SecretPassages

James Hoare's Secret Passages is back on Kickstarter with Issue 2, continuing his mission to excavate the cultural DNA of classic RPGs and Oldhammer gaming.

The Last Starfighter (Universal Pictures, 1984) is a meritocratic, sci-fi-opera western featuring an arcade game in a mundane trailer park - or in my ten year old mind - a chip-shop in Redditch. Unbeknownst to the deep-fryers, the most skilled players were secretly being recruited as pilots for an interstellar war. The ultimate fantasy for everyone who was trapped in the hopeless mundanity of the 8-bit working class: your gaming skills might mean something, someone is watching and you're special. The high-score was a key that could unlock a gateway to another life entirely.

James Hoare, a pedigree journalist whose scribing skills were honed in the annals of specialist titles from extreme art to historical analyses, is now realising his first mid-life crisis deep passion for tabletop gaming - Secret Passages, a love letter to the gritty, unpredictable RPG scene of the 80s and 90s. This quarterly, sixty-four-page magazine reflects a time when fantasy gaming was in its rebellious youth, flicking Vs at ‘video games’ and riding its knockoff BMX roughshod over linear fiction on the way to Firetop Mountain.