Sunday, May 24, 2009

Learning is Fun: The Smurfs of War edition

"Amazingly, the plot of Smurf vs. Smurf, published in the early 1970s, was almost exactly replicated in modern history with the escalation of the Serbo-Croatian conflicts of the 1980's and 90's: from a football game (see Dinamo Zagreb-Red Star Belgrade riot), to the ethnical division of villages and finally all-out war." From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurf_Versus_Smurf

In Pac-Man, three of the ghosts act in concert to try to outflank the player. Blinky aims straight for Pac-Man. Pinky tries to anticipate where Pac-Man is going. Inky attempts to be on the opposite side of Pac-Man from Blinky. The last ghost, Clyde, tries to keep his distance from Pac-Man, but still causes problems because the player will be concentrating on escaping from the other three. Details here.

There are three Transformers that turn into planets, counting the tie-in Death Star toy. Oddly, Fortress Maximus is still a lot bigger, and a lot more expensive - google product search reveals a small industry devoted just to selling all the various little plastic bits of him. You can pay $200 for just his head.