Charity Shop Gaming

You know that a console has well and truly gone retro when you see its games turning up in Oxfam. Mega Drive and SNES games have been in such shops for years but PS1 and PS2 games have started turning up, in my local Oxfam at least, at pretty much the same time.

My local Oxfam only sells books/music/DVDs/games and the type of knick-knacks that you get for Christmas and before you've got the wrapping off you're wondering what the charity store holiday opening times are. No clothes are sold, meaning it is sorely lacking in the fusty 'old clothes and cabbage' smell that you often get in charity stores (and pre-GAME takeover branches of Gamestation).

I often pop in there to have a look at the books and I generally also cast my eyes over the games. Most of the games for  sale are PC games, which do not interest me (I 'only' have a Mac) but earlier this year I did pick up an unboxed (but with instructions) copy of Starwing on SNES for a couple of quid.  I'd seen a couple of 'supermarket' PS2 games in there in the past  - the type of low-cost shovelware that never gets coverage from magazines and websites but are heavily featured in your local Budgen's (or similar store), for kids to pester their (non-gaming, presumably) parents into buying.  I often wonder if there are any hidden gems in these types of games and wish a magazine or website would  get a batch of them to playtest.  After all, Global Defense Force/Earth Defense Force 2017 were both ultra low budget games in Japan and they are both excellent.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the UK supermarket games are irretrievably crap though.  Anyway, I digress.


I popped into my local Oxfam while on a turkey hunt on 23 December.  We'd not been  able to get out to the shops before then due to the snow  and were facing the possibility of Turkey Twizzlers (with all the trimmings) for Christmas lunch, so I'd ventured out in snow shoes to bag me a bird.  Before tackling the horrors of Waitrose two days before Christmas I thought I'd have a browse in Oxfam and found that they'd had a game donation.  I picked up mint copies of Rollcage  and Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis on PS1, both well-received back in the day, for £1.99 and 99p respectively.  I probably had GAME's policy of not accepting part-exchange on imported games to thank for also picking up a US copy of Wipeout Pure on PSP for a fiver. 


They had other decent games there too, including the superb Sniper Elite on PS2 for a couple of quid (I have it on Xbox).


So, it seems that the charity-store-donation definition of  'retro' (as good a definition as I can think of)  currently has retro starting at least at PS1 and possibly at PS2.  Cheap gaming and charitable works - what's not to like?

NGamer Mario Magnets!

This month's NGamer magazine includes a whole bunch of New Super Mario Bros Wii magnets (and a Nintendo 2010 year planner, if that floats your boat). I don't think I'm NGamer's target market (in fact, I think I am old enough to be the target audience's Dad) but I am a sucker for a magazine freebie.  My favourite freebie of all-time was a Nintendo pack of cards from, I think, the Official Nintendo Magazine, which had a different old-skool Nintendo character on each card.  I used them as flash cards to teach my then 2-year old daughter the Nintendo pantheon.  Well, you've got to start them somewhere.

Anyway, the magnets allow you to recreate 2D platforming fun on any metallic flat surface.  The magnets aren't that strong, so they wouldn't be any good at fixing one thing to another thing but that's hardly the point, is it?

Here is our effort -

Happy Birthday, Playstation

The first week of December saw the 15th anniversary of the release of the original Playstation (in Japan, anyway). The cynic in me (who is, essentially, me) thinks that the coverage that this milestone received was thanks to overactive marketing executives taking a break from the coke to try to drum up some Playstation column inches.  "Hmm" think the readers of the marketing-generated copy "Sony Playstation. I had one of those back in the 'day'. I wonder what Sony are doing now? Number three you say? What does that do?".

So, showing that I'm a sucker for a good manufactured news item as much as the next man (which is why I always steer clear of the Daily  Express), here's my Playstation personal retrospective. Actually the 'next man' is sat on the train seat next to me as I hammer this out on my Blogpress iPhone App,  reading the Financial Times with a serious look on his face. I doubt he would be suckered by the marketeers. He'd probably scoff at it and want to know Sony's financial results. Killjoy.  Anyway.......

I first played the Playstation in early 1996, when a friend brought his sparkly new console to my student house before a West Ham game (I lived within walking distance of the Boleyn Ground) and we marvelled at FIFA 1996 ("wow, the commentary uses player names - that's creative midfielder Ian Bishop!" and Destruction Derby. Neither have aged well (particularly FIFA 1996, which wasn't even that good - 3D sheen and commentary aside - at the time) but I could see the potential. 


The clincher that this was something special, for me, came with Resident Evil. Another friend had bought one  and I went over to his flat,  had a go and my mind was well and truly blown. I'd heard from friends before that this was a scary game and scoffed at them - as if a game could scare you!  And then the dogs jumped through the window. And then the second set of dogs jumped through the next window.  Actually, I thought (screamed) a game could  scare you. We played the game between us that night, switching the joypad  every so often, until 5am in the morning (I had to get up for work at 7am). One of my most memorable gaming experiences ever.

Soon after, I persuaded my older brother, with whom I was living at the time, to buy one. They were still about ￡200-￡250 then I think and you'd need another pad and a memory card before you even thought about buying games - all well outside of my budget back then. By some silver-tongued trick of mine, I managed to persuade him, with faultless logic, that the best place to situate the console was, actually, in my room (placed, for reasons I can't quite remember, on an upturned washing up bowl).

I finally got my own machine in late 1997 (there was a price drop to ￡125) and gave my brother his one back (he seemed grateful enough).  That grey wonder still works today (though you have to balance it on its side these days). Will my 360 or my PS3 still be on this side of the veil in 2021 (the year, not 8:21 this evening, though I see your point)? I'm on my second 360 (I know others have had far more than that) and - touch wood - no problems so far but I can't see it still running Bioshock two decades on. My Wii will probably survive though - the reason soldiers have insufficient body armour in Afghanistan is that Nintendo make their consoles out of the stuff.

Other fan-led retrospectives, particularly Game Central's Inbox feature last weekend, have, in the main, praised the  machine and its effect on the gaming landscape (a landscape that would have suffered from 'pop-up', I'm sure). The thing is, I remember in the mid-nineties that Sony were on the wrong end of the kind of  pelters from hardcore gamers that the Wii gets these days. Earnest letters were written to Edge (are there any other kind?) about how Sony was destroying gaming with their 'cool' console, pandering to clubbers, getting on the cover of trendy non-gaming magazines, abstract TV ads ('I have conquered worlds', anyone?) and generally appealing to the mainstream. Mom & Pop concerns like Sega & Nintendo, the fanboys said, who actually cared about gaming (so not profit, then) were being kicked to the kerb by this upstart and gaming was doomed.

I thought this was cobblers at the time and still do. Some of my favourite games of all time were on the Playstation - Vagrant Story, Vandal Hearts, FFVII, Resident Evil 2 - and it was home to a broad church of different types of game (certainly more so than any of the current gen consoles are).  I think it was because Sega/Nintendo fanboys were so set in their own little two-sided confrontational universe (like the CIA when the Soviet Union was more than just a fashion motif) that any attempt to muscle in on that was bound to short-out their minds.  Coupled with the fact that change is never welcomed by some quarters.



The thing is, a lot of the core gamers that are around now cut their teeth on the Playstation - without it, gaming may well have died, or at least not been the multi-billion dollar industry it is now.  I'm sure there are those that would think that this would have been a good thing but then I'm sure there were cavemen that thought 'fire' was an advance that they could do without and that mammoth tasted quite OK raw, thanks very much.  Personally, here's to cooked games.

Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 - teaser trailer

Batman: Arkham Asylum is my favourite game this year - excellent use of the licence, great gameplay, combat, graphics, voice acting.  Other than a couple of suspect boss battles (though the one with Scarecrow balanced some of that suspicion out, I feel), there isn't a thing that I would change about the game.


Given the maths of the industry go something like - videogame + success = videogame 2: The sequel - it is no surprise that there's another game coming.  A bit surprising, possibly, that news of it has come so soon after the first game came out (it was released in the UK at the end of August) but welcome nonetheless.


A teaser trailer was released today, at the Video Game (I always say 'videogame' but each to their own) Awards.  As a rule, I'm not that interested in previews/trailers, particularly a gameplay-free one like this but for Batman, I'll make an exception (like the one I made for Fable 3). It suggests that  the game will be set in Gotham City proper, rather than in the eponymous Asylum of the first game. Joker and Harley Quinn are there again, an easy choice to make, given Joker is the most charismatic and well-known bat-villain but I'd have liked to see another one, personally.   Not that it will stop me buying it though -  I am being seduced by the coolness already.  

Wii Sports Resort - review

The first Wii Sports game was a curio, designed to ease gamers (and, as it turned out, non-gamers) into the waggle-waggle nonsense that controls most Wii games. It would be harsh to call it a collection of tech demos (that was Wii Play) but it would also be overly praising to call it a proper game.  As it came bundled with the console, I don't think anyone felt hard done by but would I have bought it had it been a boxed game sitting on Amazon's virtual shelf alongside the Wii when I bought the console?  About as likely as I would have bought (or got my Mum and step-father to buy, rather) the free games bundled with my Spectrum in 1983 (something to do with population graphs of foxes and rabbits)?

That's not to say I didn't enjoy Wii Sports, I did - a lot. I very rarely played it  on my own, only with my daughter - 5-and-a-half when I first bought the machine  - and, on a few occasions, with the type of non-gaming relatives that Ant & Dec rustle up for their Wii TV ads.  I liked the baseball, golf and bowling, the tennis was OK and the boxing was a bit hit-and-miss (pun very much intended) and some of the mini games were good (target golf rocks) but overall it didn't offer much as a videogame experience.

Fast forward two years or so and, in time-honoured videogame fashion, the sequel has rolled up.  Rather than a simple retread, the game this time round is bundled with a motion sensor doo-hickey (a technical term) that better  measures the motion of the Wii Remote when the sensor end is not directly pointed at the TV/motion bar.  [EDIT (thanks Warren!)] The Motion Plus can detect movement on a 1-to-1 basis. which the vanilla Wii Remote could not, meaning the Motion Plus should offer a deeper gameplay experience.

And I think it does.  The additional scope that the Motion Plus gives allows there to be more - and more varied - games.  Twelve different types this time but some of those hide different variations that, effectively, amount to different games.  For example, 'Swordplay', one of the twelve game types, hides a 1-on-1 fight on a podium, a two-player vegetable/fruit/assorted tuht first-to-ten slashathon and a one-player 'take them all on, one by one' fight, the only link between the three being the holding of a sword.

All the games and game types are set on Wuhu Island, a sporting-themed tropical resort (think Center Parcs in the South Pacific).  I've read that Nintendo think of the island as a character in itself and anticipate it returning in future games.  I'm not sure about that but I did think, as I was flying around the island on 'Island Flyover', a single player plane-based search 'em up, that I'd quite fancy driving around the island on a few Mario Kart tracks.

In all these types of mini game  collections, there tends to be  some games that you play more than others and that's what I've found with Wii Sports Resort. I've played a lot of Swordplay (my daughter is strangely attracted to whacking my Mii was a sword) and also wakeboarding, dogfight (not part of an Essex simulator but a two player aeroplane duel over Wuhu Island) and table tennis.  All of these very much rely upon the Motion Plus as even minute adjustments of the Remote have (and need to have) an onscreen effect (I've noticed this most in Dogfighting, flying your plane by gentle adjustments of your wrist).

Bowling and golf both make a return and both are improved.  I'm not sure if it is the Motion Plus that makes bowling better but it certainly plays more accurately  (bowling is probably the only 'sport' included in either game that I have played much in the real world) than in the first game.  Golf has definitely  been improved with the new tech though - your backswing is now important and you can put backspin on the ball, handy for those tricky approach shots/wild slashes from the rough.  I've only ever played pitch and putt golf in the real world but it now seems a better model of the golfing experience.  Not in a Tiger Woods sense, although the Motion Plus would no doubt help should 'apres golf' be on the menu for Tiger Woods PGA Tour All-Play 2011.

Wii Sports Resort is now being bundled with the Wii (along with the first game), so all new owners, like my in-laws, get to view both games side by side.  I wonder if those new owners will do more than scratch the surface of the old game, given how superior Wii Sports Resort is.  That has been the case with my in-laws, who've barely played Wii Sports in the face of their growing addiction to Wii Sports Resort.  I said above that I wouldn't have bought Wii Sports had it been a boxed game but I did buy Wii Sports Resort (and an extra Motion Plus) and it has been well worth it.  Highly recommended, particularly if you have children.

Drink is the Curse of the Blogging Classes

Yesterday was my work Christmas lunch and, as is customary at these functions, I had far too much to drink.  Not entirely my fault - no-one seated near me was drinking white wine and I don't drink red - but it wasn't as if a gun was being held to my head to drink it (the only thing being held to my head was a regularly-refilled glass of white).   So far, so festive, then.  But what, I hear you ask does that have to do with videogames?

Well, I generally draft my posts on the BlogPress iPhone app, which is great for utilising small snippets of time, like a train commute, episode of X-Factor or a boring meeting, for something constructive like drafting a post.  And yes I am aware of the irony of equating 'videogame blog post' with 'something constructive'.  Yesterday morning I missed my train by two flights of stairs and had to get on a slow one instead.  I'd already half drafted a post on a great videogame love of mine, pinball games, covering various games from Pinball on  the Spectrum  to Pinball FX on XBLA and spent the 40-minute train journey completing it.  Or, should I say, nearly completing it.  I'd hacked out a pretty much completed first draft but I generally like to read my posts through a few times, changing stuff here and and there and generally doing what I think  F Scott Fitzgerald used to call 'fannying around with the words', so I didn't publish (you can publish direct from the app).

This morning when I awoke  my Blogpress app wasn't on the front page of my iPhone - I must have deleted it last night.  I think I'd accidentally put it into 'wobble' mode when carrying it and then inadvertently deleted Blogpress, along with iDracula (which is a bit duff, to be honest), Flixster and Instapaper.  Bugger.  I've uploaded them all again from my iTunes account but the data (my pinball post and a very early draft of one on digital downloads) is lost for ever, like Charlize Theron's chances of ever working for FIFA again after last week's World Cup draw.

I've tried to start it again but I find drafting something that I've already written and then lost due to an IT error very difficult, as I try to remember exactly what the lost document was like, rather than writing directly about the actual subject.  I might return to writing about pinball again eventually but I'm giving up on it for now and turning to write about Wii Sports Resort instead. Here's a quick precis of the pinball one,  if you're interested - pinball is good, Pinball FX is great,  ball physics are hard to get right and  I suck at pinball.

Half-an-hour heroes

As I've got older, the amount of time that I have to play games has gone down in inverse proportion to the amount of money that I have to spend on them. I remember paying, in pre-Internet shopping days, £45 each for Die Hard Trilogy and Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat, two of the first games that I owned on the original Playstation. At the time, the cost of each game amounted to nearly a third of my weekly take home pay and consequently I could not buy very many games. In those far off days though, I had far more time to play the games and played those that I had (even demos) to death finding gaming time was not a problem.

Jumping forward to the present day, a better job, a family, less gaming time, the Internet (and www.gamestracker.com) has led me to amass what CPC6128 on the www.nowgamer.com/forum  (feel free to pop in - we're friendly) has termed a 'Pile of Shame'. An embarrassingly large number of uncompleted, unstarted or even unopened games that I have not yet had the time to play.

To try to work down my 'PoS', I've taken to drastic action (well, not as drastic as quitting my job or not seeing my family but you know what I mean). When I play a game for the first time now, if it doesn't grab my attention in that first sitting I seldom persevere and go back for more but instead move on to the next game in the pile. It needn't only be the half an hour (of gaming time) of the title of this post (though it has been in the past) - that was just a nice piece of alliteration. But it does apply to the first long session on a game pulled from the pile.

This policy wasn't a conscious decision on my part. It happened for the first time following a reasonably long session on a game fresh from my PoS. The game was MadWorld on the Wii - OK-ish, highly stylised but ultimately shallow and empty. When I next came to play a game, I couldn't be bothered to continue with MadWorld but instead picked another game from my PoS, the more satisfying (but by no means great, though certainly fun) Mercenaries 2.

Since then, I've played three more half-an-hour heroes - Bionic Commando, where I couldn't get on with central mechanic of the game, the hook-arm thing; Street Fighter IV, which I fully appreciate is a great game but I just don't get on with beat 'em ups (other than Powerstone) and Eat Lead, which is just not very good*. I doubt that I will ever pick up any of these games again (feel free to plead on their behalf in my comments section though).

I suppose this might seem a bit harsh and I might even be missing out on some decent gaming experiences. However I only have a finite time to play games and if a game can't persuade me back for a second sitting after an hour or so, I don't want to 'risk' more of my gaming time on it.

*I appreciate that one man's meat is another man's PeTA direct action campaign, so I feel dutybound to point readers in the direction of 24 Hour Gamer's latest post, as he quite liked Eat Lead -
http://24hourgamer.blogspot.com  He's quite convincing - maybe I will try it again........