalgia. If you were born after the advent of real VR interactive gameplay and the phenomenal rise of the games consoles, then you don't know what you've missed.