Here’s a cute video of our little toad enjoying a chippy snack:
Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
Emi Eating Chips
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011The Wish
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011Imagine if magic was real, and by some awesome circumstance I was granted a single wish. Suppose, for that wish, I decided upon the following:
“I would like to be transported back in time to Blackpool, England in early May 1977, with only the means to live comfortably from that point onwards for the rest of my life.”
I imagine, at first, it may be a bit strange. No cellphones, no internet. No-one I knew. I’d have money, a nice house in which to live, and health. I’d take a week or so to get used to England in the late 1970s. I’d eat a lot of fish and chips. I buy a cat and name her Amy Pond.
It would be early summer, the start of the tourist season. A few weeks after I ‘arrive’ Star Wars opens in theatres. I’d be there on opening day. I’d buy a ‘May The Force Be With You’ t-shirt and wear it to meetings of the Doctor Who appreciation society. I’d reveal at one of these that I have an ‘inside contact’ at the BBC, and the first new show of the upcoming season 17 would be called Horror Of Fang Rock. They’d be amazed.
Winter would come. I’d stay home mostly, watching Tomorrow People, but occasionally scuttling through the frigid weather to play the brand new game AD&D with friends. Every now and then I’d go to the movies as well. I expect Close Encounters of The Third Kind to be good, but find myself enjoying The Spy Who Loved Me even more.
A year has passed and I’m heading back to Blackpool on the train from Birmingham. I’d arrived early and caught the opening day screening of Superman at the Electric on Station Street. It was strangely better than when I’d seen it 34 years earlier. I spent the afternoon in a quiet stroll, wondering should I start following the soccer, before a light dinner at the Rum Runner club, listing to their resident band, Duran Duran. The singer – Steven Duffy – is ok, but I reminded myself to return in a couple of years and check up on them. The train is slow in getting me home and I miss the first episode of the new BBC1 show Blake’s 7. It’s a good thing I’d seen it before, since I already know it’s not going to be repeated for a very long time…
Later in the year winter returns to England. The Blackpool Illuminations are still on, and I religiously walk the golden mile almost every day. There have been mutterings in the newspapers, and what I have been looking for finally arrives. My first game of Space Invaders in 34 years – my first videogame in almost 18 months – is like heaven. At this point I feel that once again I have entered the golden age.
In 1979 I enroll in Cambridge, essentially buying my position with no regard for the tutelage just so I can be on site to witness the filming of an upcoming Doctor Who episode called Shada. It is a bittersweet moment. I spend much of my time on the golden mile, working in the arcade I now run. My insistence to have every arcade cabinet available makes the place a bit of a money sink, but I don’t care. Even though I’m running out of money I have a feeling I can turn things around in the near future. Late in the season a struggling band – Adam & The Ants – plays a local club to a small crowd. They are supporting an upcoming album, and they have the spark of greatness. ‘This boy”, I know, “will go far.”
Everyone’s excited in 1980. I’m nostalgic. The Empire Strikes Back becomes everyone’s favourite film ever made, but I’m almost too busy becoming the best Tempest player in Blackpool to notice. I can feel the wave of history approaching me quickly though and dive right in when I buy my first home computer – an Apple II GS – and a copy of the new game Ultima. I had to drive down to London to do this (in my new Aston Martin v8 Vantage) and of course I stop off at a pub in Canning to see a young band – Depeche Mode – play a motley set of new wave and Bowie covers. They are, perhaps, the best they’ll ever be.
The II GS is a promising product, but when Apple goes public late in 1980 I hold back. I have feeling now’s not the best time, and instead sink a few thousand pounds into IBM.
Shortly after my 42nd birthday (in 1981) Tom Baker hands the reigns over to that young vet. There’s no turning back from the 1980s now. MTV has started in America, Raiders Of The Lost Ark is in the cinema and NASA just launched the first space shuttle. My arcade is pulling in the cash, and I convert the upstairs to a ‘computer game’ shop. Vic-20s and (even still) 2600s are flying out the door, and I feel almost bad selling them since I know by next year they’ll be almost obsolete. But then life’s going to be like that almost forever now. Charles marries Diana and it seems so sad to me. I stay up late playing side two of my new vinyl Speak And Spell album whilst enjoying the new Wizardry game on my Apple. Amy Pond is older and fat, and likes sitting in the shop window and watching the trams go by…
I’m not interested in selling books, but make an exception – in 1982 – for a new publication called The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain. I can barely keep them in. My shop is so successful selling gamebooks, ZX Spectrums and C64s that I have to hire a bunch of kids just so I can find the time to whittle my life away playing Robotron in the arcade downstairs. All the kids are wearing Yoda t-shirts and eating Chicken McNuggets. When I see The Birthday Party performing live in London Nick Cave is so strung out I can barely believe he’s got a long and successful career ahead of him. On my shelf – next to a dozen or so plastic-cape Jawa figures – is the first Game And Watch sold in Britain.
I must keep my eye on events in Japan.
And so turns the gears of the early 1980s. Depeche Mode, Erasure and Alphaville (who I see live in 1985 in London). I now write columns (under pseudonyms of course) for Crash and Warlock magazines. My arcade is the biggest in England (possibly even the world?) and a major attraction on the golden mile. The game store above is now two stories, with video games (including the hottest of them all: the NES) in one and role-playing games in the other. Although my store runs the biggest Warhammer games in England I am rarely there. My time is spent on a grand tour around Europe in my Rolls Royce Silver Spur, making sure to catch a Kraftwerk show in Germany and A-Ha up in Norway. I’m back in England full-time in 1985, and am in the front row of the ‘last’ gig by The Sisters Of Mercy before the band split. The feeling of nostalgia is almost overwhelming.
In 1986 Challenger explodes, Chernobyl melts down, Black Celebration is on my record player and an imported copy of Final Fantasy is in my Famicom. I even had to import a Japanese TV to play it. My thoughts drift more to Japan around this time, and I think fondly of Tokyo. In 1987 the first cracks appear in the Berlin wall (naturally I am there to see Reagan speak), Sylvestor McCoy makes his first appearance as The Doctor and the tanking of cassette-game prices means my video game shop sees a slight downturn as customers decide whether or not to switch over to the NES. I buy my first compact disc later that year – Music For The Masses – and when I first play it the feeling of deja-vu is acute.
In 1988 I put the arcade up for sale. Many of the older games have now been moved – permanently – to my estate and redemption games have taken Blackpool by storm. My heart is no longer in them, and in fact is moving away from England itself. Zzap 64 is still publishing, but with the demise of the C64 it’s hardly the same magazine. I now have several Japanese televisions and have begun to import anime and (many) games. I’m learning Japanese as well. I spend the morning of my 50th birthday burying Amy Pond (who died in my arms) and the evening in Oxford as the oldest man in the audience of a Fields Of The Nephilim concert. Later in the year the Internet stops being a closed network. I can feel the world changing.
1988 slides into 1989. My businesses sell. I shutter the estate, selling the Rolls and Aston Martin but locking up the Sinclair C5. I’m a very wealthy man by now, but my fortune reaches new heights when I sell all my IBM stock and buy some (what I know to be) future-proof shares in the ailing Apple corporation. I board my private jet on a one-way trip to the next phase of my life to be spent living in Tokyo, Japan. On the flight, as I play my brand new imported Game Boy, I spend the time thinking about my younger self, half a world away, about to graduate from high school. I’ve avoided him all these years, but make a note that when I land to anonymously send him a pineapple in a box.
“That should keep him guessing”, I think with a smile.
Hithchiking
Thursday, March 24th, 2011The other day, on my drive home, I saw a hitchhiker. He was in his 20s, lightly dressed for the cold weather and had no bag or backpack with him. He was in the classic pose, thumb out, on the side of a suburban road. I drove past, with no thought of picking him up.
For some reason, hitchhikers seem to have all-but-disappeared from the roads of America. I was trying to remember the last time I saw one anywhere and couldn’t. When I include other countries (Australia, UK, Japan) into the equation the results are equally barren. Could hitchhiking be a lost art?
Only once in my life did I try it. It was on the Pacific Highway, from Newcastle to Charlestown. Me and one other person who I now forget (was it you MMN?) made a half-hearted attempt to hitch a ride. No-one picked us up; no-one even stopped. I don’t remember how old I was, probably in my late teens. I figure the lack of interest was in no small way related to our appearance.
In those days, or rather at that age, there was no fear of some stranger picking us up and giving us a ride a mile or two down the road. Although the perception of hitchhikers was certainly there, who ever thought it was anything beyond urban legend?
And yet I wouldn’t pick up a hitchhiker today. Not even a young, harmless looking guy in Delmar, NY. In this increasingly social, decreasingly private world it seems ironic to me how people seem to be less trusting of strangers than ever. The world gets closer and yet the fear of the unknown increases. Maybe the reason I didn’t pick this guy up was because I didn’t want to be bothered; maybe it was because somewhere in my mind I feared he’d be a psycho.
Has anyone ever picked up a hitcher, or successfully hitchhiked themselves? How did it go?
iOS Game Reviews
Friday, March 18th, 2011It’s hard not to take iOS (including iPods, iPhones and iPads) seriously as a gaming platform these days. Thousands of games exist or are being made. They are getting increasingly more impressive and complex, and millions of dollars is being made. The iPad2 surpasses the PS2 in performance, and I believe it’s only a matter of time before iOS will surpass (in revenue) one of the ‘big three’ console platforms (Wii, PS3 and XBox) – unless it already has?
All that said here are a few comments on the iOS games I have found myself playing the most. All screenshots are full-resolution and taken directly from my iPad.
Infinity Blade ($5.99)
If you are into gaming at all, you have likely heard of this game. Using the Unreal 3D engine, it’s leagues beyond almost everything else on the device in terms of graphics., and the gameplay is damn good as well. Basically it is a rip-off of my own game franchise Mercenary King, which means you fight baddies one at a time to get loot and power up your character. It all culminates in a face-off with the God-King that (spoiler!) always ends in defeat (even if you beat him!). The game then continues with your progeny starting his own fight through the castle. In this way you can play forever, becoming increasingly stronger and fighting bigger and badder enemies whilst collecting more and powerful gear.
Combat consists of dodging, parrying, attacking or using special abilities or magic – all controlled by very intuitive and clever touch controls. This is a top tier game, well designed and executed, and a no-brainer for anyone with a device that can play it.
Angry Birds ($2.99)
Since everyone on Earth including the US president and the British prime-minister has played this game what could I say you don’t know? Basically this is a one-two punch: a very clever and addicting game design coupled with near perfect implementation. The ultimate game I suppose, and less than three dollars! Another no-brainer purchase. (Screenshots from the HD ‘Seasons’ version)
Battleheart ($2.99)
This charming game is an RTS with great graphics, nifty controls and a good amount of customization. Assemble your team of four characters (from many different classes) and fight off waves of enemies as best you can. Each character feels quite different and the game even has synergies to consider when creating your team. It’s quite tricky, and with many levels to play through (and a lot of equipment to collect and use) there is a great deal of game here for the small price. This very professional product is highly recommended to anyone that likes RPGs or strategy games of any kind.
Cave Bullet Hell Shooters
Read that again if you’re in shock: I speak the truth. Cave – makers of the best arcade shooters of all time – have already ported two of their greats to the iPhone. Those would be Espgaluda II (left screen) and Dodonpachi Resurrection (right screen). They are incredibly good – far, far better than one would expect with touch controls. The action is fast and furious and the graphics and sound are great. However there is a problem: they are each pricey ($9) and iPhone only, which is why the screens are pixellated (the graphics are blown up for the iPad screen). The screens are from the free demos: I haven’t yet purchased the games because I think high-res iPad versions are a matter of time.
Minotron 2112 ($1.99)
Ignore anything else I say and just go and buy it. (If you insist for a review, I trust these three words are sufficient: “Better than Llamatron.“)
Two last points:
1) Note how low those prices are? I’m torn about this. Yes it means cheap games for everyone, and as I have hopefully shown here cheap does not necessarily mean bad (or short, or simplistic). On the other hand one wonders what effect such pricing will have on the game industry as a whole? I certainly think the days of $40+ niche or experimental games may already be behind us, which saddens me a little.
2) I don’t yet have an iPad2. This is for lack of trying, since I’ve made no real effort to go to the store after launch day to get one. Rest assured the day I walk past an Apple store and they are in stock one will instantly be mine. And not just for gaming: I consider my iPad an indispensable tool and the improvements in the upgraded model make it a no-brainer purchase for me.
One more final last point, specifically directed at B Francis S:
3) The graphic effects in the two Minter games (Minotron and Minotaur Rescue) will make you cry with delight. The particles in the Minotaur Rescue menu screen! The phosphor trails in Minotron (viewable in the upper right screen)! Once you see these in action you’ll want to get an iPad just to buy the dev kit and start porting over your flame demos to make them interactive 🙂
Game Crazy
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
Last Friday we visited the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. This is a new section of the museum devoted to video and electronic gaming. It opened last November and I first heard of it only a couple of weeks ago. The website promised a comprehensive collection and I was not to be disappointed.
There it is – the first ‘console game’. The brown box is one of the Odyssey prototypes invented by Ralph Baer in the late 1960s. This simple device started it all, and we were able to play it last Friday.
The collection is divided into a few sections, the most dramatic of which is the arcade:
These are all originals in their original cabinets with mostly original screens, controllers and circuitry. I spoke with an attendant and he told me many of them had such things as new power supplies or coin slot systems, but of the 25 or so games on display (from a collection of nearly 200) the emphasis was on those games that were as close as possible to how they were in the 1980s.
I’d played them all of course, aeons ago, and it was like stepping back in time being able to do so again (at the mere cost of $0.16 per game!). I was particularly amazed by the working Asteroids, Star Wars and Lunar Lander since all three use vector displays, which are notoriously prone to failure.
We spent quite a bit of time at the arcade burning through 30 tokens (1 per game), but it turns out the true star of this collection was not the old games, but was the simply astounding collection of game history on display in the many cases. Such as:
Bet you’ve never seen one of them before? What about this one:
Note how the games are built in-to the unit (which was released in 1972). Of course slightly more modern game systems were represented as well:
And not just consoles:
This was all well and good (very good actually). But the collection truly lives up to its mandate of electronic gaming (as opposed to TV or console gaming). Which means, well all sorts of electronic games. Think LCD, VFD and everything between. It was in viewing many of these objects that my mind was truly blown:
Note the original boxes for many of the items.
“If only”, did I think many times, “could that be mine.”
Many of the displays were themed (educational games, sports games, simulation games etc.) and in the role-playing game section (which spanned from the board game Dark Tower [which we own by the way] to World Of Warcraft) was this pair on display:
The most important books every written perhaps? 🙂
The articles on display were only a tiny fragment of the entire collection, but I was very impressed with the choices which ranged from obscure to common, from American to English to Japanese. As I told the attendant, up until last Friday I may have supposed my own personal collection was the only one in America to contain both a Wonder Swan and a Wonder Swan Color:
And it got more obscure than this. How about the FM Towns version of one of the Japanese-only Dungeon Master sequels? Yes, that was on display 🙂
Needless to say, this now-permanent exhibit is highly recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in the history of electronic gaming. I feel privileged that it is so close to my house, and given that the curators plan to improve both the content and size of the display I have no doubt I shall return one day to be amazed all over again.
Strong museum is also home to many other collections of toy and gaming-related material, many of which are on display. Here are a few random shots of some of what we saw:
Yes my friends, that is a collection of Star Trek themed Yo-Yo’s. They actually had many more on show, including much of the cast of Deep Space Nine…
The above is unquestionably the cutest Jack-in-the-Box in the history of human civilization. It even has the word Love written on it!
And this last shot…? It almost defies description, so I shall just label it with the proper name. The following shot depicts a squirrel whimsy.
