A brief history of missile rides
source: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/a-brief-history-of-missile-rides/a-2009081911411569044
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- KefKef
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How we learned to stop worrying and love gaming's most impossibly extreme sport.
Since time immemorial, mankind has gazed upon missiles and secretly thought, “Hey, that’d be fun to ride.” For whatever perverse reason, the idea of straddling or surfing on what amounts to a blazing rocket engine packed with deadly explosives is wildly fascinating to just about everyone, particularly if someone else does it. Sadly, the experience remains imaginary – but like with every other imaginary experience, videogames excel at delivering it.
Missile riding has a history that predates videogames, though. While most credit the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove and its notorious bomb ride with pioneering the concept, many historians estimate the very first missile ride actually took place sometime around 1800 BCE, when Egyptian sky-god Horus joy-rode through the streets of Thebes to impress his friends.
Since then, the concept was largely restricted to comic books, with indestructible superheroes riding missiles for the sake of splashy cover images.
Still, only two forms of media can really imbue the irrational act of missile-riding with the speed and dynamism it deserves, and of those two, only videogames have really bothered. What follows is a quick recounting of the (surprisingly) large handful of times this absurd pastime has lit up our screens over the years.
Since time immemorial, mankind has gazed upon missiles and secretly thought, “Hey, that’d be fun to ride.” For whatever perverse reason, the idea of straddling or surfing on what amounts to a blazing rocket engine packed with deadly explosives is wildly fascinating to just about everyone, particularly if someone else does it. Sadly, the experience remains imaginary – but like with every other imaginary experience, videogames excel at delivering it.
Missile riding has a history that predates videogames, though. While most credit the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove and its notorious bomb ride with pioneering the concept, many historians estimate the very first missile ride actually took place sometime around 1800 BCE, when Egyptian sky-god Horus joy-rode through the streets of Thebes to impress his friends.
Since then, the concept was largely restricted to comic books, with indestructible superheroes riding missiles for the sake of splashy cover images.
Still, only two forms of media can really imbue the irrational act of missile-riding with the speed and dynamism it deserves, and of those two, only videogames have really bothered. What follows is a quick recounting of the (surprisingly) large handful of times this absurd pastime has lit up our screens over the years.
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- Gaming, Video Games, Games, GamesRadar, 1 more
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pjacobs51
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That's pretty much how our space program started out. The Mercury rockets were originally designed to deliver a nuclear payload. But that's all we had when the "space race" started up, so they stuck a guy in a capsule on top of them and said - well lets see if this works.
- 2 years ago
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pjacobs51
