John Walker's Electronic House

Right, so I’m going to put as much effort into reviewing this as Atari/Sensory put into making it. It’s rubbish. Don’t bother with it.

I mentioned recently how the DS is so very wonderful because it causes developers to have to think. Well, I’m not wrong. But unfortunately sometimes what they think is, “Blimey, we can just stick any old crap on that and use the stylus like a mouse.”

Sigh.

Tim told Kieron, and Kieron told me.

The internet’s latest, and certainly greatest meme: Miming to Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart.

There’s little question that this is what the internet was made for. And this one is definitely the best. And everyone’s in love with the girl.

I do want to make special mention of the scene in Bandits, where Cate Blanchett’s character does the very same thing in her kitchen, which doesn’t seem to be getting the credit it deserves for starting all this.

But then there’s this one:

Give it time – get past the boring bag-on-head scenes, and suddenly it’s WRIST SLASHING FALLING DOWN STAIRS excellence.

There’s a billion of these, and as Kieron points out, the brilliant bit is that it justifies listening to Steinman’s ridiculous rock opera over and over again.

And that eventually leads to this:

I don’t know who Hurra Torpedo are, but I do know this: ALL songs should be performed by smashing ovens with table legs.

It’s always peculiar when trying to install older software onto a modern computer.

Wanting to play Gabriel Knight (thirteen years old), I had a quick go at simply sticking the CD in the drive and seeing what happened. It had a good go at installing, even wrote stuff to the hard drive, but became very muddled by the surrounding technology.

Fortunately a wise man on the internets had encountered the same problem, and thought to create a new installer for putting the program on XP. Hooray for internet people. And so with that it installed itself nice and sensibly, and even pre-set the compatibility settings for the game to run properly.

Except of course it doesn’t. When trying to launch the game apologetically tells me that it needs a display driver capable of displaying 256 colours or more.

How do you break the news to it?

“I’m sorry, I know this must be hard, but you’ve been in stasis for over a decade.”

“Computers run at… look, sit down. They run 32 million colours now.”

“Yes, I know… No, I know. The human eye can only perceive 10 million colours. You’re not wrong. But look, that’s how it is… No, it doesn’t make sense.”

“Look, would you like some time by yourself for a bit?”

I was shuffling through some folders on my hard drive, trying to find a half-finished thing I’m writing for PC Gamer, when I stumbled upon the original doc for an It’s All Over I wrote… over six years ago. So old.

It’s still probably my favourite thing I’ve ever written in the magazine, and the only running gag I’ve ever initiated. So here is a scan of the printed version, as it’s almost as nothing without the drawings by the in-house team of Gamer in 2000. I’ve no idea to whom this copyright belongs. The text is MINE MINE MINE, but the rest is Future’s. But I don’t care, because they are evil.

A couple of explanatory notes: Back in Those Days, PC Gamer had a section called “Grand Designs”, where readers would send in their awful ideas for games and a developer would be asked to try and be polite in response. And all French games are insane. That’s all you need to know. (I’ve no idea why the stupid wobbly lines are all over it – I can’t make them go away).

From the website for Cornish adventure game, Barrow Hill:

“An impressive endeavor for a small group of first-time dev’s, with a shoestring budget…”

PC Gamer Magazine (UK) – Review by John Walker

From the review in PC Gamer Magazine (UK) by John Walker:

“An impressive endeavour for a small group of first-time devs with a shoestring budget, but as much as it feels like kicking puppies to say so, not a product worth your money. 51%”

I think I’m more offended by their decision to put an apostrophe in “devs”.

And Came Down A Fountain

Anxiety disorder is mean. It’s easy to forget quite how potent and controlling it can be during the peace of the downtimes. Back in a peak, and the brain madness steals sleep, calm and most of all, rationality. I’m so much better at cutting it off now, and while flappy, less its slave. The ideal behaviour in the moments of meaningless panic is comforting distractions, and what better than a thunderstorm?

The balcony on my flat provides the most extraordinary panorama for thunderstorm viewing. Offering about 160 degrees of landscape, the bowl in which Bath lays is all mine to view, surrounded by the thunder-capturing hills. Which means, of course, that the focus of a storm is always right on the edge of the field of vision, mostly concealed behind buildings and trees.

Tonight’s storm was too good to miss this way. One bolt that snuck around the corner was an inch thick in the sky, viciously purple, and threaded with cruel tendrils. The rest, while spectacular, were more in hiding.

Remembering my Adventure 200 yards behind my house, and the excellent wall on which I had sat at one point, providing an even more spectacular view of the city, as well as one of those brain-confusing 3ft drops on one side, and 20ft on the other (Bath is steep, people), I ventured out into the peculiarly clear air.

As I walked up, my back was to the storm. Efforts to walk backward were quickly abandoned, and at one point to great effect. The very brightest lightning of the night flashed from behind, and everything in front of me became suddenly ludicrously visible, my arms and legs lit up with a deeply eerie blue. I love lightning’s unique lighting. It’s daylight doubled, able to pick out detail and highlight the gaps.

The hill behind my house, as I might have mentioned, is steep. With the incentive of reaching the top before the sky ran out of electricity, I stomped up at a ridiculous pace, my lungs quickly burning, charged with providing the oxygen for powering a poorly composed body slopping around with less-than-manly muscles. Reaching the top, I had that horrid sicky feeling in my throat from sudden exercise, too much saliva, and a very dark sky.

I sat on the wall and looked toward the point of the activity’s hub, but nothing. A few gentle drips of rain fell, and the sky remained rudely blank. There were not even the after-flickers of its calming down. It had just ceased. Didn’t it realised I’d just walked really rather quickly up a really rather steep hill? Wasn’t it interested in the dedication I’d put in? I continued waiting, staring around in all directions looking for the flashes that had previously picked out portions of the clouds all over. Nothing. And then it rained.

Standing in a t-shirt and trousers, my cap in my hand, I realised that now it was time to get wet. It was the moment when you’re supposed to stand up, tip your head back, and just be rained on.

And it really did rain. It started off gently, then picked up to, “Oh, it’s tipping down outside.” Hefty plops of wet showered down, and it was excellent. More than anything, it was cold. How long is it since I felt cold? Then it started raining properly. The sort of rain where someone feels obliged to make the joke, “I’ll start building the boat, you gather two of every animal.”

It was the right time to just stand still, face up to the sky, and let it rain that on me. To be so wet that I couldn’t get any wetter.

Walking back down the hill (now a bit nervous of slipping and tumbling – it really is that steep, seriously), I walked past a man pushing his bicycle up the hill. He looked up at me, we both grinned, and he said, “This oueuaagghh!” I nodded in agreement, smiling, and thought triumphantly to myself, “I am wet on purpose, and you are not. I am the winner.”

“Our development team, when we saw the various GTA games coming out, thought Rockstar had created a genre.”

As we approach the autumn, Saint’s Row creator Volition isn’t going to be the only development team making this argument. With Vivendi’s Scarface also due out in a couple of months, and also looking remarkably similar to the long-running law-breaking series, upbeat violence in freeform cities is going to be a recurring theme. Perhaps it really is a genre. Perhaps.

Follow-up interview for the Saint’s Row stuff on EG.

There will be a minority of people reading who adore Point Blank religiously, their palms still bearing the imprint marks of a long-gripped light gun. And really, no matter what I say, nostalgia is going to win out.

It’s been said before, but it can’t be said often enough: the reason the DS is great is because you can’t just port your game over to it. The PSP is a remarkable machine, replicating near-PS2 capabilities in a handheld device, but still, only replicating near-PS2 capabilities. The lazy developer wishing to port his tinpot cash-in across all systems gets to the DS and goes, “Oh crap.” Two screens, one of them a touch-screen, half as many buttons as the average joypad, and no analogue sticks whatsoever – it all means that anyone wishing to develop for it has to use their imagination.

I get all excited about the DS again, because it’s just so very, very lovely.

All you need to know about Reflexology.

Found in a shop window in San Francisco.

Rest of pics here.

Ladies and gentlemen, please listen to this short appeal:

Every day a DS game belonging to John Walker goes missing. There are now tens of thousands of DS games wandering the streets, lonely, hungry and without love.

Please, if you know the whereabouts of any of the following DS games that belong to John Walker, then give generously, and return them to a home where they will receive love, and then eventual rejection and dust.

Project Rub (I think that might be Kieron)
Rub Rabbits (And again)
Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land
Lost In Blue

Thank you, and remember, for every DS game you return, you will receive over fifty billion pounds*

Goodnight.

*This might be a lie