A shop in Turkey

Oh dear.

Still Alive on an Intel 8080

Possibly the geekiest cover version of the geekiest (and best) song ever made for a game, here's an Intel 8080 terminal rendition of the classic.

Quote:
"Everything on the terminals and sound is controlled by an Intel 8080 Microprocessor at 2MHz. The sound chip is a MOS SID (From a Commodore 64)."

Oh and the original MP4, MP3 and SOURCE CODE are available here.

Enjoy. SoB - about to start night 3 of 4 of 7.

Zack and Wiki on Nights

1\ Play Zack and Wiki. It's like a point and click adventure/puzzle/clever/cute/awesome/logical game that will have you jumping up and down when you finally solve that head scratching conundrum. It's a Wii only game by Capcom, and it's great. So great, in fact, that IGN have a "Buy Zack and Wiki" campaign!!

2\ I'm on nights tonight. The usual 4 then 7 days off, then 3. SUCKS.

3\ I'm still waiting to get something from PCZone, hopefully Call of Duty 4. If I don't have it by next week (Wednesday), I'll buy it and if they send me a copy I'll eBay the damn thing.

Lensbaby Snap

Taken with my new Lensbaby, took me ages to get it right cos the damn thing is very fiddly...

Team Fortress 2 changes now detailed!!!

Valve let rip a few weeks ago that changes are a-coming to our beloved TF2, but not much else was said.
Today, the official PCGAMER blog details the changes, and BY GOD are we in for a surprise!

First of all, the new maps shipping next month are Badlands and Goldrush. Both of which focus around a new game type (unnamed as yet) which sounds like great fun: BLU have to "escort" a mining cart from their base to the RED base. The cart moves faster the more BLU players there are next to it, BUT stands still if there's a single RED player nearby :) Allegedly this is fantastic fun because the fight is constantly changing due to varying choke points along the track. The engineers are gonna have a great time on this one :D

More importantly though is the big class changes on the way. Valve will start experimenting with a COD4-like system using the Medic to start off with: He will get 35 new achievements, if he gets half of them he unlocks a new gun!! This can be kitted out in a "Load Out" screen that is rumoured to be enabled BEFORE the game (as opposed to in-game), and is called an "Overhealer". It lets the medic buff a patient to 200% of their health PERMANENTLY. Valve are going to either severely cripple it's Ubercharging or remove it entirely.
The medic can carry either this gun or his old ubergun, but not both.

As you can see this will add some great tactical/fun changes to the game! There's also a 2nd new medicgun that hasn't been detailed yet, but the medic can get that when he's gotten all 35 achievements (allegedly it changes the WAY his patients play!). It's all very COD4-like.

These changes should be coming in 2 months or so, and will start on a very limited Medic-only basis. Any more class changes will be implemnted slowly following feedback from the medic thing, and also following player suggestions as Valve wants to hear from the community about all this, which is what makes TF2 so awesome!!!

More exciting details here. I bet everyone would wanna play medic in a few months time! Go away you bastards, they should limit these changes to people who played medic from day one *cough* me *cough*

Team Battlefield Fortress Heroes 2

EA today announced Battlefield Heroes, a "Play 4 Free" game released this summer!

Supporting itself by Microtransactions and in-game adverts (sigh), the official blurb goes:

Battlefield Heroes™ is a brand new Play 4 Free™ game from the people that brought you the multi-million selling Battlefield 1942™ and Battlefield 2™

It's a fun cartoon-style shooter which caters to players of all skill levels – easy to pick up and play, but with deep character development

It will be released for the PC as a free download in Summer 2008

Sound familiar? Can anyone think of a game recently that's a "fun cartoon-style shooter" and that's "easy to pick up"?

No? doesn't ring a bell? How about the only screenshot released of the game. Does it look like anything you've seen or played before :p?

Of course, EA are "cashing in" on Team Fortress 2s success and dominance. Whether they'll pull it off is yet to be seen. Still though, it is free so we can't moan.

Games for Windows has a world exclusive in their March issue (Out next month). Till then, we'll play some more TF2.

Jarre comes to London!

YES! YES!

On Sunday the 30th of March 2008, Jarre will be performing Oxygene live at The Royal Albert Hall, London!!

This one off show is part of his Oxygene 30th Anniversary tour, for which Jarre has been playing the whole Oxygene album live using the original 50+ synthesisers he used 30 years ago :)

I'm really glad he's performing here, I nearly bought tickets to go and see this show in Paris, but then changed my mind last minute. Now that he's doing London I'll definitely be getting some tickets hopefully!!

Can't wait!!

Remember?

Because we had SO MUCH fun...

...yesterday, I thought I'd add a new feature to the blog.

Those of you involved in yesterday's jigjig will vouch at how awesome the whole thing was. From the long-awaited presence of a 4th player (Fuj!), to the moment he realised he was playing with three VERY ADDICTED team mates!

Yesterday we also finally managed to break the Granary Curse, in that we won it for once! We always lose that level no matter what happens, or how well we try to play. We once lost it 13-0!!
Anyhow, we played for ages and had great fun rotating through all six of the TF2 maps.

The highlight of the night(morning) was when Blue Blood demonstrated his uncanny ability at playing "The Price is Right": Fuj! had told me before that he'd bought a new monitor. Yesterday, he asked me to guess how much he paid for it. Now, I can't even remember it's specs, let alone guess how much it cost. But, Blue Blood, with his psychic powers instantly said $200. Fuj! thought about it a bit, and eventually worked out that he had indeed paid $200! The amazing feat was that Blue Blood didn't know anything about the monitor, it's specs, nothing. And more amazingly the original price was $299 but Fuj! got a discount, so Blue Blood nailed it on the head with his first prediction!
He later admitted to being this all-predicting money guru who can predict the price of everything to a margin of +/- $5.

We, of course, made use of this ability and asked him to predict all sorts of prices, ranging from "How much will my new laptop cost" to "What's the pressure in my rear left car tyre!" (nothing to do with money but it was late and we were laughing so much nothing made sense any more!); the most sensible being PyroMax's "How much will Left4Dead cost when it's out on Steam?".

So, back to the new feature thingie: As you all know TF2 is cartoon-perfect. I've taken lots of various snaps (Killcams and others) while playing, so from now on every week there will be a new snap in the side bar on the right. Clicking on it gives you the nice big version. I'll update it every Saturday (Post-jigjig).
The first snap is of a bunch of Pyros on Dustbowl Stage 2, doing what I think is a Victory Chant, before all hell breaks loose :)

As always, keep on playing people - it keeps us young, and sane.

SoB

PS: Nile, we miss you......

Has anyone noticed

That the music from the "Hayabusa Village" level in Ninja Gaiden is very very similar to some of the music from the golden oldie, Shadow Of The Beast II?

I'm finally getting to play Ninja Gaiden, specifically the Sigma variety which is the PS3 super-dooper-HD-1080p-etc-etc edition. I played it a bit in it's original Xbox flavour but never got far in it (it was too difficult. YES I know...)

Which reminds me, someone HAS TO remake that game. Or preferably, remake all 3 of them, particularly the 3rd which was shorter, but a lot easier to play. Still, Beast II remains one of my most memorable games of childhood, mainly because I didn't own an Amiga and when I first saw it, I thought that video games were looking so real it was never going to get better....

As if by magic....

Here's something cool: below is a magic sentence. Copy and paste the whole sentence anywhere you like (try leaving a comment with it for example); and, as if by magic, anything you type will go right to left!
‫‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮҉
Amazing isn't it! (or just a special Unicode Character to control bidirectional typing)

‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮҉Magic Sentence

In other news...

Sigh. Has anyone noticed that the older you get, the quicker time passes by?
When you're a kid, days lasted FOREVER, the summer holidays felt like a life time, and everything was measured in days and not weeks.

Then suddenly you're all grown up, have a job, and bills to pay. That's when things get fucked. You start measuring time by weeks, and months. You look forward to a few days holiday, a few months down the line. Your birthday starts coming quicker and quicker, and all of a sudden, without you knowing it, the year has gone and you've achieved almost nothing.

Does it ever slow down? When we're all old and incontinent, does time suddenly go really slowly just like before, and we have tons of shit to keep ourselves amused with? I hope so.

Anyway, rant aside, 2007 was a funny old year. I became 30, I got engaged, friends got married, others got pregnant, others had their first child. Some died, some got killed. Facebook became an international why-didn't-I-think-of-that-first phenomenon, and the three big names in gaming released their beasts onto the salivating public. And it's also the year that Nintendo reclaimed the gaming crown it lost so many years ago to a certain Playstation.

It's also the year that the UK medical system broke to pieces with the introduction of a nationwide disaster called MMC, leaving tons of junior doctors like myself in limbo about whether we had a job or not. It's still just as shit, and we all have no idea whether we've got a job or not come August. Sucks.

We watched quite a few movies last year, 30 to be exact. Pan's Labyrinth being the best thing to come out of Mexico since Corona Beer, my love for it is well known to almost everyone I know. Not all of you agree mind you, but still, it'll remain one of my top films of all time. I saw Oldboy last year too, an Oldfilm (Pun intended!) but an excellent piece of cinema. Violent, beautiful, and cruel in an unimaginable way, the only film to date that gives me goose bumps just thinking of it's story.

Honorable mentions go to Children of Men for it's vision of a violent near future, Stranger Than Fiction for the great Emma Thompson character, Grindhouse for the shere madness of the whole experience, Apocalypto for it's beautiful colours, gory and violent story of The Mayans, L4yer Cake for having one of the most unexpected endings in a film ever, The Number 23 for Jim Carey's great paranoid role, Transformers because they rock, Ratatouille because Pixar can't go wrong, Stardust for being a great adult fairytale, Beowulf for it's nobrainer visual delights, Shoot 'Em 'Up for making fun of every action film ever made, I Am Legend because of Will Smith's Oscar-worthy show, and finally Atonement for having a sad and very sobering ending (if you don't mind watching 2 hour English dramas then watch Atonement, but prepare to be very upset).

The biggest disappointment had to be Paprika. This Japanese anime from the creator of Akira had to be good. The trailer is just amazing. The film sucked. Confusing, weird, and nothing like it could have been.

Gaming last year was a mixed bag. There was a massive summer drought, then suddenly at the end of the year the number of AAA titles that came out was too much to handle. A torrent of gaming goodness descended upon all followers, and I for one am still struggling to catch up. I still haven't even put Super Mario Galaxy in the Wii, even though I've owned it since October. Still, the more games the better, and I'm sure I'll have loads to do to cover the coming dry months. Here's a list of what we did manage to complete:

Wii

Metroid Prime 3 - Corruption (A fitting ending to one of the most innovative and fun trilogies on any console. Well worthy of the price of a Wii alone!)
Super Paper Mario
Excite Truck
Kororinpa
Legend Of Zelda - Twilight Princess

PS2

ICO
Shadow of the Colossus (The amazingly crafted story of love and sacrifice, a sad and moving tale of one man's mission to save his love. Not just a game, an experience)
God of War
God of War 2 (Both God of War games are nothing short of excellence. Pure fun and action, great puzzles, great music, great cinematics, and set pieces worthy of Hollywood)

PS3

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Heavenly Sword (Slightly disappointing God of War clone, but the cinematics and voice acting both deserve Oscars)

360

Crackdown
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
The Darkness (From Starbreeze, the makers of Riddick, and the guys behind the legendary FT2 (for those old enough to remember!). An immersive FPS with the coolest starting level of any game last year)
Halo 3

PC

Titan Quest - Immortal Throne
Darkstar One
Tomb Raider Anniversary
BioShock (Andrew Ryan's underwater utopia "Rapture" went horribly wrong, providing one of the most immersive and satisfying FPS games of last year. To not like BioShock is to admit poor taste in anything gaming related. It is that important)
Portal (Clever? Check. Fun? Check. Original? Check. Absorbing? Check. Geeky? Check. Short? Check. Best ending of any video game ever created? Check. Do we want more? Check. The Cake is a Lie? well I won't ruin that one...)
Half-Life 2: Episode 2

NDS

Dragon Quest Heroes - Rocket Slime
Trioncube

And there you have it. If you're still reading this post I extend my warmest gratitude and thanks, I was half asleep while typing it, so reading it must have been very taxing. You are a patient being.

2008? Well let's hope it'll bring just as much joy to us all. More importantly, it is the year where we will play so much Team Fortress 2 that we'll have to legally change our middle names to Dustbowl. Loving every second of it, and hoping that one day the dream of all of us getting together on one server will come true. We nearly managed it one glorious night on Quake III, so perhaps this year we'll actually do it. Who knows.

Until then, SoB out. Keep playing people.

Happy New Year!!

Everybody!!

Hope you all partied hard last night!

We stayed in and watched the Fireworks outside the window and the amazing display in London on the telly. Problem is, I am working today at 13:00, just my luck :(

Anyhow, later on I'll summarise all the crappy things each year, like games clocked and etc. Also movies seen etc.

Hope whoever is reading this blog manages to muster up some more patience to stay with good-delicious for another year. Thank you all of you!

Ali

Oh, and finally here's a picture I took recently, which I quite like. I call it R&C On The Rocks: