King Tibbet

NeoGeo Pocket Vapourware edition

2012-01-29T17:45:00.000Z

I don't own a mobile, that means there will be no Android or Iphone evangelism here and the only blackberry I've ever owned is of the fruit variety, so when someone makes a device like this its pretty hard not to shout out genuine want.

Of course its not a phone, but if its real then this could be worth looking into. We'll regurgitate some stats from Andriasangs news story where it first emerged via the Famicom Plaza site.

Pocket Neo Geo, vapourware or ripoff only you can decide?.

Stats:

4.3 screen
2GB internal storage
20 internal games including

Magician Lord
Ultimate 11
Samurai Shodown
and pretty much every other launch game for the original Neo Geo line up including Cyberlip and no ones favourite League Bowling*.
oh and a slot for a SD Card.

Though often billed on sites as a return of the Neo Geo Pocket what it really is (if it exists) would best be termed as a Pocket NeoGeo. Its a nice idea and would certainly sell if there was any indication that SNK were behind this. However there is a massive elephant in the room about the whole thing, it doesn't seem the least bit official. The thread over at RHDN has been pretty anti about the whole thing, poking holes in everything to the font used to where the whole market for this would be (my guess China).

The worrying thing about it is this, the more I look at it, the more I see the type of shoddy products, so excellently made fun of over at Ashens.com. Though would secretly love to see this made, its a Neo Geo in your palm after all, I get the feeling its made of fail.

Even more dubious is the fact that the original link has vanished from Famicom Plaza, which never mentioned where they got it from, though andriasangs link is mirrored in a lot of places. Neo-geo.com seems to think along my lines that its a mock up or at least an unlicensed product.

The idea of a handheld NEO GEO and not just a pocket is an intriguing though, done right it could actually generate some money for SNK Playmore . In fact if they could only add an analogue stick and buttons to an Iphone / Android capable handset and you would have a pretty decent phone along with some kick ass games (we would love big tournament golf and Neo driftout 95) and more crucially above physical controls to play with.

Finally a brief bit of googling brings this up for Droid lovers though god knows if it works, (apple fans of course have Imame as a option too).

MegaOffload

2012-01-22T17:01:00.000Z

This is basically a round up of stuff and a further why we can't have nice things rant, due to the whole S(c)OPA PIPpA blinkered piracy sledgehammer.

S(c)OPA Largely Unwanted.

The return of MSU1.

One of the first posts I made was looking at BSNES, specifically MSU1, a part of BSNES that acted like the rumored CDROM drive, adding a whopping 4GB data allowance and overriding the in built cartridge limitations. Now it seems that someone is not only creating new games that take advantage of this device, but that someone is making a SD compatible flash cart/MSU1 hybrid. Personally I think its a brilliant idea and can wholeheartedly support both projects, (especially as i'm playing through d4s / ryusuis excellent retranslation of Breath Of Fire 2).

Which brings us to our main news. Megaupload, the popular filehost is out of comission due to being taken down by the FBI. As a filehost they weren't bad actually, no captcha, no fifteen minute wait and downloads were reasonably fast, true you got ads but they were easily blockable. We never got much from there to be honest, a few PS1 / Saturn games from long dead companies and that was it. Stuff that would never be translated in a million years, or stuff that you never find for sale. Which is why I'm so against SOPA / PIPA
going ahead.

Having read a potted history of the bill on Wikipedo, I'm largely against it. It will prove to be a thin end of the wedge for censorship and the kind of repurposing of copyright material some communties do. It'll hit the YTP communities and those that emulate on a regular basis. You'll need to own physical copies of what you play rather than download from sites (and god help you if those discs scratch especially some of those saturn games). Theres no GOG for console games at the moment though Monkey paw games are getting there for gaming obscurities.

This is what you'll lose, there is no provision for playing obscure games, creating new works from film clips, YTP in all its forms or even home remixing of current tracks. These avenues will cease to be, along with the ability to shut down what you don't like and shut out what you can't understand.

The slow slide of side pocket.

2012-01-15T17:42:00.002Z

We've been dealing with a lot of race based posts of late, and we want to get back on track with something light hearted.; What could be nicer than a game of pool.

When it comes to old pool games, Side pocket was king. Between 1986-2001 the series sidled through a total a series of incarnations, each one becoming slightly worse than its predecessor, and we'll tell you exactly why they lacked so.

Side pocket.

Originally released for the arcades only, it was ported to a number of platforms including but not limited to. NES, SNES, Megadrive, Gamegear and Gameboy. We have at present only played the NES and SNES versions so are not qualified to comment on either handheld or Sega incarnations. We will say this though, the arcade version is horrible, it does a lot of things right but comes across as a complete coin sucker and is not much joy to play. It would later be remedied by the Pocket Gal versions of Side Pocket which is far more enjoyable, and has brief nudity fact fans.

The NES version isn't bad and has a training mode and as well as the regular 1 Player pocket mode.
You are set a score to match and are given bonuses for building breaks and potting balls in sequence as well as shooting balls into the highlighted pockets, for all the 8 and 16 bit versions this doesn't change.
We've played most of the billiard related roms on the NES and this is one of the best. A solid one player mode as well as the optional trick shot between stages (this would be par for the course for the series as it would be greatly expanded on over the years).

The SNES version adds a jukebox as well as a stand alone trick shot mode as well as keeping the travel between states theme (messing up at the end of stage 2 no less by showing a shot of San Fran instead of Vegas oh well). Its pretty decent as it goes just let down by a sheer evilness of trick shots required to pass (the end of San Francisco)

Side pocket 2 / Minnesota Fats: pool Legend

Sadly Data East would let it lie and Side pocket was deemed worthy of an update. Unfortuantely this is where the rot set in, and the excellent one player mode was consigned to the grave. Instead you had a versus mode and a story mode where you got to play as Pool legend Minnesota Fats as you took back your clubs from Big G. This being the mid nineties this was told through the medium of incredibly low quality FMV (both in terms of visuals and in acting). The pool itself is 2D and has you playing against players in a game of regular pool. In true hustler style it has you nominate a pocket when you sink the black. In true hustler style it should have stayed in the pool halls. The nomiante pocket doesn't work most of the time (its classed as a scratch or in off if you miss) and it really doesn't deliver in fun. Except for the high camp of the game intro.

It was released for Sega Saturn, and got a japanese release with subbed FMV as well.

Side pocket 3

The ailing series finally lurched into 3D with this example. Noted for its strange story mode and the insane amount of pool games to play, including Yotsudama with its characteristic pocketless table (what I call 3 cushion pool). Herein lies the problem, you can play all these games but you'll have to suffer it on the grainiest 3D table ever, it looks like you are playing on coloured sand. You'll also have to suffer through the nightmare of various 3D views, none of them give you sufficient view of the table and none of them are of any use, including the zoomed out traditional Side Pocket view, as soon as you decide to pot it goes to a First person viewpoint for adding side and spin.

The story mode is seemingly set in the Resident Evil Mansion and it takes a bloody ice age to actually get a game. You'll plod through the endless halls talking to staff and looking out for zombie attacks (we are joking of course, though the amount of time you spend spodding about, it feels like undeath) and trying not to get Deja vu. Data East copied Capcom before with its whole Fighters History Streetfighter rip off. This time it got both a Saturn and Playstation release and nary a word from Capcom (who sued over the Fighters History riff).

The final release of merit is on the original grey Wonderswan console, and to say it was a slight return to form is a understatement. You are still playing vs pool, but this time in black and white, its not bad and its been so long we don't know if there is a trick shot mode. Its not in English but there is no real language barrier to playing any of them.

Lawrence Logic

2012-01-08T16:08:00.000Z

It may or may not have escaped your attention that the outcome of the recent Stephen Lawrence cold case trial has finally arisen. The jury have deliberated and decided to hand down ~~a ritual decapitation~~ a guilty verdict to both defendants. Currently they will serve 30 years between them and there are calls for the rest of the gang to face trial untill they are found guilty and have large root vegetables shoved up their fundaments for the rest of their lives. Possibly while wearing Oswald Moseley masks in some seedy dungeon/prison cell.

If the above seems ludicrous then its no more than what the press have been reporting regarding this outcome,
First of all you would need concrete proof, a confession from either David Norris or Gary Dobson or evidence either fresh (as in the recent blood evidence from the cold case trial) or reexamined from that collected at the time. Wishful thinking will NOT be enough in this case, only a strict reexamination of all evidence, or a confession will succeed here.

From what I gather the original investigation would be best described as Clouseauesque in its execution, (certainly the Lawrence family were badly served by the police in this regard) with several flaws in the way evidence was stored and how the overall case itself was handled. Hopefully a lot has been learned through Macpherson (and evidence collection and storage procedures) so that this does not happen again.

Anyway we are not knocking the outcome, it may have taken 18 years, a change in the law and a cold case review to finally bring his killers to justice and peace of mind to his family.

As a side note, reading through the Mails press coverage, on how our area has changed (like my blog post on horrible answers to difficult questions but much more eloquently put) I came across an AIDS theory I heard from someone at sixth form in the 1990's. The theory goes that AIDS was spread to the Human population due to africans having sex with Green Monkeys. Which is of course bollocks.

I'd blocked it out due to vagaries of memory at the time (that and the person who said it, was a racist) so it was completely odd to see it come up again after all these years.

TV and Video Review of Last year.

2012-01-01T15:52:00.000Z

RIP Jimmy

We should have added this at christmas, but here, dragged into the unblinking light is a round up of some of the highlights of last year you could have seen on your tellybox. Or in some cases monitor.

Here with further ado is our list of stuff for 2011.

Best video by a bacon hungering dog. Ultimate dog tease.

Though its nothing but an alsation dog dubbed with a funny voice. Its pretty well observed and funny to boot. Bacon. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Best YTP not to involve ponies. Fesh Pince of Blair, Dikeike.

Twenty minutes of Will Smith would normally drag but its YTP and more importantly its Dikeike so you know your getting filth and a massive dose of saas. Notable for the phrase Uncle funkle and Carleton getting a sandwich, its my pick of the year.

Best YTP involving Michael Rosen. A Michael Rosen Christmas, CS188.

I must have seen about a hundred or so Michael Rosen videos and still can't see how something so quintessentially English got so big. They always seemed to have his books in school when I was growing up and we always shunned them in favour for Choose Your Own adventures or playing had instead.   Michael seems resigned to his fate as a YTP source, and thanks to Imperial Lobster and Katanasoul we've had many great Michael YTPs over the years. My favourite is however CS188's A Michael Rosen Christmas, with Michael adding 'Plams' to his christmas tree before zooming off to deliver presents to a largely ungrateful population, and not a single joke about him fiddle diddling with his sister at all.

TV Show of the year. Life in the cold or whatever its called.

Y'know the one with David Attenborough and its in the poles. Whatever its called it wins simply for their footage of a rock stealing Adelie Penguin (not Adele Penguin thats another type of large bird entirely).

Runner Up. Special When Lit.

PBS (Americas BBC4) is now available in the UK and on bangers night they showed this, reverent homage to the pinball industry. All its oddballs and all its enthusiasts given equal time in the limelight without taking the piss at all. We'd also like a charming Documentary involving Japanese College Baseball taken into consideration as well, I think it was called KokoYakyu.

Best Royal Wedding. Jean Michel Jarre concert Prince of Monaco Wedding.

Our own royal wedding bored me shitless, but this whole concert in tribute to the marriage of the prince of Monaco to his runaway bride, on Euronews was the bomb.

Best discussion of a national event.   DJO does the Royal wedding.

Applejuice, Kill Jordy, Jesus is a raisin. If you don't know what or indeed who the DayJob Orchestra are, search out their Star Trek vids on Youtube.   They are Canadians that redub old videos and add their own hideous lipsynching instead. DJO has its big old Appleparty doing the royal wedding of Tom Middleton to Prince William.

Best Advert. Avios.

One of those search engines where you compare things. Who cares, there are floating washing machines and a cool song by Leila Arab.

Finally we come to our very special Miranda Awards for Televisual Unexcellence. The first annual bad television awards, named in honour of the grossly unfunny sitcom of the same name.

Winner (by a country mile) The Royal Bodyguard.

We lost John Sullivan this year, so this means no Rock N Chips and no Green Green Grass of Home or Fools n Horses ever. Which means David Jason has to eke out his pension in this misfiring mix of Mr Bean and pomp and ceremony. I lasted 5 minutes about the same as I did for Miranda, before putting him out of his misery.

Runner up. Towie Any season any episode.

Worst costume Drama. Downs syndrome Abbey. (Downton Abbey)

Put the chicken stealing cat in from series 1 and then we'll talk. We liked the Norwich union ads its a shame that they were ruined by being sandwiched between some boring show.

Worst Internet fad. Nyancat.

Irritating Vocaloid song added to a sprite of a half pop tart half cat trailing a rainbow behind it. If you haven't seen it consider yourself blessed.

Peter you lost the news.

2011-12-29T17:31:00.001Z

We'd like to wish you a very previous happy new year. Sunday's service will of course be in 2012 and next year we'll be all dead due to doomsday (lol) so without further ado we'll leave you with a few downbeat bits and pieces.

For some unknown reason, we can't have nice things anymore, Adobe won't support Vista 64bit so you won't hear truly excellent radio unless you of course go looking for it. NHK have stopped their support for NHKWorld SD, which means I'm left rudderless at lunchtime without me daily dose of NHKWorld (it does survive in HD format but my TV is not HD.) Which leaves you with a quandary, where do you go for gentle news and magazine format TV.

French news in English from France24 (pronounced Vingt Quatre rather than Twenty Four), isn't half bad, and reminds me a bit of old MTV Europe before it lost its soul somewhere in the late 90's. Their arts program is run by straight haired Kate Humble lookalike Eve Jackson and is pretty darn good.

Regular European news is provided by nondescript tv channel Euronews it does the job without being remotely interesting. Best thing ever was a broadcast of Jean Michel Jarres concert for the wedding of the prince of Monaco. Worst thing calling Brian May, Brian Man, in a tribute to Freddie Mercury.

Fox news seems to broadcast Fox and Friends First Live, a bizarre mix of robots masquerading as presenters and a right wing bias for each and every story. I don't care about republicanism or the soulless automatons who present it, so its often switched over in a hurry.

China has two news channels that are bland beyond words, and Russia seems to thrive on something called the Keyser report. Which leaves Arabic slanted news al Jizzura (Al Jazeera) and the soon to be fucked Press TV which is just weird. Owned by the Iranian government it adds mainly arab issues such as a march to celebrate Ashoura in London and various other pork barrel issues and relations. By that time i've either finished my lunch or Piers Moron is on CNN which means its time to move on.

We'll leave you with the news that Berkeley University have unearthed some recordings from telephone pioneer, Alexander Graham Bell. Its most interesting, do have a look dear.

Merry Boxing Day

2011-12-26T16:06:00.000Z

Last Years Boxing day review em up was actually quite well received so here is the year 2011 in review.

Over the past year we have had arabs springing, tyrants falling like ninepins, the tragedy of the Tohoku region earthquake and related fall out of the Tepco disaster and closer to home, rioting scum.

Today we'll not be talking about any of those things but instead be focusing on music.
Here are the best tunes according to me of 2011.

Best tune delivered by an Alison Moyet lookalike.
Adele Someone like you.
A good tune completely overkilled by relentless play on commercial radio, its still good but horribly horribly familiar.

Best Dubstep / Funky / Wonky or what ever the gangsta kids are calling bass house now.
Katy B Easy Please me.
This isn't bad but to me the whole track is just getting warmed up in my opinion, (we'd dearly love a clean acapella of this to add a massive Juno monster style electro house break to) still hate the whole genre as a whole.

Best attempt at a 1990 style Daisy age rap track.
Olly Murs feat Rizzle Kicks Heart Skips a Beat.
Yes it really does sound like the mutant offspring of Beats Internationals Dub Be Good To Me, and thats all due to Rizzle Kicks old school rapping. Olly is of course the runner up from TVs popular X factor which means I have officially sold out.

Best YTPMV of the year.
Pinkie Pie Swear Flutterwonder.
Looks like MLP Friendship is creepy is showing no signs of slowing down, but if we get more stuff like this its not too bad.

Best track ruined by rapping.
Wretch 32 featuring Josh Kumrah Don't Go.
Seriously cut the rap out of this and add some old house style to this and it'll be pretty boss, Wretch 32 brings fuck all to the table and when he's culled from the track it actually improves.

Best acid track of the year.
Acid Symphony Orchestra Live in concert.
I only saw this on youtube a few days ago but damn, these guys know how to jack a silver box. Composer is of course Jori Hulkonnen (Zyntherius amongst others) and the line up includes Jesper Dahlbeck and Mr Velcrofastener along with the cream of the Scandinavian techno / electro scene.

Best track by Russell Brands wife
Katy Perry Last Friday Night.
Kind of 80's film homage to this, wouldn't sound out of place in a remake of Ferris Buellers Day out. She's a geek in this and Rebecca Black is her neighbour and that. Chorus works better over old disco than the main track.

Best Techno.
Legowelt The TEAC Life.
Autistic techno that sometimes misfires, but when it does hit, damn its like 1987 all over again. Available for free in file format and in 4x12 at decks.de for the purists out there. Aww yeah.

Best House.
Myriadd Beyond this life EP.
Dark Larry Heard like reverance here, from the guy who used to be Mantra on Bunker Records. Your getting some dark old school melodies here and nothing can stand in its way.

Best end of television show montage theme glorifing the third reich.
Saga Snow Fell.
You know that music you get at the end of CSI or the show where the main criminal has been caught and they show a montage of shots. You know the type, the kidnapped child has been reunited with their concerned parents, the masked rapist has been caught and there is a shot of Delko and Calleigh grinning in the lab. Its that kind of music that plays, just that it glorifies fallen nazis instead of some random folky guitar thing.

Finally with all these bests there has to be a worst and these tracks actually fit the bill.

Rebecca Black Friday. Not as worse as Bieber singing under the mistletoe but its pretty close.

Cher Lloyd Swagger Jagger. No mark rapping over the old Huckleberry hound song Clementine as you can imagine its awful.

Maroon 5 Moves Like Jagger. The second stones inflicted horror here, complete with bad rock and Christina Aguilera. I'd rather move like Crouchy if its all the same.

Little Tits Cannonball. Girlband made up of remnants from X Factor that went on to win XFactor and makes my ears bleed.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T16:27:00.003Z

We'll be adding a couple of things here over the next few days, just think of them as the sixpence in your christmas pudding and that but as a placeholder, we'll add have a happy christmas and leave you with a few talks from the excellent Applemasks youtube channel.

A Few PSP Updates

2011-12-18T17:16:00.002Z

An update regarding the PSP, Sony's handheld version of the Sega Saturn (of course not, but that is how its ended up). We have a few new games to review and poke over we're not sure what we reviewed last time but a kick up the archives will tell us. We also have new Custom Firmware added so all the analogue stick problems have been abolished. We use Godman Firmware, and XMB Center which is pretty neat and though you may have your own favourite firmware to use.

Review wise we'll start off with:

Castlevania: The Dracula X chronicles.

A 2.5D remake of Chi No Rondo for the PC Engine CD and a few unlockables such as the original PC Engine game and Castlevania Symphony of the night. Rondo of Blood is something you'll be playing a lot of, its the default game and as such its probably the most unfamiliar of the lot. Its a fairly straightforward pre Metroidvania Platformer, think Super Castlevania with bells on and a few branching paths, taking the merman path on stage 2 will net you Maria if you grab the key as well, and somewhere in stage 3 will unlock Symphony of the night. Its also old school hard, you'll need your wits about you as your energy will be depleted in no time flat.

Symphony of the night is the least messed with, it has the intro changed, no longer will Dracula say "miserable little pile of secrets" or "HEWmans wish to pay me Tribute". From the cursory glance, its not bad, though we totally beat it back in the day.
7/10

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth.

This is one of my favouite games of all time, I ended up spending £50 on this back around 2000, (we originally came across it as a pirate and when we found it for sale we just had to get it officially). The PSP version cost me £6, preowned, and is for all intents and purposes the same as the PS1 original, except the anime cut scenes are now fully rendered in 3D. I kinda miss the artwork and that, but they kept the voices intact, so you get Megan Hollingshead as the lovely lady Valkyrie, and Veronica Taylor as Freya and the Ash Ketchumish Fuyuki the Fisherboy ;0).

Its a non standardish RPG, you get a set amount of time to explore and collect the souls of the slain, there are a few dungeons to explore and bosses to encounter, but it plays more like a platformer with Lenneths ability to shoot ice crystals and jump. Combat is realised through turn based beat em up action, you can chain a few combos and block and counter. Its pretty good with for once a strong female lead and a nicely written script. If you find it for sale then please get it.
9/10

UK Championship Snooker.

2011-12-11T14:52:00.001Z

You were supposed to get an update to Let My Body Exceed Me but both the camera and scanner let us down. We have a picture but its massive and in PiNGas format, so we won't bother uploading it.

Thanks to flash being a cunt and not allowing the IFM player on 64bit Vista (yeah we run that so deal with it) you probably won't get inspiring radio from the guys at Intergalactic.fm. So I'll just have to hot link to IFM directly.

Oh and Freecorder seems to be working with Firefox. Applians Borderline spyware audio recording toolbar has been a mainstay on my desktop for a while now. Thanks to my onboard soundcard not letting us do anything but play sounds (really its a challenge to configure music programs, Renoise won't acknowledge our VSTs and its only free stuff like Aodix or tempremental stuff like Psycle that will give us the full DAW experience).

Here are a few tips if you're running freecorder.

Uninstall the Conduit engine, really who wants an app store with a sound recorder, and its works fine without it.

Get rid of the search bar from Firefox toolbars, and scale back in the toolbar options what it displays and has out, oh it'll also grab videos from most places so click the film strip now and again and prune all you don't need from there.

Snooker.
So, the Championships then, not only has it thrown up some good matches and fully showcasing some new talent, but this years looks like to be one of the oddest yet. Not only has it thrown up the first black snooker player I've seen, its also seen a lot of the top seeds go out leaving Mark Allen to fight it out with up and coming star Judd Trump for the winners spot.

Mark came through to the final beating Ricky Walden 9-7 (despite never making it past Semi final in a major tournament before) quite convincingly seeing as he was down 5-3 at one point .

As well as having no real seeds in the main final, its also the first Championship final between two left handed players. At the moment we haven't a clue what the score is but we will be watching the evening session to see who eventually wins.

More race based tat.

2011-12-04T10:08:00.001Z

I don't enjoy this political stuff much. I'm on the wrong side of the left wing (weakly right wing and life long Lib Dem supporter) and the wrong colour for starters for us to comment without someone screaming that I'm just a prejudiced cracker, who knows nothing. Here are a few updates and a comment.

An update to Demographics and Stephen Lawrence.

Been watching the Lawrence cold case inquiry with interest, and it seems from reports that from errors of storage that they actually had the equivalent of the Keystone Cops for forensic examination and storage. I can see this going to end up with an unsatisfactory result, either acquittal or a short jail term for those involved.

What I failed to mention from that report is that the extent of black on black homicides have risen in my area to more than the Boneheaded Nazi Ponces at the BNP ever achieved. Its something I would need to research more to get exact figures but for starters here is just one such case, (warning illiterate Daily Mirror link). As a my only commenter added, its hardly an improvement, and its true. Gang culture and the riots have really hampered my areas chances of improvement (to be honest Woolwich was in decline long, long before this, due to the closure of the arsenal). We're getting there with Beresford Square opening and a few shops recovering, but I look around and still see areas burnt out from the riots, clearly we have a long way to go.

Snookers back, and for once its quite interesting, there's a black guy playing and he isn't half bad. He's called Rory Mcleod and I thought he was a new face on the scene, but it turns out he's been playing since 2005 (he beat Paul Hunter shortly before he tragically died of cancer).

Sorry for my shock and incredulity in the above, but despite there being no barriers now, sometimes you see something you don't expect and it throws you for a loop. Like an Indian playing top flight football in Premiership or a white working class lad reading Proust on a train (that'll never happen). Sadly looking online it seems that he got knocked out by John Higgins (last I saw he was leading 4-3) but once they are good enough to appear in the televised stages, you normally see a lot more of them.

Round Pup

2011-11-27T15:06:00.001Z

We'll not lie to you its been a crap old week. Various stuff has taken its toll including my first copyright strike on Youtube and various stuff with relatives which although I won't talk about, will say isn't great.

On the plus side I managed to find something which I've been looking for for ages. A parody of Walk Like an Egyptian by The Swinging Erudites called simply Walk With An Erection. I am easily pleased and to be honest, am expecting this to suck balls. I saw this at a bootsale about 10 years back along with some other stuff (someones Neo Geo Rom collection plus Neo Rage to play on my then wreck of a PC).

Copyright cunts again.

To be fair its full title would be retroactive copyright cunts. Two claims including All4Media and Orchard Music have filed copyright claims and that tipped it onto my first copyright strike. For further info it takes about 10 copyright claims to gain your first strike. This involves filling in a damn fool questionnaire and watching a copyright is wrong message which I think involves the happy tree friends. We also had a video removed which, we would have done anyway. (We went too far TBH, never mix clips of TOWIE with home made porn music). Incidentally we own the copyright to the music so we uploaded a dub version with home made artwork.

Orchard music are representatives for Jappo and Lancinghouse and I suspect a lot of the other ID&T artists,
yeah I was surprised to see that as well.

Hing Hon Soundfont.

Hing Hon in the front, cat not included.

This is sampled from an especially cheap and nasty synth that you got with certain mail order catalogues, and quite possibly market stalls and boot sales. It contains 8 instruments and 3 drum samples, and crucially for us a headphone port so we can sample the sounds. We may improve this with better samples of the main instruments so I'll not be uploading it just yet. We'll take samples of some of the soft bends you get, there's more details here for those interested, but for the impatient, you can trigger some crazy sounds by holding down two of the instrument keys, and playing the normal keys. Organ and music box is quite nice if I remember correctly.

Horrible answers to difficult questions.

2011-11-20T15:10:00.001Z

Instead of the usual round up of stuff. We have a variety of statements to ask (directed at noone in particular).
They are often unpalatable questions mainly about religion but one is cultural and regards demographics in my local area. We'll split them over a couple of posts so you don't get bogged down.

I hope you don't take offence but in case your all fired up to take offence, take a look at this video first and then come back with an open mind.

Question 1.
If Stephen Lawrence lived and died in the same circumstances today, due to demographics, he would be more likely to die in black on black related crime than as a result of a racist attack.

There is a current, ongoing court case, based on new DNA evidence found through new sequencing techniques, which means that this is headline news again. I can't point fingers or accuse but what I will say is this, in true CSI style we will let the evidence decide if they are guilty or not and leave it to the lawyers to bicker over whether its legitimate transfer evidence or contaminated in storage.

For those uninitiated with the incident, the original crime took place in Well Hall in 1993, and was a totally unprovoked racially motivated crime. Stephen was stabbed twice with a 12" knife, and despite there being several eyewitnesses, the case collapsed and the main suspects were acquitted. The Daily Mail calling the main suspects murderers and threatened them to sue for defamation. There is a plaque set in the ground to commemorate where he eventually collapsed and died. It is under video surveillance and woe betide anyone who messes with it.

Fast forward 18 years and a lot has changed. For once the BNP isn't as strong as it was here, thanks mainly to the closure of the BNPs bookshop in Upper Wickham Lane. I've blogged about this before, but mainly it wasn't a landmark to the right for local folk, just a squalid little house with blue shutters that took up space that could be used for regular housing or retail. I'm not sure how or indeed why it was closed in the end, I have memories of seeing a news report that it was structually unsound and had to close, but that could be just a bad memory. Anyway in the prevailing 18 years our demographics have changed completely.

When I was little, there was precious few non white people here, and those that were were almost exclusively asians. There was a largeish community of Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis something that wouldn't change to about mid 2000's, and only a few folk from the Afro Caribbean community. To be honest, Stephen Lawrences murder wasn't the only racially motivated killing in our area. There was also Rolan Adams* and Rohit Duggall, but these have been largely forgotten about and are never mentioned, ever.

In about 2004 - 2005 we started seeing more Africans appear along with Eastern Europeans. Lewisham always used to be the place where there was a large Afro Caribbean stronghold and over time they moved into the surrounding suburbs especially Thamesmead and Plumstead. We also, due to this change in demographics, got a lot more black on black crime, with a few kids murdered in gang related crime. There are probably still some racists here, you'll never totally eradicate that sort of mindset, but they are definitely less of them around. As an example, most of the places I new as a kid including the Coronet Cinema in Woolwich, are now Evangelist churches, which shows how much the population has changed over time.

So in short, due to population changes, Stephen Lawrence would, if he was a teenager today, be more at risk from black on black violence than racist attacks.

Round Up time again

2011-11-13T14:47:00.001Z

I'll not lie to you this post is largely updates from hell, and a bit on Children in Need. At least my chest infection is finally beaten, Yay.

Looking through old gaming magazines we found an ad for a game shop in Trading World. This is about the first confirmation in print that I've seen stuff from Trading world.

Now this is odd, I can't actually remember blogging about this, though I must have done so here is a recap for those who missed out. For the uninitiated, Trading world was in the early to mid nineties, a small market stall place that dealt with all sorts of places. There was a few game stalls that dealt with either computer stuff (we saw the Amiga Version of Giana Sisters running here) and possibly the place above that dealt with console stuff. They had a few TVs running stuff, mainly Cyberlip for Neo-Geo and Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts. They really did only have a small stall but was packed with goodies. Actually they had Marchen Maze running so its probably a part of that entry. After a while Trading World closed and became a Primark.

(We were right, looking through this, its part of the Marchen Maze Entry. Oh as an added bonus they used to have NES games in a little wooden cabinet at the back too, they had Legend of Zelda in its Golden box).

No need for Children in Need.

This is largely horrible, but we have a telethon here called Children in Need. If you wonder why we have such venom about helping hapless kiddies its because its trailed for over a month before hand gathering steam before it kills all before it. The whole non optional you must donate, rather than leave it up to you, rankles with me especially. I have no interest in helping kiddies or donating to a charity that I have no interest in, and when that is trailed endlessly or invade other programmes to ask celebrities to donate, well thats just evil.

For instance Terry Wogans show has a lot of middle class folk paying out a lot of cash for pointless bollocks, such as a trip to Downton Abbey or to live inside a shoebox. These are not small sums either but £8-10 grand, just to simply to say we've done that and get one over your neighbours. In fact you could level this at comic relief too, that goes on too long as well. On the night it'll be hideous shit like the cast of Eastenders doing minstrel songs or Newsreaders pretending to be Lady Gaga. Sorry thats not entertainment that just makes my skin crawl.

I'm not some tight assed git who doesn't donate, if it involves puppies or kittens I'm liable to punt 10p toward them. I buy music and books in charity shops, and spend my £15 annually to the BCSS and more for their seed list. Its just that I despise the constant hard sell the BBC does, month long juggernauts of advertising, earn your spots, I'd rather it earned them a kick up the arse.

Pins and Arcades

2011-11-06T16:07:00.001Z

Hello we are still coughing up our brains, this chest infection is tenacious and yes we are on antibiotics for our sins, 4 pills a day, you can read up on what I'm on here for the terminally curious. Oh and reading its list of stuff to cure, its also used in clearing up Syphillis.

Special When Lit.

For some reason we now get PBS in the UK, (why its only Americas answer to BBC2 / 4 stuff we already have). However looking at this we do appreciate a decent channel for documentaries, Discovery and its many offspring don't really cut it now, maybe they should go back to showing Beyond 2000, instead of infesting a good documentary with awkward cut scenes. Oh and Neo Geo-graphic is no better with its infinite shows about Jesus. Apparently Jesus was a Raisin and that is that.

Anyway PBS not only get away with it by being Americas BBC4, but by showing a show on Bonfire night of all things a documentary about Pinball. You wouldn't think it fun but the assorted collectors, players and designers anectdotes and recollections made the show. I never knew that most of the first print run of pinball cabs were shipped to Europe due to sheer demand. I only remember seeing one original cab and I think it was a Monte Carlo in a bar in Cyprus of all places, so can well imagine that. They interviewed a total pinball nut, whose house was totally dedicated to pinball, he looked like a geek version of Chong but was totally awesome.

It was'nt all pinfans, they took a good look round Sterns factory in Chicago (home of Pinball and house music) where they were hand assembling Pirates of the Caribbean tables and possibly the one pin that got me more into pinball in a big way. (Not so much that I'll have a real cab, but if I see a real life cab abroad or home I'll punt cash into it.) Their boss is pretty much what I expected a real boss to be and seems a joy to work for.

A few of the old designers looked like they were originally mob related including one that looked just like a Vic Reeves drawing of a gangster. They were bemoaning Pinballs demise in relation to the rise of the arcade game.
Apposite really as both are doomed now, to big ride style games and the occasional cab harking back to the good old days. Pinball and the arcades are doomed, we've blogged before on losing the Troc and Various arcade games down at the Leisure Casino or Casino Leisure. To be honest we've lost an awful lot of places and not just pinball which was tied into pub culture here, (my first go was some dudes replay from the Sublime Addams Family pinball in a pub about 18 years back).

When I think of the arcades in and around Woolwich, Herbert road had a few for us Poly boys out on lunch (bastard hard to do now they've shut the old school and moved to Thamesmead about 2 miles away). For lower school kids (our school was split into two sites) there was an excellent place opposite the Waterfront that had excellent stuff. A fishing Pinball and a sit down Chase HQ greeted you. When you got inside there was Megablast, a Galaxy force cab and a Buggy Boy, further down was the main draw before Streetfighter 2 came on the scene, Golden Axe and yes people really used to talk about playing on it before Streetfighter crushed all before it. They had a Vimana and an Exvania cab too but no one ever talked about playing those.
Later when we used the Waterfront leisure centre for games, me and a mate used to pony up lunch money to play King Of Dragons. Like I said it was halcyon days and if you wished to emulate then MAME, RAINE, or FBA would be an excellent starting place if only to see what we have lost. Pinball is well supplied in Visual PinMame a mix of Editor and Emulator, so noone has an excuse to miss out on our golden years.

Champions

2011-10-31T16:17:00.002Z

I'm still coughing my lungs up but hopefully, its on remission. We've, got a new drink, a tradtional English drink, for when you are sick. Its called Lucozade and maybe marketed as sports / energy drink, was for a long time delivered glucose energy to the poorly, hence me grabbing a bottle. No glass bottle this time, its fully plastic and as its a limited edition is a cola. For Americans or just damn lucky Brits, it tastes a lot like Jones Cola, which is a cane sugar coke which is wonderful. As its Lucozade its a lot easier to get than Jones Soda here so if you come across it and are in need of energy don't hesitate to buy.

Captain Tsubasa

For some of you this will be familiar to you, but just goes to show how the UK missed out especially in the mid 90's. The original game was done by Tecmo and was sort of a football game which takes place entirely in box out shots describing the action. The game came across to Europe but I don't remember seeing it on the shelves. Most NES football games are of course completely evil and shouldn't be touched with a bargepole.
Unless is Technos Nintendo World cup, which is still shit but allows complete carnage.

In fact this was a long running franchise that included Manga and Anime. The Anime was localised for Europe under the name Campeones and had a big following worldwide. There is a link to a version in English called Flash Kicker, but just leads to dead ends and clearly non English versions.

This is the best we can do, English subs that you can imagine sung by the players of the day, Maybe even Glenn Hoddle.

Flash Kickers licence was owned by Enoki Films, they seem to have a long list of obscure Anime, like Inspector Fabre, based on the Entomologist of the same name and got a total WTF when I saw it on Spanish Kids TV. They also hold most if not all the Captain Tsubasa licenses which they license to Mainland Europe. England loves its football and when they came out in the late 80's noone knew what Manga was save for Robotech and Lensman on Premiere (later Sky Movies). Mainstream was a bust, Channel 4 showed only the violent stuff at Midnight, and Sci Fi Showed some tamer stuff, If you consider Mangas Sweary version of Appleseed, orHell City Shinjuku Tame. Sky one or Nick would have been your only home for kids manga. With Foxs Peter Pan and Tokusatsu shows like the Power Rangers. Nick had the updated version of Speed Racer which came to the BBC.

Flash Kicker would have certainly have entertained English kids. Most of us grew up playing football with jumpers for goalposts in a local green space. I've yet to see kids do that now, but 80's kids were different.
Depending on the dub, whether American or English (likely in the early days, but not now), I'm sure it would have taken off either as Flash Kicker or simply renamed as Champs, it would only take a forward looking BBC or ITV to add it to their afternoon schedules, maybe even have Andy Crane Introduce it.

But it didn't happen, it simply rattles around the continent in various dubs, ITV did actually licence a football Cartoon, but its only the barely remembered Hurricanes.

Lately there is Inazuma Eleven by Layton Creators Level 5, but its dubbed by yanks (who know nothing of real football) with various Japanese names left in. What I saw was a keeper use a punch shot which he called a Fire punch, which was subbed as Fire Kobushi, an entirely unnecessary elaboration.

One of these days they'll show Champions dubbed, but I'm getting its a long day in hell.

Dreams of Trevor Chester and worse.

2011-10-23T16:00:00.001+01:00

My whole body system is down with a tenacious flu virus at present, so am typing this Ted style with a blanket over my head.

I.e. ultra conservative Muslims

The bastard made itself known on Tuesday, coming in from work all I could do was sleep, we had a prior engagement (an eyetest which resulted in some handsome new glasses), and for the next 3 days it pitched between being zombie style lucid and trying to sleep.

Its not cheese that gives you nightmares its flu. First I kept generating L shaped tetris blocks whenever I coughed, and if you cough a lot believe me they build up. The next night was the complete opposite, the golden age of rave with full on psychedelia at a breakneck pace. We tried our best to work with this and would have made an absolute blinding video back in the day. The third day was more sinister dealing with being accused in dream of being a paedo, (I'm not, but see those afflicted as having a type of psychosexual compulsion). Oh and you are only a paedo if the child you fiddle diddle is under 13, you are thanks to Wikipaedia, known as an ephebephiliac which means lover of the young. My dreams are lucid and we decided we'll pray to the God who'll help. See above, yeah we even renamed the evil accuser as Death Adder.

Wheres yer child?

Its sort of normalling down now, so this sort of shit should become a thing of the past soon.

But now I'm fired up and we'll might as well as give you a proper post on who Trevor Chester was.

Trevors

There was a proper kids entertainer called Charlie Chester and while not on television in the mid 80s to 90s, was probably known about through kids parents and grandparents. Its an obvious rhyme to child molester, see above, the sort of dodgy Trevor who tried to show kids puppies and give car lifts that we were warned about.

Trevor is possibly a corruption or mishearing of this and spread through our playground, 4chan had Pedobear lifted from 2chan, we had a corrupted Charlie Chester. Peace and indeed out.

Ambient track is best relaxing track ever.

2011-10-17T17:34:00.000+01:00

In other news bears shit in woods and the Pope is confirmed to be a Catholic after serious doubts.

To be fair we havent heard of Marconi Union before and if it wasn't for this spurious top ten for Radox Shower gel then I probably wouldn't have either, to put you out of your misery the track can be listened to here. If you are wondering about the rest of the list if its made out of Oophoi or Lustmord tracks then you're SOL. Though Adele Someone like you is there which is intriguing as its in the running for my favourite track of the year.

Something else that is entirely relaxing, and we've fully romanized the title for this, was the Mystery Playstation game for our Yokai game round up. It is Ore no Shikabane o Koete Yuke, and yeah thanks to my shit Japanese we had to fix up our translation in JDICT so we could google it. It looks really nice and has a relaxing theme song. If you speak Japanese and or just dig a nice acapella the homepage is here. Made by Alfa System who if memory serves correct did the excellent Shikigami no Shiro series of shmups for Naomi hardware and PS2 (we have a Pal localisation courtesy of Play it under the name Castle Shikigami 2).

Translated loosely as something like And My Corpse Transcends Me, its a mix of RPG and Sim where you are cursed by a Demon and all your resultant offspring have really short lives, you have to manage them to try and break the demons curse. You can download the original Playstation version here, where we culled most of the info from. Looks pretty good as far as yokai games go, but a word of warning it was never localised so you'll need pretty hefty Japanese skills to get anything out of this.

Rainbow Islands NES Variations

2011-10-16T16:29:00.001+01:00

We were largely ignorant of this in general but there are three different versions of Rainbow Islands for the NES. We were largely intrigued by an entry in Mean Machines as a child, they had ads that would sell NES but more likely SNES stuff mail order. Rainbow Islands, on the NES its gonna be awesome right and we had a converted NES it'll be a no brainer too, sadly my dad shot it down no way was I gonna spend my cash on something that may or may not work. Still the point was moot, a few months later and Ocean announced that they had ported it over to the European market and I didn't have to bother importing.

Mean Machines gave it a lack luster 67% and we managed to pick it up reasonably cheaply so it wasn't so bad. We even with some continue bug managed to beat it back in the day and that was it. So it was much to our surprise that looking in Stuart Campbells excellent column on Bubble Bobble that we found out that our version of Rainbow Islands was so very different to everyone elses.

Nice Looking: Horribly Executed

For starters we'll deal with both the NES and Famicom versions in one Potted entry, as apart from the US version not having the proper Somewhere Over The Rainbow theme and English Localisation they are entirely identical. They seem to have been done in conjunction with Disco who were responsible for Panic Restauarant / A Crafty Chef in Gourmet World amongst others.

Imagine if you will someone suffered amnesia whilst playing Rainbow Islands and at a later date when waking up in hospital, had brief flashbacks to Rainbow islands: that it was some sort of cutesy platformer and it involved collecting jewels of some sort and there were 7 or so islands but apart from that its all a blur.

THIS IS WHAT THE AMERICAN & JAPANESE VERSIONS PLAY LIKE. It looks nice and the items you pick up are of a decent size, but everything else sucks balls. For starters the main level structure has been totally obliterated. Gone are the arcade layouts which even the lowly ZX Spectrum and C64 managed to keep (along with multiload to contain all the world data) and even worse added flick screen scrolling so it doesn't even act like the original.   They still have all the levels... just. Added in this version is a world based on Ki Ki Kai Kai possibly at the expense of toy world (we haven't got that far yet). The worst of the worst comes in the Boss levels that seemingly now sprout a Megaman style power bar not seen in any other 8bit version.

One major plus point is that the boss sprites are surprisingly huge, and you can talk to various people at the end when you defeat it. The only way to see your score is on the main level stage screen and Rainbow gems show up but only as the word rainbow and looks ultimately perfunctory and naff.   Overall we give you a 4/10.
Generic Platformer Masquerading as Rainbow islands.

Edit the boss creatures are named the helicoper is called Super Helibow.

Oceans Rainbow Islands.

This is the version we did get as a kid as well as the much cheaper C64 version. From the off you could see that Ocean actually put in some severe effort to port this. There are no vague notions to the arcade levels here. All the enemies are present and correct here as are the correct layouts. Theres no flick screen scroll as it has proper scrolling. There is still no Somewhere over the Rainbow Theme, however the tune they did use is quite nice, level end themes and boss themes are intact. My only gripe is that the gems you collect as well as the bonus items are too small, at least you get to fire three rainbows here unlike the US versions paltry 2.   Best of all boss screens get their proper layout with the correct lifebar and a back ground too. There is a secret room too, no talking to Bob here for items, collecting gems in order will make it appear in the boss room.

Finally it can be a git to get working on real hardware, lots of blowing is required for all Ocean games, however if your emulating its no problem.
Overall A great effort 7/10.

YOKAI Watch.

We still can't remember for the life of us a PSP port of an old PS1 Sengoku era Role player. And we forgot to add Fatal Frame, a photo based survival horror totally consistent with the vengeful ghost lore of last weeks yokai Review. We'll just dump this video here of Yokai Watch a new franchise from Professor Layton and the no chance of a new Dark Chronicle, publisher Level 5. Its last weeks mega review in a nutshell.

Edit We have found the mystery game in an copy of Famitsu and will try and romanize it. In the meantime have this.

The Great Yokai Encyclopaedia

2011-10-09T17:55:00.000+01:00

We are finally back online due to extreme downtime and of course Virginmedia being can'ts as usual. The upshot of this is we have a sparkling new review for you.

Thanks to SpAmazon we have a pandora battery to resurrect our PSP and a few new games to play on it.
This being Prinny Can I really be the Hero (Dood), Metal Slug Anniversary Comp and Valkyrie Profile Lenneth. Finally we have a big old book of monsters from CFZ press called the Great Yokai Encyclopaedia.

If you're sitting comfortably we'll be gin (groan ED).

The Great Yokai Encyclopaedia.

A massive manual of mythical monsters that appear in Japanese myth and legend. Comprising the familiar (Tengu, Kitsune, Kappa and Tanuki) with many that aren't (Ippon Datara a one legged blacksmith monster local to Mount Kumano area, and Tsuchigumo a massive earth spider.)

Sekiens Night parade of 100 demons.

They are generally well written articles for those well known monsters, including about 8 pages on Kitsune alone, however some of the least known only get a few lines or just one line. I've yet to fully look into whether they have much more info in Japanese, but its a little offputting to see. Much worse is the inconsistent texts, sometimes its bad romanization of Japanese names (we are fans of Macrons here rather than doubling up letters), though its often spelling mistakes and spellchecking as this example proves. I don't think the Buddha quelled a giant dessert in Mongolia but gee thats a great image, and possibly the greatest misprint i've seen.

As an anime nut I would have loved manga style artwork for these entries, but the art (and artist) they are using is good and reminds me of the old D+D Monster Manual stuff. Some of the scanned artwork from various sources is rather pixelly, however its always good to see old woodblock printed stuff.

The beginning has a massive section dealing with the various media that Yokai have appeared in including a look at Kaiju movies and Hideo Nakata's Ring Series. I never knew that Raichu was a direct take off of the thunder beast Raiju, though they are right in saying that Pokemon has a massive amount of mythical beasts in it and would take a book pointing them out. Sadly they never talk about video games and yokai in that context ever again, which we'll certainly do after this review.

All in all the book is a good read and while much more ruthless proofreading is required of it, is certainly worth the £14 they are asking for on the Center for Fortean Zoology website. Anyway where else can you find a parasitic Yokai that cause you to crave acidic food and live in your spleen.
7/10

The Not So Great Yokai Videogame Appendix.

Like I outlined above, there are plenty of games that let you experience the yokai at first hand. Its not just Pocket Monsters, where you can find yokai to play with, I'll outline some of the best Yokai experiences below with my top 5 Video Game Night Parade.

5: Pocky and Rocky Series (Ki Ki Kai Kai)

A series of games that pit you as a Miko (Shrine Maiden) called Sayo Chan and her Racoon buddy Manuke. Seemingly a vertical scrolling shooter from Taito this game is not only rock hard but stuffed full of yokai. From the lantern ghosts that swirl round as cannon fodder to the massive showdowns with 9 tailed foxes, this is one of the best old school shmups featuring Yokai. The original is available on the Tatio Memories 2 compilation for XBOX, PC and PS2. You'll need an emulator to get the original SNES games to play, but its worth it. More Info here.

4: Ganbare Goemon Series

A series of games that were never really translated here, only the N64 games and a SNES game ever made it out of Japan, however what did come out I can heartily reccommend. Based on the story of Ishikawa Goemon the Japanese Robin Hood, it stars Goemon, his hapless pal Ebisumaru and (in later games Ninjas Yae and Sasuke). Though obviously a comedy platformer, there are strong yokai themes in this one, including a village haunted by various obake and walking umbrellas, and Tanuki that is used as a save point.
You'll need an emulator to play both SNES and N64 games but its worth it.

3: Otogi.

This is a really obscure game released by From software for the Original XBOX only. You take the place of Raiko, a samurai assassin that was killed off and back to life to unleash vengence on demons. It had pretty good graphics and allowed you to wreak havoc on all sorts of demonic beings and mythical beings.
There is a walkthrough on youtube but its best watched on mute.

2: Shin Megami Tensei Series.

A vast series of games that revolve around you recruiting demons in some fashion. This sounds like a horrible paraphrase to the series but let it be said if you love both role playing games and Mythology then the Megaten series is the best. We would reccommend getting either of the later Persona games for PS2 or the remakes for PSP, for a more Modern day Japanese experience horror experience especially Persona 4 with its Ringesque investigation into a serial murder case in Inaba town. Theres still folklore and stuff but its more up to date and current as well.

1. Okami and Okamiden

The best Yokai game and another sprawling adventure game. You play as the incarnation of the goddess Amaterasu, reincarnted as a white wolf (providing a lovely double pun, Okami being wolf in Japanese and an honorable way of speaking of the gods), its loosely set in Sengoku era Japan (1500 ish) and has a massive array of yokai and characters from myth. The follow up Okamiden sees you as a puppy incarnation of Amaterasu and has even more yokai fun. You want Sugawara and Daidarabotchan (incarnated as a giant rabbit robot owned by the moon tribe) you got it. Evil cartwheels that roam around, oh yes, they even have Namahage as well in case you think they are being lazy. Best of all its still available for both Wii, DS and PS2 though Okamiden is DS only.

Conclusion. We omitted some of the Japanese only stuff including a whole series on GeGeGe no Kitaro that would never be translated officially in a million years, and a bizarre PS1 RPG thats getting a PSP Remake, that'll never be released in a million years in the west.

LunarCy

2011-09-25T17:29:00.000+01:00

Lunar Pool.

Well well well, that didn't take long to break, not only did my PSP die on my thanks to custom firmware gone badly wrong, but we also shorted the battery out while trying a hard mod. Pro tip when they say a battery can't be punctured or disassembled they mean it. We got a small spark and smoke (that smelled faintly of liquorice) that poured out of the side of the casing. On the other hand seeing as we have a 1000 model, getting a battery shouldn't too expensive.

My PSP woes are of course not what this is about, what we really want to write about is Lunar Pool or Lunar Ball for Famicom fans. Or rather, is Perfect Billiard its arcade only offspring of Lunar Pool.?

The game itself is a weird take on Pool, Tables start off looking normal and from round 3 onward evolve into something like crazy golf, with increasingly weird table layouts and pocket placements. Unlike regular pool there is no draw, side or screw shots, just a varying power bar and the overwhelming reliance on using this to move around the table. Further weirdness comes in that you are allowed to miss twice before a ball is taken from you, (of course a scratch or in off counts normally) so you could simply miss on purpose to set up a shot so you can sink it on the next hit. The game ends when you run out of balls.

Lunar Ball

Coming ridiculously late to our shores, though Gamefaqs has it as 1987 it was more like 1990 that I saw it in Dixons along with Noahs Ark an odd Konami Platformer that I may write on later. I only really discovered it through emulation, and thats where my reaserch starts and ends. I always thought it an anomaly, the only halfway decent game put out by Pony Canyon* (no Ultima doesn't count as that was originally by Origin) untill I started to look for something entirely unrelated (Real Break Academy actually, an arcade pool game that mixes engrish, bad voice acting and mild lewdness in one easygoing package). Downloading the orignal Japanese version we discovered that it was designed by Compile and released under the Pony Canyon name. (Incidentally that Niitani you see as director, is Moo Niitani, Compiles boss, and director of Puyo Puyo, Zanac and many more classic arcade games.) Incidentally the credit removal is the only change so far we've found between the Famicom / NES version.

Two more bizarre offshoots of this is that compile made an MSX version on Cart. Its still the same game but looks like its running on a C64 and the level layout is different too. Gone are the faux bas relief style tables and in comes normalish looking tables, though with wacky layouts still. It seems to have been designed by Shintani only and isn't too bad for an early 85 computer game, put it this way it, was up against Steve Davis Snooker for British Micros like the C64 and spectrum, and would have easily held its own if released on them. Finally we found out through related videos to Real Break Academy that there is a bizarre looking off shoot of the series called Perfect Billiard.

An obscure arcade game from Nihon Systems that seems to be their only game released.
We did a double take when we saw Youtube clips of it up and running, it is essentially the same game as Lunar Pool but it now looks like its running on an Amiga. They have a few new rules too, you can't take too long when taking a shot as it will cause you to lose a ball. I think they have dropped the miss rule mechanic too (we haven't played it much), however the main change is that they have changed your cue ball. Whereas in the original it was greyish, its now bright red and looks like you are smashing round a red from your snooker set. Its still an okayish game, but the changes make it rather odd. The main music has been changed for the worse and there is a nifty hiscore screen complete with groovy music too.

All in all thats where it ends, apart from a wiiware emu release, theres no stunning HD remake or even a brief update for iPhone or XBLA. In fact Compile are themselves defunct and are part of the mighty budget game empire of D4 enterprises (home of the Simple 1500 series) could (but won't) see it released along with other Compile IP on a compilation disc if we are lucky.

PS Polar Explorers

2011-09-18T16:41:00.004+01:00

We are on a full time mission here, not just to the north Pole, but to a much more stranger place. The destinaton, the uncharted regions of PSP Homebrew, oh and a fuller round up of PSP Games we now own.

PSP Games received.

Thanks to the major retailers clearing their decks of PSP games there is quite a lot of bargains to be had relating to PSP Stuff. There is precious little shovelware to wade through too which is a boon as the games themselves (including Betamax films Sorry UMD Films) will only be limited to a small shelf at best.

So far our list of PSP Games are limited to these three beauties.

Powerstone
Half Minute Hero
Valkyria Chronicles 2

Powerstone Capcom

These Two Fokkers came up behind me. (C) S Boardman 1973

A port of the two Dreamcast arena fighters, and to be honest I'm lame at them both. We played Powerstone 2
on DC back in the day and it was awesome, but for some reason the Powerstone series doesn't get a lot of lovin' by Capcom (A fate it shares with the Breath Of Fire series). Any of the characters would be a welcome addition to the Marvel VS Capcom register (we personally want Fokker and his biplane in as well as either Fou Lu or Deis from Breath Of Fire), the game is a whole load of fun for the 20 or so minutes I've played of it, however there is a big but and its not game related. The downside is this, my PSPs Dpad and sticks with some titles act like a man possessed moving around menus uncontrollably and controlling things I don't want controlled, its not game breaking here (Hello Valkyria) but its fucking annoying.

Oh before we forget, you can play the original VMU titles that came with the DC Memory stick as bonus games, you only get Fokkers Flying 'Shmup' at present but its a fun Game and Watch Style distraction.

No Score (what do you expect for 20min we aren't Official PSP Magazine)

Half Minute Hero Marvellous Entertainment/ Rising Star

The Princess Gawd Bless her.

This was Preowned and for what I payed (£6.98) is my PSPick of the three.

Its a top down RPG that plays like an old Megadrive RPG on steriods. Your premise, to stop a wizard reciting a spell that destroys the world, the downside, you got 30 seconds to stop him. In fact so crazy is this you'll probably see the end credit screen after 5 minutes. Its not that its brief, its just that its played at warp speed and the credits roll after the first world is cleared. You can still buy armour and items to equip or use like a regular RPG but everything is played at breakneck pace. All the battles are automatic and feature your usual assortment of JRPG weirdos. All the cutscenes are brief, unanimated, unvoiced and have blocky sprites, if it wasn't for the fact this is a PSP game and played at exteme speed it could easily be done on a Megadrive / PC Engine.

Bonus modes include Dark Hero 30 (an RTS that we haven't played) and Princess 30 a shmup that we have. Princess mode is quite odd, a shmup that sees you rescue an item in the 30 second limit and possibly fight a boss all at the same time. Your face buttons fire in each direction and let you target any enemies from your squad of soldiers. Oh yes you control your princess as she sits atop a squad of soldiers as they rush through the stage. Like the others you have 30 seconds to grab the item / person and get back otherwise its game over. Its manic and proves to be quite a lot of fun, especially the witty script.
We played this sufficiently to give it a 8/10

Valkyria Chronicles 2 Sega

This is the most expensive of the bunch (£15) and suffers the worst from the ghost in my machine, so much so its a lottery just what menu item you get or where on the battlefield you end up.

Its a turn based squad shooter that is a sequel to a PS3 game no one bought and shares a lot in common with Konamis Ring Of Red for the Playstation 2. It seems to be a weird parallel of World War 2 but this time involving a neutral country caught between what would be the axis and allied forces or game equivalent of such. We haven't played that much of it but to be honest its not that bad.
If I get my Weird DPad issues fixed I'll add a score here.

CFW.
So we have a brand spanking Custom firmware and a few emulators for PSP, So far I've got no homebrew or ISOs working only Emulators, it won't even acknowledge it other than say Corrupted file.

Stuff that I can play.

FCE Ultra port, works well with a few sound hiccups but hammers anything I can throw at it so far. (No FDS games as yet.)

Final Burn Alpha Port. At the moment it loads but all the roms I load in do not support it, which is a shame portable SF2 would be nice.

Finally a glossary of terms. Seeing as these aren't explained either.

OFW= Official Firmware that you get from Sony or from UMD Games. Won't let you run homebrew.
Latest version is at time of writing 6.60.
CFW= Customised Firmware downloadable from the Internet, will brick your PSP if you install wrongly, needs the correct firmware and a steady hand but can open it up as an emulation powerhouse if you do it right.
XMB= What your PSP Homescreen is called by dicks mainly.
More when I get them

Twin Towers day round up.

2011-09-11T15:35:00.000+01:00

Did you know its ten years to the day that 11/9 happened. Ten years since extremist cunts crashed a series of motherfucking 747s into the World Trade Centre (oh and the Pentagon). Ten years since we waged war in Afghanistan, and Iraq and we even shot Osama Top Banana for you in the name of good old Uncle Sam. You do, and that there's been extensive coverage of it all over the TV and everything, complete with special programming with sombre music and film clips of the planes crashing and everything. Wow. Looks like you're way ahead of me then.
Apart from my irreverance of it all, ( lets face it there was jokes rolling in a good day or two after the WTC went down. My favourite lays the blame squarely at the Janitorial staff.. Well they did leave the landing lights on.) there is nothing I can add that hasn't been said a good hundred times before.

RIP Buddy you'll be missed.

Ginger bows out at 19
We celebrated our own worst day last Sunday, soon after the blog went out, (about Nazi hedgehogs we believe) when my Dad came in crying. We lost Old Man Ginger, our cat of 19 years. He wasn't well for the past month or two, hanging out by the cooker and not moving far. Certainly not like him at all, he would always be in with us either tucked around on my lap or outside in the garden on the picnic table. We got him from a neighbour about 2 years ago, they called him Tails (they owned a cat called Sonic but unfortunately he got run over when Ginger was about 5ish). He came along to us when we had our old cat and ate her food and decided to make our house his official second home, moving in when we lost her back in 1998. Our neighbours got a second cat called Olly and when they decided to move to the country they said he could stay with us as he was too old to go with them and that he was more ours than theres.

The big guy always sat in with us when making film clips or music and even if he didn't like what we made he'd be there as a constant reminder, sometimes doing the typical cat thing of sitting in front of the screen and being a nuisance.   He's buried beneath the conifer tree at the bottom of the garden, with a stone tortoise marking his grave.

We finally have a PSP.

We bought a second hand PSP this weekend for £40 and its a rather neat piece of kit. It totally sums up Sony over the past couple of years, its flashy and shiny, and feels like a smartphone. Its also been hacked to buggery with both the signing keys for it and the PS3 now fully available to hackers and homebrew enthusiasts alike. When it came out we weren't that fussed by it, in fact we were rather taken by the DS Lite with its double screens and GBA slot. In fact for serious gaming that would be our first choice. But over the past few weeks we've been getting into PSP emulation for some unknown reason. Whether its the platform of choice for RPGs, (plenty of Nippon Ichi releases for the hardcore in you) or Monster Hunter (hey it revitalised the PSP in Japan) it seems that in its undeath the PSP is getting interesting.   Hopefully we'll add some custom firmware and begin Emulating some stuff. But for now a run down on the PSP itself.

PSP overall.

Slick looking piece of kit, with a shed load of buttons, including a big power switch and back tray for your UMD discs. D Pad isn't entirely horrible though the Analogue stick is. Looking like some mutant speaker offshoot, the analogue stick is totally woeful, in the one game I used it, I wished there was a dpad only option its that bad. In more strangeness you have to press the home button to return to the bios screen whenever you play a game as switching the console off merely turns the game off where you left it instead of logging out. Its a really weird and unintuitive way of doing things, and it gets no better from then on.

Bios.
The firmware is actually kinda nice with a logically laid out screen that lets you scroll through all your choices. In fact this could be the best thing about the PSP, that along with the homebrew community and its emulators. Everything is clearly laid out and seems to run off the x button on the console itself, and its simple to get everything running from that point. You have date and time, video, music and a built in Web browser for surfing the internet (need wireless internet and uses the useless Analogue stick instead of a mouse).To run games you need to select UMD and click on the game itself, and you can even update firmware, though it wouldn't let us downgrade to 1.50 (were running 6.20 nerd fans).

Games.

We have two games at present, first is one that came bundled with it from the bootsale stall, its Need for Speed Carbon, the other I bought for £5 and its Lumines.

Need for speed Carbon:
A thug lite car simulator that I played all of five minutes of, no thanks to it being too dark, but mainly using the horrible analogue stick and the unremitting awfulness of it all.   You end up in a car smash and after 6 months in hospital you need to get back in the racing saddle by going on illegal drift races.
Nice bits, It uses Tubeway Army's Are Friends Electric on the title screen and there is a screen that says that the cars and people are not fully official in case you have a problem with that, (and if you do I suggest that you GTFO all games should use unlicensed likeness even the official ones).
Nasty bits everything else.
2/10

Lumines:
Box building puzzler from Q entertainment and horse poking merchants Ubisoft. You drop bicoloured cubes onto the play area making cubes of one colour before an ever sweeping line erases them. Its largely the same as the PS2 version, with decent music and well suited visual for the PSP screen. In keeping with its bigger brother it takes far too long to get remotely challenging, about twenty minutes in before you are truly taxed, but its not half bad and well suited to the PSP screen.
7/10

My love hate affair with torrenting.

2011-09-04T15:44:00.001+01:00

Theres a thread up on BX forum detailing some of the stuff that you can't get for love nor money on torrent sites. My 2 pence worth is this, if you go off the beaten track music wise then you stand a good chance of it not appearing. Old electro, techno, minimal wave stuff, italo disco or acid are ignored unless your very lucky or visit Youtube where they are much more liberal with stuff like that (unless copyright cunts pull the owners channel).

My own personal experience with torrentz has been this, disappointing. In fact, if I can't get it through Rapidlibrary or Megaupload or even direct from a site then lets face it its not worth bothering with.

This isn't some idle chatter either, at the moment, thanks to a bootsale mishap we have a Kevin Bloody Wilson case minus 1 CD. Looking through the usual suspects, and finding it missing (we're looking for Kalgoorlie Love Songs BTW) we decide to check the torrents to find out if its been uploaded.

Promising, there are about 7 streams and feedback is non existant but at least its there.

We download about 3 times and hit a brick wall. No one is seeding meaning that I get 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000002KB per second. Fuck this. Fuck this to hell. Trying about
three different streams and finding the same thing. Currently we're 87% there and its not getting any better as the tap has dropped off. If I was pirating films or games or something popular I probably would expect a stellar service (though I doubt it). But something I own but due to an oversight (no disc) don't well damn I expect better.

Other stuff.
Remember last week we promised you a hedgehog. Well here he is in all his rolled up glory.

Poor guy someone tried to touch him inappropriately.

Also we've been listening to something I can't really square with my beliefs at all. I've written before about my love hate relationship with the Far Left and Far Right before and used to run with some people who were far more right wing than I'll ever be. When I was growing up there used to be some cunt promoting the Socialist Wanker party outside Smiths. (Thats largely moot now, we have various African Christians singing now outside Smiths, and yes they're fucking annoying).

I digress, the far right have been pumping out Hate rock for what seems like ages and to say it doesn't appeal to me is a understatement. However thanks to an article in The Sun, I discovered Saga. Or rather Ode to a dying people, which is a nice folky ballad (we made a slightly disappointing Acapella for mashing up and general mixing) which is insanely catchy. Its the sort of stuff they would play at the end of CSI when the killer has been caught and you need a montage of shots for David Caruso to raise his shades to.
I still don't like any of their other stuff though luckily theres no such thing as racist techno so the dance community is safe for now.

In which we find a hedgehog.

2011-08-28T12:54:00.000+01:00

We are down at my aunts place in Suffolk for the bank holiday weekend. Taking some time out to chill and visit the local area. I found out that my cousin Ellen had to go into hospital for an operation to straighten her back and it seems to have gone well. Hope you get well soon and are back on your feet...

Anyway you're not here for that you want to know about me seeing A, a hedgehog as outlined in the above post and B. Lisa Goddard.

We'll deal with Lisa first. She was in Waterstones in Lowestoft, for a book signing. and was reading a book with a small girl (possibly her granddaughter we don't know). Currently the list of celebrities I've seen, have been either gaming related (Shigeru Miyamoto when he came to London back in 2001) or minor celebrities, we saw Bill Oddie in Khaki pants down at Soho and Terry Nutkins looking at a dolphin when we were on a school trip to Windsor Safari Park. Mostly though they've been in Oxford streets HMV promoting stuff. This goes for Monty Python's Cartoonist Terry Gilliam, Girls Aloud / Sugarbabes who blocked the dance music aisle while they sang, and for FF12 launch Yoshitaka Kawasu (though that was remembered more for cosplayers including some dude in a full moogle outfit).

Back to Lisa and to be honest, she doesn't look half bad at all, seeing as all anyone remembers her for was as a teenage girl in Skippy. In fact that was the worst thing, as I walked around the shop I had the Skippy theme tune stuck in my head and it wouldn't let up.

Anyway apart from Lisa and that we also had a visit from the Jehovas Witnesses and a storm which kinda cemented my luck for the rest of the day, i.e terrible. On the upside we were working in the garden when came across a hedgehog that was trapped by the drainpipe. We decided to rescue it and set it down by the picnic table where it promptly curled up into a ball. It was about a good 9 inches with softish spines (we were under the impression that they were hard like some cactus spines) and it stayed there for most of the afternoon curled up. We looked for it later on and it had wandered off into the undergrowth.

All in all an eventful holiday.

Namco Station.

2011-08-21T16:39:00.000+01:00

Not Namcotstation.

Its time for another foray into town, this time taking in two new places.

Part 1.
First of all is a nice trip to Namco Station, which sounds like some badly branded PS1. This subterranean monster is off the radar to most people who usually visit the Trocadero (now closed) and the Casino leisure (more later), as it's situated on the banks of the Thames just down from the London Eye and the London Aquarium. The top floor has a few crane toys and penny falls, and an escalator down leads to the basement where the main action is. Here are a variety of fruit machines and penny falls including PacMan Ball and some other refugees from the recently closed Troc.

Arcade game wise there is nothing much here, they have a Rambo and a Silent Hill the arcade game and a copy of Time Crisis 4, but nothing else of note. Most of the fruit machines are geared up to dispense tokens, you get 1 even if you fail, and it takes a kings ransom to redeem for even the lowest prize on the list.

Good points, one crane toy had the most amount of Donald Ducks I'd ever seen. They have a regular coin pusher version based on Pac Man and a dodgem track taking up the most of the ground floor, but apart from that its a wasteland and didn't compare to either the Leisure Casino or the now defunct Trocadero.

Outside is miles more fun, as it takes in the whole gamut of performing arts. Including several human statues and my new favourite performance guy (edging out a bloke I saw dressed as a baby in Barcelona) a guy dressed as a dog hiding in a pet carrier / desktop combo. It was awesome as he sang a song as well. Oh and some dude dressed as a lizard on a bike.

Dave Mirra has nothing on him.

Further along there was a crop of beach huts as part of a South bank exhibition, this included a giant seagull kiosk as part of the RSPB display, and Tim Hunkins under the pier show transplanted from its Southwold home and is well worth a visit. Strangest of all was a group of lads surrounding a guy on the floor with breathing appartus on and his shirt off. They had paramedics come to treat him but to this day I still don't know if its performance art or a genuine medical emergency.

Part 2
Our main aim was, thanks to a well placed article in Wire Magazine, a visit to the Science Museum to see an Exhibit on Daphne Oram Founder of the Radiophonic Workshop and experimental composer. The exhibit itself is on the second floor of the science museum and comprises of an installation remaking the remarkable Oramics Machine, and a rebuilt version in its entirety behind glass. There is also a film clip taken from a BBC documentary of Daphne explaining what Oramics sets out to do and how she would achieve it.
Its not bad and is quite humbling to see the roots of electric music are just sine waves and reel to reel tapes.


Part of the Oramics Machine.

Part 3
Finally after fiddling around with the installation (we wanted to take some video but our camera wasn't playing ball) we decided to take one last arcade trip to the Leisure Casino down town. We were pleasantly surprised that the GTI club they had languishing upstairs was kicked out in favour of a brand new Darius Burst cab. Complete with bass boosting seat and a massive three screens, it takes some inspiration from Caves Deathsmiles in that you can flip direction to blast creatures behind you by pressing a button, there is also a button dedicated to shooting off a massive beam weapon (unless your playing as the original Silver Hawk then it just drops bombs ala Gradius), which is bastard well impressive. Bosses of course are still based on sealife with a massive Nautilus to take on when you tackle normal. Oh and power ups are still true to Darius, shooting down creatures gets you a power up pod that you use to gradually level up your guns. So far its pretty cool we don't know if the hold down the shield to capture an enemy remains but it looks the business.

Keep your community clean Garrote a hoodie.

2011-08-14T16:17:00.002+01:00

Just in case you didn't know or were living under a rock for the past week. We've had riots in ~~Lagos~~ London.

Far be it for me to offer any kind of comment (it'll only unbelieveably knee jerk) or provide insight into the why (disenfranchised youth, of either spectrum of class, Gangsta rap culture (you never hear rap about mental illness or spending your life trapped inside giant mechanical dogs or for that matter Sunn 0)) and wanting it all with little or no work ethic, qualifications or motivation to improve their lot in life.

Instead I'll simply blog my non involvement in the whole scheme of things. For someone who is never out we were actually supremely unlucky to be out on the one night where I should have stayed in.
Our cactus club down at Well Hall held a talk on the Monday that the riots really started to fan out. We should have clocked something was up when the bus driver said that he would not be driving through Lewisham and watching a load of white kids in hoodies mill around the bus stop at the top of Well hall hill. But we simply didn't catch on and got to where we wanted to go without much trouble. After a relaxing show and tell session we bowled out at 10pm ready to take the bus home.

The bus was late and we walked to the stop where Stephen Lawrence was killed to maximise our chances of getting home (you can get a 161 as well as a 122). When we finally got a bus the driver informed us that due to rioting in Woolwich they will be detouring out to Welling before heading back to Plumstead. We didn't mind this we can walk home from Welling and did so seeing hardly anyone out. (OK so its not very exciting, i'm hardly likely to burn down withies am I.)

Come Tuesday and we are allowed home early from work due to percieved trouble. We see more groups of white kids in hoodies and an awful lot of rumours. Gangs spotted down at Abbeywood, shops closing early and shuttered up just like when you drop a rock into a rock pool all the creatures hide untill its safe to emerge.

Come Friday and we have the day off we can go down to Woolwich and see whats really been done and whats survived. Ironically its all the usual suspects, all the phone shops have been smashed in except 3 (gee looks like the average scum doesn't want all you can eat data). Both Game and Gamesation have been looted and Wetherspoons and Wilkinsons have been torched, extending to the Pound shop and Barclays next door. Finally Mc Donalds has been broken into too along with C(r)ash converters.

Some shops were totally untouched, Sainsburys and WHSmiths and even Poundland made it through unscathed, and Brighthouse made it without being looted. I still have no answers why it all kicked off, but you can watch thugs vs a thin blue line of cops on Youtube.

Warning Whitehouse Extreme noise.

The anatomy of a British Arcade

2011-08-07T15:42:00.001+01:00

This was supposed to be at the end of last weeks rant at MAME, alluding that fruit machines could be included in an upcoming build. If it goes ahead then it could leave MFME (a slot based incarnation, based on a closed source of MAME) redundant. What with WOS's coverage of Coindozer and the demise of the Troc this covered most of what I had to say. That and complete and utter brain drain, anyway...

What you were supposed to get was a round up of the other stuff in your average English Arcade, so without further ado lets rant on.

The token nod to arcade heritage.

This is normally either a bleeding edge arcade game (Tekken 6 or some sort) or some sort of late 90's 3D game, based on either the Naomi board (virtua tennis) or Model 2/3 (Daytona or Sega Rally) you might have a fighting game either a Tekken or a version of Virtua Fighter(see sentence above). Rarely will there be a dance game like a Dance Dance Revolution or some Korean version, under no circumstances will there be any 2D games unless there is a mame cab tucked away somewhere. Most of these are non mame at present but do a google search for:
Makaron if you have a hankering for Naomi / Dreamcast stuff
SuperModel for Model 3 stuff.

The 18s only area.

Rather than pole dancing or adult stuff. This area houses those slots that contain big prizes and normally cost something like 30p a go and that. Like all slots they trade on the hopes of the punter and like everything else in gambling are horribly skewed toward the house.

The non 18s only area.

Regular fruit machines and Coinpushers. There may be a modern nod toward the old arcade in some coin pushers, as modern ones have video screens that are triggered when you put the coins into a special slot.

So far no one has begun emulating these. For good reason too, they would be such a massive test of physics simulating the movement of dozens of coins as well as the hardware and screen. Really, at present I don't know if it could be done, but I suppose could be a fun test of 3D hardware.

Other stuff.
Stuff like Kiddy rides, Pool and Air Hockey tables and various crane toys. Oh and bingo, but theres a billion on line bingo sites so these don't count.

Pinball.

You'll occasionally get the odd table, but the only place to really go to town for pins is in fact the Leisure Casino near Goodge Street Tube station. The sad truth is that they are much more prevalent abroad, with plenty of old Williams Pins retiring to the Spanish coast like cockney Gangsters.
Pin Mame and Visual Pinball do a sterling Job of emulating these.

Foreign Imports.
No one seriously has Pachinko or its Slot based offering Pachislot in the UK and previously when I've covered it its always been stuck in the windows of some arcades. Japanese in origin, they are a massive deal over there. Working sort of like redemption machines, tokens/balls collected can be cashed in for prizes and items or sold through a hole in the wall for cold hard cash (illegal). If they are popular enough they are converted to
console for home play. Though I've seen Pachinko done in Visual Pinball, I don't know if MFME would cover Pachislot the same way. They seem genuinely fun, though that maybe the exoticness of it all, in fact we had Victory Zone for PSX back in the day and it was wall to wall tedium.

Updates and slots

2011-07-31T17:08:00.000+01:00

First before going into one, we'll have a bit of an update of stuff previously posted.

Marchen Maze Fan translated.

First up I'd never thought I would see this happen. When people fan translate its normally the glory days of Nintendo i.e NES and SuperNES era with a few nods toward the original Playstation. Anything that runs on Sega Hardware or falls under the banner of NEC or is a handheld system is usually roundly ignored. So I nearly fell off my chair when a general update appeared on RHDN showing that someone had fan translated the original.

Incidentally patching this is a breeze, just grab your favourite patcher (FuSoYa's LunarIPS) and apply the patch to the rom and it'll patch.

Pulse FM and Copyright Cunts.

We've found one of the old tapes that has Pulse FM on it. Its probably the first thing I've ever taped off the radio and harks back to 1993. Of course its one of Aphrodites shows and has an incredible mix of old house, trance and sometimes Acid. Converting it across and adding song titles in Vegas we finally uploaded it to Youtube.
However some parasite at the Performing Reich Society seems to think because its a radio show that they should have their pound of flesh, we are going to argue that its an archive of a Pirate Radio show and that it should be exempt on copyright grounds (though possibly not on music grounds). We'll see how this goes on.

Coin Pusher, Haniwa De Go.

Arcade experience in a PC draws nearer.

We periodically read Dave Haywoods MAME page, an interesting read into MAME politics and the state of arcade emulation, 14 years after its inception.
We were surprised to learn that in his latest post he's looking into adding Fruit Machine stuff to MAME now seeing as its not that hard to do.

Though some of the video slot stuff has been in MAME for a while now, for regular slots an MAME offshoot called MFME was the best bet, even though its closed source (against MAMEs mission statement) and not updated in ages.

Now I'm ambivalent about slots, they are mostly not fun (though some of the UK ones were weakly entertaining) and are mainly about seperating idiot from cash. However, intergrated into MAME this would instantly emulate about 90% of seaside arcades in the United Kingdom, though they still wouldn't be fun at all.

Addendum

2011-07-25T16:44:00.000+01:00

As if by magic theres a top ten dance thing in todays Sun that warranted only a short page space to fill.
Conducted by Global Gathering apparently the best dance track of all time is...* James Browns Sex Machine...
Followed up by stone cold Classic Groove is in the heart. For sheer perversity Wino and Ronsons cover of Valerie by the Zutons is in at number 8 if only they had covered Groove is in the heart...

In unrelated news it seems Ally Ross is back doing TV reviews, I've always rated his column, and he has been absent for some while. They had Dom Joly covering and doing not bad if I say so, but its nice to know he's back.

For the uninitiated he's the Sun's in house TV reviewer, a sort of Scotch version of Charlie Brooker (whos gone downhill since Screenwipe diversified into a million different wipes). In fact rather then let me explain badly theres an article in teachers bible, the Grauniad, thats a pretty good run down of who he is and why he matters.

*Full list and commentary here.
1 James Brown – Sex Machine – 26%; We'd prefer Steinski and Mass Media Lesson 2.
2 Deee-Lite – Groove is in the Heart – 13%; No argument from me.
3 Martha & The Vandellas – Dancing in the Street – 11%; Soul standard nuff said.
4 Donna Summer – I Feel Love – 10%; Patrick Cowley version only
5 The Bee Gees – Night Fever – 9%; Just no, really anything but the Brothers Gibb
6 Fatboy Slim – Praise You – 8%; No argument either.
7 Abba – Dancing Queen – 6%; Pissed up hen night special
8 Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson – Valerie – 4%; See 8 and indeed 2 for non cover
9 The B-52s – Love Shack – 3%; This is kinda rock, its still cool mind
10 Michael Jackson – Billie Jean – 2%. Jackson could do no wrong in the early 80's but I'd rather have Can You Feel it instead.

Hot one on one round up action

2011-07-24T15:33:00.003+01:00

An awful lot of stuff has happened so far this week and not all of it pleasant. We lost Amy Winehouse over the weekend. We always joked that she should have done a cover of Deee-lites Groove is in the heart before she died of drugs, I guess its not to be now.   To be honest I can't see any major dance music artist getting the same coverage when they go.

Rest assured when Juan Atkins, RDJ or Roni Size passes into the great hereafter it will not be front page news. Not even worth a small quarter page column on page 23 news near the lottery results cos when it comes to dance music, we don't matter. We lost Aaron Carl to cancer last year and earlier this year disco diva Loletta Holloway suffered a heart attack and died, yet neither warranted column inches in any of the main newspapers. Or if it did they were very small.

You may like to think of dance music as a bunch of faceless guys fiddling with synths and stuff, or worst case scenario music that can simply provide a backing for the latest rap track.

For instance, JLO stole the hook from the Boss Theme from Parasol Stars as a backing theme for Get on tha Floor. Snoop lifted Felix Don't you want me wholesale for his track, Wet, and Jason the Rolo has a bastardized version of Robin S Show Me Love on his track Don't Wanna Go home.

Saddest of all, gay fish and funny specs wearer Kanye West has 2 cOunts against him. First for lifting Daft Punks Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger the second unforgivable crime is using AFXs excellent Avril 14 for a pile of old toss featuring John Legend.

In other news we found a picture of Benny From Crossroads thrown out at work. It is the campest thing I've seen, sadly though its seems to have gone missing so here have a picture of Dizeeeeee Rascal (Ripping off Stevie Vs Dirty Cash) instead.

Dizee Rascal Workout via Billys Boocamp.

To battle the Elf. Go to post 115

2011-07-17T16:19:00.002+01:00

Do you remember Fighting Fantasy books then that heading will all be familiar to you. For the unenlightened they were green spined roleplaying books from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (He runs Eidos now don't laugh) where you got to choose your own path through a fantasy story before succumbing to traps and ultimately cheating. They were an integral part of 80's / 90's youth, where two dice and a pencil (oh and the ability to read) were all a young adventurer needed to have a reasonably great adventure.

We came across some such weirdness the other day where a totally unrelated search for stuff brought up this weird little factoid. Fighting Fantasy was released in Japan not only with the original covers intact, but bought right up to date with manga covers. We can't vouch for the other illustrations and that, just that it seems to have quite a following in Japan (the Warlock magazine lasted way longer than here).

Lone Wolf: Twice as rocking as this. FACT.

To be honest though, even though I loved the Fighting fantasy books we loved Joe Devers Lone Wolf books even more. With a cohesive storyline {you had to become a Kai master} and the chance to transfer skills and items to other books as you 'levelled up' this was about the closest you could come to RPG goodness without investing in 20 sided dice and joining a D+D group.

We had about 20 of the books and managed to make it magnakai status back in the day. Though to be honest we never actually used the battle system properly.
This is how you should have done it back then.

1. Choose a number from the number grid (located toward the back of the book) and while your there choose a number for the enemy.

2. Turn to the back page to see what results it gave you in the battle grid.

This is how we did it instead.

1. Close your eyes and pick a number from the number grid and pick a number for the monster you're battling. If your number is higher than theirs take off the difference from their HP. If you draw pick again and add the result to the numbers you chose. If the monsters number is higher than yours then take off the difference from your HP.

I.E. If Elf rolls a 3 and Lone Wolf a 5, Elf would take 2 damages. Rinse and repeat untill either is dead.

We made one of the squares a K square. If you landed on that you would instantly kill anything there with a critical hit and vice versa.
This revised ruleset saw me through a good 12 or so Lonewolf books untill the books disappeared toward the mid 90's.

Both LoneWolf and Fighting Fantasy are available on DS, though Lone Wolf is currently Homebrew so you'll need either a Flashcart or an Emulator to enjoy it.

Finally, (this was more of a junior school thing) there were a series of gamebooks called Choose Your Own Adventures. They didn't have any combat, and you always seem to end dying a few pages in. I know of nobody who made it through with a satisfactory ending, they either died or had one of the wanky endings where you lived out your life amongst nomads or as a pauper.

Summed up below with three atypical choices.

Young Peter Stupid was walking home from school when he is approached by a strange man driving an old Ford Fiesta.
"Hey sonny, My names Professor Guy Dubious, I'm looking for a young lad to help track down some missing dinosaurs. They've escaped through my time portal and I really need to get them back."

Wow real live dinosaurs, that sounds pretty great. If you'd like to help the Professor go to the next paragraph entitled bad outcome.

Hey dinosaurs don't exist any more, I bet he's a foreign agent or a weirdo of some kind, Go to the paragraph after, called good outcome, to call the police on him.

If you'd like to ignore him and head home to play CODBlOps, turn to the final paragraph called unsatisfactory ending.

Dinosaur: Bad outcome.

You agree to head off on an adventure with the Professor, full of ideas about tracking Diplodocuses and evading Tyrannosauruses. However before you can start hunting for dinosaurs, the professor puts a strangely scented rag over your face and bundles you into a large sack in the boot of his car. 24 hours later after unspeakable depravities are carried out you, your body is dumped onto waste ground at the back of Tescos where your corpse is found by dogwalkers.

Dinosaur: Good outcome.

You are suspicious about something the Professor says, and decide to call the Police instead on your Mobile phone. A squad of police officers in a panda car pull up and arrest the so called professor.

PC Copshop: Thats the third sighting we've had of Professor Guy Dubious this week, you've had a lucky escape sonny, he's no professor but a notorious child killer and a dinosaur buff, take this fiver as a reward for not talking to strangers.

Dinosaur: Unsatisfactory outcome.

Your mum told you not to talk to strangers, and you swiftly ignore the professor to head home to play CODBlOps with your mates online. You load up the PC in your room and while it boots up you notice a shadow fall across the wall behind you. Looking in the direction of the window you see a small Brontosaurus walking through next doors garden. Maybe the "professor" was telling the truth after all.

Smash Hits

2011-07-14T17:23:00.005+01:00

Right, remember when I said that we were creating samples from a found Smash Hits Keyboard, well we are finally through with it. We found out a little more stuff about it. It only has twenty or so original synth sounds on there {not 100 as they say on the hooter itself}. Believe me when I say they just recycle sounds and put a new name up. Apart from that what you have isn't bad some usable drums, an 8bit esque square wave and a string ensemble that could be of some use.

Anyway enough waffling on. This is a 13MB 7zip file, that unpacks to around 44MB. All sounds are in wav. format for use in whatever tracker / sampler VST you use. You can find the file download.

HERE http://www.mediafire.com/file/dcxz43qa2xdss23/Smash%20Hits%20Samples.7z

Work, Safe.

2011-07-10T15:32:00.000+01:00

Heres a brief bit of round up of stuff and for once a breaking of the golden rule (no talking about work)
It'll also give you an insight into what I was doing 12 years or so back.

I had course to visit the estate where I first worked all those years back due to a lack of staff, and really took stock in whats changed between now and then.

Its quite alright the people who I worked with are all retired with one exception and are thought of semi fondly if at all.

The upshot of all this navel gazing is this, sod all has changed to the blocks itself with the exception of new talky lifts in each block. What was our tea room then, still floods even now, and venturing to the other parts of the estate reinforced my opinion that it hadn't really got even better. They seemed to have a lot of stores in there something which would please my old chargehand (though he would prefer to be known as Senior Caretaker or idle git behind his back).

"'Ere boy, we've got a big codgle of stores in, the blokes gawn an' come down with the truck an' dropped it off.
(for those who really don't speak South London I'll flag up a translation,)

We've got a massive amount of stores in. It seems the delivery man has dropped it off of the lorry for us.

Codgle/Codule is one of those words that seem to be either old school cockney or South London, that you never hear anymore. It seems to relate to amounts of things and on one or to occasion about a persons dick (like all good Brit slang having double or even triple meanings).

One good thing is that we don't have any sheltered accommodation to deal with now, no bins, no salt to put in the water systems and no cups of tea with the wardens and residents in our breaks.

It also lead to one of the most baffling experiences of my life so far. While clearing out some wheelie bins we found a collection of porn. Given its location (sheltered housing) and the nature of the magazines (we had new cunts and a color climax along with several others) baffles me to this day. Were they owned by the wardens, or some horny old dude throwing out his stash of pr0n. It was just the most hilarious thing finding hardcore filth in the bins. Nowadays you don't even get an Escort let alone that.

Draw something nice and win Legowelt reissues.

To celebrate the reissue on Bunker of The Rise and Fall of Manuel Noriega, Tower of Gypsies (baroque electro weirdness can recommend this whole heartedly) and Klaus Kinski, Legowelt is offering up signed versions of these tracks to those who can submit a Panama style tropical Paradise. The catch. The comp closes tomorrow. Pics can be done in either Paint. (PC) GIMP (Mac) (Which I've never got working) DPaint 3 for the tru Amigans, or even hand coloured and scanned in.

More details at www.legowelt.com

Genetics, Kin and all that jazz.

2011-07-04T18:04:00.000+01:00

If you are wondering why the regular Sunday service wasn't updated, we have the perfect excuse. We were watching the Annoying Orange (hey apple) and the Super Mario World Cartoon, MAMA Luigi (the original non pooped version no doubt) on Youtube. With someone special.

To paraphrase we were down my aunts house in Suffolk for the weekend, and she'd brought my cousins daughter down from a visit from Scotland. The last time I saw anything of her, she was only 3 and it was after my Nans funeral at the wake, in my aunts place outlined above.

FFWD 12 years. I'm employed now (between jobs at the time) and the family in which she grew up in is now split apart. We still don't know the full details of what happened or how, just that they were all taken into care and fostered out to different people. She has some physical problems which make life tough for her but apart from that she seems to have weathered the storm of her upbringing and is doing well despite it all.

Anyway we came down on the Saturday and as soon as I got there, it was a massive shock to see how much she had changed. I've seen photos of her and that but this doesn't give you any insight into a persons nature or likes and wants. In fact as it went on, we found out we share a staggering amount in common, which is really scary. First of all she is a complete game nut, like myself at that age before Superplay corrupted me into RPGs, we loved Mario.

We both like Luigi and have DS's and brought a shed load of games with us. This culminated in me getting totally schooled by a 15 year old girl at NSMB thanks to wi-fi link play. We had a go on Pokemon Heart Gold GBC Reboot, and Cooking Mama 2 which has the worst voice acting ever. She was taken by my love of old school games and role playing harvest moon take on Rune Factory 2.

The Sunday we showed her some of the less weird and work safe of the Youtube stuff I do and a few clips and memes including, Nyancat, Hatsune Miku and Justin Beeble being shot in CSI, someone we both hate. She has a toy dog, which I also had as a kid. Oh and she really looks like her mum, minus her temper of course.

We also twiddle our hair when stressed, have a liking for cheese and a dislike of tomatoes, and above all are nature lovers. We were watching some ants, probably the biggest I've seen in the UK and no they weren't flying ants either (something that I saw on holiday too). We also larked around on Google Earth and tried to find her house where she lives with her foster family in Scotland and the hotel in Salou in Spain where I spent my holidays, this ended up in a miserable failure for both of us and my arm covered in Pritt stick (don't ask).

Like I say, I liked her a lot in a moe sort of way, kinda like the little sister I never had (No really, I'm not kidding, I'm an only child).. Weirdly, if you've ever played Persona 4, Nanako evokes the same feelings in me as well, and I've always thought of Nanako as looking a lot like my cousin when younger, though she was never as endearing as Nanako was.

More reign in Spain

2011-06-26T17:47:00.002+01:00

OK more on spain.

We took one trip out the whole day we were there. A visit to Barcelona. This is what we found. Though the Nou Camp and Sagrada Famillia maybe nice to be honest both left me cold. Sagrada has to be one of the most meretricious piles of old cock I've seen. Gaudi by name and Gaudy by nature, which seems to influence a lot of his works. Parc Guell a rich persons estate that morphed into a park due to epic fail, was largely excellent. Gaudis use of ceramic either excites you or bores you and in most places it was the latter, but the bird nest walls inhabited by pigeons and wisteria are suitably beautiful. Also nice is Gaudis Chameleon figure masquerading as a dragon at the main entrance, and various orange flowered opuntias nestled around the place.

Theres a piddly mosaic set in the roof adjacent to this excellent view.

Onto the Sagrada Familia, the worlds most famous building site, and to be honest the marmite of large religious buildings. I hate it, all its Gaudi sorry Gaudy walls and candle wax columns, its fruit on spikes and rogue words and paeons to god. Even though technically it won't be done untill 2026* there are massive queues to see inside the big eyesore which goes to show that people are weird. There is a park outside of it, which is very nice, filled with living statues and dudes trying to be babies (very funny, he had the voice of Mr Punch and had me in stitches). I suspect you want a bloody picture of the Sagrada, go on heres one then.

Its Gormenghast, big fucking whoop.

Finally we got to stop at a few other places including lunch break in las Ramblas. For Londoners imagine if Portobello Road and Piccadilly merged going down toward the Thames as one unit, you'll have a rough idea of the area. A mix of people flogging stuff to change your voice to that of Mr Punches (really Annoying), plants, including a Rebutia for 6euro amongst the general floristry stuff and tickets to Sonar and other shows.
This largely made up for it, they still have a C+A here which is funny seeing as the last closed down ages ago in the UK. The rest is a trip to a mirador at Montjuic overlooking town and some stuff from the 92 olympics which remember from a poster in our Spanish class. Nice.

The pigeons flying into view make this in my opinion.

We promised more on the Central Arcade chain of Arcades in Salou, there were about 5 of them with increasingly tenuous arcade games and bits, the latter ones were simply a "Locutorio" (Netcaff) with a few air hockey and crane toys out front, the big one on the main drag is the one you want, a homage to Naomi hardaware it has a massive array of Virtua Tennis, Virtua NBA and Spike out, Coupled with a decent array of Pins, including Ripleys Believe it or not (really nice believe it or not), Pirates Of the Caribbean, Star Trek and the quite Scary Red and Teds Roadshow, complete with big Scary Riddler heads that talk to you when you lose. Theres quite bit to hold your attention here, the casino arcade has a Sopranos pin but we don't talk about that.

Off the main drag there are two further Centrals that deserve your attention. A stones throw from another arcade {not worth visiting} is a run down place. There they had this in working order.

Furoko Wars.

An unlikely mix of Tug of war and Japanese weirdness, we're pretty sure that it translates to Furoko Wars but not sure of its overall Romanization. It allows you to select Easy, Medium and Hard modes. When thats done you're supposed to stand at the back board (not shown) and pull on the rope until an onscreen enemy gets wrenched off its feet. The game is made by Takumi and Towa Corp in 1995 were pretty sure its the same Takumi that is a splinter from Toaplan, and looking on line it seems Towa Corp does these sort of rides, they did a big Pop Up Pirate as well as this.

The final place is half way to the old town of Salou and has a few more Virtua Tennises and some Gaelco games. What you really want to check out is the Scared Stiff pinball out the back which is suitably awesome and, next to it for the princely sum of 2 euro....

These are

the robots

you're looking for

Rideable robots.

Sadly you'll need to be a child to have any fun with them.
And I bitterly regret not getting video of them in action, but damn they look awesome.

*Possibly earlier. Edit that should be Fukoro wars, throughout. Be on your way...

We R Back

2011-06-19T18:07:00.000+01:00

Hiatus deceleration, 3,2,1 you are back in your familiar room...

A family holiday in Salou Spain, one week of overcast weather and one week of traditional Spanish sun, a rather excellent trip staying at the Golden Avenida Park hotel.
Of course what you want to know is if there was any strangeness there and overall what it was all like.

Heres a potted list of highlights for your delectation.

1. It seems that the Russians and ex Russian states have seriously made their move into tourism. Where it used to be signs in German and that, most parts have signs in cyrillic script as well as Catalan (Salou is part of the Costa Dorada/ Daurada.).

2. We saw an Octopus, a real live octopus. Found by one of the aforementioned Russian chums, hidden under a rock and with the arm it presented I guess its around a good 12 inches. The guy who found it asked in broken Spanish if it was any good to eat and if it was in any way poisonous. We made our excuses and left, so we guessed the octopus ended up on his dinner table that night.

3. An old Spanish lady holding her arm out to check her tan against that of an African guy next to her. In fact this year I've seen more Africans in Spain than at any other time. Normally resigned to flogging knock off shades and hair braiding, I've seen them diversify into official jobs rather than, so called black market activities. Incidentally Spain always had a dodgy reputation for racial depictions, Carioca Cafe and Conguitos chocolate peanuts are two of the products that come to mind with dubious depictions of africans. Whereas by the late 90's we had managed to pension off Robinson from Robinsons Jam, they were still depicting africans as spear wielding natives on conguitos packets.

4. Central Arcade. I love an arcade and will do a full report on what I saw in an upcoming blog, but safe to say that there are a shed load of Pinballs there as well as a wide spec of Naomi Cabs too. Including Virtua NBA which I didn't know they did (along with Virtuas Striker and Tennis). Incidentally Time crisis is virtually ubiquitious.

5. A massive thunderstorm, proving that the rain in Spain is mainly a bastard pain.

Anyway this is just a brief hello, we'll look at other stuff when I have time.

Edge 100 prophecies.

2011-05-29T16:59:00.000+01:00

Miyamoto Cover. MMMM

Been rereading old back issues of Edge magazine, purely for fun but mainly to see just when they turned into boring their readership senseless.   Issue 100 is on our current reading list and along with a rare look into the heart of Nintendo (plus a special Miyamoto cover above) they give a list of predictions on what gaming would be like as presented in Edge 200. I could with some poking about drag out EDGE 200 and see if they covered them, but seeing as this is almost ten years to the month (this is August 2001 issue though you can't really tell from that image above) that this came out. Now totally unedited we'll give you a run down on some of the predicitons.

First up, everyones favourite, way out predicitons.

In eight years all UK game magazines will have folded. Filling the void will be German publications featuring games and women's tits. Eventually they will discover that boys already have a game to play with pictures of tits. The company will eventually drop the games section and just feature tits. OldmanMurray.

The convergence of different entertainment sectors will have taken a huge leap.   Edge will be reviewing films, which we will develop and which people will play and also star in. No more crappy mice and joypads - the user interface will be the user him/herself. How do I know all this? Because we are already doing most of it in Actor. Mevlut Dinc Vivid Image.

Broadband Internet in more than ten homes finally might be a reality, and maybe somebody has figured out a way to make money with it. Microsoft will have the Y-Box, Sony the PS9 and Nintendo, well, the Virtual Boy Color. The biggest revelation of the year will be that Yamauchi san secretly was the owner of Square all along to rake in the profit from both Nintendo and Sony at the same time.   And, of course, he won't have retired. Julian Eggebrecht Factor 5.

The high end game system will disappear. Only cheap toy-like systems for children will survive. The TV set and the PC will merge into a new device on which people will play. In this machines menu, you will find TV programmes as well as download services and lots of other stuff, including games. Hisao Oguchi. Hitmaker.

Near Photorealistic- quality graphics. Persistent worlds with millions of players dipping in and playing from myriad devices. Large improvements in behavioural modelling and AI perhaps leading to the exciting possibility of automated dynamic storytelling. Demis Hassabis, Elixir Studios.

2009 - a world where the division between fantasy and reality is difficult to distinguish. Immerse yourself in the best interactive gameplay, wherever you are whatever you are doing. In fact just like Gameboy Advance and Nintendo Gamecube today - only even better! David Gosen Nintendo Europe.

Round 2, Half wrong predictions.

I think the big breakthrough will be virtual reality. Instead of using a keyboard, game players will be in amongst the action in a virtual world, via headsets or other technology. Peter Snow (He of the funny graphs)

In 2009 gamers all over the world will finally be able to play the 'arcade perfect' versions of the arcade titles they knew back at the start of the millenium. The Playstation3 will be a broadband gateway to numerous worldwide gaming experiences. The line between gaming, movies and real life. The latest game from Square requires the player to to complete some real life 'geocaching' quests in order to progress in the game, Nintendo finally unveil the portable home holography unit they have kept hidden in development for 20 years. Gaming finally gets recognised as a positive experience. The first Olympics of gaming will be held in Japan at a new Namco park. Gamers the world over prepare for excellence.
Alex ward Criterion.

It's naive of me, I know, but I would hope that by then certain publishers will have learned their lesson: that gamers won't buy crap games, no matter how many sequels you pump out. To wit: a turd is still a turd, even if you keep doing more turds on top of it. Step forward Army Men, Tomb Raider, et al - you big, stinky, mess-ups. The ever excellent Mr Biffo.

This is of course what really happened in 2009.

MONKEY BREAK.

Scarily accurate predicitons.

In eight years' time I shall be retired, but while there will be more online retailling, I believe that there will still be a mix of on-demand and traditional. Why? Because human nature requires the the interface between consumers and sellers. This scenario depends of the videogame proprietors adopting business models that combine e-distribution with traditional retail. Roger Bennett ELSPA.

The keyword should be 'network' at this time. However, this will not mean only that fact that software will feature online play. It will also allow players to access downloadable features and buy games online.
Yukifumo Makino Wave Master

Videogames will be divided into two streams. Both will feature network connectivity. One group will be games with very high graphical level, requiring a long development time. The second will consist of games which will be based on their content, or concept. Masato Maegawa Treasure (Boss)

Over the next eight years I imagine we'll be seeing a futher concentration of talent and studios, leading to an overall improvement in the quality of games available. Unfortunately, I also think you'll see a decline in the number of original and idiosyncratic titles available: as the buying public becomes more and more 'safe' so developers and publishers will stick to pursuing only guaranteed licences and genres, avoiding higher risk titles.
Julian Widdows Rage software.

Chucklevision song contest.

2011-05-22T16:12:00.000+01:00

All this posting of the worst of the worst last week I totally overlooked the Eurovision wrong contest. A little shop of horrors in one.

Last year we posted this

"Hopefully next year we get Poland, or the Ukraine to do our entry, they always put some nutter forward (subs please check) up on stage, so next year, its a full comeback for Timmy Mallet, in a Tinfoil hat and massive, massive specs, and nothing else."
What we got was B list boyband downsy and Blue singing a totally non selected song, we came eleventh overall, and no I didn't watch it. Moldova of course supplied the weirdness (Beehive hairdos and unicycles yessss.), Malta, gay men with flattops and bowler hats, and Ireland of course with perfect Eurovision act. Deadwood (Jedward). Can't imagine how I ever missed them out of the horrendous line up of room 101 last time, knob ends on a par with N-Dubz. Oh the show was eventually put out of its misery by Azerbaijan being crowned the winners.

Of course they'll have to foot the bill next year, so it looks like they'll need the Azerbaijani equivalent of My Lovely Horse to stop them winning again, we're not kidding (we didn't know untill we looked through Wikipaedia).

Incidentally I've been totally remiss in bringing you a scan of the week, the last one was from Famitsu and contained Dizzeeeeeeee Rascal doing fitness {not}. So without further ado here is a nice non stereotypical picture of an African on a sugar packet, courtesy of Carioca cafe.

For 6000 wrong points imagine that on the side of a minivan.

Oh!

Room 101.

2011-05-15T15:38:00.000+01:00

You know the book and the old TV show with Paul Merton / Nick Hancock. A place where all the evils of the world dwell and then some. Here's wikipaedia with a much better explanation of what I just said.

The TV show is the one I'm talking about Willis. Just so that we are on the same side here, we'll use the same criteria of the show, thats five picks of the worst shite imaginable, and we'll shove them into a pit. Its my own personal list of suck. I'm known to like most things without exception, so if some of them come across as strange or odd then so be it. Its individualism dude, get over it.

Entrant 1. Marzipan.

I have never really liked this ever, and where there are foodstuffs of equal nastiness, {Baked beans come to mind} this is probably the worst of the lot for me. Nasty bitter almonds and sugar combined to form vague explosive like blocks, that ruin christmas and wedding cakes. In fact every cake it touches, how much better would battenberg be with a chocolate outer layer than one of crappy marzipan.

Entrant 2. Jehovas Witnesses.

Never understood this religion, their whole end of world millenarianism and steadfast belief that Christ is invisible and that all blood is sacred. Oh and that knocking on doors can some how lead you to accepting Jesus into your life rather than a polite but heartfelt fuck off you weirdos.
Actually my hate on Jehovas comes from this belief i've held as a small child, that they are supremely unlucky, and coming into contact with them or their material will cause bad luck to follow you. More exposure the more bad luck you'll receive. I didn't say it was remotely rational, but that is what I sincerely believe.

Entrant 3. N-Dubz.

This could actually stand for Robbie Williams and his smug git ways, chirpy little can't Justin "Beeble" Bieber, or any number of hot, fresh new acts they punt on Kiss FM that simply fall into a massive grey audio sludge of rappers with recycled hooks. What sets the Dubz apart is this. They aren't just rappers but they are also massive bell ends too. Fappy and Dazer (we do know their real names) oh and Tulisa the only fittish one there, like a refugee from a Ben Dover council pram face special (and yeah I would watch that). There's plenty of decent talent in the UK at the moment, Alison Moyet's daughter Adele, Katy B, Tinie Tempah (who went to St Pauls School and definitely passed by our house if we could remember which one he was.)
The Advent, Underworld, Slam, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Ceephax I could list more, but all have more worth then remploy kids in funny hats that can rap.

Entrant 4. Cilla Black.

We would also like Nick Knowles taken into consideration. Any way Cilla like a gopher in drag, all scouse accent and teeth. We would put up a photo of her in a light up dress taken at Kids on speed, Comic Relief but its really not for those with faint hearts. Like Knowlesy, Cilla is a mass of insincere, see also Inscincere Dave Cameron for a masterclass in smarm. Thats Cilla done.

Final Entrant. Storms.

This is about the only true Room 101 experience here, I really have a phobia about Storms. I got caught out in one when only 3 in Greenwich park and had to shelter through it with my Mum and that to say it was horrible is an understatement, from that day forward I've hated them. Sure I can look at lightning pictures and say that they are pretty, but the actual real thing is over in milliseconds a flash then a rumble or a crash all uncertainty and terror. In my ideal world they would hang like stalactites in the sky slowly over millions of years growing extra bits of electricity till they reach the ground and discharge into harmless showers of sparks. Oh and all thunder would be subsonic or at least under 10 decibels. Of course there is no way in the world that this would ever be workable, weather just isn't like that.
Seeing as I don't believe maybe you could put in a word with god dear reader to make it so.

Round up honey.

2011-05-08T17:27:00.000+01:00

Well that was an eventful few weeks. Kate and Wills Married, Bin Raider shot dead by Navy seals, whilst
smoking weed and watching the teletubbies on his 14" portable (subs please check), and PsN offline due to a massive screw up.

Not only that but we've only gone and found a bottle of bitter leaf tonic, and they've only gone and given us proper binomial names on the list of ingredients guv'nor. So the bitter leaves mixture is this.

Ginger, Aframomum (another ginger species), Aloe Vera, Xylopia/Xylobium (last ones an orchid not native to Africa, though the first species is, and crucially, is used as a medicine) and finally African Mahogany.
Though a cursory glance on the internet, reveals that it didn't contain any real bitterleaf at all.

Royal Wedding: Big Whoop edition.

Make it stop you cunts.

So a pretty girl got married to a rich dude, lots of posh birds wore silly hats and the world ground to a halt as it was televised to the entire nation. The link in the opener is sentiments exactly in the massively trailed and overkilled royal nuptual day. So though we did see a little of the spectacle, we mostly tried to avoid it, one thing that they did show was some old dude in Kanye West specs who was an ardent royalist. The other was on Have I Got News for you and had two drunken mums commenting on the wedding which was ace. I'm no republican, I was just heartily sick of the whole affair and its constant trail.

Binraider killed dead.

Osama Bin Raiden was killed to dead on monday. He was offed in his giant compound in Sidabbotabad, 50 miles from Islamabad. Pakistan, by armed bastards. Cannot get worked up by him snuffing it like that (he maybe a cunt but he was still a living person), though there are the stock shots of jubilant Americans, whooping and hollering in times square who evidently are.
There is film of him being killed, and a mass of confusion regarding how he died exactly (we're going for armed bastards), whether his missus was killed or not killed and if he was armed or not.

PSN to become the, PWN network.

Final story is the massive lack of security on the PSN Network now renamed in its honour as the PWN network. The hack happened over the easter holidays and succeeded in pilfering many account details, credit card info, and addresses, no thanks to Sony's complete lack of security. Sony are said to bring in an ex NCIS expert to track the anonymous hackers, (not Anonymous) to Malaysia (though theres precious little evidence to back up this either).

As I've previously noted Sony seem to have bought a whole bunch of jinx with them when they made the PS3. Not only did they start out right by including Region free gaming and backwards compatibility, they then pissed on their chips by stripping out PS2 support, then Linux (which was the impetus to get Custom firmware onto the PS3 and mass online cheating sigh, this also includes the well publicised spat with George Geo Hotz too). Now PWN is compromised due to... Piss poor security.

Whatever they do, Sony has lost a lot of support due to this, I have no sympathy for the hackers who did this, ( I neither own nor would consider using PSN nor XBOXlive or any online service as it just doesn't appeal to me, so aren't affected.) but have an equal dislike of Sony for their sheer stupidity and not locking that sucker down.

Honey guide not Honeyguides.

2011-05-01T16:57:00.000+01:00

Hello lone viewer, are you blessed with a sweet tooth, do you like honey and books written by Nigerians.
You do!, wow then we have a treat for you. Thrown out at work along with some Nollywood films is a small book all about honey and how it can cure problems. Settle down with some bread and honey (possibly in your parlour) and lets begin.

The book in question is 50 ways of using honey. Honey can cure your sickness by Sesan Adewusi.

The first parts are about spiritual matters, which is close to the hearts and minds of your everyday denizen of Lagos. Don't mind me as a faithless westerner, that we'll mercilessly take the piss at this juncture.

"Bee is an insect that god loves so much that he blessed human beings with it in order to use it for treatment and healing of any ailment/sickness."
So if you're feeling ill eat a bee, but watch out for stings. He continues.

"For reference purpose (sic), Check Quran 16 verse 68-69. God created woman to rule the land (wrong ED). God created an insect, he called its name Bee, he ordered it to live in the hole of trees and inside the rock with the authority of healing.
So allah created a bee and told it to live in a trees and healing rocks so far so good. We have a quran handy, and we'll quote Sura 16 verse 68-69 in its entirety.

"And your Lord inspired to the bee, Take for yourself among the mountains, houses (beehives) and among the trees and in that which they construct.
Then eat from all the fruits and follow the ways of your lord laid down for you. There emerges from their bellies a drink, varying in colours, in which there is healing for people. Indeed in that is a sign for a people who give thought.
So there you go, much more detailed in its breakdown, involving bees who can make curative drinks in their stomachs by eating fruit. Hopefully that isn't mead, although as a weird correlation the previous verse talks about grapes and palm fruit used to make booze!. Anyway, we'll further quote from the honey book.

"If one takes a look at the Quran, one will know about the secrets of honey and how the prophet Mohammed (S.A.W) made use of it effectively.
We use PBUH rather than S.A.W, after the Prophet Muhammad in English but will obviously have to use random Aphex Twin albums now seeing as he started it.

Onto regular Christinanity and yeah it doesn't get any better here, as we'll see in this quote.

"Another story revealed to us that god invited all the animals, Phytons, Birds and other creatures living in the bush for a meeting one day. All of them were in attendance but he noted that bee was absent. Without much ado, god sent one angel to go and call bee to attend the important meeting. Eventually, bee came to that meeting and god asked why did it hide itself in the back. Bee responded that it cannot stand in front of where all powerfull animals like horse, elephant and other big creature can step on it and kill it.

We don't know what Phytons are, luckily Wikipaedia does, and they seem to be one of the minor gods from the Greyhawk D+D campaign.

"Phyton
Phyton was once like most other nature deities, but now represents man's dominance over nature, which pits him and his followers against druids, other nature gods, and others who would protect the wild from mankind's depredations".
Not bad for a mispelled Python.

Anyway, enough of matters spiritual and onto actual cures and we use this in the broadest sense of the word.
We'll give you 5 uses for honey before ending this megapost.

5. To draw customers to your shop.
Buy a big bottle of honey at the step door of the shop and cover it with sand.
(People will come to see what this nutter is doing burying perfectly good honey, and what is a step door anyway, I'm guessing doorstep).

6. Asthma Cough.
Get a quantity of snail water (omi igibin) add some quality honey to it, mix together and take one tablespoonful morning. Afternoon and night.
(Sadly looking for snail water on google just diverts us to other honey blogs in yoruba or general molluscicides, hopefully its linked to this old recipie in english to treat venereal disease.)

29. Low Sperm count.
Any man that is having watery sperm or low sperm count can never impregnate any woman. That is why some women remain barren for life. Some men believe that the faults are from their wives when they fails to be pregnant, not knowing that the fault may be from them. I want to help those who are in this problem. Go to the market where they are selling herbs and leaves and buy egbo ogbolo, cut it into pieces, put them in a big bottle and put water. Allow it to ferment for three days. Always take one glass cup with one tablespoonful of honey every day.

On a related topic. This.

5.FOR GOOD ERECTION : Slice three big onions add small water then cock for 10-15 minutes when the onion is soft, extract the juice, mix with honey of the same quantity, then cook again for 5-10 minutes. Then store it in a bottle when it cools 2-3 spoons in the morning and evening after meal.

(Until onion is soft and cock is hard presumably.)

37. Eating In The Dream
Eating in the dream is bad because it can lead to serious sickness and can eventually cause early death. To treat this, get a quantity of palm kernel oil (i.e adi-eyan) with honey. Mix them together and take one tablespoonful in the morning and night. This will enable you to vomit whatever you have eaten in the dream. Take the same measurement both in the afternoon and night, This will enable you to excrete whatever you have eaten in the dream.
('()') not a clue.

Finally, this is a baffling way to cure impotence, oh and seems to be the source of snail water.

48. Impotence.

This is specially for men who cannot perform sexually. Our fore fathers discovered that the combination of snail water with pure natural honey has the power to stimulate the promotion of sex hormones in men.
Preparation:

Get a big snail, break it and put it in a plastic plate, pour a quantity of honey to it and leave it till the following day when you will be taking two tablespoonful in the morning and night use the preparation for ten days before you throw away the snail and do another preparation.

Two words Cheap Viagara.
Peace out.

Smash Hits Keyboard

2011-04-28T17:54:00.000+01:00

This doesn't really merit a Sunday Update so here is a few bits and pieces we've found out about this table hooter.

I'm pretty sure from looking online (and in the Argos catalogue) that this is a rebadged version of an Acoustic Solution synth. Specifically the mid range version

Boasting 100 instruments and rhythms but in reality has only 29 instruments, the others double and triple up for other instruments. I doubt this could be due to mine being found rather than bought as it seems to be present on all of them. Its a little sketchy when playing either vibrato or sustain and has a nice range of drums with it.

Sounds.
Not too bad, there is a few favourites on here such as a nice chiptunesque Square Wave, a string ensemble and a shamisen. I'm not into circuit bending so I couldn't tell you what the insides look like or where to solder, but if you want to sample it there is an out port at the back, (we're using a usb audio grabber and it fits there). We'll add some samples on our mediafire account when we have the whole lot done, and if we can work it out make a soundfont from them.
But so far don't hold your breath anytime soon.

4 Posts of Extreme Excellence.

2011-04-24T16:28:00.000+01:00

The whole idea of this was to post over the 4 days of the Easter Holidays but as you can see this is Easter Sunday and you'll have to sit tight for a massive update.

Good Friday.
We took a trip to Polhill Garden centre. on the promise that, A. there would be animals and B. it would be a nice day out.   Animal wise they had sheep, assorted bunnies and chicken chicks. Oh and a sheepdog that had to be hosed down due to the heat.

Polhill isn't half bad, it does pretty much anything you want for a garden and as a bonus it has one heck of a farm shop.    They cover most of the usual stuff such as locally grown produce and cakes and also take in other stuff including for a teetotaller such as me, premium soft drinks. They have a range of Fentimans drinks for about £1.50 (we had a Rose Lemonade which was unexpectedly nice), as well as other bespoke and artisan brands of food and drink. They also had a range of cacti which wasn't entirely awful, mainly Eriosyce, Mammilaria, Gymnocalycium and what I ended up buying, a Parodia which I thought was Magnifica but with a pink stigma (Magnifica flowers are all yellow from the pics I've seen.) Turns out its Buiningii from the photos labelled.

St Georges day.

Our local pub actually had bunting out for celebrating St Georges day. Entirely laudable in their aim we thought it was cool that they actually thought of the English for a change. Big up everyone elses national day if you like but remember to defend your own with as much vigour, when it comes down to it.

Anyway this is one of two bootsales we went to, an overland trek to Charlton Meridian and one that never fails to shock with its mix of pirate and the knock off.   Worryingly we got a PS2 network adaptor and coupled with a few spare hard drives that we accumulated over the years we set about the task of getting it to work on our modded PS2. (The one supplied didn't really fit but was an old 80GB miles larger than what I have) (17GB). Coupled with Virgin Vinyl from some dude punting records out for 10p, we got Parents don't understand Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff (remember when the DJ was an integral part of every rappers act) and Coming From Tha D a sampler from an Intuit-Solar CD collection (has Dopplereffekt so it comes home with us).

Storm spoiled the rest of DR Who, but damn does that look like a corker. Also don't scare the Hare, a bastard mix of Portal 2 robot, gameshow and winners game from Shooting Stars, fronted by Richard O'Brien lookalike Jason Bradbury. Was team 1 really called weegee the storm started so it fucked it all up.

Eggsta sunday.

Pedham place farm. A miles parking and not enough exits makes this good only. It makes up for its parking issues by being massive in size.

This wasn't our first choice but hell did it throw up some weird stuff.   Someone was punting a Size 16 S+M outfit with vibrating nipple clamps, along with wetsuits and other diving gear. Yeah really, that has to be the most fucked up thing I've seen in ages. Also being punted was some German VCS games in black labels, they had Snail against Squirrel , whose blurb here makes it sound the most perverse thing ever.

Raum 102

2011-04-17T14:58:00.000+01:00

We'll not lie to you this is going to be yet another round up of tat. One in which we break the holy grail (mentioning work).

3DS.
A trip up town finally, got us a play on an actual 3DS. All I can say is this, the 3D does work and yes there is a slider to make it more 3D or less. To be honest all we played so far is Pilotwings in 3D, a nice little tech demo in which you use the flimsy Analogue stick to fly a plane around a town looking for rings to fly through. The 3D bit makes it look like you are seeing right into the middle distance which is nice. Other stuff noticed is that when you crash your pilot parachutes out of your compromised biplane. Apart from that and the fact that the cunts have region locked it (inexcusable for any console let alone a handheld) its not a bad piece of kit. Also my eyes did feel a bit funny afterwards though that could be due to an early start also.

Work features in an advert.

According to a workmate they have a new Virgin Holidays advert for Jamaica filmed around work. Now don't get your hopes up, we do NOT work in Jamaica, the ad was filmed around here. A guy came up to us while working and said that they were filming (we didn't ask what) and would his car be OK (yeah we have no clamping here.) I haven't seen the ad but in true Amazon reviewer tradition its the most excellentist thing ever.

Emperors Birthday.

2011-04-14T17:29:00.000+01:00

Today is my birthday and as a departure I have some gifts for you.

http://www.mediafire.com/?9ak6xpy6u69qbxg
This is an old Shining Force Strategy Mag from Game Players Magazine. 42MB download.
Giving the overview of the main characters and a walkthrough for maps 1-20.

X files Mini Comic Trick Of The Light. 17.6 MB
http://www.mediafire.com/?pmmu8blb1xh7rdw


Dave Cole Spinning in his grave toward the Planets Core.

Oh and because we've been lax with scan of the week we'll give you Sony Imagesofts Make My Own Video.
With C+C Music Factory. Aren't you glad Sony aren't cunts anymore (Sarcasm Fail.)

20 'Century' XXX

2011-04-10T17:13:00.000+01:00

As promised this is our 100th post and as a milestone we'll be taking a look at the claims of veteran reviewers Harry and Michael Medved, authors of trash film guide the Golden Turkey Awards an early 80's look at cinematic clunkers.

In fact we'll be delving into a single topic, and look away now if filth offends, its the Most Shamelessly (and Tastelessly) Derived Title For A Pornographic Film category.

Our list of nominees are as follows... IMDB links where possible. One Million AC/DC is NSFW and ludicrous to boot.

My Bare Lady
Sex Family Robinson
One Million AC/DC *
Pray For Rosemary's Beaver **
Flesh Gordon
Lust Horizons ***
The Sexorcist
Naughty Network
The Pink Lagoon ****
Every Which Way She Can
The French Lieutenants Boys
Beyond the Valley Of The Ultra Milkmaids
On Golden Blonde
Fleshdance *****
Flashpants
First Times At Cherry High
Sperms Of Endearment *6
Sister Dearest *7
E.T The Extra Testicle
and last 'butt' not least Romancing The Bone.

As you can see from the list there are millions ranging from cheapjack Hardcore productions, guaranteed to pull in the dough on the blockbusters name alone, to Million Years AC/DC with its rubber monsters and daft premise, swinging cavemen. The winner of the category is Beyond the Valley Of The Ultra Milkmaids, which the Medveds slated as:

The producers of BTVOTUM managed to to evoke echoes of all the films noted above, in an absolutely disgusting motion picture that had nothing to do with Russ Meyer, vixens, dolls, valleys, Jaqueline Susann, or Roger Ebert.

*In Eastman colour, complete with dude in a gorilla suit and a fat guy who looks like Pavarotti this actually looks like a hoot, mixing monster mash and softcore silliness.
** You'll notice theres no link, thats because it doesn't exist. There's a reference to Roman Polanski seeing a sign for Rosemary's Beaver (tagline Pray for Rosemary's pussy) in downtown L.A. when his film Rosemary's Baby was on, and thats as far as it gets.
*** Another no show, a Lust Horizons was released but in 1992, far after the book was published.
**** Contains Ron Jeremy
***** Another released years later job, a Fleshdance was released in 2008 but is unlikely to be the same film. EDIT its not. Its alternate name is Sexdance Fever and stars Ron Jeremy.
*6 We haven't found this one neither, its from 85. There is of course a later pron version but that doesn't count. We linked to bug girls blog simply cos of the insects man.
*7 Unlikely to ever be released uncut as Traci Lords was 16 when she made this.

Make mine a 99

2011-04-03T16:18:00.000+01:00

Can't believe this, but this marks our 99th post, the next you will see will be our hundredth missive.
If I can find and remember it we'll be looking into whether the list of derivative porn names provided by the excellent Golden Turkey Awards ever existed as films.

In fact we haven't had a scan of the week in ages nor some half remembered tat from my childhood. So here is two for the price of one.

WCCF Stattos dream come true.

As a child of the 80's we grew up with the era of the Panini football sticker. Every year they would punt out a new set of stickers and an album to stuff them in. We would rush out and buy them an furiously swap them in the playgrounds with cries of got, got, got, got, need. We never managed to collect a whole set and despite coming close. They were split into what would now be called the SPL and Premier league clubs, with occasional foil stickers of club badges that were bloody hard to get. We wanted an Arsenal badge but no one would swap, in fact now I remember it, the Dunfermiline Athletic badge was hard to get hold off as well.

Panini did other stuff as well (we collected Beano and Dandy stickers as well as stuff from the Transformers cartoon), but all they were ever known for was football stickers.

What brought all this back was a booklet from an issue of Game Japan we got from the Japan centre sale.
Apart from some quite literally pornoriffic Queens Blade artwork, there's quite a line up of info for arcade games including World Club Champion Football 08-09 by Sega.

A bastard mix of Panini sticker and Football game, that if the arcade hadn't coughed up blood and died sometime in the mid to late 90's could have been the saviour of the arcade in the UK. I'm pretty sure there would be a market for this, as soccer is well known for attracting Statto style anoraks. You get an IC card to register data and have a mix of cards to lay down on the screen to make your team. Like the fantasy football leagues printed in the papers, certain cards are marked out as rare and cost more rather than your rank and file players. You then assemble a team from the cards you have and play football.

Of course this being Japan there's a strong Engrish prescence here, located in the various skill descriptions.

Rather than bore you with all the normal ones we'll put up some of the most outlandish descriptions in a small list here (clubs they play for in brackets).

Samir Nasri. The Brew Master (Arsenal)
Francesc 'Cesc' Fabregas 4-Dimensional Through-balls (Arsenal)
Adriano The Power Horse (InterMilan)
Stevie G Terrifying Right Foot (Liverpool) Actually you could picture Motty saying this in a pinch.
Karim Benzema The Trench Mortar (Lyon)
Nordin Amrabat Sturdy Penetration (PSV Eindhoven)
David Villa The Wedge Buster (Valencia)

With that we will leave you for another week.

Trips out.

2011-03-27T16:39:00.000+01:00

First of all, I'd like to say a sad farewell to Loleatta Holloway, who by the sad coincedence of dying at the same time as Liz Taylor didn't get the send off she deserved. We'll always remember you as the voice of disco and a thousand unofficial house tracks, we'll add this link to Ellis D My Loleatta as it captures her at her best even if it was bootlegged by Brian Forest.

Secondly we had a grand trip out to the Ideal home exhibition in Earls Court. Our primary objective was to find the Nintendo stand and blag ourselves a go on the new 3DS, however despite being advertised, we never actually found it. Our record of trade show stuff is pretty woeful, Last time was a go on the Phillips stand circa 1994. They offered up Hotel Mario and Burn Cycle which were pretty average if I did say so myself. Burn Cycle was a sort of Interactive Movie shooter in which a woman kept saying shoot now in your ear, and Hotel Mario is a bastard mix of door closing and Elevator Action with execrable animation, utterly redeemed by Youtube Poop. It could easily be reworked for the SNES if the shonky cut scenes were erased or left as stills thats how basic the game is.

Anyway if you couldn't make it or weren't bothered enough to go, the exhibition in a nutshell is basically a live version of the kind of home shopping channels running at the higher limits of Sky.

Hi. I'm Billy Mays.

With Prominent posters of Linda Barker, and Fiona Phillips the show itself was dedicated to the expensive and the gadget orientated. A load of food stalls and home beauty stands mixed with the occasional toy or big business stand, (Nissan and Virgin Media this time) Ideal Home is the perfect balance of the unaffordable and the Rinky Dink in one. They recreated the Rovers Return pub from Corrie and had a big lake in the middle of the center for some reason.

Certain stuff was nice if you had the room, the games company could do you a cocktail mame cab for 6 grand, or the latest pinball (Stern's Rolling Stones) for 4. There were the usual rubbish adjustamatic beds, non sexual massagers and beauty therapy stuff. Oh and free samples of food which is always nice.

We will leave you with what could be the worst celebrity snap of all time. Linda Barker.

Is that her? Behind the camera?

Stuff I didn't know

2011-03-20T15:30:00.000Z

Welcome to an occasional column where I discuss stuff that quite frankly I didn't know existed but actually does exist. Two fascinating facts for you here.

Fact one.

Bob Carolgees has his own candle shop.

I'll say that again, Bob Carolgees of spit the dog fame has his own candle shop.

There's a link there proving it, and all told its quite baffling. How many old quiz show hosts have their own online stores flogging homeware. Chris Tarrant doesn't have a webshop dedicated to quilts nor does Bob Monkhouse have a store promoting decorative glassware. (though he did have an archive of film of quite staggering proportions in his house) I find this quite Partridgesque to be honest. Incidentally if you wish to buy candles from Bob Carolgees or a Spit The Dog puppet you can.

Fact two.

The Japanese electric grid systems run on both a 50HZ and a 60HZ system.

Thanks to this link it proves quite interesting reading. From a gamer perspective if only they went with a Pal TV option and kept the 50HZ output then you wouldn't really need all the hassle involved to run import consoles, just a plug adaptor like you would use for trips to mainland Europe.

First bootsale of the year.

2011-03-13T16:20:00.000Z

First of all I'd like to update you on Neverwinton. While it does work saving and indeed messing with your body shape will cause it to crash out, this is why I never ever mess with PC games. We also had the misfortune to play Dragonball Ultimate Battle for PSOne. We heard it was bad but we didn't imagine it would suck that much.

Oh and a belated if not heartfelt, Sumimasen to those suffering in Japan. A megaquake, tsunami and reactor meltdown. Watching NHK news at the devastation, nature can be such a cunt at times.

Anyway, its the first bootsale of the year and the first Saturday one I've ever been to. Its up at Charlton parks meridian centre, just past the QE Hospital. A long walk and a 50p entry fee got us some goodies. Quite a lot of records and tapes, though the amount of non trade people selling were actually few and far between.

First lulzy stuff.

Pirate stuff. Mainly some dude flogging Mccarthy antivirus suite with no "Kegen" apparently, but your usual array of stallholders with bent DVDs and CDs. They had someone with Reason along with non legit Windows XP and 7.

Bibles. In some unknown language* (some sort of african dialect, we have a load of africans here) all I could gather was they were called Bibeli Mimo. Which sounds like some IDM group.

*Ah its Yoruba, (thanks google) which explains alot. They had Nollywood films too one called Chelsea VS Liverpool.

Stuff I bought.

CDS, a DVD and some records.

Degrees of Motion Album.
For some reason, bought this and two others for a quid, the guy wanted me to grab something else but through all the other stuff he had a lot of stuff I didn't want nor was interested in.
The album is appaling, like a third rate C+C Music factory. Degrees of motion are best known for the song Do You Want it Right Now, which is a reasonable track, however the album goes downhill fast after they play this. Adding some dude to rap and even attempt some ragga at one point is the crappest thing evar our tolerance for dancehall is low. Gyptian and Chaka Demus is about the best I can hack before wanting to commit genocide.

Low price Best of Acid House Volume 1.

Part of low price musics best of acid house box set. Drawing together the old Acid Trax compilations from Needle / Serious Records and essentially making each one a radio mix, they are not the full length versions as described on the box. Still they are a nice compilation for those without access to the original records or indeed a box set of 4 CDs that Low Price punted out.

Records.

So far the word major disappointment would be gifted out now. We have Kurtis Mantronik Trickstyle EP as yet unlistened to, and some French Gabber from Psychik Genocide Records.

We did some major soul searching here. Both records are fucked, I don't mean scratched but with major chippage to the outside its as if someones taken a chisel and whacked off a good chunk from the edge. The good news is that it doesn't affect two tracks on the 4 track EPS. We got a Hardcoholics EP and DJ Radium Vice Machine, both tracks will be uploaded in due time. We left behind a DJ Promo / Hellfish EP from the same label (similar fate) and a few unofficial bootlegs of D Mob and Inner City.

Neverwinton Nightmares.

2011-03-06T17:31:00.000Z

This is basically a rant against PC gaming in general. Stuff that never appears on PC and a few general installation woes thrown in. If you want an eloquently written rage against the machine here is the Rev's take on the same theme.

For once we decided to take a punt on a pc game for sale up in Oxfam. Its the critically acclaimed Neverwinter Nights from Bioware. Unlike Stu who's tolerance of Orc's is set somewhere on the minus area of the chart, I don't mind messing with goblins and the like. So after putting in the hours with Baldurs Gate Shadows of Amn. We decided to give Neverwinton a punt. Big mistake.

First up, we decided to Install all three disks, and after much waiting we decided to load up, only to be told that you need a playing disk to play. Looking in the box we found that there wasn't any such disk there, but a look online on Biowares forums showed that the latest patch actually did away with such things.

Which is our second mistake. The game is supposed to update and patch itself but for some reason it doesn't well not the latest patch (1.69). Through more poking on the forum, we found a link to the patch we needed t o download, and it updated our game excellently. Booting up as normal we found that the game itself crashes out at the title screen, a quick uninstall and a trip to my old PC running XP finally got the game working (well sort of it crashed a character generation screen).

Two things here. Games on PC are always going after the highest spec where most people are running something much, much lower powered. Why do you think The Sims is so popular, low specs to run and walling people up in the toilet. (Incidentally my Sims 2 had a bug where they could never order food meaning any relationship was doomed to slow starvation.)

The other stuff is the weird dichotomy of PC gaming, its either call or duty or object poking simulators, leavened with World of Fucking Warcraft and the like.

Harvest Moon could never be made for PC, (though farmville is, I suppose, its coin sucking equivalent)
primary colours aside. There are never any JRPGS for the pc in mainstream shops, same with Mario and the same with Dodonpachi. Platformers and 2D shmups are never considered for PC gaming.

I'd love a fps with the same mentalness as Parodius, giant cats that are half submarine, imagine how much better Call of Duty would be if the Russians wheeled out a massive laser spewing elephant with the communist flag on its back, all the while playing tannenbaum / Red Flag in the background. Or Wolfenstein where hitlers head could explode like in Bionic Commando. I don't expect realism in my games, I don't want it dirty, brown or indeed miserable. Gimme a blue sky and I'm happy, gimme the commie elephant as an end of level boss and i'll even think about playing COD.

Being a virtual Space captain.

2011-02-27T15:47:00.000Z

Its been a long standing dream of mine to get into the original Elite on the 8 bits. Playing it back in the day it seemed such a chore, the promise of deep space exploration with the actual reality of that it'll take massive amounts of effort to get anywhere.

But still I keep trying, and trying various emulated versions to see if there is a bearable version but no dice. We heard about Oolite a while back but thought it far too nerdy to bother with, it is pretty geeky but those that have played the original Elite should be right at home here. Other folks well...

It does capture the magic of the original space series, with options to have either wireframe graphics on or off, and as a milestone, its the furthest I've been in any of the original Elites, (making it as far as the target planet and rather stupidly dying whilst docking). Oolite isn't bad but there's 2 problems with it.

1. It takes an ice age to get to the object planet. I put it on full speed and set it toward Diso, and went for my dinner to find that, not only by the time I came back that we were in range but the space station was slightly visible on the main screen. I estimate I was away for 10 minutes and it took another 7 or so reach (and crash into) the Coriolis Station. Let alone vast distances of space, it seems that they couldn't implement the far superior time dilation controls from its follow up Frontier.

Don't get me wrong, Oolite isn't bad at all, but with Frontier controls, it would be miles better, and meant that I'm not drawing my pension whenever I make it to Earth.

2. There's a heck of a lot of controls to learn, but you can remedy this. Open whatever PDF viewer you use and pull up the player sheet from the Oolite package. You can then use this as a background while playing Oolite. You can switch between the to while playing if you forget which key is for targeting space ships, and which is the Witchspace jump button.

In fact as you may have gathered my affection for the whole series only took off with Elite 2 Frontier for the Amiga. Pitching up to prospect the farthest reaches of the galaxy with an Imperial Courier and an MB4, or simply ferrying people between the more populated planetary systems once we had expanded enough. We dedicated 13 game years and never made it to Elite status, (its been ages but I think I'm at dangerous level).

So imagine my surprise when someone on Metro's Gamecentral pages suggested that there was a remake of Frontier too. Called Pioneer its still in alpha, but its already looking like Frontier on steroids.

Sure it has its problems, there are far too many thrust buttons for starters and the background themes aren't the best. You seem to start out with too much fuel and a weedy hyperdrive too (we got 8 light years out of my old Eagle mark 3 now its more like 4 and a bit). But the magic is there, you can speed up time to your hearts content and even autopilot to planet's vicinity {or vacinity as the game would have it}.

We'll try and arrange some audio stuff if I remember it, but for now, I' m off to dust down the Eagle and trade to my hearts content.

I am more in a factory, hothouse was never?

2011-02-20T15:19:00.000Z

Today our eclectic skill shop will show you how to chop up a Sanseveria to make plantlets.

Thanks to a water leak in the conservatory, we have to deal with disparate lumps of rotting plants that were previously healthy specimens, mainly Aloe, Haworthia and Gasteria but with both of my Sanseverias too.

Luckily its left us with three leaves and a recollection that chopping them up will elicit more plants. Sadly most of the Aloes are too far gone for this treatment (we're holding out hope that a Gasteria can be saved in this manner). Lucky that it was only one tray that was affected, but still its especially galling that this happened at all.

Sanseveria Cylindrica, not your average Mother in laws tongue!.

Anyway here is a guide for those that have had the same problem or simply want to up their propagation skills.

You'll need:
a large pot
Sharp knife
Free draining compost, John Innes no1 is good, or peat free with extra gravel added if you can't get hold of it.

Prepare the pot with the potting compost and then select a good sized leaf for cutting.

With leaf selected, lop it off at the base of the stem and cut it into 4inch/10cm chunks.
Do this one at a time, so that you won't mix up the which part was from where. (Only those that were on the bottom will grow otherwise they'll rot instead)
Plant your sliced Sanseveria into the potting compost and leave in a warm and dry place. Hopefully you'll see small plantlets appearing at the base of each leaf piece (well thats what I hope to see) a few months down the line oh and when the weather is better don't forget to water.

Toy museum trip.

2011-02-13T16:05:00.001Z

So far we've been enjoying SaGa 2 Goddess of Destiny for the NDS a remake of the old Gameboy game. We're up to the bit where Ashura sends his micronized foes into Kai to retrieve the relics inside her, and you set off to the giants world to learn this dark art so you can stop them. Working well in DeSmuMe with no real drop outs and that, and it is proving to be as hard as the rest of the series, Ashura himself killed off most of my party with only Guest star Mask and my robot holding him off with souped up taijutsu skills and battle hammers.

Toy Museum

WARNING A HUGE PHOTO SPLURGE IS APPROACHING.

Thanks to my employers generous holiday package, we took a day off to visit the Toy Museum at Bethnal Green.

To give its full name thats the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, its a short way down from Bethanl Green Tube station and its a largely ace place.

If you have any interest in children then the police would like to speak with you, however if you're nostalgic about toys then this is the place for you oh and you kids too.

They seem to have a fixation with creepy dolls, which of course we took many photos of and there are many pictures of Gollies there too which are neither expalined away through political correctness (just another facet of childhood) or shoved out of sight, in fact there's a huge one on display there (not pictured), although their full name is not of course given.

Right between the eyes.

There are a lot of tin plate toys including some devilish mice and various wind up novelties on show.
Robots from Japan and sinister german ducks rub shoulders with tin plate bears and magic lanterns.

There are a few cabinets dedicated to dolls and soft toys. Barbie is well represented as is Sindy her British counterpart. There are a few Action Men too complete with eagle eyes and accesories.

My favourite is Blythe a doll made in the early seventies that sort of looks like an anime figure crossed with a hippy. (in fact she would be successfully relaunched in Japan in 2001, though she still looks like an acid casualty crossed with the bride of Chucky.) For a gamer though the biggest sin was the complete lack of game systems, UBISoft donated a pink model of a DS complete with bunch of shite Imagine: Childmolesterer software and there is a Tamagotchi in the testimony display case but, apart from that there's nothing, no SNES no NES no ZX Spectrum complete with software on tapes or anything else for that matter.
They were a big part of most of our childhoods, growing up in the 80's, there isn't even a VCS, which is rubbish.

There may be no consoles there, but they do have some stuff based on old TV shows. I never knew Superted or Dogtanian ever had their own toy spin offs, but there are examples of both. Predictably Superted is absolute rubbish, whereas Dogtanian looks classy in his red hat.
Anyway we'll add some photos and leave you in peace.

Super Ted still rubbish.

Blythe, Headshop owner and space cadet.

Flat top the sailor man.

Jesus is invisible and other bollocks, according to the Jehovas Witness cunts. Sorry just really hate them.

Hello Kids Wanna buy some Honey.

Probably not a nod to electro group Le Car.

The BNPs attempt to celebrate ST Georges day was a fucking disappointment (as usual).

Great Uncle Bengaria, the ethnic Womble.

Dogtanian minus his muskerhounds.

Told you they'd be gollies, though dressed up in tartan is a new one for me.

Haniwa De Go

2011-02-06T15:21:00.000Z

Back in May we wrote this.

"and finally you're not allowed to take photos in arcades anymore we may actually write more about this, as it seems entirely wrong headed and petty. We have very poor footage of Haniwa De Go by Taito in fact we'll definitely do more on this as there's precious little information online about this at all.

Oh and we'll try and make it a double bill with unlicensed Mario too."

Mario got his day in the spotlight back in May, but Haniwa de Go got forgotten about, lingering out in the darkness... Until now.

A trip to the Trocadero, proved to be the catalyst for this rebirth of sorts. The previous location had a ban on taking photographs of the machines for reasons unknown, and after a few visits there it was demoted to being broken and finally disappeared to be replaced by a Coronation Street coin pusher {which is shit}.

Skip forward to the new year and we took our camera up town to photograph the chinese new year, and decided a trip to the Troc' would be a fun diversion before we got down to the serious business of photographing the festivities. Up on the top floor they had Haniwa set up and accepting 10ps. We broke out the camera and filmed us playing through about a pounds worth.


We don't know the name of the Namco game but theres some cracking Engrish on the front there.

Overview.

Haniwa De Go is a coin pusher style game from Taito, the aim of the game is to move around the board by timing your shots so they roll into the moving pink coin slots. They trigger the rolling dice on screen and you move about, sometimes you get a chance to collect bonuses or OOparts (the main feature of the game) and this in turn gets you more coins to the lower (and indeed more traditional) coin pusher 'penny falls part' of the game.

Instead of directly dropping it down via the slots you have a choice of 6 slots to place your coin, (three each side) and if it falls into the moving slots you go onto the map screen as explained above. If not it joins the rest of the coins on the main pusher, and if it gets pushed down onto the lower screen then there's a chance that it could fall down and pay out onto the main slot (in time honoured tradition it won't, it'll just hang there defying gravity). Anyway to watch us play some rounds and even trigger a bonus have a look at the clip below on Youtube, courtesy of the bearorbust empire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0kX3_LvdYg

Saga 2 patched.

2011-02-03T19:45:00.000Z

And it only took a brand new version of DesMume to get it working.

Here is the full rigmarole of getting this to work under emulation (for those that don't need to run stuff from no stinking flash cart).

Download the latest release of DeSmume, from the link above and don't extract it, simply copy it to a folder of your choice (ours is simply called unzipped)

Locate your Rom by the time honoured traditon of googling its name on google. Saga2 Hihou no densetsu
We'll throw you a bone here by directing you to rapidlibrary and put in the name there to see if its up on any file drop places. ( and for gods, sake ignore all the weird porn requests that people make there).

With the rom downloaded to a folder of your choice, go to the Crimson Nocturnal sub page and download the patch from the list of filedrops provided and extract it to the same folder where your SaGa rom is located.

Play the Rom image in DeSmume and see if the main title screen appears, if it does open up Xdelta from the Saga2 translation patch file and close the emu. (You'll get a warning screen in japanese if you use any other emulator to patch this at present either that or it just won't work.)

In case you mess up make a copy of the rom and then with Xdelta open add in the directory for:
*where the patch is for patching.
*where the rom image is for patching (easy both should be in the same place)
*the new name for you rom file with .nds at the end of it.
THIS BIT IS IMPORTANT OR THE PATCH WONT BE RECOGNIZED.

Press apply and it should patch ok, run Desmume and see if the title screen is in English. If so well done you've patched Saga for emulator play.

Saga 2 translated.

2011-01-30T16:18:00.000Z

For those of you not fans of Squares also ran RPG series, Crimson Nocturnal Hacking Group have released Saga 2 Goddess of Destiny in English. So far I'm tracking down a rom file that won't crash out when patched or booted up in an emulator but when I do rest assured that I'll be linking to the place were you'll get it.

For those unaware, the SaGa series started out on Gameboy as the unloved spin off of Final Fantasy. Both Secret of Mana and the SaGa series were released as Final Fantasy Legend 1-3 and Final Fantasy Adventure in the west. The Second version (which Square have remade along with 3) is the best of a hard bunch. You'll regularly be forced down to 1Hp through random battles and confront punishing boss battles (Apollo in particular is a bitch unless you kit everyone out with lasers and cure wands).

Weapons eventually dull and become useless through battle, skills will not be randomly learnt through battle here unlike their main console brethren, and though abandoned in SaGa Frontier for PS1 you'll fight with a party of monsters and robots along with mystics and humans.

Square have decided to release the third Gameboy SaGa remake this month and there are currently no plans to release either officially in English. Though to be fair the third game has no real overarching story like 2 (its main claim to fame was that the graphics looked a bit like Final Fantasy spin off Mystic Quest but on Gameboy) and Akitoshi Kawasu played no role in the development of it. Here's hoping that they decide to add a plot and several upgrades to the gameplay, though its not as rubbish as the original is definitely playing second fiddle to the mighty 2nd SaGa.

In other news we found that PacLand for the PC Engine can be controlled normally by pressing select on the title screen. Oh and scan of the week with return soon, as we have a brand new scanner (as soon as we find a USB Lead for it).

88th postage insanity.

2011-01-23T15:55:00.000Z

Actually make that not insanity but more like a round up of a load of old tosh.

PS3 games could get serial code. Secondhand Market fucked?.

Sony has only itself to blame for all this, and if this does make it out from the credible rumour stage to market, then its not really going to stop piracy. Pirates will always find away to crack and spread games and that. DRM doesn't work on PCs and it won't work on PS3. All this will do is alienate the existing users of legitimate games who will put in the codes and bend over to get shafted leaving the pirates to play with their DRMless copies scot free.

Even worse cutting down the preowned section is foolish. Although DLC cuts into this, preowned is an ideal place to pick up games you might have missed first time round or heavily discounted classics (except Nintendo's own they apparently still want £30 for all Mario DS games). Today we got from game, Breath of Fire 5 for £5 and Final Fantasy 4 warriors of light for the princely sum of £10. All preowned.

Childrens Film Foundation.

This is something we've been wanting to find for ages. We had these weird racial memories of them showing short feature films at the end of CBBC during the late 80's. Odd things like an Eskimo that survived on sugar and what I thought was Wilfrid Brambell ('Arrrold) as a ghost with his head under his arm (wasn't though, though in retrospect it had the late, great, Ronnie Barker as a villain in it).

Browsing through one of the many offshoots of Chriddof on youtube we stumbled upon an old VHS rip from the CBBC Broom Cupboard. Containing presenter Andi Peters, Edd the Duck and Wilson the butler, they introduced the film Zoo Robbery, and as soon as the opening credits appeared I knew just where the eskimo was from. They don't have clips of this sadly but they do have shots of the Ghost film with Bernard Cribbins and Terry from Terry and June.

Its called Ghost of a chance and we'll put a link up here.

That is all.

Kuru Kuru Twinkle Onegai Ohoshisama.

2011-01-16T15:37:00.001Z

My obsession in finding this out stems from a small picture in the only copy of Koro Koro comic I own.

Purchased from Lewisham bootsale and comprising of several oddities in itself, (not least a Mole Mania manga and some maze contest for Fushigi no Dungeon) Koro Koro comprises several strips based on established brands such as Pokemon, Mini4WD and Mario 64. Its the same size and weight as a small brick. Were not kidding, you can still purchase it from places like the Japan center up town and the like. Its one of these give aways that the pic is from (a puzzle game in which from the picture looks like your battling some sort of crab), for ages my Japanese was poor enough miss out the title, but a recent look through with 1337er skills brought up the name. Kuru Kuru Twinkle Onegai Ohoshisama.

Snesorama gave us the proper links for downloading and we fired up EPSXE for perusal once we grabbed the iso.

First problem, sound isn't the greatest on this, in fact its not supported at all leaving just the sound effects (and just noise if you use the default plugin rather then Eternals SPU plug in).

Second problem. Theres quite a bit of text to wade through including a scrolly menu system, and a big intro (thats skippable). However we've put together a menu translation that will help you out in this case.

Main menu.
おはなし Story mode. Take on twelve signs of the zodiac for items
ずーうと One player mode
セーブ Save
ロード Load
せつめい　Config screen (controller)
つくる Construction kit use おわり to exit here if you visit here by mistake.
ぱずる Puzzle mode. You have one move to clear the screen and can play as any of the weirdos from story mode.
たたかえ Battle mode 2P only.

Hitting ずーうと (1p Mode will get you a mass of difficulty settings and afterward special attacks to pick through).
They range from まあまあ very easy Level 1 to 達人 expert mode Level 80, its just a case of flicking through and picking you level and then special attack.

Gameplay explanation.

OK, this is the real meat of the article. You control a 2x2 cursor on screen. Pressing X will flip it horizontally and pressing Circle will flip it vertically (Triangle has your special attack). The aim of the game is to create lines of three gems in a row (or an L shape that works too) that disappear and create chains if there are blocks that can make three below you.
You'll get a whole row falling instead of the odd pair and its game over if it reaches the top of the screen.

Hampering your efforts are garbage blocks which look like breezeblocks. Unlike any other game where making three the same will eliminate them, you have to make a line of them just like in Tetris. Unlike Tetris, when they drop they will clear everything under them leaving you with extra space to work with.

Story mode works the same except you get x shaped garbage blocks to work with, and a selection of weird versions of zodiac characters, including the aforementioned crab creature and what looks like Chouanikis Adol and Samson further on.

In conclusion, the game is actually good, the different buttons used to flip become second nature over a while and it provides some tense moments for you especially if you concentrate on clearing blocks rather then watch the top of the screen. Not quite sure why this didn't get a Midas Game release toward the end of the PS1s life as its the perfect fodder for a budget compilation. Anyway our over all score is
3/5
Kuru Kuru Twinkle Onegai Ohoshisama
Tomy Inc.
Developer Tomcat
Released 1996.

Edit here are some screenshots.

Half rice and Half chips.

2011-01-15T14:46:00.000Z

So the snookers back on, long time viewers will know I have a love for the beautiful game and a chance throwaway mark on BBC Breakfast bought up a real oddity.

Chinese player Ding Jun Hui is set to have his own cartoon show in his native china.

I'll say it again, Ding Jun Hui is getting his own show based sort of on him growing up as a shy lad in china and discovering snooker aged nine. Its called Dragonball 1# and has sod all in relation to Akira Toriyamas take on the Monkey legends. In fact if the picture behind it is accurate it looks an awful lot like Digimon but with more baize action. We couldn't zoom in on the back illustration but if its accurate looks like it'll have a badger headed lion in it (but probably won't).

This would never happen in the UK sadly, there was never a Saturday morning cartoon involving Alex Higgins (although simply imagining him in the title role of 8Ace strip would be mostly accurate).
Going Live was a lot better off knowing that there wasn't a show involving an animated Jimmy White getting into scrapes and failing to win the Embassy world championships. The less said about Steve Davis or Terry Griffiths as a lead character the better.

In unrelated news we've been playing mostly obscure PS1 puzzle games, but we've taken time out of our busy schedule to poke around Taito's PC Engine output.

Taito's out put seemed to convert many of their more obscure arcade games to the system. A cursory look around Gamefaqs brings up this not incomplete list.
HUCard
Bonze's Adventure.
Rastan.
Don Doko Don,
Parasol Stars,
Liquid Kids.

Its only with the PC Engine CD that we veer into more familiar territory.
Rainbow Islands.
New Zeland Story
Space Invaders (Published by NEC Interchannel and brought out in 1995)
It seems that Taito treated the PC Engine as something as a test bed, most of these games never really got released on anything but PC Engine. (and those that weren't had a patchy conversion rate, C64 Parasol Stars is now lost, and Liquid Kids for Amiga showed up only recently).

A lot of these only became well known through the Taito Legends Compilation series, which brought together most of Taito's arcade output. Anyway normal service tomorrow we'll be looking at Kuru Kuru Twinke Onegai Ohoshisama by Tomy.

Marchen Maze links.

2011-01-09T15:52:00.000Z

Rather than amend the above post we'll just drop these links in here.

Marchen Maze strategy guide
Marchen Maze write up. Still nothing concrete on the western arcade version as of yet.

Yet more PC Engine stuff.

2011-01-09T15:44:00.001Z

We've had more of a chance to play around with Ootake now, more specifically refinding something I saw from my childhood.

But first the usual reminiscence.

We may have told you about a place called Trading World that used to be in Bexleyheath in the early to mid nineties. It was a collection of small stalls and shops selling all manner of items. They had a few game stands there one that specialized in Amiga stuff (they had Mario baiting german platformer, Great Giana Sisters running at one time), and one dedicated to Console games with load of import games. Of the three games I remember them doing one was Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts on the SNES(or its Super Fami incarnation Chomakaimura to be exact). The others were early hori shmup, Cyberlip for Neo-Geo and Marchen Maze which looked fucking impressive to my 12 year old eyes more used to the brown tinged hues of a C64.

Recently remembering this was a PC Engine game, we downloaded it and booted it up in Ootake. It still looks the part, even if the intro is entirely in Japanese, you can easily work out its based on Alice in Wonderland. Its by Namcot long before their change over to Namco and is based on an arcade game of the same name. Available for the Sharp X68000 also, its a middling vertical scrolling platformer, shooting game, complete with unsual enemies such as Tweedledum and a Mushroom smoking a fag (though we always thought it was the caterpillar which had the nicotine addiction in the original book). The premise is to make it to the end of the level and take down the boss Queen of Hearts.

The first level is Okashi land (i'e Sweetyland) and many of the enemies will try and push you over the edge in which case you lose one of you lives represented by a balloon. Make it to the end and you'll fight a boss, in this case an absolute git of a wizard who'll kill you stone dead in seconds flat.

We've yet to find if was localised for western systems, apparently its called Alice In Wonderland in western arcades and has an isometric viewpoint which the PC Engine lacks. We'll need to check if the X68000 does the same, but in any case the same can be said its barely average.

Anyway we don't have a scan of Marchen Maze but we do have a shoddy little ad from GameStuff.

Hullo Buster are you looking for a good time dearie.

Buster Bunny from Tiny Toons encounters (judging from the picutre) a Shemale Prostitute called Targa and offers 'her' his arse. And by arse we mean games. Apparently you can call for 'specials' too, we shudder to think what that could be.

Happy new Year.

2011-01-02T15:42:00.000Z

Great tidings be upon ye. We're still going through the best and worst of the old year so no scans for awhile yet.

We'll finish up music with.

Best Ambient of the year.
Massively slowed Justin Bieber. Obviously we're not going to give him the oxygen of publicity but damn you have to give him credit for remaining high pitched when massively pitched down. Even if that means he remains a castrato his whole adult life.

Mix of the year. Optimo (Espacio) Fabric 52
Spanning from 70's cuban latin arrangements to, Levon Vincent's acid revival track Love Technique, this is pretty top work, face it if you can't see the joins where one track begins and another ends then thats one hot mix.

Finally not that anyone cares and it isn't music related but it seems someone has seriously started hacking the PS3, Sony's also ran Blue Ray Player and sometime games console.

Apparently, as a project to reinsert linux back into the console, the "1337 dudez" at Fail0verflow have managed to gain some control over low level stuff inside. Whether linux works or not at the moment is moot but surely its the gateway to better homebrew emulation and of course pirate stuff. Not that we care pirate wise seeing as its region free already, (possibly the only remotely sensible thing they did with the PS3 in the first place). I wonder if they'll port PCSX2 (and do what Sony couldn't i.e proper PS2 emulation) if it gets wider usability from the modding community.

An odd round up.

2010-12-28T16:52:00.000Z

Richer sounds punts Playstation 2 Telly combo

This is odd Sony are keeping quiet about this flat screen Bravia / PS2 combo. Apparently its small screen TV with an added PS2 Slim on the base. Currently only available through RicherSounds chain of HiFi emporiums, it boasts a line of ports and other stuff I don't understand to keep it future proofed for all eternity (subs please check). Slims are harder to mod than the original PS2, and for the price they are doing it £200ish, It's not bad at all. Although my dream set up would be a Modded PS2Fat used as a SKY+ box receiver (though not sure of the size of the HDD you can add to a PS2). Failing that would love to see Sony rebadge its PS3 the same way, with neutered PS2 backwards reinstated (Region free of course).

Either that or a VCR in the guts of an old XBOX.

Enid Blyton and Google.

To prove I'm not just a pretty face I've been reading over the xmas period some old Enid Blyton books. More specifically Circus Days Again and despite its worrying preoccupation with "bears"* theres this passage from page 57 about Mr Galliano hiring new clowns.

"Well the third clown is Google. He's really funny too. He has a wonderful motor-car, and everything goes wrong with it - and in the end it blows up into a hundred different pieces! Google has a little dog called Squib. You'll like hin. He helps Google with his nonsense."

Make of that what you will.

* Get your mind out the gutter, they are real bears as its an old school circus, no ones queer in Enid Blyton except little Noddy.

Merry Boxing Day.

2010-12-26T13:41:00.000Z

Todays awardoriffic round up is.

Music of the year. We listen to a shed load of stuff every day, whether its unwinding after a hard days work or via the radio or online. The following stream of consciousness is what I consider the best of 2010.

Best KFC Advert that never was. Cee Lo Green FUCK YOU.
Come on who remembers the old soul tracks that they used to play out over KFC ads about 5 years back, they got into trouble by singing with their mouths full and people thought they were mocking Spaztards. Well good news it seems that this sort of soul is back and its probably the commercial hit of the year. Get the one that says fuck you as forget you is for pansies.

DUBSTEP track of the year. Katy B Katy B On a Mission.
Because its not only haunting but it can be mixed with the Nitro Deluxe track of the same name for retro goodness, especially if you snag the acapella thats on Youtube.

ACID track of the year. Jared Wilson. Drug Related Stories. Smocid Edit.
Though it can't surpass the original from 2007, this is a pretty bang up old skool acid track. He also released a non acid set of tracks check out Night Sky JPG From the rise of the machines EP vol 1

METAL of the year. Merzbow Yurikamone.
We know this as a black headed gull in English, anyway this isn't your daddy's noise, but a proper noise metal track. Proper metal guitars and white noise, and best of all a drum that is simply there as noise rather than beats.

R+B of the year. Neyo VS Nightwriters Let the monster use you.
The original Beautiful monster was a channelling of Josh Wink style acid with Neyo's old school lyrics. This is probably the best I've made ever made. We stripped out the acapella from youtube and added it to the dub version of Nightwriters Let the music use you. With a lot of sweat and tears it improves the original 10 fold.

Best Techno. Model500 OFI Huesca.
Even a misfiring Model 500 is still better than 75% of everything ever.

Best 6 seconds of the year. N-Dubz Girls
Of the intro and that is all you need, the rest is pure shite.

Best commercial pop of the year. Lady Gaga Lovegame Brian Ice Version.
This is only available via the medium of Youtube but this bootleg of Brian Ice Talking to the night is my Italo Track of the year.

Best YTPMV. Chriddof It Doesn't do Anything.
Hard electro beat, tough samples and, the cat solo, worth seeing as a video and as audio.

Merry christmas.

2010-12-25T12:15:00.000Z

Just a small note saying seasons greetings and a big old merry christmas to all our loyal reader(s).

We are putting together a year review thing, you know the best of's worst of kind of thing so over the next few entries we'll rating you up good so sit tight.

Today is BEST GAME OF THE YEAR.

Bear in mind that a: we have no current gen console aside from a DS and b: no willingness to poke about in PC gaming other than emulation.

The winner by a long chalk is Dragon Quest 9 from SQUENIX.

For offering a tight quest, endless customisation and a witty and pun laden translation from the original Japanese. It also gets a mention for using proper UK English and not going overboard with the accents.
The only black mark is with Nintendos stupid monged up advertising that totally played down the strengths of the game for Jedward spunking about with fans, thus putting the back up.

Runners Up,
PANG Magical Michael, Rising Star / Mitchell Corp
Laudable reboot of Mitchells seminal balloon popper.

PCSX2 PCSX2 team.
For finally getting and proving that Playstation 2 emulation is doable on an (un)reasonably specced machine. Now how about putting CD support back.

PacSmiles

2010-12-19T16:38:00.000Z

We've recently been messing about with Engrish friendly PC Engine emulator Ootake seeing as I've always had a curiosity about the system. The PC Engine or to give it its full American name of Turbografix 16 was one of the consoles they had on show at Trading World in Bexleyheath (now Primark), I remember them showing Marchenland and maybe Cyberlip for NEO-GEO as well as a few NES and SNES games.

Playing around with Ootake, on a few games I own versions of (Parasol Stars (NES) and Pac Land (C64)) I've come to like the little guy. Maybe because of crack cocaine use or maybe a bad rom dump the PC Engine version of Pac Land is really odd.

Instead of using the D pad to control Pac Man it simply makes him jump whereas the regular buttons move him either left or right. Its really messed up and bears all the hall marks that Cave would use some 20 years later for its Loli Horror style Shmup, Deathsmiles. One button simply switches your position onscreen to face either left or right. So its the same for Pac Land but much, much more awkwardly done. We hope this is simply a bad rom dump (all I've found online are) but if it was intentionally programmed like this then man Namco have balls of steel.

Cue Duo Industries AD.

From the We've got a warehouse full pile.

Hup de de ha ha Taiiito!!!!

2010-12-12T16:40:00.000Z

Seriously lay off the skag.

This weeks scan is of the Taito heat wave, a load of old games from Taito, not limited to but including, Punchbag sim Sonic Blastman. Cameltry (rebranded as On the Ball here.) and if we're being honest proto only Hit the Ice. No in fact the only reason we have this guy here is simply the fact it looks just like he's spent most of his life mainlining heroin.

In fact having googled it, he looks just like a young Begbie from trainspotting, minus the tache but with his addiction already in place (seemingly to NES games).

Similarily I have a major hard on for Bubble Bobble on the NES. Bought with Xmas money from Boots when they did games as well as aftershave and cotton buds. In fact they would set up a Megadrive booth around Christmas time and put Sonic in, we're pretty sure it wasn't a display thing but it was probably the only Sega exposure I had while growing up.

So Bubble Bobble then, we played it to death as a kid going so far as to make it to level 76 in one credit, (not easy, though it is generous with its lives). In fact, and this is no boast, looking at Twin Galaxies Rankings, my 13 year old self, would easily have made it to at least 4th place (though ironically we had no way of verifying this, then). The NES version was easily the best I played, including the arcade via Legends PS2 compilation or the C64 version (in which it looked like Bub had his neck wrung). The main reason was lives you got extra at 30,000, 100,000, 200,000 and 400,000 and through extend making it very generous to lame fisted players like myself.

Sadly making it to level 20 in the NES version would not open the magic door, as in the arcade version, nor were there codes to get permanent stuff or unlock things. The only thing it had was passwords that let you jump ahead to the boss screen, that in the Disk System original allowed you to save to disk (we'll bore you another time with differences between the two), and stealing lives with select and start.

Bubble Bobble NES remains special to me as it allowed me to dominate it rather than me like most of my C64 collection.

Saaay Gahhh.

2010-12-05T15:57:00.000Z

Scanned badly for your convenience.

God where to start on this, yeah we know its a horrific scan, get over it. This weird young / old guy's foot is supposed to say Kick A(rse) but it got sheared off in the scanner. Judging by the foot he's either smashed through a plaster or dare I say it a wall made entirely of cardboard. All to make wildly implausible claims about some dodgy peripherals, from STD.

Coupled with his strange outfit of green jacket, blue baseball cap and rubbish armband, makes him look like an irate leprechaun, than a typical nineties youngster.

STD of course changed their name from an acronym for Sexually Transmitted Disease to the more radder InterAct, and released the gameshark line of game enhancers for which they are to be applauded. Sega of course had millions of ads out at the time proclaiming to do what Nintendon't. Largely bombast and bullshit, though to be fair it would be ages before Sega itself caved in and allowed their games on Nintendo consoles.

Thanks to pirates, you can play a ropey version of Super Marioworld on your Megadrive (or Genesis if retarded) and even Super Mario Bros via Emulation (though SMB is actually homebrew).

1 year on

2010-12-01T17:54:00.000Z

Well well, a whole year has gone by. We started with slang and ended up with scan of the week. I'd like to do one of the whole flashback to earlier times but I've had a look at my early posts and boy we really didn't hit our stride till May.

Anyway here is some more slang, courtesy of my boss. It concerns the bass from radios and when its really strong like on some dance genres we call it Woofy. From the bass, as it goes woof, woof, woof in a song or a chavs motor as it rattles along with its windows down.

Anyway we'll be back sunday with the scan of the week from Sega.

Edge never fails to disappoint

2010-11-28T17:32:00.000Z

Before we get to this weeks scan we will take a short detour to pick over EDGE magazine from Future Publishing.

We haven't bought Edge since the summer partly due to funding issues and partly because its the magazine equivalent of Belgium (Sorry Belgium). My only reason for buying it is that they have a wall chart / calendar looking at Nintendo games, (this year, 25 years of Super Mario* as opposed to 25 years of Amiga or 20 years of Super NES. ) The wall chart isn't bad and best of all there's lots of space to add dates and notes. Bad news you have to put up with EDGE magazine.

EDGE is quite simply one of the most boring and dull magazines in all of gaming, it has neither the guts to credit its writers nor engage its readership. It hardly covers anything of mobile gaming systems or cover much retro or Japanese stuff, unlike old EDGE or GamesTM. Old copies are very interesting indeed, they were not only designed well, but had a truly international outlook with extended out there columns and even retrogaming and Emulation ( up on Stuart Campbell's excellent world of WOS).

The current issue is case in point, for my £4.50 I enjoyed reading about Katamari Damashi and maybe a few bits in the news. Apart from that, I largely autopiloted through the whole issue, Git Hero got a 10 whoop de do. Oh some Kinell (Kinect) stuff did well including Dave Brabens Tiger troubling sim Kinectimals and that but by that time I'd suffered through War, Warcraft and other boring stuff culminating in a spectacularly dull letters page and guest columnists, certainly no Redeye or Mr Biffo here.

Seeing as you've suffered enough, here is todays scan. It Involves Dargon Ball and boasting from Adam Lee Miller (possibly not)


Mortal Kombat conquered by the dude from ADULT.

Incidentally the current record for a tool assisted speed run is just under 9min.

More hits from the scanulator.

2010-11-21T16:50:00.000Z

OK this took a while to look for but now we are here we'll present to you the US advert for the CD32 as presented in EGM issue 58. (We've taken more scans but it seems our monitor has died and what there is is ropey to say the least.)

Is that supposed to be now here or nowhere, we'll go for the latter.

Commodore of course couldn't advertise its wares to save its life, (ironically this is from circa 1994 where Commodore called in the receivers and the sun went down on the good ship Amiga) and this Ad while not that unusual for the time is basically a load of buzzwords and cringing 'street' slang. At least they didn't resort to selling Vapourware like the Atari Jaguar ads of the same era. Incidentally this only hung around for one issue only of EGM proving that Commodore really were in trouble then.

The CD32 was never a success in USA thanks to patent disputes and Commodores bankruptcy, and it really didn't have much impact in Europe, coming just before the PS1 boom. Most of its games were either souped up Amiga titles with. extended intros and cut scenes or just the regular bad interactive movie games that stank up the early nineties.

So there you go. The CD32.

Scanulator Redux With TV laughs too.

2010-11-14T16:27:00.000Z

Everyone likes free stuff so here to prove that my scanner works is Sengoku Basara 3 which is a short magazine given as part of the freebies as part of V Jump Magazine. Possibly last year sometime. It's a promotional tie in with V Jump for Capcoms lacklustre in the west brawl em up.

Facts.

File size 2.9MB
Language: Japanese.
Pages: 8
Zipped with: 7zip with no password set just download away.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/wycnf1sytg2ktf1/Sengoku%20Basara.7z

In unrelated news we have got a new universal remote to work my portable games TV (yeah we party like its 1991 baby). The instructions seem to have been written in and translated from stupid to English such is its incoherence. Anyway these are the instructions for getting the automatic search function up and running as its rendered clunky in English. Its a Vivanco portable remote.

Step 1. Turn on your TV / VCR / Skybox or whatever. In my case TV.

Step 2. Hold down the set and TV buttons on remote, till the power button begins to flash. It'll scan through at this point.

Step. 3 When the TV screen (or device in question) switches off, immediately and we mean immediately press any button apart from Set to halt the scanning process. Pushing the power button on the remote will hopefully bring your TV screen (or device) back on. If not repeat until it does.

As an addendum there is a massive list of hardware companies on the packaging at the back covering 7 columns of closely typed text. I'm guessing there are around 300 or so companies there with the added line that many more are covered!!.

I'm sure these are all real companies and the like, its just that they are blessed with either silly or indeed rude names. Errors and crude misspellings accepted.

Alkos:
Allorgan: Yeah my 50"er is Allorgan baby.
Anttron: We'd like to think they were a portable / pocket TV specialist
Asat: Asshat. possibly a Satellite receiver box.
Black Panther:
Blackway: Italo Disco artist too!
CNT: One letter away from immortality
Cybertron: Transformers!
Disco Vision: Possibly a record label
Dong Woo: Its a 32" Dong, Woo.
Einhell: German for Hades.
Electro Tech: See Disco Vision.
Euroman: Could well be a gay video service.
Grothusen: Possibly a porn receiver.
Harman Kardon: Spoonerism
Hornyphon: Actually part of Phillips now we looked it up. Though rendered as Hornyphone on the list.
Interfunk: Also an electro artist, check out our video to Strip Tease.
Kamp.
Kitt. Michael Knight.
Nad.
Noblex.
Phillips CDi: Please have enclosed instruction manual handy.
Robotron:
Saccs:
Sandra Color:
Sinotec (Pepsi Dose): Haven't a clue here.
Starlux
Starring
Stella
Stenway: These four I'm sure is an 80's scifi complete with leading lady.
Tivo: Sky plus to Americans.
Ultravox: Midge Ure Only.
And thats it.

Happy Rememberance day.

2010-11-13T14:20:00.000Z

Yellow Horned Poppies for those too ignorant to know the significance.

Please if you have any love of experimental music please get hold of the British legion 2 minute silence charity single, see here for the youtube version. Though they see the act as symbolic gesture of paying respect to those who fell in battle, theres quite a shift in tones and background noise, in which to render this actually as a valid piece of experimental music in its own right, like a radio friendly? version of John Cages 4:33.

Even if you torrent it or get it via Youtube video converters from the link provided please consider giving some change to the poppy sellers you see in the street. You'll be doing some good providing for those maimed, killed or left traumatised by horrors of wars current and long past, oh and you'll also get a poppy too.

Now fingers crossed for Steve Reichs Come out for Comic Relief.

Scanulator

2010-11-07T17:03:00.001Z

Feeling pretty good today as I've managed to get a dead old scanner working on my old computer. It was originally my uncles and he didn't really use it that much before punting it over to me when he got an all singing all dancing printer / scanner combo. After locating all the bits including 'cutting edge parallel cable' and driver disk complete with MicroGrafx* picture publisher in both 16 and 32 bit flavours, It was time to install.

Looking at the 16it folder on the disk I saw it was broken down into 5 disk folders which if it wasn't for them entirely housed on CD would require an awful lot of disk swapping, thankfully though we XP and so can use the 32bit folder. Helpfully the autorun works so it doesn't require you to do that even simply boot up and install off of the CDROM. Simply installing Micrografx Picture Publisher and then the Driver software will do the job. We were shocked when it actually worked first time with no problems.

We were also shocked when upon saving a scan it gave out options to transfer at modem transfer speeds in either 14.4k and 28.8k flavours. It also proclaimed itself to be the best graphics utility on the market. Which it probably was back then (although with choices to save as a Photoshop file that was then as now a moot point). It was certainly no better than Amiga stuff at the time like P Paint or XI Paint.

Also seeing as its the bad old days and that, you get the odd dialogue box that makes no sense and even less help, whatsoever.

This is what you get sometimes, when installing the main driver.

Of course you'll want to make use of something more modern rather than rely on a program who's guts have long since been absorbed by the Corel corporation. So I decided to see if it could be handled entirely through paint.net. Now its hardly my first choice of paint program but seeing as its A. free and B. already loaded up on XP we gave it a go.

First hurdle, seeing as its not my main PC anymore, its not connected to the internet. So their help file is useless. Firing up my main rig I find out I need twainable, a plug in that lets you use scanners with paint.net. Installing and switching this across with a thumb drive, means that with some poking we can now take images with paint.net.
(located in the effects menu, use grab from clipboard.)

Post script: we were hoping to create an ISO. image from the main CDROM but to be honest, who wants an ancient version of Micrografx, an even more ancient version of Acrobat reader and what little driver software there is on a Multi language CD.
Incidentally if anyone has a Plustek Optic Pro 4831p Scanner and has lost their driver disk then they are located here along with a whole lot more Plustek stuff. Oh and the actual scans.... Damn guess I just forgot.
Maybe later Jack.

* oh and Finally Micrografx still exist its just that all the graphics stuff they used to do are now part of Corel. They do other stuff as outlined in their link above.

Spooky Blog In Spooky Vision.

2010-10-31T15:21:00.001Z

Happy Halloween loyal reader. Heres some google excellence, in which some meddling kids are unmasked by Scooby doo on the Google logo.. If for some reason you're late to the Halloween Party then they'll be here if you wanna look.

Though we don't really do scary movies and that, this pwned my dreams back when I was 6 or so.

We had a proper old school TV unit, basically a brown cabinet unit on wheels, (you may remember these from the Otis and Marvin bit from the Smell Of Reeves and Mortimer) and Dark towers was part of the schools programming on in the morning. They always had a butterfly testcard type thing preceding it and because I loved butterflies as a kid, classmates would ask me what species it was.

Of course Dark Towers main aim was to teach you Maths and English but to make it interesting they added the drama too, which is where the main problems started. It involved ghosts and one in particular the glowing ghost of a knight, boom voiced and accompanied by thunder scared me shitless and pwned my dreams for about 4 weeks later. Looking back it still gives me the creeps but now I can appreciate the sheer beauty of the Radiophonic Workshop score and chuckle that its really the guy who played Chewbacca in the knight costume. Also Derek (Heads and Tails) Griffiths sang the end theme which wasn't so bad.

We don't remember anything else about Dark Towers except the name which I thought was called Dark Tower for ages, and that there was another programme involving backwards writing spacemen.
But that wasn't scary so it doesn't count.

A good old song session.

2010-10-24T16:28:00.000+01:00

Finally managed to track down that Nursery Rhyme Karaoke thing. Its not by Sony of course (its for the Wii) and it seems that its done by Mindscape and involves quite a list of songs. Sadly not featuring Bobby Shaftoe or the dirty version of Popeye the Sailorman we used to sing, its got quite a line up of songs including B.I.N.G.O. (and bingo was his name Oh!).

In fact we used to make up quite a few songs to sing when we were kids. Man I used to know the entire intro song to Willy Fogg, thanks to Richard Farthing teaching me the words when I was 8. You can probably see the intro on Youtube as well as check out the rest of the BRB International did here. Actually thats a pretty awesome line up Dogtanian, Iron Kid and Willy Fogg all pretty cool. With only the interminable David the Gnome series and inexplicable blind kid drama Nico to let the side down.

Anyway not only did Rich teach me theme tunes he taught me this dirty rhyme too. It involves one Mickey Mouse being bad and goes like this:

Mickey Mouse
In his house
Pulling down his trousers
Quick Mum
Smack his bum
Before he does another one.

It would be years later before I found out there was another one in a similar vein about Donald Duck written in a big book of playground slang. For those interested this goes like this:

Donald Duck
Did some Muck
On the kitchen floor
Daisy Duck
Ate it up
Donald did some more.

Update Me Do.

2010-10-22T16:34:00.000+01:00

Just a brief update before Sundays inevitable outpouring.

Seems that nursery rhyme Singstar I alluded to actually exists. Even worse there is something similar soon to be released for the Wii. Man there are just no more new ideas.

Seems we have two more for the deathlog as we say goodbye to Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and Wos / BXs very own Rev Owen.

The Rev Owen we solely remember for bigging up the DS version of Fushigi no Dungeon Shiren the Wanderer when BX split from WOS. He seemed quite a genuine guy and from photos looked spookily like my old Humanities teacher (another nice chap as well).

Mandelbrot of course is known for Fractals, the mathematical representation of an Acid trip :). Here is a video that proves this.

Finally the latest beta of PCSX2 finally plays Romancing SaGa Minstrel song, which with a few glitches and framerate drops is simply jaw dropping. Of course its hard as hell (its Rom SaGa of course it PWNS) and some of the voice overs are questionable we like the woman hassled by a butterfly for some comic relief.
But damn it if the whole thing works.

Kernow PT2. The long and winding road

2010-10-17T15:52:00.000+01:00

Hold tiiight because we have an awful lot to get through.

Heligan

Heligan. Situated past St Austell, Heligan is a typical garden with many things to recommend it. First is the grounds itself reclaimed from forest after the previous keepers died off in WW1. Mainly hills with specimen trees and only a few open areas of traditional gardens, these drift into woodland proper, mixed with Rhododendrons and tree ferns just to give you the scale that something isn't quite right there. There is a quiet kitchen garden area with a wide variety of crops including some pears trained up against the wall and a pumpkin patch. The best thing of course is the original glasshouses which hold melons and grapes, and a budding succulent collection including one of the biggest Pleiospilos Neli I've ever seen and a Monanthes up on the wall.
Also lurking around was more succulents including a big starfish flowered Stapelia and a big yucca.
Further on was a lot of animals including ducks, geese, and a hide with various look outs to the outside. The best of these had a female Pheasant in the bushes (we later saw a male but he was frightened off into the bushes by a clod hopping rambler).

So thats Heligan, near Mevagissey Cornwall. £10 to get in. Senior Citizens, kids and the less able considerably less.

Other Stuff.

Looks like Pennywise has finally got round to finishing off Monty on The Run for FDS. Full patch can be found here on RHDN. This includes a review written by myself in my non UK guise as Monty Mole.

Excellent BX music / game thread here.
For those link phobic it asks you to come up with a genre of game and a setting and add 10 or so songs to it that you see fit. We came up with a crap version of Singstar but with their mainstream hits replaced with absolute tat. Coming up with this big old list we were struck by this. Why is there never a nursery rhyme version of Singstar.

I suspect that many of them are in the public domain, and would be cheap to licence so why hasn't there really been a sing along version for mums and dads to croon to their little ones. Or get them to join in, with older members singing the words and that. I know its not really cool but Singstar is basically drunken entertainment for hen parties, belting out old Hi Energy anthems and current chart hits, so why not do the same for little kids (minus the booze and Kylie).

Other game idea.

This one also struck me as a no brainer. A themed Nintendogs but instead of the dogs, allow you to raise Yoshi's instead. They would look pretty cute as they bumble around and you could give them gifts of Goombas and Koopa Troopas and Watermelons too.

Sorry Lone Viewer again.

2010-10-11T17:32:00.000+01:00

We had major problems trying to get online and it turns out not only was there a fault with the cable outside but, horror of horrors, it looks like an old cable TV installation we had upstairs was causing the problem thanks to the Virgin Media tech dude. It was leeching power like some kind of energy vampire and to be blunt was causing half our problems.

Worse, catching up with the world at large we find out that Aaron Carl is dead from cancer. For those not familiar with the guy, he released Down on Metroplex Records one of the best labels around, and something which I haven't heard in ages. Its pretty sad as it appeared that he died shortly after diagnosis.

Anyway normal service has resumed.

Kernow pt1. Far east of Eden Project.

2010-09-26T16:43:00.000+01:00

Well that was a nice trip, we stayed as the title suggested in a small holiday camp outside of Polperro on the north cornish coast. We have always loved Cornwall, it just seems warmer than the rest of the UK, and the weather we had there was pretty nice overall. Sharing with my mum, dad, aunt, her friend and her dog (a peke with a snoring habit), it was quite cramped but overall quite cosy.

We took a couple of trips out while there, this include worthy ecobubble the Eden project, the lost world of Heligan gardens oh also Liskeard which is pretty nice.

Eden Project.

Pretty nice if you can resist the urge to freak out and burn down some rainforest. Set in an old clay quarry, it has two domes and an array of gardens ringing the quarry itself. Some kudos goes to the WEEE man, a hideous mechagodzilla reinvisioned as some sort of scrap monster possibly as a comment on our wasteful society. Which is rich seeing as it looks like some skinless giant ape, don't take your eyes of its manic grin it'll lash out and disembowel you soon as your backs turned. Its traditional enemy of course is large bee thing, impressive last time we visited, though it looks quite different now (I.E threadbare.)*

Cacti wise the outer gardens have some lovely Echeverias and Sedum including a chocolate coloured Ice Plant Sedum Spectibile. They also have a maidenhair tree and a ferns along with more traditional garden plants looking rather spectacular.

Mediterranean Biodome.

If you like cacti and succulents you can't fail to be amazed here (non cacti people are catered for too, as there's a wealth of other non xerophytic stuff as well as I'll explain). Covering those areas of the world with a mediterranean climate, this covers the southern states of the USA, South Africa, Argentina and Chile.

For the likes of me, the South Africa exhibit is the most interesting, with a vast mat of Oscularia and a large Lampranthus Goodieanus in flower, there were smaller bits and pieces to including a stand of Glottiphyllum about 2ft across in full bloom and another that had set seed. If I had a water pistol we could have opened up their water sensitive fruits and seen the seeds inside, but that probably would have got us kicked out.
There's a full compliment of Aloes including Striata, Brevifolia and what looks like Plicatilis lurking throughout the display as well as a nice Gasteria Maculata in pots.

Cactus wise there is a lone Prickly pear and a Ferocactus to bring up the rear in the California exhibit.

For those non cactaceous amongst you there are some nice displays of popular crops, Sorghum proving popular with the sparrows and a massive tobacco plant with some drying out just in case Eden is considering making their own Eden eco fairtrade fags. Last time we visited they just had robins dotted around the dome now they are joined by sparrows and blackbirds too.

The Jungle Biodome.

Theres nothing remotely cactaceous here at all, no Epiphyllums lurking in the trees and certainly nothing whatsoever to do with the Cactaceae. There is a Moringa and a Chorisia that are the sole representatives of succulence and both are about 20ft tall (thats almost a billion metres in metric). There are lots to see including a few quail lurking in the undergrowth, and a huge variety of massive and not so massive tropical plants. Buildings include a Malaysian hut in the forest looking not unlike a jail and a rusting tin shack that is part of the African exhibit.

Food fans are quite well served here with Banana and its cooking equivalent Plantain both growing here. Jackfruit and Papaya as well as Starfruit are all to be found here as well as Konyakku root (also known as Konjac) being displayed by a traditional roadside stand with various goodies on display.

Finally there was a few hokey fairtrade bits and pieces that grated not considerably with the whole project, which were hardly few and far between. It seems that every step you are assaulted with banners for some eco project in the rainforest or climate change. Some are worthy others actually aren't so bad, but be warned that there are legion and nigh on unavoidable.

*Sadly the cactus dome / storage area, that I saw in a Eden Project Documentary Circa 2005 hasn't materialised. This would be a putative third dome covering desert areas and xerophytes in general but now seems to be taken over by the core centre instead.

Anyway not that anyone is remotely listening anymore thats...

the Eden Project, Bodleva, Cornwall.

£17.50** to get in, Kids, Students, Pensioners and the Less Able are of course allowed in with a discount.
**Gitfaiding your fee, gets you free entry and a clear conscience too.

Hiatus #2

2010-09-18T07:25:00.000+01:00

We feel another extended break coming on so as always heres some music to tide you over.
http://www.mediafire.com/?hjf585drvphp4ysVideo version of Nightwriters vs Neyo Mashup.

September Round up.

2010-09-12T17:04:00.000+01:00

We don't really have a big overarching theme to this Sunday's update. We forgot we were going to talk about MTV, and that so you'll have to deal with various little things.

Contra Puzzle.
We got this freebie from an old copy of Mean Machines (purchased in Penzance, with Parodius on the cover), stuck in with a larger puzzle. Rather than a video game its an actual 200 piece puzzle from the SNES game Contra Spirits (or Super Probotector as it was here). Memory is telling me Konami actually did jigsaws as a sideline as well as YuGiOh! cards and Tokimeki pillows. Anyway seeing as the internet has failed to come up with a single image this is an upload of my own (with crucially a piece missing).

This is, crucially the Japanese Box Art.

Beckenham and Croydon.

Two towns that we decided to make a trip to yesterday. I haven't been to Beckenham in a long long while. Home to Raven games , who used to sell PC Engine games from the back of CVG (oh arcade games too) back when it regularly gave 6 page reviews to Darkstalkers on the Saturn.

We didn't find Ravens shop and we suspect that they are soley an internet entity now. However we did explore the town and came to the conclusion that it was rather nice with a decent Smiths and a good few charity shops. Croydon on the other hand has gone downhill. As a kid, we went there for Christmas shopping and to see Father Christmas over the Army and Navy store (showing my age).
Now it is totalled through the joint efforts of junior gangstas and the happy clappy brigade of African churches. There are a few places where its not a total abortion. Where Beanos used to be is a few market stalls with one selling corsets! of all things. X Electronics are still going though with a variety of odd stock in, a mix of electronics at the front and video games at the back. A broad mix of the current and the retro with a few speccy and even Vectrex games there {It remains the only place I've actually played on a Vectrex}.

Amanda Lear.

Bizarrely shortly after we put up the post on Sat 1 and Electric Blue then I was contacted through my Myspace page to be a friend of mine. Funny how stuff works out.

A bit about MTV.

2010-09-05T16:10:00.001+01:00

Oh joy of joys, not only is FDS Monty Mole finally getting a translation, (thanks Pennywise) but they're bringing Beavis and Butthead back.

I'll say that again they're finally making more proper shows on MTV and not relying on shit like they have done the last 10 years. Beavis and Butthead were fucking awesome simply for the fact that they were not only the class idiots but because they were sharply observed class idiots. They're the slackers slacker, whether rooting down the couch for stuff to go couch fishing with, panhandling with Z from Police Academy (he played a Harold Ramp in the episode of the same name) and of course Cornholio Beavis's alter ego emerging in times of extreme crisis (read sugar rush) chatting about his bunghole and TP the best thing ever.

Finally its the best things that are largely absent from the video compilations and DVDs put out, Music Videos and B'N'Bs stock demolition of each and every one of them. Edie Bricknell Pinching a Loaf, to wanting to pee on Blur (and apart from the sublime Monkey soundtrack who wouldn't) their put downs rocked.
A raver like me getting into weird metal stuff like Suicidal Tendancies and Danzig (hey Mother does rock even if I still hate guitar stuff with a vengance). They sometimes played other weird stuff too like MC 900ft Jesus with Beavis singing throughout much to Buttheads annoyance.

I can sort of remember B'N'Bs church song, Beavis yelling fire at things oh and Butthead being summoned out of the crapper by Beavis because there was bare ass on TV (and him to repeat the trick because there was a dog with a surgical brace round its neck thus earning him a dig to the nads).

Though I like King of the Hill, and am pretty sure Hanks a relative to Tom Anderson, its great to see Beavis and Butthead return. May the new episodes rock as hard as the older ones. I said hard Heh Heh.

Oh and they'll be more on MTV mainly Partyzone stuff and the birth of the career of Davina Mc Call for all the good its done mankind.

Irasshai

2010-08-29T11:54:00.000+01:00

Heres a bit of an oddity, the ever reliable Snesorama boards have provided possibly one of the oddest Playstation games around a noodle stand simulator. Not just any old noodle stand simulator but something that plays halfway between a radio play and a noodle sim. Its basically a noodle stand simulator with heavy (and we do mean heavy) amounts of voice acting. Factor in that it has full Pocketstation support (for a noodle timer and mini game Ki Ki no Ippatsu) and you really must wonder what they have been toking down at Tomy corporation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UB-nhUabwk Check out the intro, that we literally sweated blood to upload. Thanks to Hugh from WOSforum for pointing out PSXMC for future PSX Str / XA file ripping.

Now for the rant part, we've tried about 3 or so different programs and found that playing Str and XA programs are pretty outdated, not only that but none of them support my DVD / CD drive not PSXMC is the best but still won't play anything without plug ins that we haven't found so we'll make it our mission to at least get this out dated piece of junk working. I'm surprised the hacking community haven't actually made something to view at least XA or STR files, I'll probably be proved wrong on all counts but, surely an up to date and modern viewer is at least what we can expect.

Everyone talk about... Pop music.

2010-08-22T13:56:00.000+01:00

All I ever hear nowadays on the radio R+B. I'll rephrase that, all I ever hear is hateful 'music' put out by screaming histrionic women and mongoloid rappers. Thats radio that is and if you sincerely want anything that touches the lower reaches of 200bpm or makes weird sounds then tough, they don't do it. There's enough interest in rock to keep Radio 2 in buisness for years to come, and I'll be honest its ideal to work too as it makes no demands on its user being the aural equivalent of grey wallpaper. They can even surprise you by putting out say a live set by an out of sorts Incognito. {Which makes you wonder what the Brand New Heavies are up to these days... Apparently nothing.}

No the worst thing is this, if you're young, all the programming you have is heavily skewed to Rap and R+B with maybe some Grime or token dance thrown in for good measure. I'm approaching my mid thirties and largely put up with this shit the first time round and you know what it sucked then and it sucks now. Stations like Capital or KISS and many more rely on playlists to generate songs for broadcast, and in Capitals case rinse and repeat every track so the same 3-4 tracks come up again and again. No wonder I called it Capital punishment.

Kiss of course used to be entirely acceptable back in the day, when all they had to lose what their licence when raided by the DTI, however they lost pretty much all that made them unique back in the mid to late 90's with the migration of Solid Steel to BBC London, {Steve Jackson I think} and Colin Favers techno show to the bin of history. They still run specialist music but only for insomniacs, apparently real dance is to be ghettoised forever into the wee small hours never to engage or interest anyone.

Back in the day they had house with Alex P and Brandon Block (with their Rule Brittania cover jingle.)
A pretty decent show on Sunday where they played underground hits and asked folk to name a mystery song, which was nearly always some kind of 80's soul. Though one time it was Nexy Lantons You too. Sadly though it didn't last and by the time speed garage came out Kiss was entirely shit from start to finish, the last time it rocked was Princess Diana died, and they suspended all regular programming for largely house and techno.

The motto if you listen to the mainstream, don't complain when that supply is poisoned forever and ever.

Foreign TV on British cable #2 the rest of the world.

2010-08-16T06:58:00.000+01:00

Yep we're back a little later but here is part 2.

We covered Germany last time so here is France, Spain and Arabic channels.

France was covered by the venerable TV5, and seemed to show a nonstop diet of Subtitled films, none of them pornography. It was situated on channel 15 just down from the original discovery channel and where I could link to wikipedia and such, to be honest I spent most of my time watching Discovery Channel.

Spain is covered by TVE another seemingly ancient channel, and to be honest the only thing I like watching on there was Precio Justo (Price is right). Incidentally both TVE and TV5 are still part of your Sky package lurking somewhere in the morass of asian channels in the upper reaches of the EPG.

MBC lurked around the mid thirties on your cable box and to be honest wasn't really watched at all in our house, except when they showed a locust swarm when our Moroccan neighbour came over.
That and MBC Movies from a holiday in Cyprus but we'll casually forget about that.

Foreign TV on British cable #1 Germany.

2010-08-08T14:56:00.000+01:00

This is really just some random posting of stuff about foreign channels you got with your cable and where applicable satellite.

We'll start with the most infamous, the German channels everyone remembers these because they had softcore porno at 10pm on a Saturday.

There were two channels you had on cable and an extra one if you had satellite. These were of course, Sat 1, 3Sat and RTL (satellite only).

3Sat was mostly like BBC4, concentrated highbrow programming on the arts and architecture, when you are a teen these came across as unutterably dull. Even worse than that the channel was located on channel 21, sandwiched between MTV and Nickelodeon. It therefore never stood a chance.

RTL. You only got this on Satellite and analogue satellite at that. As a consequence I only really saw this when staying over at my aunts. The only thing I can remember seeing on there was a dubbed Captain Tsubasa (probably as Campeones or the German equivalent) and the Megaman cartoon, (both of which never made it to the UK). Its British equivalent would be a non shit ITV.

Sat1. German equivalent to Channel 5 and yes all anyone remembers from this is the porno.
They did other things such as a general sing along a good 15 years before the BBC decided that was all that people needed on a Saturday night. Oh and Man Oh Man, where a woman pushes a guy in a swimming pool before a crowd of screaming women. The English version contained Chris Tarrant long before Millionaire payed his pension cheques for life. And yes it was sexist shit.

Ok we've put this off for as long as I can. Pornwise they showed a lot of 70's softcore stuff, Largely Schulmadchen report and Elf Tag Elf Nacht with Sarah Asproon, though at one time it was Carry on Emmanuelle with Kenneth Williams, which was a major disappointment, we are not Jacking off to Babs Windsor not then and certainly not now. Oh and Electric Blue, which was the first ever place I ever saw Custers Revenge for the Atari 2600.

Memory is telling me that they also had Amanda Lamb singing and dancing under a strip light for some unknown reason. Of course its not the A Place In The Sun star but Amanda Lear, though if Channel 4 ever do Children in need I'll pledge £5 for the privelige especially if they get Kirstie Alsopp in rubber (though to be fair I don't actually have a fetish for rubber) and Phil in short leather pants for the Girls / Gays.

Custers Revenge was part of a special on erotic games, seeing as every Electric Blue was shot in the 1980s we sincerely believed that they were released for ZX Spectrum. We had a VCS at the time and couldn't quite believe that they would release porn for it. Only looking at EGM later in a big Seanbaby article on crap games, there was Custers revenge along with a handful of other shit porn games for VCS. Would love to see this again as due to limits of VCS programming Custers penis was detachable.

Holiday TV round up.

2010-08-01T15:28:00.000+01:00

Part 2 of our holiday special see's us not only reminisce about some great holiday TV but something from work.

We normally don't talk about work, not that its forbidden or nowt but simply because its routine and boring, there's only so much you people could take before your eyes glaze over. However last friday we cleared out the grass bank at Galena. Its the mother of all slopes at the back of our tea room and largely a dangerous place.
Doing so we managed to find about 6 Slow Worms hidden underneath various bags and stones, ranging from small coppery coloured youngsters to a large brown adult male, it was heartening to see them there. Previously we used to collect them from the self same site when we were kids, and kept one for 3 days until it escaped into the garden.

OK back to holiday tv, My parents had the room with the TV so if you wanted to see anything you needed to get a hold of the remote and go surfing. Sadly English channels bottomed out around Channel 17 with half either fuzz or the ominous no signal. The rest were German TV and were nothing to write home about, sorry Germans. English was BBC Northern Ireland (previously Ulster), an Intermittent ITV though thats a blessing seeing the shit they put out, and various guest channels, (German Eurosport and Sky News) with rolling coverage of Raoul Moat "heroically" blasting his wife, her lover, and a blameless Police Officer before doing the world a big favour and shooting his own steroid addled brains out with a shotgun. As you can see I have little time for the cunt.

No if you wanted different you had to tune into Spanish TV. A mix of TV news and Telenovela Spain never disappoints, mainly because they're the only people to have decent kids TV in the mornings. Oh and Doraemon in Catalan. Its divided up into TVE, Cinco and Siete as main stations, and is based on a mix of dubbed imports (an impressive Stargate Atlantis comes to mind and a patchy Simpsons with Marge and Lisa being spot on but Apu sounding not unlike Mr Burns), home grown Loose Women type shows and crappy lottery game style shows.

Worse was the TV shopping shows, this includes a Gold for Euro advert, seeing as that pox has reached Europe too. Psychics, including the old, the fat and someone who worryingly looked like Jo Brand. All with a mix of contact ads underneath, so if you don't want your palm read you could always ring up for a fat mature (shudders).

Best of all is Aprende Ingles a station dedicated to teaching the Spanish, English. Run by Richard Vaughan a Texan, who is the spitting image of dead comedian Bill Hicks if he'd lived to his 50's.

Richard Vaughan

Bill, sorry Richard is the host for most of the shows and is largely there to promote English use amongst the Spanish. However for kids there's Davey the Dog. Davey is of course no ordinary dog, being host Marcus Giovanni in a dogsuit. Yugioh! fans may remember Joey in a similar suit, well this dude does it for real, not only that but he sings Old Mac Donald and various songs. Its utterly funny but for all the wrong reasons, a proper Meme in motion that would only require a dedicated 4Channer to turn into an internet phenomenon.

Last but not least there is an unknown show that
seems to involve either something from Dig dug or Black and White Minstrels. Videoclip of course later.

Bill Hicks Uncanny huh.

Holiday round up.

2010-07-25T16:27:00.000+01:00

First some sad news, Alex Higgins known to millions as the Hurricane has been blown out from this world sadly due to complications with cancer. I'll repeat this that I first saw him on TV as a kid, playing Jimmy White, the guy won a match against him pulling off crazy shots, half the time not in position at all. He will be missed.

Secondly out thoughts go out to those victims of the loveparade tragedy, the more I read of this, the more I'm saddened by the whole organisation.
Go here and click on the video for more info, actually, fuck the BBC and go here for all the info. Man they had Anthony Rother playing as well, thats tough dudes.

Finally some good news WosBlog is back up and running, no thanks to shameless plagiarist Olin Coles at Benchmark reviews.

Ah You'll be wondering where we were for at least a fortnight, Well we were living it up in Mallorca at the lovely resort of Son Baulo. Its in the north east of the island to the east of the town C'an Picafort, notable attractions include.

Son Real Necropolis, an Iron age {though they call it stone age, its in operation circa 7-5C BCE so really iron age.}
Bar Puput, which we previously thought of only as onomatopeia for africans talking but is actually the English for bar Hoopoe (a type of bird).
A good 2 miles plus of Sand dune coastline, complete with eel grass covered beaches and wild leeks.

Not your conventional trips out but still worth a look especially if you looking for nature. Most of these areas are of course covered by the environmental protection and the Mallorquin take real pride in their natural landscape, which is how it should be. We saw a lot of butterflies, including Swallowtails and Brimstones and an awful lot of cicadas, which was very unusual by their extreme conspicuousness. Also they have walks organised to the Son Real estate, a farm that also operates as the local museum. Its pretty cool to see, a mix of farming implements and memories of the way of life of the workers. The top two floors held a photo exposition on the local birdlife (ducks featured prominently there's quite a lot of standing water there) and the necropolis down on the coast.

One of the things they didn't mention, was that they had wild tortoises. We only saw the one, but it was utterly entrancing. Its about the size of a rich tea biscuit and near enough the same colour, it spent its time slowly making its way across the path in the woods. Just in case you don't believe me we took video to back up our information. In this case we will leave you with ten seconds of tortoise magic.

This is why we can't have nice things.

2010-07-23T18:12:00.000+01:00

For those of you who are slow on the uptake WosBlog has been taken offline. It had been running a story against the site Benchmark tech for pilfering from puff pieces and marketing guff put out by a posh chair company in its review of a swanky chair. Full drama plays out here.

Consequently they put up a cease and desist order along with blocking the Revs many Email Addresses from posting comments in their forums, the upshot is WosBlog is banzored.

Now I don't agree with all that Stu says and that: I wasn't around in the Early 90's years when he was in Amiga Power, only getting an Amiga long after it died in the mid to late 90's. I only got into him as the angry guy from Digitiser, who pissed off Amiga owners in their droves (or rather drove) calling for its extinction, and railing against laborious PC setups and non re definable keys in FPS games.

I've been a WOS member long before the long and acrimonious split that created BX from his whole £2 a month subscribers bonus supergroup, and long, long before world of trolls and the whole flat top hate site.

We fully hope that this whole mess will be sorted out sooner or later but for now from me (Adam) we'll say this.

Happy 50th post

2010-07-18T18:13:00.000+01:00

If you haven't gathered were back from holiday, two weeks in the sun, so we have the equivalent of being snowed under by various junk mail and of course Youtube updates.

Consequently theres no update this week, but we'll keep plugging away throughout with various bits of shit.

Hiatus

2010-07-03T16:49:00.000+01:00

We'll not be updating for a while so to tide you over here is a short video we made to get you in the mood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsjjsB8-LKI

Ne Yo Beautiful Monster 80's Cover.

Contains 303 beats and Chris Crocker.

What is Purgatory

2010-06-27T16:30:00.000+01:00

You know there is a 10th layer of hell reserved right now for people who do this, and by this we mean tennis.

Probably the most boringest of games imaginable so imagine my utter dismay when they had this crop up during Wimbledon fortnight. 70 - 68 thats over 12 bloody hours to resolve a fucking tennis match. Though unpopular this is what I propose that tennis should become.
Get rid of love , advantage, power serves and double bounce and all that shit.Takes far too long.

Instead implement this. Get it into the boxes to win the said amount. People run on in Mascot costumes and could be hit with a tennis ball for big points.

If it looks like an old Binatone game made live, then yeah, so what, thats what tennis should be.

Two guys (or girls ED) slogging it ou, andt the first to fifteen wins, by my reckoning you would have Wimbledon done in under three days, sorted.

Terry vids

2010-06-20T16:37:00.004+01:00

Amiga gameplay vid complete with ItaloDisco theme and eyepopping graphics.

C64 level 1 speed run with Jazzy music and a more pleasing colour scheme.

There that should illustrate what that big wall o text I wrote out much better than me struggling to explain everything.

Terry's big adventure.

2010-06-20T16:15:00.000+01:00

There are certain games you grew up with, that although no one ever new, you know deep down they would be special. NES Bubble Bobble, Valkyrie Profile PS1 and Terrys Big Adventure C64. Picked up from a market stall in Woolwich market for the princely sum of about £2, Terrys Big Adventure was an ace platform game sort of in the style of the Mario games but of course on the C64. Unlike such blatant clones as Giana Sisters (which was German and riddled with cheap deaths) Terrys was a completely balanced and tough platformer in the vein of Mario.

A small character that looks like the tenor from the Go Compare adverts, Terry is armed with rocks and his trusty yo-yo to dispatch enemies, in fact later levels would make use of the rocks to dispatch enemies immune to a good yo-yoing!. The fact that learning the layout of the levels meant that you could with some skill make it through to the later levels with no problems was all the more wiser for a hamfist like myself. It was also tough too, learning to duck under enemies and lightning bolts, avoid poison mushrooms and leap on certain bricks to reveal hidden bonus rooms were all part and parcel and while old games were tough Terrys was completely fair. If you died its because you hadn't learned the layout or misjudged a jump.

Random events lead me to the fact that there was an Amiga version available, and with some curiosity, download it from Zophars Rom Subdirectory. And thats when it all went wrong.
Memories from C64 days have not been kind, whereas the original C64 game was quite subdued in its colour scheme, the Amiga version has that strange colour pallete that old A500 titles had, making it seem like its escaped from the Playschool set. The gameplay is still the same however and even now I made it to Level 2 with little loss of life (where I was tragically slaughtered, thanks to poison mushrooms and the push scrolling).

Musically though, its gone through some changes. The original C64 theme was pretty jazzy and fitted the mood perfectly, possibly due to the fact the score was done by Allister Brimble, though he's only credited for the Amiga Score. Full Brimble Discography Pdf Heeyar.

The Amiga score doesn't really fit, being a storming Italo disco / Euro style track, which makes you wonder what the original was based on.

All in all its a missed opportunity and though still good, is a come down from the excellent C64 game.

World Cup

2010-06-13T17:30:00.000+01:00

Its coming home, Oh...

Well its started, football is coming home again, and by football of course we mean the World Cup which we'll definitely win this year cos the Sun told us and they don't lie. OK, hyperbole over with, football's coming home early, an ignominious Quarter final exit, dropped out on penalties, morose, boozed up and trophy-less, crying into its cross of St George before repeating the whole shebang 4 years later.

If you can't tell I've got no real time for Soccer / Football call it what you will.
I've had a token likeness of Liverpool for years and will on occasion watch them play on TV, but mainly I'd really prefer to see the result in tomorrows paper than watch live.

In fact the world cup has made is especiallly hard for someone like me, not only is it played in South Africa a country I dearly love (I defy any right thinking person not to be moved seeing Namaqualand in full bloom) but their actual mascot is a dung beetle, which is pretty damned epic. Oh and watching it on television is really surreal thanks to the countless Vuvuzelas being blown in the stadium, the result is a wall of drone like noise punctuated with random drumming, sort of like if Merzbow were to create the official world cup song, (in fact please do then they'd have to play it on radio 2 and everything).

In fact this is a pet project of mine*, thus having no real love of the game, I would love to see them put on a shit world cup. Not the top league game that the world cup is, but the dregs of the football league, also rans from the world of soccer, your Australia, Sao Tome et Principe, Greenland and San Marino quality teams. A celebration of the worst the team has to offer, none of the big footballing countries would take part. No England, (unless say its a Sunday League team), but a chance for Wales, Scotland and Isle of Man to shine.

A truly representive world cup that reflects the loserness of football, only losing teams go through and theres a crap plastic beaker or pound store knock off of the classic Jules Rimet trophy given to the eventual winner making them the worlds shittest team.

*NNGH the other dream is that Crazy Golf (or minigolf to non english) is televised just like regular golf with all the reverence of the regular show and Peter Alliss doing a voice over.