The Classics: cultural artifacts for the new millennium – The Verge

The Classics: ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ text adventure

2014-03-08T16:23:01-05:00

You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it which you can't.

Each version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has its own unique charm. The five novels let you revel in Douglas Adams' gloriously strange writing, while the radio show lets you hear what a Vogon actually sounds like. Even the disappointing 2005 Hollywood film has its moments, most notably the clever scenes involving the guide itself. But none of them will put you through the roller coaster of emotions that the text-adventure game does. At times you'll be laughing out loud, at others you'll be cursing at your co …

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The Classics: ‘Solaris’

2014-02-21T11:00:03-05:00

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Solaris begins with a simple, evocative setup. Three scientists studying an alien planet begin receiving unwelcome "visitors" - apparently human figures from the long-dead past, returned to haunt the living. They appear (and reappear) while the scientists sleep, as though dragged into the waking light from the deepest recesses of their subconscious guilt, dread, and regret. Sent to investigate, psychologist Kris Kelvin awakens next to his wife, who'd killed herself 10 years earlier. Is she "real"? How did she arrive at the space station? And how is she connected to the ocean planet, Solaris?

For Stanislaw Lem, author of the original 1961 no …

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The Classics: ‘Return of the Rentals’

2014-02-08T12:00:02-05:00

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The Classics are must-see, must-read, must-play works revered by The Verge staff. They offer glimpses of the future, glimpses of humanity, and a glimpse of our very souls. You should check them out.

1994 was an awesome year to be a nerd. A decade had passed since Revenge of the Nerds, and popular conceptions of awkward enthusiasts had evolved to the point where Weezer's "Buddy Holly" video could put four cardigan-wearing squares at the top of the charts. After that, there was always another word attached to nerd: "cool," a conflation which sent both terms into a perennially cloudy spiral of meaning. Bassist Matt Sharp took a detour from Wee …

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Classics: ‘Batman: Knightfall’ BBC Radio drama

2013-12-23T09:36:41-05:00

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The Classics are must-see, must-read, must-play works revered by The Verge's staff. They offer glimpses of the future, glimpses of humanity, and a glimpse of our very souls. You should check them out.

There has always been something special about the way Batman speaks. Perhaps it's because, unlike many comic-book heroes, Batman has no superhuman abilities. His power lies, in part, in the aura he creates through his costume and voice. That's why my favorite adaptation of the Batman legend is one that leaves behind all the iconic visuals and translates the universe of Gotham into pure sound.

I grew up watching reruns of the campy live-actio …

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On RoboCop: Somewhere, there is a crime happening

2013-12-07T11:30:03-05:00

RoboCop

The Classics are must-see, must-read, must-play works revered by The Verge staff. They offer glimpses of the future, glimpses of humanity, and a glimpse of our very souls. You should check them out.
Last year, Detroit decided that it needed RoboCop. A Kickstarter campaign raised around $65,000 to design and cast a bronze statue to be placed in an as-yet-undetermined location in the recently bankrupted city. Back in the near future of 1987, a corporate conglomerate named Omni Consumer Products had the same idea, but its RoboCop wasn't a symbol of hope. It was a cynical solution to an ultraviolent future - and the protagonist of the action movi …

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The Classics: ‘Style Wars’

2013-11-22T10:30:03-05:00

Style Wars Cops

The Classics are must-see, must-read, must-play works revered by The Verge staff. They offer glimpses of the future, glimpses of humanity, and a glimpse of our very souls. You should check them out.

Style Wars, a PBS production, was filmed between 1981 and '83, largely in the Bronx and Queens. Still cited as a classic piece of hip-hop history, it's an unnervingly calm movie capturing a particularly delirious moment - a moment replicated so often in throwback movies and rap songs that to see it in the comparatively 1:1 ratio of a documentary film can be jarring.

Though originally intended as a movie about the broader hip-hop movement, Style …

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The Classics: Roland SP-808 Groove Sampler

2013-10-17T11:15:03-04:00

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It wasn't so long ago that electronic music production was the work of pioneers. Giorgio Moroder and Don Lewis synthesized monstrous Moog mainframes in the disco era; Roger Linn kick-started hip-hop in 1988 with the Akai MPC60. But making music on a computer was a dream just beginning to come true in the '90s - boxes were getting faster and cheaper, but music software remained torturously buggy. Roland, a Japanese company with a long history of democratizing production by mass-producing and lowering the cost of new tech, saw an opportunity. The electronic music world lacked a product that efficiently combined sampling, performance, effects, …

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The Classics: ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ and the raw thrill of unchecked speed

2013-08-31T11:00:03-04:00

via dl.dropboxusercontent.com

Every ride home from the video game store was a strange exercise in lust and this one was no different. I sat in the passenger seat and immersed myself in the sacred act of unwrapping and popping open the big black container shell, fondling the rounded cartridge in my hands as if the magic on the logic board inside could somehow be transdermally absorbed, internalizing the coarse alliteration of the box copy: Super Speed! Super Graphics! Super Attitude! It's Super SONIC.

Like a jet engine warming up the choral two-toned SEGA brought my mind into gear but I still wasn't prepared for what lay beyond the iconic finger-wagging title screen. Gre …

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The Classics: ‘Persona 3’

2013-07-13T11:00:03-04:00

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Persona 3 is a video game where Japanese teenagers shoot themselves in the head with magical guns in order to summon powerful monsters into battle. And that's not even the most notable thing about it. Persona 3 is sort of like what would happen if you mashed up a typical dungeon-crawling RPG with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You're still battling monsters and saving the world like in other games in the genre, but you also need to balance that with hanging out with friends, remembering to study, and just basically being a kid. But what makes the game so remarkable is the way these two seemingly disparate elements interact with each other in a wa …

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The Classics: ‘The Downward Spiral’

2013-06-15T10:30:04-04:00

The Downward Spiral Classics

"I am the voice inside your head," Trent Reznor crooned after a violent sample from the movie THX 1138, "and I control you." Indelible words imprinted on a 12-year-old brain, and that was only the first 30 seconds of the album that changed my perception of the world forever.

The Downward Spiral - or "Halo 8," as it's known to NIN serialogists - is an unapologetically conceptual album. Listening to it from beginning to end squeezed my hormonal brain right through the spiral, which was presumably a projection of Reznor's vice-ridden lifestyle, distilled and packaged for general consumption under bleak abstractions by the artist Russell Mills. …

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