James Cameron's - Avatar

Avatar, it's all about the environment and nature things, which is just as well as he has rccycled a ton of ideas to make this film.

First off, he has reused a load of characters from Aliens, you will recognise Burke, Drake and Deitrich right off, Deitrich has also brought along the dropship from Aliens, only now its got real fat. You might also notice a bunch of dragon things from Panzer Dragoon, and some mechs from Matrix Revolutions, and Signory Weaver from Gorillas in the mist. It would of been funnier if he had used Signory Weaver from Ghostbusters instead, but never mind.

The plot has been recycled from Disneys Pocohantos, so in the spirit of things I recycled the synopsis of pochantos from IMDB, Ive only had to change the names in bold, it fits so well it's scary.

"Badass marine leads a rag-tag band of American sailors & soldiers to the New World to plunder its riches for Wayland Yutani (or, more precisely, for Burke from aliens, who comes along for the ride). Meanwhile, in this "New World," Chief Blue Alien has pledged his daughter, Blue girl to be married to the village's greatest warrior. Blue girl however, has other ideas. She has seen a vision of a Flower thing, a vision she believes tells her change is coming. Her life does indeed change when the American ship lands near her village. Between Burke from aliens, who believes the "savages" are hiding the unobtainable-ium he expected to be plentiful, and mean alien warrior, who believes these pale newcomers will destroy their land, Nice marine and Blue girl have a difficult time preventing all-out war, and saving their love for each other."

Well that saved me and James Cameron some writing.

Anyway, even though its all a bit familar its still good fun, if a bit long. The 3D is also supposed to be a revolution, only it isnt, Space Hunter had it first, and frankly its not that much better. 3D is supposed to stop piracy, but ironically it makes it seem like watching a 3d pirate copy. Maybe because I was wearing a pair of 3d specs over my normall specs, on account of 3d clip-ons not being invented yet, that spoils the effect somewhat.

Apparently James Cameron had 3d contact lenses to wear while making the film, perhaps that was what took him so long, because he couldnt see anything.

Overall - 4D Special agent

OutRun

I remember when I first saw someone playing OutRun at the local arcade. That wa Leisureland in Paisley but that's by the by. Can't recall the exact year but I remember my jaw nearly hitting the floor. Surely this was as good as it gets? So fast, so smooth, so tough to make the time limit (it seemed). And the music. Shame I don't have a sound clip to put on here, cos that music was ace. In the same league as the Daytona stuff for me. I wasted many an hour (and 50p) on that thing. It basically paved the way for the time limit arcade racer of which Ridge Racer is a prime example. I think the machine at Paisley Leisureland was also where drugs deals went down, as I recall one instance where the machine swallowed my hard-earned without yielding a credit. I rattled the
machine once, twice and then a third time upon which appeared a rough looking dude who asked this 14 year old if he 'had the gear' to which I squeaked that I wanted my money back. He glared at me then departed. I may have come that close to being Begbie'd or called his bluff. I'll never know but I did get my money back and went on to reach the final checkpoint with my lady by my side, in the red Ferrari, wind in my hair....

MACH 3 - Exclusive in game screen shot!

Because blogs go backwards, you see this follow-up post "before" the post that it refers to. Which is stupid. So this is the official Hotstuff version of MACH3! No messy emulation needed. I would like some more planes though. It's quite boring as it is.

Vanguard - Random Arcade Review

Konami have alot to answer for, stupid Yugioh cards year in year out Poo Evolution Soccer (which for them in the know was good once) and global warming. Well maybe not the last one as I have not got their carbon emission data to hand. They also brought us Scramble. Maybe the 1st horizontally scrolling shoot em up. Scramble in turn gave us, by means of video game Darwinism, Nemesis, R-Type and Vanguard. Ok so Vanguard is older than Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses, and probably fought in the battle of Midway with no kills on record, but it's important because it scrolled diagonally up for a bit and then down for a bit.
You can fire in 4 directions which means your buttons will either need reconfiguring or you'll have to stick little labels on them . So you shoot stuff travelling to the right, then as mentoned the screen moves up-diagonally-right. The alien blobs that attack only attack in one pattern per section so you only really need the forward and either up or down fire. Then you go right again and fly through some multi-coloured straws. But not those cool ones with bendy bits in and definatly not clever swirly/loopy ones. Occasionally the music from Star Trek the Next Generation plays and sometimes there is a shield power up that gives you not only limited invincibility but also the Vulcan's music from Flash Gordon. It is mandatory that at this point you shout "GORDON'S ALIVE?" in a Brian Blessed voice.
The end of the five stages gives you a chance to shoot up the alien's homes. Defensless alien homes, full of women and children. Now they're dead. And it's your fault. Steve.

Basford Sorting Office FAQs !

Like a tedious daily column from some uninspired journo or a blog from someone who thinks pople give a damn here is my postoffice parcel blog..

As often happens you get home and find a postoffice slip saying that there was no one in when they tried to deliver your precious package at 12:30, so now you have a trip to the sorting office to pick up.

When you arrive at the office you will be tempted to drive in through the gates, don’t do it! If you do you find that you have no where to park and have to do a three point turn in a tiny courtyard, without hitting any post men on bikes. It’s a bit like doing one of these annoying missions in GTA where you have to pick up a package without damaging your car or killing anyone.

The opening times on the door have been crossed out and re-written in permanent pen. They are now open an hour later and close at 1:00 which is still no good to me.

When you go through the door you are in a space about the size of the Tardis, or at least how big the tardis would be if it wasn’t bigger on the inside. There is another hand written sign, it says “Gas men sign for your parts” Ignore this especially if you are a gas man. Everything is beige in the room, and very worn, not dirty just like its been used every day for 30 years. Like a Rebel alliance fighter, but not cool.

Then you ring the bell and wait. You have to wait Exactly the right length of time to think maybe you should ring it again, If you ring it twice you loose, as they appear right away looking cross.

The man has usually will have grey hair and a moustache, you will recognise him because he has a moustache. He will then spend some time looking for your parcel, you can usually see it on the shelf from where you are, but the guy will do the best to avoid spotting it as long as possible. Don’t tell him where it is this spoils their fun. Stare at the pile of unclaimed low energy light bulbs that stretches from floor to ceiling to distract your self.

This is where you find out despite waiting 24 hours it still might not be back, sometimes its still not back after 48 hours. Just how long are these post rounds ? Congratulations You get to do it all again tomorrow !

Overall: Brown

Bayonetta - First Climax Demo - PS3

Sega Does Devil May Cry?


Bayonetta is a hot witch with Tina Fey glasses. Apparently a child of when a dark witch gets off with a light witch or something. I wasn't paying much attention to the intro. So she gets a train to a gothic station that doesn't look anything like a station. I mean it hasn't got a ticket machine or a turnstile thing that your bag gets stuck in. Anyway this station has lots of ghosts wondering around that do nothing and some archangels that attack you. The combat is really awesome, Bayonetta shoots, kicks and punches in some really cool combos. One is like a Chun Li kick combo that finishes with a huge stiletto boot kicking the bad guy out of thin air. Sometimes crazy Jpop music plays during combatn which is nice. There's torture moves that are a bit like finishing moves but aren't because the finishing moves are more awesome! The one I saw had Bayonetta's hair turn into a dragon that ate the boss guy, while Bayonetta stood there naked watching. Funny girl.
The weapons are cool especially the blunderbus trumpet thing and the witch-time slo-mo shooting bits. The final bit of the demo had me fighting some blonde chick who liked stuffed animals and roses. I died a few times there but when I beat her I got an award - a stone statue of what looked like Christopher Biggins falling over.
So it's pretty cool, but only a demo. Well worth waiting a few months for Gaystation to reduce it to £20. Sega games always go down in price quicker than a duck in a blender. Or something.

MACH 3 - not the razor.

As everyone knows the arcades were great. As a dribbling 13 year old you could stare for hours at the big boys playing really cool games. Mach 3 was once such a game. It was the best thing ever.

It ran real video footage of a plane flying down canyons, over a dam and past Richbourgh power station (it might have been Didcot). A jet fighter was superimposed on top that you could control and shoot down other superimposed fighters.

There was a second stage that you had to pay more money to play where you viewed the action from above. I never played that bit. It looked boring. Unfortunately Mach3 broke. Well the one in Margate did anyway, it was (probably) taken away by arcade dustmen and buried in concrete to make a motorway bridge. Sadly there was never a home version of it. The closest there ever was, er.. was Tomcat Alley on the MegaCD which coincidentaly belongs buried in concrete to make a motorway bridge. Maybe one with a Skaven head spray painted on it. Thanks to the world wide interweb you can at least download and watch the video footage. I have found out in lieu of not actually being able to play it you can hold a toy F14 in front of the monitor playing the footage and pretend to shoot down the toy Mig21 in your other hand. Buy more toy planes to get extra levels and use a pocket calculator to keep score. Brilliant!

Ghost in the Shell - The Laughing man review !

Ghost in the Shell - Laughing Man - Stand Alone Complex

How many titles does an anime need these days ? Well three it seems.

Anyway, Ghost in the Shell (or GITS) was Mangle Videos next big thing way back in 1996ish, just when Anime was starting to go bad.

It was written by the bloke that did Appleseed, before he went completly out of his tree and decided to only draw porn for the rest of his life. (see galgrease)

Mangle video loved it because :

• The main character is a hot lesbian cyborg
• There is graphic voilence every now and then.
• The word Cyber is used in every sentence.
• They desperately need another Akira

Anyways, after the film there was a TV series - Stand alone complex, so this was the movie edit of that. Its very long.

I watched the dub of it - YES THE DUB, take that anime purists. Mainly because I need my hands free to do other things while watching. (hur hur). Not that i read subtitles with my hands, that would be mad unless you had a braille TV which hasnt been invented, because it would be stupid. But you cant iron and read subtitles at the same time, unless you want to singe your pubes. Apart from the voice actors struggling to pronounce japanese names its fine.

So Laughing man isnt that old, and a lot of the stuff which uses to seem rad isnt so rad these days, maybe because wireless internet is part of real life these days. Still there are a lot of cool things like the landmates out of Appleseed, and nice ideas like hacking peoples cyber eyes.

Of course if you could do this you would hack your bosses eyes so he thinks he sees you at work, but he might be hacking your eyes so you think he's at work so it would get confusing.

The laughing man's plot is confusing too, everybody double cross's their cyber doubles, but there is action every 20 minutes thanks to its episodic roots.

Its kind of like BBC's Spooks but they dont spend every episode in a London
Station, and instead of interspersing violence with tedious love affairs, they stare into space and talk a lot of cyber babble.

Overall : Good

Time for the modern age...........

Back in the late 90's it took a special kind of loon to create a fanzine. Photocopied manga, hand drawn comic strips and pictures lifted from PCzone. Text printed from a Pentium 90 running windows 95 that contained brillant mindless drivel. All photocopied (illegally) at Mum's work, stapled togther and given away at Anime conventions to anyone who was drunk enough to take the one copy that actually got finished.

Now bloody 10 years later, any spong with a computer can make a blog or twitter or whatever online and publish to the uninterested masses. So with this in mind it is time to drag the idiot fanzine into the 21st century ( like Buck Rogers we've been asleep in a space shuttle).
So here is..............

HOT STUFF in the 21st Century (dadadadadada)