Video Games

Release date: 1993 Systems: NES Last week we looked at the most important side-scrolling beat em up of all time, Final Fight. Yeah, that’s right – I didn’t hedge with ‘arguably’. It is the most important side-scrolling beat em up of all time. If you haven’t read last week’s post, go do that now. In … Read more

Release date: 1989 Systems: Arcade, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, PlayStation 2, Mega-CD, ZX Spectrum, Super NES, Sharp X68000, Xbox, XBLA, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Network, Virtual Console Final Fight is the biggie, really. Even if you take Streetfighter II as the moment where beat em ups sloughed off their gills … Read more

Release date: 1988 Systems: Arcade, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Sega Master System, Commodore 64, Sega Game Gear, MSX, TurboGrafx-16, ZX Spectrum New York spent the 80s gripped by violent crime, fuelled by unemployment and the crack epidemic. By the middle of the decade, its reported crime rate was over 70% higher than the rest … Read more

Release date: 1984 Systems: Arcade, NES, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Commodore 64, DOS, ZX Spectrum Last week we dealt with player vs player beat em ups’ inauspicious beginnings in the form of the dire Karate Champ. Today, we look at the considerably less turdy first flourish of the side-scrolling beat em … Read more

Release date: 1986 Systems: Arcade, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, NES, Sega Master System, Virtual Console, ZX Spectrum Renegade is not a classic. Let me level with you right from the off. Sometimes a game gets rendered obsolete by successive iterations (I’m looking at you, Streetfighter II), sometimes everyone was … Read more

Release date: 1984 Systems: Arcade, Nintendo, C64, Apple II You know those movies that are ‘important’, because they gave birth to a new genre? You know how they usually suck? Yeah. Karate Champ is one of the earliest beat em ups, the foundations upon which such vertiginous edifices as the Streetfighter and Tekken franchises were … Read more

I love video games. If you don’t like them, that’s fine, but if you say they are rotting our children’s minds I will fight you. I grew up reading and playing video games and found them equally fertile grounds for the imagination. I don’t think I would ever have got the bug for wanting to … Read more

No amount of snarky commentary can do these screenshots justice. Suffice to say, I have been playing Captain Bible in Dome of Darkness, a PC point n’ click adventure game where you must use Bible verses to defeat evil robots in a bizarre lycra-clad futurescape. Instead of an energy bar, you have a ‘faith’ bar, … Read more

Readers of this blog will know that a fair proportion of my life’s work is devoted to promoting the creative output of the writer John Osborne. He has just done a new youtube video, for a poem I like called ‘I Think Pat Sharp Is Lonely’. Here it is: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwYtDhvDVJQ] Today is MAR10 Day, apparently. … Read more

“There’s a sense of wonder and a spark of imagination at the heart of the Super Mario Bros. games, and as children we pick up on that right away. Then, over time, most people lose that spark. School, career, social engagements, relationship drama, mortgage payments, credit card debt, medical ailments, and other things that we … Read more

So with video games off the menu until the end of Lent, I just finished reading Northern Lights, the first book in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Yes, yes, I know I’m way behind the times, but better late than never, eh? My verdict on the first book? Loved it. After years of editing … Read more

So yeah, Pancake Day is upon us, like, well, a pancake, that has finally unpeeled itself from the ceiling and dropped, moist and lukewarm onto our upturned faces. I love pancakes. They are the best food. I always do my best to celebrate pancake day by gorging myself in a hurried and unselfconscious manner. But … Read more

So, uh, yeah. Doesn’t time fly? It’s been a year to the day since I started the Cone O’ Tragedy. Frankly, I’m surprised (and pleased) it’s staggered on this long, like a plucky lil’ zombie. So happy birthday, my blog. Well done! Like a drunk lost in an disused railway tunnel, you yell your barely … Read more

So, I just realised I’ve never posted up this track by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats and Kaki King. It’s written from the perspective of one of the Mushroom Retainers (or ‘Toads’) that Mario saves at the end of each castle in Super Mario Bros. Toad was my favourite character in Super Mario Bros … Read more

Hey you. Nice to see you again. You’re looking well. Have you had a haircut? Sure? Well your hair looks great today, then. You’re welcome. I had a pretty Kinder Bueno 2009, all told. My first (maybe only!) book came out, I got to do gigs with Vic Reeves, Jon Ronson and Tim Key, I … Read more

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmNb3xJFzkc] I wonder how this chap would feel if he knew that, within the latest versions of Pokémon, they have their own church you can visit, laid out like a conventional Christian church, where people worship the Earth and Pokémon. No joke. Plus there are Ghost Pokémon who are literally the resurrected ghosts of dead … Read more

In The Lord Of King, you play some beardy dude who pulls a magic fire axe out of a stone, becoming, in the process, a king. But not just any king. Oh no… You’re the Lord of King! Gooowaaaaarggghhh! The rest of the game sees you waddling about hacking at weird mantis-creatures, skeletons, cruel wingéd … Read more

Hello, yes, it’s me, Tim Clare, inviting you to watch my strange, infrequent ritual of poking a shotgun muzzle into a barrel of writhing pilchards, then squeezing the trigger. What’s that? Some old video games don’t hold up to close aesthetic scrutiny? No shit!! What incisive, necessary reportage! You should, like, be given a job … Read more

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulbotKa5LnM](via the ever-giving Metafilter) I love video games, and, as some of you may know, I’ve written dialogue for games too, as well as helping cast and direct voice actors. So, you know, I get a little piqued when game companies release titles with crappy dialogue. What’s the point of pouring all that time and … Read more

So, I’m in the midst of a rather pleasant weekend in Liverpool, doing a bunch of gigs at the Bluecoat. On Friday evening, I got to host an evening with Vic Reeves, where we introduced a sold-out crowd to his new book, Vic Reeves’ Vast Book Of World Knowledge. As you can probably imagine, I … Read more

Pity the swollen ranks of crap comedy superheroes – every Goitreman and Ochre Bagpiper, each Super Wafter and Captain Brasso, even The Amazing Mr Narcolepsy – and their attempts to amuse by being mediocre. They are all but wisps of bumfluff against the majesty that is Mustache Boy. Mustache Boy is a vaguely Einsteinish hirsute … Read more

The Amazing Adventures Of Mr F. Lea can’t blame its title on some over-enthusiastic foreign programmer’s bad English – unlike most of the other games I’ve covered in this hall of shame, it’s just a really crap pun. Appropriate really, since the entire game is basically a succession of weak jokes, as gentle and poorly-executed … Read more

Of all the video game titles we’ve encountered so far, The First Funky Fighter is the most semantically problematic, colliding various contradictory images into a single, on the face of it ludicrous, claim of primacy. One definition of the word ‘funk’ is ‘the smell of sexual intercourse’, thus making the protagonist ‘The First Fighter Who … Read more

‘Story:In the early part of 1950’s in USA, a game called “Violence Fight” was in vogue among Mafia, reckless drivers and general businessmen.The “Violence Fight” was the game to struggle for “No.1 Quarreler” with fighters who were gathered from all parts of the USA speaking boastingly of their strength.And of course a lot of winning … Read more

Diet Go Go belongs to that rare class of video game, the ‘issue’ title. The Oddworld series – Abe’s Oddysee, Abe’s Exoddus, Munch’s Oddysee, etc – all foreground an ecological/animal welfare message, Cannon Fodder claimed to be anti-war, although how many players actually picked that up, and to what extent pleading ‘satire’ provided a convenient … Read more