Marino Bros: Not iconic video game characters
Tags: Mario Bros, Video games
1 comment
Three brief PT things
Yearly: Beat the price rise
Just bought my new Yearly ticket via PTUA Commuter Club. It’ll take a couple of weeks to arrive, but it means I’ll beat the March 12th price rise.
PTUA Commuter Club Yearly plus membership: Z1 = $1090 (order by end of Feb; payment must clear by March 3rd). Will go up about 3% after that.
365 day Myki Pass (Yearly Metcards are no longer on sale): Z1 = $1170 until March 11th, $1202.50 after.
12 x 30 day Myki Passes: Z1 = $1332 (if bought after the March 12th price rise; Metcard prices are almost identical).
Myki gates at Melbourne Central
From what I’ve seen the new gates at Parliament and Melbourne Central work well most of the time, but when I went past, one was out of service (with a red light) and another was being problematic.
And at the end of the video you’ll see two fare evaders follow a lady through. There were no staff watching, so they appeared to get away with it.
First impressions after playing the free demo version of Cities In Motion
Quite slow even on my recentish PC.
Very nice graphics. A few options to adjust settings, but nothing seems to really speed it up. Demo works on my PC’s 256Mb video card despite the system requirements claiming it needs 512Mb.
Clearly a lot of scope in the simulator for playing with different options, setting up routes etc.
Just a teensy bit clunky in some ways, eg having to lay dual tram track everywhere, and having to end all (tram/bus) routes in a loop.
Can’t see a way to create bus/tram lanes. My buses kept getting stuck in bad traffic.
Not totally convinced it’s a big leap forward over the old Traffic Giant game, but it’s only $20 to buy (online; don’t know about retail), and obviously is still under development, with an active user community/forum.
A bit of fun for any transit geek. Provided I can verify the full game will run on my PC, I’ll buy it.
(Some demo download sites require signup/membership — this one doesn’t)
New Wii tennis?
Wow, they’ve really improved the graphics on Wii tennis.
Tags: Nintendo Wii, tennis
4 comments
Coolest Mini ever
Spotted in Centre Road, Bentleigh:
Tags: Mini, Space Invaders, Video games
2 comments
Super Mario tram
Also last night, how’s this for combining my interests of transport and classic video gaming? The Super Mario tram — celebrating 25 years of Mario games.
Tags: advertising, Mario Bros, trams
6 comments
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
9 comments
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.
