The toy of the movie of the game
Spotted in K-Mart: Lego Prince of Persia.
So let me get this straight… this is the toy of the movie of the video game.
I wonder if there’ll be (as there was with Star Wars and others) a Lego video game of it. That would be the game of the toy of the movie of the game.
(I remember playing the original Prince of Persia game in my uni days. Despite being a fan of the platform genre, I don’t think I’ve played any of the sequels. The Wikipedia article notes the author got the distinctive animation done by video-taping his younger brother, and links to one of the original videos. Very cool.)
Retro trains
Melbourne’s Comeng trains date back to the early 1980s, about the same time us Gen-Xers were cutting our video game teeth with Donkey Kong and Space Invaders.
There’s certainly other things of the 80s around the place on the train network, for instance this sign on a now unused gate at Caulfield Station. (Since then we’ve had a new Met logo, then Bayside Trains, then M>Train, Connex, now Metro.)
Something else Retro Metro have done that harks back to days of yore is to put staff back on busy platforms. While I was surprised to see Sydney rail staff waving a flag a few years ago, here they’ve been given high-tech looking paddle devices (the other side has LEDs that stand out to the train driver).
Tags: Metro, retro games, trains, Transport
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The hero
A while back we were in EB Games in Swanston Street having a look at the big Nintendo area on the first floor. Jeremy sat and played a bit of New Super Mario Brothers with another kid. Both being experienced players, they gave the very last level a go. But towards the end, Jeremy’s character fell into the lava or got hit by a fireball or something, and his game ended.
The other kid kept playing, right to the very end of the very last level, which (if you don’t mind spoilers if you’re a player of the game) you’ll see involves some pretty daunting hazards.
He got all the way through. Those of us watching were awestruck.
At the final victory, on the last level of the game, with Bowser vanquished, and the princess rescued, he put down the Wii remote. He stood up from the couch, and he walked off into the sunset (well, back towards the exit to find whichever parent or guardian he was with).
He didn’t wait for praise. He didn’t wait for the reactions of those who had witnessed his great deed. He just moved on.
It was truly an awesome moment of video game heroism.
It’s Mario month!
Isaac noticed the Best Before date on our current jar of Vegemite is MAR10. That makes it Mario Month this month!
I think I’ll go play some more New Super Mario Brothers Wii.
Then maybe I’ll make a Vegemite sandwich. (Though it doesn’t strictly have to be used by the end of the month; note the difference between “best before” and “use by”.)
Tags: Mario Bros, Nintendo Wii, Vegemite
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Avatars
One of the fun things with the Wii is creating your “Mii” — that is, an avatar used in some of the games.
While the kids got busy creating some favourite fictional characters, my avatar looks like me.
Here’s mine, seen in Wii Sports Resort, playing table tennis.
Guitar Hero doesn’t use the standard, cartoon-like Miis, but has its own rock music-oriented avatars. They look more realistic, but despite my efforts, I think this one looks less like me.
What do other people create? Your likeness, or something else?
Tags: avatars, Guitar Hero, Nintendo Wii
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It’s the Beatles!
Today’s release of The Beatles Rock Band video-game and the remastered CDs is enough to get me excited about the band all over again.
Not that I’ll rush out and replace my collection of CDs with these new ones, but it’s sorely tempting to buy my the new versions of a few favourites, such as Sgt Pepper, The White Album and Abbey Road, which were the first three I bought on CD, back in the late-80s. [Extensive review of the remastered versions].
I just love the opening animation from Rock Band.
(Watch it here to see it without the added intro bit, and in better quality.)
Even the commercial is cool.
I only just got around to getting Guitar Hero, so I won’t rush to get Beatles Rock Band, and I’d want to make sure the guitar is compatible — apparently it is. I’ll keep playing through GH and look at BRB at some stage later when it’s dropped in price.
Daniel’s Beatle Trivia#1: Favourite Beatle song of the moment: Paperback Writer. Love that riff.
Daniel’s Beatle Trivia#1 2: About halfway through The Inner Light I always expect it to start repeating itself, because that’s what the first copy I had of it (a secondhand LP of The Beatles Rarities) did.
Tags: Beatles
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Wii Sports Resort – For The Win!
Okay I admit it, we fell for the hype, Jeremy and I. The demos of the game at the EB Games Nintendo Experience thing in Swanston Street, and Jeremy’s participation in a Nintendo event at Southland convinced us to pre-order Wii Sports Resort from EB Games. In doing so we gained an extra (so two in total) Motion Plus controller (and a recharger thingy that’s pretty much useless to us because we already have a stock of rechargable batteries — I might eBay that) along with the game for $79.95, not too bad for an RRP of $99.95. Thankfully I didn’t have to attend the late-night launch event to get the bonuses.
I think the first time I’ve acquired software on the exact day of release since Windows 95.
The Motion Plus thingies (which are basically a small add-on to the standard Wii controller) provide the extra precision needed for the game. Adding the Motion Plus to the controller is a little fiddly, but it can be left on for other games that don’t use it — though it changes the feel a little by being slightly bigger and a bit heavier, which I found a little cumbersome for Wii Sports tennis, though baseball was okay.
Anyway the Sports Resort game is a lot of fun. Twelve sports in all (and numerous games within each sport), and I’ll summarise my first impressions:
Great: swordplay, air sports, archery, table tennis (amusingly at one point instead of Match Point, it announced “For The Win!”)
Okay: wakeboarding, frisbee.
Bad: cycling, basketball.
Jury still out: canoeing.
Haven’t played the others yet: golf, bowling, power cruising.
The swordplay in particular is a helluva lot of fun. Playing against other players puts you on a platform and you fight it out until one of you falls off into the water. The other mode is playing a kind of action-movie, battling hordes of other little sword-wielding guys. (Isaac pretended he was Luke Skywalker fending off stormtroopers.)
Anyway, the whole thing is a lot of fun, particularly with two players.
By the way, also recently got Guitar Hero World Tour. On sale nowadays for about $90 including the guitar. Didn’t want the full band set clogging up my house. It’s also good fun, though haven’t yet had a long go at it. I wonder what real guitar players think of it.
Tags: Nintendo Wii
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Geek Idol
I’ve had few real idols; people of whom I could genuinely say “I want to be like them.”
In my early-to-mid 20s, Ben Elton was one of them. Amazingly funny, both on stage and in his writing. I wanted to write stuff that was half as good as his books, but never quite managed to write anything that was engaging enough to last over the length of a novel. My best attempt was The Year 2031, and even that wasn’t terribly long.
Ten years earlier, it was Tony Crowther. He was perhaps five years older than me, and a game programmer extraordinaire, writing hit after hit on the Commodore 64. I loved his game Blagger, and the sequel Son of Blagger, then got through Monty Mole (but only with help from a walkthrough). For a while I was hooked on Potty Pigeon, then Loco, which I enjoyed more than its astoundingly similar-looking followups Suicide Express and Black Thunder.
After that I moved off the Commodore 64 onto other things, and lost track of him and his games.
I suppose I dreamt in some ways of writing my own games and making a fortune from it. Back in those days many commercial games were written by solo programmers, or small teams. These days the gaming industry is dominated by borg-like big development studios, and Suits.
The other week I was in MagNation and noticed a copy of Retro Gamer which featured an interview with the man, as well as a big feature on Pacman. Wow. I was in a rush and made a note to go back and buy it the next day.
When I went back in, it was gone. Replaced by the next edition. I asked if maybe it was lurking somewhere in the shop. Nope. Everywhere else I looked was the same. Gone.
I had a look online. There are quite a few articles about Crowther, but most of them are reprinted from the 80s. I was also interested to know what he was up to these days, and what he thinks looking back at those old games — precisely the sort of thing Retro Gamer does well when they find people to interview.
I could order the mag from the publisher, of course. It would cost 5 pounds. Fair enough. But with 6.50 postage (!) it’d be a total of 11.50, or about $25 — double the Australian retail price.
While I was pondering that, Rae (who had been kindly checking newsagents near her work for it) pointed out I could look on Ebay, which was a brilliant idea. I found a copy for UKP 7.70 including postage, about $16. Much more reasonable. I’m eagerly awaiting its arrival from the UK.
In the mean time, I’ve discovered that Crowther has in fact been assimilated into the borg that is Electronic Arts. One of the games he worked on recently-ish was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which was one of the last games I bought for the XBox.
And me? Well, I did start writing a few computer games, but never quite finished any of them. But I did end up making a living out of writing software.
Who were your childhood idols? Where did they end up? Did you get to be like them?
Tags: Ben Elton, Commodore 64, idols, Pacman, retro games, Video games
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