Saturday Nights Main Event

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There’s never been anything quite like Saturday Night’s Main Event for great Saturday night entertainment. I became aware of it after it had already begun its run, and didn’t even get to get my first live glimpse of one.

My first was on Saturday night May 1, 1986. I didn’t have a TV in my room, so I slept in my dad’s spot in his bed since he was out of town. He had a little black and white TV on the nightstand beside the bed. I tried hard to stay awake to watch it, but I didn’t make it. I had fallen asleep before it started. It was probably the news that did me in.

But I woke up just in time to see what was supposed to be the start of a Ricky Steamboat vs. Jake “The Snake” Roberts match. Ricky Steamboat was my favorite wrestler at the time, and I was always excited whenever I got a chance to see him on TV. Unfortunately for 8-year-old me, the match didn’t really happen, because Jake attacked before the match and nailed Steamboat with the DDT on the concrete floor. I was super pissed! While I hated that I didn’t get to see an actual match, the angle did lead to some good ones down the line.

The next big event I can really recall from SNME was the Hulk Hogan vs. Paul Orndorff cage match from January 1987. I wrote about it in depth over at TRN last year, so I’m not going to go into much detail here. But I did want to share that I knew that match was happening that night, but my excitement level got turned up to 11 while watching The Golden Girls, as one of the commercials was a short promo from Hogan with the cage in the foreground. That was awesome.

And then in March 1987, the episode that featured a battle royal as a way to hype the upcoming Wrestlemania 3. Hogan and Andre went at it in that battle royal, and the whole thing was awesome.

There were numerous other memorable moments to be enjoyed through the years on Saturday Night’s Main Event, and every now and then on Saturday nights, I get really nostalgic for it. TOnight is one of those nights.

Thunder Run Movie (1986)

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Here we are on a Friday night. It’s only 8 pm, but it’s already dark where I am. The weather is a little cool, and all things combined, it’s feeling like a “movie on the couch” kind of night. While browsing through the numerous streaming services we subscribe to, I was having trouble finding something I want to watch. But then a post on Instagram pointed the way for me.

In it’s entirety on YouTube is a movie from 1986 that I used to love watching with my old man when I was young. We had recorded it off of a pay channel like Cinemax or The Movie Channel at some point, and all through the late ’80s, he’d pull that tape out and pop it in the VCR to rewatch it. The movie is Thunder Run. It’s about a truck driver who gets lured out of retirement to haul a load of plutonium from Nevada to Arizona, and along the way, he has to fight off domestic terrorists who want the load. While that premise alone is a good one, it’s got the added benefit of being something like an extended episode of The A-Team.

With the job to haul the plutonium came a big payday. Our hero in this movie took a chunk of that money and bought a rig, and outfitted it with all sorts of cool weapons and such to fight off the terrorists. The whole movie is a fun, action-packed, thrill ride, and I’m going to give it another watch tonight. I thought I’d share it here too. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest carving out an hour and a half at some point and giving it a watch. It’s a great way to spend 90 minutes.

Mortal Monday (1993)

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So I missed this anniversary by a day, but way back on September 13, 1993, the home video game version of Mortal Kombat hit stores in an event dubbed Mortal Monday. The Mortal Kombat arcade game was an instant hit when it landed in arcades around the country, so turning it into a game for home consoles was a no-brainer.

I probably played the arcade version just a couple of times when it got big, but being as how there weren’t any arcades close to where I lived made playing it more than that a virtual impossibility. But I was still excited for the game coming to home consoles nonetheless.

I was a Street Fighter II fan and played it at home all the time, so another fighting game seemed cool. Now I wasn’t one of the fanboys who were all excited about the fatalities and such, I just enjoyed fighting games. Mortal Kombat had an interesting story attached to the game so that was a plus as well. But my friend Geoffrey couldn’t shut up about it’s pending release. Between his excitement, the plethora of commercials advertising it, and the many ads for it in comic books and magazines were enough to make my head spin. When Mortal Monday finally arrived, I was kind of relieved because I wouldn’t be inundated with the hype anymore. Or so I thought.

What overtook that was Geoffrey’s non-stop babbling about how awesome the game was. He was one of those Sega Genesis kids, so his version had the fatalities intact. The SNES version did not. I still sometimes wonder what kind of deal Sega made to have that kind of exclusivity. But I did my duty as a best friend and went over to his house to play it, and enjoyed it, but not like he did. He just could not shut up about that game for weeks. But me, I went home and played Street Fighter II. That was my game.

But looking back on it all now, it was quite the promotion for a video game, and it even had a cool tag line in “Mortal Monday”. They drilled that into people’s heads. I guess it worked since the franchise went on to spawn numerous sequel games and movies.

Happy belated anniversary to Mortal Kombat and it’s Mortal Monday promotion.

If you’d like to read more about Geoffrey and video games, check out the entry for the Game Genie in an old comic book ads post I did, Even More Old Comic Book Ads. And if you remember the hype, share your memories in the comments!

Weekend Reading 09/11/22

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Every weekend, I like to share a curated list of retro & nostalgia-themed posts that some of my friends have put out recently. It gives you a chance to escape the daily grind, and just sit back and pass the time reading about the good old days. So with that in mind, here is some fun stuff from around the blogosphere I wanted to share with you this week.

  • And since I’m on the subject of Dinosaur Dracula, don’t forget to check him out every day for his “Daily Halloween Thing”. It’s a blog within the blog, as he is updating it every day with new Halloween fun. It’s been a blast so far, and I really love the vibe of a daily blog. I miss those.

TRN Time Machine Podcast: Foods We Miss

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The TRN Time Machine podcast is hosted by myself and Jason Gross as part of The Retro Network. I’ve not had time to be very involved over the last couple of months, but I hate to let those great old episodes just sit there gathering dust. So I’m presenting them here for a new audience to discover and enjoy.

In this episode, get ready to bounce around the decades as we time jump looking at some Foods We Miss! We’ll be covering square pizzas at Little Caesar’s, pop culture pasta from Chef Boyardee, cereal, patty melts at McDonald’s, and the Tic Tac’s rival Dynamints just to name a few. Snacks, candy, beverages, and more are covered in this delicious episode.