Man on tram

This guy was on the tram, he likes the Dreamcast more than you do, in fact he likes it so much he's wearing he Dreamcast suit out. He should get together with the guy who looks like a hard Twikki for maximum awesomeness.

Double Dragon 3 - Random Arcade Review

Remember when Double Dragon was released? No? Well bugger off and steal a Delorean and find out then. It was something of a revelation. Okay so Renegade came first but you never saw the arcade game (apart from the arcade in Canterbury which became the Penny Theatre). DD was two player as well and featured the now legendary "Billy Elbow", which you could finish the whole game with. Final Fight came along later and Double Dragon was forgotten. This game is probably the reason why.

So Billy and Jimmy are tasked with finding the Shankra stones by a little yoda-like Chinese guy. Unfortunately they're not really up to the job. They move like geriatric pensioners, their two frames of animation showing that they probably have arthritis or rickets or something. Shame as they were so quick and nimble in the other games. The generic bad guys move much faster even the Meatloaf lookalike moves faster. The bad guys change with each level, great you might think but think again. Level 2 has straw hat wearing chinese guys and Bruce lee as a boss (its a chinese level you see), level 3 is in Japan so it's all samurai. And probably ninjas but to be honest I really couldn't be bothered beyond the 1st screen of this level.
Something that is different is a that each level has a shop at the beginning. So you wander inside and the girly shopkeeper (not as good as the one from Forgotten Worlds) squawks stuff at you. I think it's english she's speaking but it's hard to tell. The shop sells power-ups, weapons, health and men. Yes that's right it's a front for white slavery. Problem being that there seems to be no in game currency so how the hell do you buy this stuff. The answer is simple. With REAL money, you have to put another credit in after you've paid to play the game to get one in-game coin. The game is so Gil-Gerard-hard that you HAVE to buy at least the power-up. Then I found that when you buy a man you get, guess what, an extra life, which is stupid as you only get one per credit anyway. So why not use the continue function? What is the point of paying for a life in the shop if you can continue anyway? Why were Billy and Jimmy resurrected to find these stones? Why am I still here? WHY?

Golden Axe, Beast Rider Review

Golden Axe Beast=Rider is one of those games that was largely ignored on release, but it had quite a nice box and a good gaming history so I thought would be worth getting when it was cheap and now is the time of cheapness.

At first glance it sems to have nothing to do with proper Golden Axe, no dead friend Alex or anything, but on closer inspection theres actually quite a lot of Golden Axe in there but it's hidden under a lot of gushing blood and repetative scenery.

In fact if Hollywood were to make a movie of Golden Axe this is what the movie would be. It looks like a realistic Golden Axe, stuff happens like it would in Golden Axe, yet some how it entirely misses what Golden Axe should be.

I never thought I would hear Gilius Thunderhead Say "By my balls!" but thanks to Bast=Rider I have.

All the levels involve running a long a bit, killing some enemies then moving on to the next bit.

Every level is a wasteland, wilderness wasteland, desert wasteland, castle wasteland, you get the idea.

The scenery is decorated by badly drawn strung up naked corpses. A 14 year whose only possesion is a pirate VHS copy of Conan would think it's cool.

Golden Axe, Beast=Rider has for some reason decided rhythm action combat is the way to go.

The combat involves lots of dodging depending on the colour of the enemies sword glows, after your dodge you get an extra strong attack which is a pain if you are ryhtmetically challenged like me.
It can also mean standing around waiting for someone to try and hit you so you can use your strong strike back.

Riding beasts is actually good fun, but the problem is the mighty beasts are very fragile, and they tend to explode in a fountain of blood after bumping into things, or using a special move.

You can only have one beast at a time so this means after your beast has stubbed its toe and taken a load of damage the best thing to do is to jump off it and then lop its head off, and run back and get a new one. Tyris flare is no friend of endangered species thats for sure.

Despite all this the game is kind of compelling, just to see whats going to happen next or at least unlock another Tyris Flare costume, I have spent more time on this than MW2 singe player, Infinity Ward are probably kicking themselves for not including more semi naked desert warrior women in MW2. I know I am.


Overall - Nobody tosses a dwarf

Adventures of Sid - Xbox 360 indie game

Tomatoes are a fruit. Not a vegetable. This means they mince around town like a little teapot. Not like vegetables. They sit lifelessly in a chair dribbling. Sid is a tomato, but rather than prancing about like Gok Wan, he resolutely trudges about a 2 dimensional landscape (his footsteps sound like the sound effect from trudging around Animal Crossing) gunning down snails and bumble bees. He comes armed with a flamethrower, grenades and some dynamite. The explosives come in handy not only with blowing up the local wildlife but also in destroying the scenery. which leads us to the level design. Which is pretty clever with loads of secret areas with handy switches to open them up. One level has underwater bits (in which the music changes like in R-Type Delta - but makes you think your sinuses are blocked) and obligitary slidy bits and frozen walruses. When Sid gets hit by a bee or a patch of spiky things he looses health, which can only be regained by devouring what looks like Tomato ketchup. I find this slighty disturbing. Sid gets more health by drinking the liquidized remains of his fallen brethren. That's practically cannibalism. Sick
On the whole this game reminds me of Bullfrog's game Flood which us in need of a serious update. If you don't know it, look it up. Well I guess it's more like Fire & Ice. Look that up too.
Word has to be given to the guys who made it from bits of their own flesh and bone (or something) Give it a download, the demo's free and the game is 240 Microsoft dollar.
clicky here to have a look

Surrogates - Balancing Plates?

John Mclain is back as a robot shell of Bruce Willis, except he looks very very plastic. He's an FBI agent looking for a secret weapon that kills not only the robots but the user too. The chick from Silent Hill is his partner (but doesn't look as Plastic even though she's a robot too). So they run around Boston chasing the guy who fell out the airlock in Event Horizon. Bruce willis looses his John Mclain shell (this is however where Jedwood stole their hairstyles from) and has to....shock.. horror...GO OUTSIDE. Hilarity ensues as he keeps walking into people as he finds out that some one has taken over his partners body and will use it to plug the weapon into the internet to destroy humanity!
I really stopped paying attention to this movie about half way through and started to think of some more interesting premises......

• Cow&Gates : All humans are replaced by very small jars of a rudimentary paste, until Robocop shoots them (or eats them)

• Margates : All humans are replaced by eastern european cheap labour. May or may not have had anything to do with the Scenic railway fire.

• Normanbates : All humans are forced to have a shower, just to be murdered and replaced by a crosdressing psycho

• Baddates : All humans are replaced by poisoned fruit in a dastardly plan to kill off Nazi Monkeys

• Duelofthefates : All humans are replaced by John Williams, which suits him just fine as when you start to hum any one of his themes you could wonder off into any other one. They're that similar.

It's also worth noting this is based on a comic book which I'd not heard of. It seems Hollywood will take any milk from the comic book cow dairy.Even the stuff thats been out in the sun for a few hours. Now where's that big budget version of Johnny Fartpants. Or Biffa Bacon......

Killing Floor - PC

Some things are very British. Most games these days aren't. Killing Floor is made by some Scandinavians that maybe went to London once or watch the Bill on the internet while listening to the world service. It has London buses, Black Cabs, Panda cars and fire hydrants. Er... WTF? Fire hydrants? Nowhere in Great Britain has fire hydrants. Stupid American fire hydrants.

The date is next week and the zombie apocalypse has happened. In Blighty. Well they're not really zombies but genetic experments gone bad. Like in House of The Dead they all have nails and metal sticking out of them. Mostly. They attack in orderly waves with a handy counter to tell you how many there are left. When you kill them all a shop opens, which is usually 10 miles away and you have like 1 minute to get there before it closes. You buy guns and ammo and it shuts. Then the NEXT WAVE starts. Just like that.

The game is mainly a co-op affair and all the player characters talk in a thick Eastenders accent. "stand still you muppet" "Can't you see I'm reloading" "Get outa my pub". They're also all closet gays. Going on about taking "one in each hand" and "trying to shag" each other. The yardie shopkeeper doesn't help. All she says amounts to cock euphanisms "I like them big" All the player characters ignore her again indicating that they are gay, because as we know from 28 Days Later all post apocalyplse soldiers turn into serial rapists.
The game has a perk system where you grind to get better discounts on guns and more damage using certain guns. The game wants me to headshot 700 guys for my next level. Which may be nice when it happens.

So get it off Steam and enjoy gay mindless zomble-cide. Great and I never mentioned Left for Dead once.

Overall : BIG GUNS

Gley Lancer (Review)

GleyLancer (MD)

Its got some anime type 'cutscenes' at the start. Excellent MD speech. Pick it up for GRAVEL VOICE! Graphics are fair ,backgrounds look nice, even on teh first level we flew through saturns rings (a bit like in Macross) . Thorpe says it plays like a Horizontal versiion of Image fight. At the end of the first level, the Megadrive tells us in its gravely voice "I would do anything for some ice cream" Or it might have been "I will give you anyhting but eighteen year olds" we aren't sure.

At the start of the second level (after a very easy first boss) it tells us to beware of the popcorn. It could be talking about the tune from the 80s or there could be popcorn on this level. This is whats so great about this game; Its allways going to be easy to adapt to new situations, in fact the second boss was twice as big and twice as easy to kill. It wasnt made out of popcorn, ice cream or eighteen year olds (as far as i know) but it was a giant head. The voice on later scrutiny is i fact what Tweeky from buck rogers will sound like after 25 years when smoking more than his usual 8 cigars a day. Half way though the second lvl you get somthing called Ned Shot. Just after that you are attacked by metal Neds that look like blobby space ships. after this you get to the end of lvl boss, which is a giant brain thing (the grouped hub of hive intelect representing every Ned in the universe. Its easy to kill though as its got no guns and just foats in front of your guns.

Stage 3 comes after another small anime cut scene with an anime chick, shes not on shopkeeper from forgotten worlds standards, but shes quite good. anyway yes, stage 3, its the obligarory speed up stage.... then it slows down and shouts danger at you a lot. at first you think its having a laugh, as it just has little volcano things shoot at you from the floor, but soon enough you see that its really unfairly just going to crush you in a growing blocks of shit. If you jab your laser in the eye of some spinning ball thing you will complete the level. Huzzah.

Jesus, now its onto the next level, it appears to be a copy of lvl 3 of R-Type (which i completed btw) Its pretty bad and even though it warns you that there is a huge ship heading your way you still are suprised by the huge falic object on the back of the ship, its some sort of rear firing penis launcher.... nasty. Amyway skip to the end, you can wipe out this big red cock machine pretty quick and we are onto somthing that i REALLY hope is the last LVL.

At first i thought wow, they are pulling out all the stops here, there is a sunset with not one, but 2 suns and the first few waves of ships look hard enough, then you see the pattern, then its as hard as putting on slip on shoes. Another huge ship aproaches and is beaten before i really can decide if it looks like ED209..... A cut scene! its the end!! ...... No....

Another lvl, but Thorpe says "this must be the last lvl, its bio-mechanical". So i stick it out and watch as he moves into the end ... no ... mid lvl boss, thats still a huge enemy standing in our way. at this point im just hopeing that Thorpe dosnt turn round and happly ask me if i want a go after him, i think i might die or somthing. Ohh, i just missed the end boss. aww shit in a hat and puch it, there is another level.

OK, this is Level 8, it looks a bit like stage 2 from Gradius 1 but with a red backdrop. I think i can see where the developers were going with the dificulty curve here, You see, its like a marathon not a sprint. Its just told us to watch out for flying rocks (they have little laughing faces on them), i can only think they are laughing at us for having got this far, its some sort of developer in joke. Ok, thorpe just lost a life on the boss, im sortof worried about him , hes looking a bit down , and has gone all quiet. Im going to try and speak to him in a light friendly way after this boss. Wish me luck.

Overall : Continue? yes/no

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)