Music – Page 21 – Robot Claw

SSS

November 10, 2007

One of the adverts between the songs on the Sigue Sigue Sputnik album Flaunt It is for the SSS computer game, allegedly available “In stores now”. The album was released in August 1986.

The game was apparently never made, and apparently never was any more than a couple of mock up screen shots. Those shots appear, as far as I can remember, in an article in Commodore User magazine, which I had back in the day. I recall they described the (nonexistent, remember) game as a fighting game of sorts, perhaps a rip-off of Karate Champ but in a SSS mode. I can recall one screenshot showing possible combat, and another of a possible ‘character select screen’.

Billy Idol and Andrew Eldritch may have been in the game. Neither are too unlikely given the pedigree of certain members of SSS (ex Generation-X, for instance). Things get weird here, because it’s slightly possible that in a box in our attic is an old Sisters Of Mercy fanzine containing mention of this very game, possibly even reprinting the screenshots. And possibly not.

It’s enticing they may be there. So much so I don’t even want to look.

The wonderful zzap64.co.uk has scans of every issue of that fab magazine. But only scans of 4 issues of Commodore User, and for some reason I am positive the SSS game was only featured in CU. Even so, I pored through many issues of Zzap just now. I found no Sputnik game coverage.

I found these however:

Watch Us Work It

August 21, 2007

There’s a new Dell advert on TV with a very, very catchy song. When I first saw it I was pretty sure it was Devo, and indeed it is. The song is called ‘Watch Us Work It’, was recorded for this ad, is now available on iTunes, and is damn good!

See the ad here, you non-American readers 🙂

Semester Winding Down

April 24, 2007

It was just shy of 90 degrees yesterday (Fahrenheit). And yes, that means in under ten days the temperature had risen almost 60 degrees (remember it was snowing just over a week ago). It has gotten cooler now, which is a good thing because it was borderline oppressive yesterday.

The semester is winding down. There is less than two weeks left of classes, during which I have a quiz, an exam, and must give a presentation. So I’m busy preparing. I also have to prepare a poster for a department meeting this weekend, and do a second presentation for a group meeting. None of this is super detailed (or important) stuff, but time consuming nonetheless. I didn’t get a great deal done this past semester with respect to my doctoral work, mostly because for about two months my x-ray detector was broken (the repair company is scheduled to ship it back today), but I’ll be working over the summer to make some progress (hopefully).

Not much other news. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl came out for DS last weekend, and we’ve both started playing them. Only this morning I unlocked the GTS, which is a system, that lets players wirelessly trade Pokemon with players anywhere in the world (the first few trades I browsed were Japanese players). The game includes a nifty world map that will fill up as trades are completed, so you can see just where on Earth your Pokemon originated. Very very cool, especially for a DS game. (Note to Adam: buy this game so we can battle/trade Pokemon)

Here’s a shot of my DS library as of last week. Not as good as I’d hoped because I chose bad lighting. The idea for doing this was born online; it seems to be a good way to show off ones collection (DS boxes tile well together)

With 85 games in total (including Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, not in the above photo) I have more DS games than 18 of my 21 total systems. Only for PS2 (with 109) and Gameboy Advance (with 138) do I own more. However, I have been accumulating DS games at a far faster rate – an average of slightly over 3/month – than for any other game system I have ever owned…