The Hobbit Calendar 1976 focuses, as its name suggests, on illustrations made to accompany The Hobbit. The five watercolour paintings that Tolkien created for the book were once again reproduced in this calendar, but, for the remaining seven months, H.E. Riddett was invited to colour Tolkien’s original black-and-white pen and ink illustrations.
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Royal Raceway exudes a rather peaceful aura. Bells gently toll in the background and confetti litters the track. Pink-tinged clouds can be seen in the sky and gorgeous cherry blossom trees line certain sections of the road.
The first world that Mario and Cappy visit after the grey, London-esque Cap Kingdom is the lush, colourful Cascade Kingdom. This is the greater location of Fossil Falls, which is a prehistoric dinosaur-themed area – a wild, vibrant, grass-covered mountainside nestled in a basin surrounded by towering waterfalls.
One of the few retro tracks from Super Mario Kart to make a reappearance in Mario Kart 8, Donut Plains 3 has received a huge graphical overhaul. It’s a beautiful HD interpretation of a classic Mario World 1 motif.
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As a zoologist, I’m perhaps particularly intrigued by the creatures, the wildlife, the non-sentient animals, that occasionally pop up in the Star Wars films. Sometimes, these are part of important plot beats, such as the rancor or the wampa; other times, they are brief, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearances that serve only to flesh out the planets on which they are found.
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Dry Dry Desert is an Egyptian-themed track, with lots of pyramids, obelisks, and large stone statues of Hammer Bros. to see in the background. There’s even a huge Hammer Bros. Sphinx (based on the Great Sphinx of Giza), which is rumoured to be cursed.
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The J.R.R. Tolkien Calendar 1974 only includes a few new illustrations, but one of them, ‘Fangorn Forest’, is particularly interesting. This image, in one form or another, has been used to illustrate all three of Tolkien’s major works.
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The fourth and last course of the Flower Cup, Shy Guy Falls takes place in a cliffside area with majestic waterfalls and exhilarating anti-gravity sections.
In Generation II, Stantler didn’t evolve. It was one of those rare one-shot Pokémon (that isn’t Legendary, at least) that most players tend to overlook or forget about. And it stayed that way for a very, very long time. But then, 20 years and hundreds of Pokémon later, Stantler finally (and unexpectedly) received a long overdue evolution in the form of Wyrdeer.
Over the years, the Mario Kart series has had its fair share of spooky-themed tracks, from haunted bridges to scary forests. But many of them involve driving through haunted houses. The latest is called Twisted Mansion. The track’s environment, music, and background characters all fit the spooky aesthetic perfectly.