There was a Three Mile Island video game??

Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station has been in the news again over the past year, because controversial plans are underway to restart its shuttered Unit 1, perhaps as early as 2028, in order to provide nuclear-generated electricity that would be purchased by Microsoft to support its energy-intensive data centers. (Imagine telling Microsoft's young leaders in 1980, five years after its founding and one year after the partial meltdown at TMI Unit 2, that this turn of events would be part of their company's future.)

Recently, I was surprised to learn that there was a Three Mile Island video game, by Muse Software. 

Three Mile Island, for the Apple II, was published in 1979 and it was followed a year later by Three Mile Island: Special Edition, all according to Wikipedia.

And, yes, the point of the game is to avert a nuclear meltdown. What fun!

I found out the game existed through an eBay listing. Apparently they sell (or are at least listed for) a pretty penny. Here's another listing, one of about a half-dozen total. The listings range from $100 to $300, though I don't see any that have actually sold recently. I guess you'd need a working Apple computer, too, with a 5¼-inch floppy drive, to play it. (And this is also assuming that the data on a 45-year-old floppy disk is still intact, which is not a great bet.)

According to MobyGames: "This simulation puts the player at the controls of a nuclear power plant, with the challenge of operating the pressurized reactor, keeping it afloat financially, and adhering to safety procedures to prevent such disasters. The plant's operations are managed in (accelerated) real time, aided by graphical and textual information screens: detailed, animated views are available for the containment building, the turbine/filter/condenser section, the reactor core with its control rods, and the pump house. Individual subsystems like valves, turbines, pumps, rods and filters can be adjusted as needed, and the effects are visible on the various graphical displays and readout panels. ... The player will have to meet electricity demands, raise profits, handle equipment failure, and deal with government officials and their requests for inspection."

All of that sounds like an actual job! When you could have instead been playing Mystery House or Mystery Fun House.

The My Abandonware page for Three Mile Island has 15 screenshots, including a page that, ominously, just states "EMERGENCY NOTICE NO. 6, MELT-DOWN." There are also some first-person memories of the game on that webpage, which is great for the historical record. In 2019, James wrote: "I remember in 1982 was the first time I played the game. My high school in Pekin ILL had a computer room with like 20 computers. I would always get their before class and had like an hour to play. At first I would always have a meltdown before I had to leave but over time I mastered the game and could run the plant forever without melting down."

Photo of Three Mile Island I took in Goldsboro on April 4, 2018.

Sunday evening ramblings

Blargh. Between the national news, the desert heat, the prospect of returning to work in the morning, taking care of the cats and did I mention the national news, my mind is all over the place this afternoon and evening.

I missed my normal window of putting together a coherent blog post this morning, partly because the Phillies-Nationals game started at 8:35 a.m., Arizona time.

I'm behind on posting as it is. I do have a lot of good starter ideas stacking up in Blogger's "Unpublished" queue. It's just time that I need. Don't we all? 

Anyway, here's a miscellaneous collection of stuff that's been on my radar and won't be in a separate post:

1. I made a cryptic reference to Orson Welles last Sunday, but I no longer have the energy or desire to do that as a separate post. I was going to write about how Ash and I watched the ridiculous 1981 "documentary" (it really shouldn't be called that) The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, in which narrator Welles shares the prophecies of Nostradamus, as badly interpreted by Erika Cheetham. 

Skip it and watch F for Fake if you're looking for something involving Welles pulling one over on the public. I stand by what I wrote about The Man Who Saw Tomorrow in 2018: "The supernatural-seeming angle and the fiery, horrifying visions of the future offered by the film ... preyed on both Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation and racist anti-Arab sentiment. It cast "The Middle East" as some strange land from which a devilish villain would start the gears of World War III into motion in the 1990s." That is not an endorsement.

Further reading: Reddit and Jedadiah Leland on the Through the Shattered Lens website.

2. RIP, Terence Stamp. My official favorite movies of his are The Limey, Spirits of the Dead and Superman II. But my secret favorite movie of his is the absolutely bonkers Modesty Blaise (1966), where he saves the world alongside Monica Vitti. 

3. Want to help a New York City bookstore, spread the availability of books and contribute in a small way to the ideas of social justice? There's a summer book drive for Bluestockings Cooperative, a bookstore located at 116 Suffolk Street in New York. They're seeking new and gently used books on the topics of race, gender, sexuality, class, socialism, anarchism and more. The book drive continues through Sept. 1. For me, it was a very positive way to chip away, once again, at Resimplify Me and clear some shelf space. Here's the poster. 

4. Speaking of books, this amazing dust jacket cover showed up in my BlueSky feed recently. Adventures with Phantoms, by British ghost hunter Robert Thurston Hopkins (1884-1958), was published in 1946. I hadn't heard of this one before, so I'll have to keep my eyes peeled. It would look dandy alongside the likes of Haunted England and A Ghost Hunter's Game Book.

5. That's all for now, folks.