Cyborg: Death Machine was Directed by the MASE BROTHERS and dubbed in English, C:DM is an obvious and well-made short film that pays homage to the Action movies and Science-Fiction films of the 1980’s and 90’s. Taking inspiration from films such as The Terminator, Cyborg, Hardware, NEMESIS and even video games like Contra and Aliens vs Predator, there’s plenty of references all throughout this film.

Set in a dystopian future where machines have risen to oppress and exterminate mankind; armies of cyborgs created by the Magnatron Corp. seek out and destroy any and all humans left to starve in the ashes of the fallen civilization that was modern life.

I feel like this is the live-action CONTRA movie that I always wanted. And definitely a better Terminator film that the last few Terminator sequels could attempt to be.

From the start the film sets the tempo and atmosphere for this dark future straight out of a James Cameron film. The soundtrack was composed by Meteor and Pixions and is very, very, good at capturing that dread that should weigh down a story setting like this. I can only compare it to the composer that inspired this project; the composer of the original Terminator – Brad Fiedel.

Our hero is Alex Rayne, a militant cook (Under Siege reference) living in the wastelands accompanied by his friend and A.I. “Barry”. Barry is the heart of most of the humor sprinkled here and there and the overall humor was well executed giving needed counter-weight and balance with the violence.  Both Chef and A.I. are hunted by a lone cyborg sent by Magnatron. They eventually link up with members of the resistance for one last strike against the machine hordes. The cyborgs are basically Terminators with a dash of the Jin-Roh military police from the Kereboros saga. For a better comparison, go and watch Mamoru Oshii’s Kereboros films like Jin-Roh, Stray Dogs and the Red Spectacles as well as the manga that inspired them all.

The film is an English dub over the original language but, I have to say I really like the voice over acting. It complements the dialogue that thuds along like a Kojima script for MGS. The storyline is sufficient being that this is a short film that carries the impending doom of an M.D.GEIST OVA.

I loved the gameplay footage from the Robocop vs Terminator video game. Robocop vs Terminator is probably Frank Millers most underrated graphic novel, in my opinion.

The cinematography was actually well done and the set pieces were well done. Although some of the daytime scenes did pull me out of the overall mood and feel of the film. Luckily, those were few and in-between. The visual effects were good for a low-budget fan film. The action scenes were really good. The fights were well choreographed and the gore was satiating. There was no shaky camera and only one slow-motion sequence. And “Oh boy”, does the film close out with a banger. The last action scenes are just retro-perfection when the film transitions into a side-scrolling video game and then a Robot Jox type stop motion animation climax.

I highly recommend this film. Now streaming on NRW TV and on the MASE BROTHERS  Youtube channel.

And did I mention there’s a friggin’ post-credit scene?

Three thumbs up!!

Stay safe, stay away from Mega Corporations and their A.I.
And Keep your fingers on that Rewind Button.

The Budapest-based producer also put up a webpage dedicated to the video and the team behind it, complete with a playable Outrun spoof flash game to brush up on your scoreboard-topping skills.

 Play the game

How well did you fare on the Highway Violence Arcade Game? How many references did you find in the video?

 Quixotic’s ‘Highway Violence’ is featured on his album Flamingo Drive-In. Available via Bandcamp, Spotify and NewRetrowave.

A veritable spoonful of explosive, post-apocalyptic sci-fi action to make the exhausting election coverage go down, the film is a godsend that is sure to bring you back to those golden years when end times looked a lot more fun. In an age of great divide and turmoil, Cyborg: Deadly Machine is a humanistic reminder of human resilience spelt in the form of a love letter dedicated to classic Eighties and Nineties action flicks.

The French filmmakers deliver above and beyond all expectations, thanks in no small part to the phenomenal score by Synthwave acts Fixions and Meteor (out now on Bandcamp)

Cyborg : Deadly Machine (Movie Soundtrack) by Meteor / Fixions / Kid Zan / Magic Dance

Consolidating cheesy one-liners, stunning stunt work and old-school practical effects eye-candy, the Masebrothers successfully recreate the feel of the classics we all know and love to create a piece of indie retro cinema for the ages.

The French version will also be premiering on Youtube tonight via this second link.

Be sure to Subscribe to the Masebrothers Youtube channel and like their Facebook page to catch the latest news on their upcoming projects and releases.

IT’s a mess. The franchise should’ve ended a long time ago. They had their chance to bring new life into THE TERMINATOR with Salvation and they screwed that up. They had their chance with The Sarah Connor Chronicoles and they let that slipt through their fingers. Now they have DARK FATE.

The Good
SARAH CONNOR is back. LINDA HAMILTON is back and still embodies the mother of the future. She’s not doing summersaults in her old age. But, she is still as badass as she was in T2. Mackenzie Davis is my second favorite part of this film. I’ve been following her since Blade Runner 2049. Mackenzie’s character was an interesting twist on the protector role with obvious inspirations from the Dark Horse comics. Third favorite part was Arnold, I liked what they did with his T-800 role. I liked it. It felt thought out. The supporting cast were okay. I could care less if they killed John Connor but, they could’ve done something else.
The action was good. The CG- mehhhhh, but the set pieces were good. Tim Miller can direct action but I feel he hasn’t seasoned himself enough to make a great cohesive film yet.

The Bad
A lot of plot holes from beginning to end.
Lack of world building.
Weak CG in some scenes.
I think they blew a chunk of their budget just to for the de-aging effects in the beginning for Linda and to make Edward Furlong look like a kid again.
When Sarah says, “She’s John” I almost threw my soda at the screen.
The throwbacks to other films, barf.
The ending that hints at a sequel.

It was entertaining. I liked it better than the other sequels but, enough is enough. Pull the plug and end it already. End it or make a super R-RATED Robocop vs Terminator animated feature.

Having loved their previous, action-packed short Rage of Fire II, we were thrilled to hear that the guys are back at it and ready to take their craft to the next level. Retro-heads, meet Cyborg – Deadly Machine, the Masebrothers’ latest love letter to Eighties Action Sci-fi flicks, a love letter to James Cameron’s Terminator… with a tomato-flavoured twist! The guns are loaded and the pasta-water is on the stove, however, the Masebrothers are in need of your help to get their dream project to life, which is why they have set up a Kickstarter page to call upon your interest and support for this project. As we further enquired about the project, we took the opportunity to ask Masebrothers co-founder Mathieu Caillière about the channel as well as the project.

First off, can you say a few words about your background as a collective?

We’re a bunch of buddies that make short-films. Two years ago, we decided to start a Youtube channel and make videos dedicated to Eighties and Nineties pop-culture. We basically wanted to do work on something related to the whole Retrowave culture, whether it be music, films or retro-revival TV series.
Masebrothers is basically three creators: Jérémy Vazzoli who has a graphic design background, myself (Mathieu Caillière) –a graphic designer who does a bit of 4D Cinema, VFX and film post-production, – and Sébastien Petitjean, with whom I createdthe channel and who is also a graphic artist. Sebastien does the writing and I’m more on the directing, editing and special effects sides of things.

At which point did you realize you wanted to work within the whole Eighties and Nineties pop-cuture aesthetic?

We’re actually Eighties kids. I’m thirty-five and we’re all around the same age, so it’s what we knew when we were kids. We’re paying homage and recreating the candor of our childhood, how we heard music and how we saw movies back in the day. It’s basically a tribute born out of our love for that era.

The credits in your videos and short-films indicate that you all have a large set of skills. Were there any that you were recquired to learn on-the-fly?

We do work on many aspects, but we keep learning with each shoot we do. Our limited means of production forces us to think of new, smart ways of moving forward and overcome constraints. Of course, it would be great to have more resources and more people to guide us along, but we also learn a lot this way. I did study editing though, so I already knew that. I started making movies when I was in middle-school, so my first steps in filmmaking were with me playing with my dad’s film camera when I was a kid.

Your videos feature a whole lot of old props and accessories. Were these part of your collection or did you have to hunt down some of these objects for your purpose of the videos?

Actually, we’ve had to buy a lot of things – like old TVs’, old dial-up telephones and radios, because we unfortunately didn’t keep everything from back then. We also got a lot of things from our families. We’re very fond of vintage action-figures we used to play with when we were kids, so some of those were part of our personal collection that we kept in our dusty cardboard boxes. We made a trailer called Toys War, where we only used action figures. There were basically X-Men and GI Joe figurines fighting together. We used some of our own and bought a few more for the film. It was part of our little passion as collectors.

Are there any props you’re still looking for? Some things that are hard to come by?

We’ve had trouble finding a good Sony Walkman Cassette Player. They’re hard to come by and they’re really expensive to buy online nowadays. There were also these watches with TV screens on them. It would be awesome to find one of those. Those are also outrageously priced, they’re collector’s items. If we manage to get one of them, we’ll obviously make a film based around them [laugh].

Moving on to the main subject: Cyborg – Deadly Machine. What is it about and what are your ambitions for the project?

Cyborg –Deadly Machine is the story of a bunch of a Resistance-faction that’s fighting against machines. The atmosphere is very similar to James Cameron’s, only here we have some pretty eccentric characters on board. The Resistance is led by this female warrior called Stacy who, on her way, meets our main-man Alex, a guy who is fixated on making tomato sauce in a world where tomatoes have pretty stopped growing. Together, they will find a way to fight against the machines, all the while being tracked by an ultra-sophisticated, deadly Cyborg.

Cyborg – Deadly Machine is a tribute to Eighties and Nineties Sci-Fi and Action films. It’s a continuation of what we do on the channel with our sketches, fake-commercials, fake trailers and short films. Last year we release a short called Rage of Fire II dedicated to action films and retro-gaming, and this time around we wanted to pay tribute to the Sci-Fi genre, namely the Terminator franchise that we grew up on and its technical aspects. A lot of these films were done with mostly practical effects. We’d like to work with more traditional means, such as animatronics and model-sets to create our universe. The idea is to use the old means to shoot the film with our own means. That’s what we want it to look like, anyway. There will still be some digital effects for things like gunshots and explosions for budgetary reasons, but we’ll be using animatronics for the Cyborgs in the film, for instance. The film will be roughly twenty to thirty minutes long. That’s what we’re aiming for with the Kickstarter project, anyway.

How did the tomato sauce storyline come to be? It sounds like you had a lot of fun during the writing process.

[laugh] The film is pretty serious from a visual perspective, but here at Masebrothers Productions we’ve got a thing for humor and the absurd. We’re not making fun of Eighties films but rather we’re having fun with their common tropes. We wanted to go for something a bit more light-hearted, thus came the whole idea with the tomato sauce. It’s about a quest for flavor, in a barren, post-apocalyptic world that has lost all flavors, where it’s all about survival and robots ruling over everything. Alex’s way of being consists in seeking things that remind him of humanity, symbolized to him by tomato sauce. He’s also followed around by a little robot, who will be adding to the film’s comic relief.

Your Youtube channel combines sketches in both English and French. What made you decide to start shooting these short films in English?

We launched the channel with a film called Kickin’ Jack, which we filmed exclusively in English. We were really marked by the big, buff voices we used to hear in American blockbuster movie-trailers, more so than those we’d hear in French. We wanted to use them in our films. We’re heavily influenced by American pop-culture and Asian films like those made by John Woo, and we wanted to do a throwback to the way we perceived them at the time. Some of our sketches are in French because all of our short-film are done in English because we weren’t sure we were going to gather an audience for them in France. Given that we followed certain channels like NewRetroWave, we figured there’s a larger audience that would be interested in what we do, namely thanks to films like Kung Fury that really helped in getting the ball rolling. We thought it would be more fun to branch out beyond French audiences, even if we do sometimes shoot sketches in French because it’s also part of our culture.

Is your DIY approach more of a personal choice or rather the result of a perceived lack of interest from production studios?

I don’t think we’d be of much interest to producers. We didn’t go see any, and I can’t really think of anyone we could conceivably work with. It’s not like we’re Christophe Gans [rire]. We’re pretty low-level, so it’s a little complicated. We’ve always done things this way. We’ve often stitched things together ourselves. We’ve gone through a few official procedures for the project but it’s tricky. We figured the best way to get this project off the ground would be to turn towards the Retro community and to our loyal fans.

How did you meet your music collaborators, Meteor and Fixions, with whom you will be once again working on Cyborg – Deadly Machine?

I believe I first came across Meteor through NewRetroWave [laugh]. I got in touch with him around the time I was starting to work on Kickin’ Jack, as I had fallen in love with his first album Parallel Lines. I was a huge fan of his work and so I offered to make a music video for one of his songs called ‘Escape the Fate’, and the video actually ended up on the NewRetroWave channel, actually. Our collaboration started from there. He was also a fan of our work and when it came time to make Kickin’ Jack he gave us his consent to use the music from his album and he really appreciated it. Up until now we just used his songs for our videos. We also used his second album Inner Demon in Rage of Fire II. It only seemed natural to work with him again, as I’m a huge fan of his and I really want to get an original score for the project.

For Fixions, it was actually him who contacted us first. We didn’t know who he was but we later found out that he was the guy who made the soundtrack to Mother Russia Bleeds. We eventually hit it off and became really good friends. Furthermore, he also lives around my area so he also participates in the making of our videos.
I think the pair will really add something to the project through their complementary styles. Meteor is rather Synthwave/Outrun-driven, whereas Fixions is sounds more Darksynth, which will go well with the whole post-apocalyptic decorum and the machines in the film.

Closing off : can you name one of your favorite albums, movies and books?

The Killer by John Woo, Inner Demon by Meteor and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Any closing words?

Cyborg –Deadly Machine is a project we’re really passionate about. We believe we’ll be able to make something really fun and special. We really want to work with these Synthwave artists and we hope that you will find some cool stuff on our Kickstarter page and that you’ll dig it. Keep listening to Synthwave and ‘Stay Cool, Stay Retro!’.

Be sure to check the ‘Cyborg – Deadly Machine’ Kickstarter page here if you wish to know more and support the project.

Yes, folks, we’ll be giving the Sega Mega Drive, known in North America as the Genesis, the same attention we gave the NES last month. While I had an NES and enjoyed it very much, the Sega Genesis is likely the console I’ve put in the most hours on, and as I’ve said before, I was on the Sega side of the fence for the Console Wars when it competed with the Super NES. There’s a lot to love about the system. In particular, I’ve always liked the unique sound that the YM2612 chip lent the music, not to mention some of the remarkable titles Sega self-produced for the platform. There was nothing wrong with the SNES, but if you were cool… you had a Genesis.

The Ooze

Sega/Sonic Team, 1995

I wanted to start with this one because I missed it as a kid, only to discover it years later, and it blew my fucking mind. You play as this scientist who finds out some grody stuff about his employer’s business. Your boss tries to kill you by exposing you to some gnarly green slime, but little does he know he just created one of the coolest protagonists for a video game ever. With what’s left of your humanity, you set out for revenge.

GRAAAAH! He’s so fucking cool, man. I can’t even be mad that I missed it as a kid because it was worth uncovering it years later and being jazzed as hell.

YOU PLAY AS A SLIME MONSTER. It’s as cool as it sounds. You slide around as an amorphous blob, able to do all the things a blob could do (move through tight spaces, etc.) and capable of whipping out deadly pseudopods to murder and devour anything in your path. Getting attacked reduces your mass, but turning creatures into ooze and subsuming them replenishes it. There are even power ups, despite the idea that you’re already pretty boss as a sentient ooze. The controls take a little getting used to, but once you’re comfortable, you’re really going to enjoy yourself. The soundtrack is really good, especially the first stage, the toxic dump. Really good digitized SFX as well, with some nice voice samples that come through crisp and clear. I shouldn’t even have to say that the graphics are incredible, but I will, because holy shit. It’s not just normal sprites for your ooze man; your character is composed of modular chunks of 16-bit slime that flow in a very “realistic” fashion. A lot of effort clearly went into this game, and it shows.

I give The Ooze 8 out of 10. It is what I consider a high quality game, giving you the total package when it comes to gameplay and the audiovisual experience.

The Terminator

Probe/Virgin, 1992

I really don’t care much about the third and subsequent films, but Terminator 1 and 2 are, in my opinion, among the best science fiction films ever made. I doubt many of you would disagree, especially since the first one is filled to the brim with that dark-neon 80s starkness that retrowave/synthwave fans adore (myself included).

Unfortunately, the Genesis game is a woeful sack of wet horse shit.

You play as Kyle Reese, first in the future (to get to the past) and then in the past (to save the fucking future). The game follows the plot of the movie, at least loosely. A lot of the game involves just slugging through areas and getting hurt with very little in the way of mobility, hoping for the little health tanks to drop from enemies. I don’t remember Kyle murdering hundreds of police in the movie either, especially not with a crazy rapid-fire shotgun. This game plays like a sloppy death metal album: just things smashing and being smashed together as you mechanically plow through it and hope you don’t die (or just stop caring, like I did).

I spent several minutes just fighting my way out of this dead end. Just constantly hurling grenades at buff shirtless cyborgs. It’s like trying to have sex to grindcore music. It becomes mechanical and you get mentally tired.

To be fair to it, I’ll mention a couple things they did really well. The dialogue scenes between levels are actually pretty cool, featuring only minor affronts to the English language and some very well-done, almost comic-book style presentation. Some of the later levels feature interesting elements and stipulations; the police station requires you to reach Sarah Connor before the T-800 does and is a fairly good attempt at capturing the movie’s intensity.

I just wasn’t impressed with the game as an overall end-product. With the money Virgin has, they could have published a much better game. Terminator gets 3 out of 10 from me. It was almost depressing how “throwaway” this effort seemed.

Devil Crash MD/Dragon’s Fury

Naxat/Technosoft, 1991

“Are you just using this as an excuse to talk about Devil Crash again?”

Yes. Yes I am.

It’s no secret that I love the Naxat “Crash” pinball series. Virtual pinball is a great way to pass time, and Naxat fucking nailed it with Alien Crush and Devil Crash. Unfortunately, my PC-Engine emulator is on the fritz, so I’ve been playing the Mega Drive version of Devil Crash (called Dragon’s Fury in its North American release for the Genesis) to feed the beast.

Nothing is really lost in translation from platform to platform. The game still looks gorgeous, rife with cartoon-occult schlock imagery and straight-up Halloween wickedness. The Mega Drive’s YM2612 handles the music well, although it doesn’t seem as “blended” smooth as it does on the TG-16. Small loss, though. Play is the same; in fact I even think the game handles a little bit better on the Mega Drive. That might just be me, though. I’m very good at deluding myself. (I even call myself a writer sometimes.)

She’s still there, and she’s still a real knockout. Hubba Hubba!

The only thing that bothers me about the MD port of Devil Crash is that they named the American version Dragon’s Fury and pointlessly watered down a lot of the weird occult content. I understand the motives and all, you want to protect your children from the nefarious secret Satan codes they put in the video games… but we were way too fucking soft about this kind of thing back then. You gotta know the Enemy to fight him, and the best arena for that is pinball. Put on the Armor of God and hit the paddles!

As a solid port and a great game on its own merit, I give Devil Crash MD 8 out of 10.

I will catch you in a day or two for part 2 of this one, folks. Stay Retro!

Scientists claim that we’re currently doing a reasonable job at a mass extinction but not nearly as good as the huge rock that struck Mexico around 65 million years ago. Regardless of what the top five extinctions tell us, the planet is fine, always has been, probably always will be. It appears to have a fairly nonchalant response when it comes to mass extinction. Before you start frantically commenting on why a mass extinction is bad, if they had never taken place, today we would not have sharks and cars, two of my favourite things.

Corvette Mako Shark

That being said, we have to enjoy our short but sweet time here and so far we’ve been pretty busy. Thankfully for me, fellow curious human beings make movies about sharks and cars. Obviously I’m not here to talk about sharks but I was thinking about my favourite retro motors in movies.

Without doubt in my mind Anton Furst’s Batmobile is one of the coolest retro on screen motors of all time. His design work on the bleak metropolis of Gotham was second to none and to have produced a very striking and timeless Batmobile was no mean feat. With inspirations from war machines, aircraft and art deco styling, the final result was the perfect driving machine for a super goth. Batman was charismatic and cool back then, the car was purely an extension of that. With a turbine driving the midnight black machine, it looked every bit intimidating as it did sexy, with its winged rear end and the aircraft like cockpit in the centre.

Twin browning machine guns mounted at the front, armour plating and a grappling hook, need I say more?

The Bat Bastard

In George Millers depiction of the future in Mad Max, a massive percentage of everything has died (Probably including sharks) with the exception of humans and cars. Not just any cars though, modified beasts with armour, guns, spikes and flamethrowers. Whilst there is something refreshing about a world without the Nissan leaf, tax returns, governments and police. The world in which Max lives is rather bleak and unforgiving. What better way to see the day through than mowing down members of a tyrannical biker gang with an armoured, nitro fuelled V8, a Ford Falcon to be exact.

The interceptor was the product of Barry, the seemingly mentally challenged mechanic in Mad Max. Despite his impairment he was quite handy with a spanner and put together what is arguably the meanest looking vehicle for a protagonist. “She’s the last V8, she sucks Nitro!”.

I could go on and mention all the most obvious super star cars, The Back to the Future DeLorean, Ecto 1 or the five hundred bond cars but as a car guy, I think we should all take a moment to remember those unsung heroes of the big screen. Those cars that got people from A-B or a car you saw only for a few seconds before it was blown up by an overzealous director. Knowing what kind of money these relics go for now, I watch some scenes through my fingers.

Take the Ford LTD for example. A large lumbering “yank tank” from as far back as the 60’s, which, in all of it’s variations, ran until the end of the 80s. If you’ve seen any films within this era, you’ve seen many of these land boats smashing into other cars, people, chasing criminals dressed as a smokey or simply driving entire families around in it’s vast expanse of an interior.

For the fans of the synthwave community I guess the go to movie is The Terminator. Kyle Reece came from a future war and needed some muscle. What better vehicle to steal than a sixteen foot long, two and a half ton V8 sedan. With a 0-60mph that could be measured on a sundial, 12 mpg and all the handling of an abused shopping cart, I guess the only bonus was that it was incredibly comfortable. The sheer size and weight was probably Kyle’s saving grace, because if Sarah Conner was born in Europe, Kyle would have stolen a Fiat and subsequently the Austrian death machine would have picked it up and thrown them in the sea.

In a sort of car “cos-play” the Ford LTD has been most memorable in retro movies as the Crown Victoria, in fleet use they were used for primarily police or taxi markets. Again you may remember it as the cop car used to getaway from the T1000 in Terminator 2, similar cruisers in Universal Soldier or from the hundreds of scenes of taxi rides in your favourite movies. The LTD is truly an on screen icon, from action films to crime thrillers, the LTD was stuntman, sidekick, for good guys and bad guys.

Throughout the 70s and 80’s car wrecking was a big draw for Hollywood. Ron Howards Grand Theft Auto (now overshadowed by the multi million dollar gaming franchise) was a wrecking-fest. Dozens of cars, now considered cherished automotive icons, were rolled, crushed and launched into untimely deaths.

If you want to see some of the best chases and stunts, check out Junk Man. Henry Blight Halicki, nickname, Junkman. A stuntman, director and a bit of a lunatic. Using his own vast collection of vehicles, he wrote and starred in Gone in 60 seconds, Junkman and also made a sequel to Gone in 60 seconds, aptly named Gone in 60 seconds 2.

Grab a copy and some popcorn and enjoy some automotive carnage!

My main inspirations for obtaining a licence to ride a motorcycle wasn’t to join a gang, or to race, or to grow a beard, get fat and become fearful of the rain like a Harley Davidson rider; but it was of course, Street Hawk.

Jesse Mach, ex motorcycle cop, now lone wolf working for the government fighting crime in a bustling city, dealing with crooks, robbers and thieves. Jesse was given free reign to deal with wrong doers on a military grade motorcycle which fired lasers and rockets, and could reach 300mph with “Hyperthrust”. At the time I didn’t care that a road bike was achieving speeds of a WW2 fighter plane around Los Angeles, I was more enamoured by Jessie and his exploits. A mysterious man philandering around L.A whose day job it was to protect the innocent, with a licence to kill. Street Hawk was a short lived television series that aired back in 1985 on ABC. It lasted only one season and there were only thirteen episodes ever made. And as with anything this cool and short lived, it gained a bit of a cult following.

He didn’t have a second helmet

Inspired by the enigmatic presence of man and machine dressed all in black, I did include some of that when customising one of my first motorcycles, the Suzuki TS125X. The Suzuki TS was released in Japan in 1970, with a simple and comfortable ride for multipurpose use. It was 2 stroke with a 6 speed gearbox and long fork travel. You could pretty much go anywhere on this little machine and have fun doing it.

A similar bike to the TS was the Yamaha XT ridden by John Rambo in First Blood.

Reliable and good looking, in the 80s the TS was given rad decals and a bright paint scheme. The classic look round headlight was replaced with a square fairing and lamp, emulating that futuristic Street Hawk look even more. My bike was in bright Suzuki yellow with retro decals, but my aim was to achieve more of a “murdered out” look. As it was my first attempt at anything like this, it ended up a bit more “Mad Max” than the high gloss finish of Jessie Mach and his black beauty.

From the same team who built the cars of Bladerunner and The Last Starfighter, the Street Hawk was designed by non other than Andrew Probert who had touched many 80s franchises. FRom M.A.S.K to Airwolf and TRON.

Hondas XL500 and XR500 were used as the base frame and many modified parts were introduced over the series timeline, from the practical to the purely aesthetic. Here are the specs;

MODEL: Top secret government project.

TOP SPEED: 200 MPH, 300 MPH with Hyperthrust

WEAPONRY: Laser Cannon, Machine Guns, Rocket Launcher

OTHER FEATURES: Infrared Cameras, Compressed Air Vertical Lift System, On and off road capability

My TS125 was a little less dynamic, no lasers or Hyperthrust, but I had, on more than one occasion, switched off the headlights and ducked into a driveway or side street to avoid the cops (Stealth mode), and if you drafted behind a truck you could perhaps pretend to “boost” around it.

Dirt bikes were mad popular back in the 80’s, the lethal 2 stroke power of the raspy, smokey on/off road machines gave them a rebellious streak all of their own. I used to stick on The Dirt Bike Kid back in the day, which, if you haven’t seen it, is a lot of fun. The premise is fairly simple to follow, providing you’re a complete lunatic or a child.

Jack Simmons, a small town geeky kid from a single parent family, spends his mother’s last fifty bucks purchasing a self aware dirt cross bike (A Yamaha YZ-80). Infuriated by his whimsical purchase, she sells the bike to a local shop owner but the bike returns to Jack signalling the start of a “friendship” between boy and machine.

Dirt nerd

Jack gets involved in a financial battle between a bank and a hot dog business, ran by a family friend. After hacking the bank with his best friend Bo, they attempt to stop the demolition of said hot dog business by disrupting the bulldozing with a pie fight, enlisting the help of his little league team. I won’t spoil the ending but in a nutshell the kid and the dirt bike win and the hot dogs are ok. A dirt bike was now a childhood dream, yet the YZ-80 was not a street legal machine here in the UK, unless you modified it.

In the early nineties a young man and a robot father figure ran from another man with knives for arms in Terminator 2. Although quite obviously Arnie was a thorough badass in the film, I couldn’t help but admire the rebel without a cause, John Conner, on his stripped down Honda XR complete with a ginger carrying a ghetto blaster. The Terminator 2 bike chase is to bikers what Bullitt is to car lovers and if you have no clue what either of these things are, get in the sea.

The Honda XR however, didn’t sound like it would have in real life, the bike was dubbed with the 2 stroke engine to perhaps further accentuate the dichotomy between the brutal black truck on Johns tail and Arnie on the thundering Harley Davidson. Legally I could only ride small capacity machines until I was 21. So dirt bikes were my preferred mode of transport until that time came.

He may have needed a step stool to hop onto the Kawasaki GPZ900 R in Top Gun but Tom Cruise undeniably looked rad in his flight jacket and aviators riding the iconic Japanese sports bike around an military air base. Whether you’re drag racing a fighter jet or running from an angry blonde in a Porsche, a sports bike is what you need. Like the Street Hawk bike, although this wasn’t a custom dirt bike, it actually looked similar in ways to the futuristic crime fighting machine. The GPZ also known as the Ninja 900, came in a range of quintessential retro colour schemes.

The littlest pilot

Some of the 80’s flagship models from Japan are often now referred to as “Jap Muscle”. Large litre bikes were relatively compact, fast, good looking machines with the edition of plastic fairings which certainly made the naked british bikes look ancient. Fairings were the future!

Talking about fairings, perhaps one of the most badass retro bike movies was Mad Max. Jim Rains or “Goose” rode a 1977 Kawasaki KZ1000, not a bike for faint hearted, a beast of a bike at a little over 240kg yet the strong 1000cc inline four cylinder engine could take you to 130mph. Because of its stability, power and adaptability the KZ was in fact used for many years as a police bike. Notably the KZ1000P was ridden by the T1000 in Terminator 2 in full police fairings.

So that’s a brief history of some of my inspirations for riding motorcycles, it would be good to hear your stories of what got you into biking and what do you ride? For those who don’t ride, maybe make it a news years resolution to saddle up, stick a lid on and go have an adventure.

Ahem… Please note that Emilia Clarke will NOT be returning for a terminator Sequel.

Not a very promising sign when star actors start pulling out.

Sadly, this franchise is continuing to suffer. James Cameron needs to come back and get things back on track again.

Even though Terminator: Genisys did make back its initial investment and then some profit, a lot of fans felt the Terminator reboot was doomed after seeing the movie. 

Let’s hope Arnie at least stays…

What could save the Terminator franchise from completely collapsing?