heartbeatkitty
what's the data, theta?
- Melanie/30/Canada
- living on a steady diet of 80s post-punk, alternative and synths
- mostly posting Erasure content these days, with a smattering of other bands
- what to expect: vaguely homoerotic gifs, somewhat questionable clippings, musical observations, and occasional shitposting
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Your team discovered a Gracidea Flower!
okay so listen up I know this doesn't make a single bit of sense but the inspiration for this piece was the single cover of Always by Erasure
Am I saying that Vince is a Leavanny and Andy is a Primarina? Yes.
#erasure#pokemon#everything about this is DAZZLING THANK YOU SID#not only is andy a primarina#but he's a SHINY primarina too
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A mention of Simon and Garfunkel in an old Beetle Bailey comic from the 1960s!
Source: At Ease, Beetle Bailey (1970). Mort Walker.
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As someone just getting into Simon & Garfunkel, the fact that my two favourite synth duos have discussed the "were they lovers" rumour is hilarious to me.
Image 1: Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys commenting on the rumour.
Image 2: Vince Clarke of Erasure chiming in.
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You know what day it is so enjoy these wonderfully Neil-themed quotes from Pet Shop Boys versus America. (READ THROUGHLY)
Happy Birthday Neil-based-af-bbg-Tennant
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Courtesy of the Smash Hits Yearbook (1988), here are some tips if you're inviting Freddie Mercury over for dinner!
TRANSCRIPTION:
Simple Tips If You're Having Lord Frederick Lucan of Mercury Round For Dinner (courtesy of his personal assistant Joe Fanelli)
Exotic food is a winner - try North African food, curries or good French cooking.
Don't try veal - he might go all queasy.
Carrots are off too.
Lamb is decidedly "iffy" - don't risk it.
Remember, if he brings Brian May, meat is off altogether - nothing but vegetables and fish, matey.
Remember, if he brings John Deacon, to have something simple and traditional in reserve - try pie and mash.
Remember that, if he brings Roger Taylor with him, lamb is no longer just "iffy" - it's a recipe (geddit?) for disaster.
Avoid all jovial mid-meal ripostes like "if you don't eat meat you won't get no pudding" or "I'll wash, you dry."
Happy cooking!
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Dykes to watch out for so real
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anyway thinking about ska did you guys know the 2-tone girl is trans? her name’s Brigitte St John and she was a dancer and ska singer! this is one of the coolest things i’ve found out about recently and i’ve been meaning to get around to watching the doc about her (it’s in the link)
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Can't believe Rev. Richard Coles dropped this tea about a Jimmy Somerville/Chris Lowe hookup and no one noticed???
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Host: We've been talking about enlarging penises and things. Do you want yours to be enlarged?
Andy: Well, I'm quite satisfied with big mine is.
Vince: It's very scary.
Andy: No.
Vince: It's SCARY. It's scary.
Andy: (sheepishly) No.
Vince: It's like Alien 3.
Andy: He hasn't seen many penises, I've seen much more.
(source)
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An adorable drawing of Pet Shop Boys.
Source: VOX Magazine (a long-running arts and entertainment magazine from Calgary, Alberta). December 1, 1990.
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upstairs at eric's, yazoo, 1982
#not mine#vince clarke#alison moyet#yazoo#absolutely love this#amazing style#love how alison is holding the cable in her fist
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thinking about the pet shop boys ringtones on this fine evening
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Petition to have "plays the synth" become a euphemism for musicians of ambiguous or undisclosed sexual orientation. ("He really plays the synth, if you know what I mean.")
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The Communards (Jimmy Somerville and Richard Coles) 1986 poster from Smash Hits
#i am APPRECIATING richard coles here#the hair#the vibe#it's everything#the communards#richard coles#jimmy somerville
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The Pet Shop Boys Video Game
youtube
You may know about West End Girls being in GTA V, or the various songs that have been included in karaoke and rhythm games. But that's just tracks included in the game, not an entire game with the central focus of the Pet Shop Boys. Surely nothing like that exists...right?
Our story begins on a late Saturday night, in a Discord voice call. @condylicious, knowing my obsession with PSB, had jokingly searched for "Pet Shop Boys video game" on Youtube.
What we found was an enigma that plagued our lives for the rest of the night. So now I present it to you, dear reader, in hopes that this curiosity is documented for posterity.
This is PSB Game (1992) for the Commodore 64.
(Full essay below.)
Part 1: Gameplay
Lucky for all of us, not only is the PSB Game available online, but it's playable right out of Archive.org! I recommend adjusting the emulator's joystick settings so that the controls work properly.
Intro
Upon loading up the ROM, the first screen we're presented with has an animated color border, the name Riff Raffs, the label Pet Shop Boys +6, and a scrolling message in the middle.
Quick tangent: this first screen that we've been presented with is a crack intro. To quickly summarize, breaking and removing a software's copy protection oddly enough has a culture around it, complete with entire teams that work on cracking programs. Not only do they remove the copy protection, but they add their own little flourish at the intro. The Riff Raffs here are one such team.
The second screen is a cheat menu, also added in by the crack team. For my playthrough I gave myself infinite lives because I'm bad at video games.
Title Screen
With all of that out of the way, it's time to start the game!
Other than the big text declaring PSB Game, there's the credit of 1992 S Pearson (we'll come back to this later), and an indication that Neil is Port 1 and Chris is Port 2. The title screen also has an extremely loud clashing noise playing over it. Listening closely though, it's a few second loop of the beginning of Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money).
I'm gonna be honest, these visuals combined with the clanging bitcrushed audio is uncannily similar to the supposed Polybius title screen. If the Men in Black show up at my door five days from now and start asking me synth-pop related questions then this is why.
The Stages
Pressing fire on the title screen starts the game. Whichever port you used to start will be the port you can play on. You can press fire on the other port at any time to have a second player join in.
Neil and Chris can move left and right. The fire button shoots up a comically large bullet upwards.
Getting hit knocks off one block from the health meter, as well as make our heroes flail their arms in distress. If the health meter drops to zero, its game over for that player. If both players lose, the game boots you back to the title screen. But I gave myself infinite health earlier so I won't have to worry about that during this playthrough :)
There are twelve stages. Most of the stages take place on this Launderette screen:
On these Launderette stages, large gray rectangles attempt to squish our heroes. They are also impossible to shoot, leaving you with no choice to dodge them. After two stages of the Launderette screen, the game changes the stage to a different screen with different enemies. It switches back to the Launderette screen for another two stages, then to a new screen, and so on until the game ends. Here are all the unique stages.
Stage 3:
It's the sleeve for the Love Comes Quickly single! Being rendered so minimalistic has somehow made Chris more ominous than he already was.
Stage 6:
A bald, sunglasses-wearing man with a shirt that says "Video Fall". I'm not sure who this character is supposed to be, but he's throwing VHSs at us. Luckily these VHSs can be destroyed with a couple of shots, one of the few things that you can actually shoot.
Stage 9:
The word UNFAIR is turned to its side, while a strange creature attacks our heroes. This stage isn't any more unfair than the other stages though, so I'm not sure what that's about.
Stage 12:
I have no idea what this is supposed to be a picture of. It's possible that since Stage 3 was a picture of Chris that this might be a picture of Neil. But it's so mangled by pixelization that it's anyone's guess really.
Ending
The game ends rather unceremoniously after Stage 12. It rapidly flickers the words "THE END". After flashing it for a little while, the game loops back to Stage 1.
Truly, the best that gaming has to offer.
Part 2: Who is responsible for this
As I mentioned in the intro, the first part of this journey began with a youtube video of PSB Game's gameplay. IMO it's not as good as mine, but it did start me off on this entire journey, to which I must thank it.
After going through every stage of grief upon watching this video, I began searching for more information about this game. I found two Commodore 64 databases had entries for the game. Here is the Gamebase64 entry, and here is the CSDb entry.
What's the title of the game anyway?
You might have noticed that the game appears to go by several names. CSDb, the original youtube video we found, and the cracking team itself calls the game "Pet Shop Boys +6". But the Gamebase64 entry calls it "PSB Game - Pet Shop Boys", and the game's title screen simply calls it "PSB Game." To confuse this further, the Archive.org file has "+6" tacked on at the end of the file name. My best guess is that the +6 part is related to the cracker team themselves? If anyone knows Commodore 64 terminology can explain this, feel free to let me know.
Personally, I've decided to go with the name PSB Game since it appears on the title screen.
Back to figuring out who made this
I realize it's a little bit late in this essay to point out that this game is a fan creation and completely unofficial. But uh, I thought I'd bring it up just in case.
The CSdb entry has little else other than the download link and credits the cracking team Riff Raffs (more about this in a bit) but has no credits for the game itself. The Gamebase64 entry gives us a little more information, noting the year it was published, as well as two names: Shaun Pearson. and Chris Yates.
Chris Yates is a red herring. As seen in the publishing info, PSB Game was created with SEUCK, which is an application that can be used to create shoot 'em up games. Chris Yates is one of the programmers for that application. Essentially, it's like if you credited a game made with RPG Maker as being created by RPG Maker itself.
That leaves us with Shaun Pearson.
Gamebase64 lets you search by creator. Searching for the name Shaun Pearson brings up a few results, mainly other SEUCK projects. What caught my attention was that they appear to have worked on a game as recently as 2020.
Now where this gets particularly interesting is that searching the same game on CSdb credits to user Wile Coyote instead. I'm not entirely certain if Wile Coyote is Shaun Pearson, but if they are, then they're active to this day. I'm not sure how to get into contact with them to confirm this because CSdb's forums were too confusing for me (I'm bad at technology I know), but if they are in fact the same, I think it's pretty cool to know that they're still active. If anyone can find me a way to contact them (or hey, if Shaun/Wile Coyote is currently reading this and want to contact me), feel free to reach out!
Part 3: Conclusion
As is, I think that's all there is that can be documented about the PSB Game. Before I go though, I do have a few requests.
One, if there is a physical copy of PSB Game laying around somewhere (unlikely, but you never know), I'd like to see a picture of it.
Two, if anyone knows how to rip C64 sprites, I'd love to have the sprite sheet for this game. Especially tiny pixel Chris and Neil flailing their arms.
And finally, Shaun, if you're reading this, I'd just like to say thank you so much for creating this strange little game. I had a blast uncovering it and learning a bunch about the C64 in the process. As I said, if you're willing to reach out, I'd love to hear more about this game from you!
Thanks for reading, everyone!
tl;dr weird little C64 shoot 'em up starring Neil and Chris
#pet shop boys#vintage media#vintage video games#op i bow down to you#this is the coolest thing ever
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Your First Impression of Me vs Impression of Me Now (Anonymous or Not)
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AV Club: What’s your favorite gay sex record?
Margaret Cho: Anything Vince Clarke, whether it’s Erasure, Yaz, or Depeche Mode. It’s basically R&B with synths. It’s very sexy music and perfect for gay sex.
(source)
#margaret cho#vince clarke#erasure#depeche mode#yazoo#yaz#you heard it here folks#vince clarke: king of gay sex jams#we love to see it
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