1986!!

I decided to base the game in the 1980's for a couple of reasons, the first in the current trend towards all things 80's in the fashion world (which is clearly aimed at the 14-25 age group) and with the designers at this years London Fashion Week agreeing that it is here to stay for potentially another two or so years. The second reason is as always nostalgia of people who fondly remember the decade as children, the toys, Saturday morning tv and the music all play an important part in the memories of people between the ages of 28 and 50.

The hardest thing for me was to try and place the game in a particular year during that decade and it had to be one that would fit within the overall game concept that I have, after the quickest resource to me was used (the net!!) and a wealth of pages ploughed through later one year really stuck out at me, 1986.

In order to pick the year I used one simple line of thought, what major events happened in the year? 1986 had more than one and these are the ones that helped me make my descision;

HALEY'S COMET


The comet appeared in 1986 and with it busy rush of news surrounding it, the comet itself travels past Earth every 76 and through out the ages it has been seen as an omen. It is the very nature of the comet that will enable me to bind together the story in a more robust and cohesive way for a couple of reasons. The first is the 76 year cycle making it a rare and powerful thing and the second is the age old tradition of seeing it as a bad omen, I will be able to bind this event to the fantasy horror element of the game giving the story more cohesion on the real world.

CHALLENGER


This event still rings true in my head from 1986 as the world stood back in gasp as the Challenger exploded shortly after the lift off, sadly 7 people lost their lives that included 5 men and 2 women of which one was a teacher and was picked from 10,000 entries which had entered the cometition to go into space. Thousands of viewers watched this world wide as there were always international screenings of these events which when compared to today seemed much more inspirational and more in the worlds minds eye, the lift off had been postponed a couple of times before hand. It would be good to tie this in somehow with the omen event theory of the comet, if I was to touch on Lovecrafts idea of interstellar beings beyond our comprehension meddling with or lives there may be a way of piecing it all together.


CHERNOBYL



Another event that caught my eye in this year was the terribel disaster of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploding causing mass devastation and problems in the then Soviet Union just inside Ukraine. The event obviously made headline news due to it's very nature and the mass evacuation plan that was required, whilst this is a horrible disaster I am not so keen to use this to help tie the story in even further....but hey you never know I may change my mind!!!

Another interesting fact in this year was the first report on world terrorism and good starting point to help illustrate modern terrorism as we know it today, maybe it's this link that helps drags us back to the 80's but personally for me it was the good times that we all had at parties, the toys and those cheesy Saturday morning programs.