Mortal KomBat

Now you were either a MK boy or a SF boy. You couldn't possibly like both. That's just wrong.
Those of you in the SoB club (ie MK fans) would remember the seminal (and greatest) MK3, and especially it's rumoured fatalities, babalities, animalities, and friendships.

Codes and tips on how to do fatalities and all that would circulate in magazines, rumours of long and elaborate rules to get one thing done were usual. Of course, it was great fun once you found a code that actually worked. I personally used to know Kung Lao's shredding fatality: FORWARD, FORWARD, BACK, DOWN, HIGH PUNCH.

Anyhow, some one on the ever entertaining youtube has posted a video with ALL possible MK3 fatalities, babalities, animalities, and friendships. Enjoy this 8 minute medley of gory, shocking, and now crap animations. Still a great game though :)

India, you might like this - what with all your old SNES magazines you used to bring with loads of codes in them.

R.I.P. Anas

This really is sad news... had a phone call from a friend earlier to say hi, and he was telling me about the death of a friend of mine that was younger than me by a year.
His name was Anas, I'd known him from primary school, we went to the same one, same high school, and same medical school. His dad was a university teacher.

He was kidnapped from outside Al-Kadhimiya hospital and a ransom was given to his dad. His dad went to deliver the money and the kidnappers killed them both. Their bodies were found shot dead on 22/12/06.

It really makes me sad and angry. Poor Anas, was such a nice and calm guy, never hurt anyone or anything. What have they gained from killing a father and son, both pillars of the community and academics? A doctor and a teacher now dead in a torn FUCKED UP land. FUCK THEM ALL.

R.I.P. Anas and father. I sincerely hope your family get the patience they so desperately need.

FUCK THEM ALL.

Merry Christmas!

All you lucky SOBS out there (note the big O in that, SoB is me, SOB is all you mofo's!). Am working for the 3rd christmas in a row, but I had the senses to bring the macbook with me, cos they've recently installed a wireless network in our mess.

So, am sat here watching Grease on the TV while typing this. It's 14:45 and I finish at 22:00... poor me :( here you go - a snap of me sat here to cheer you all up (or hopefully depress you so am not the only one).

On How Christmas Came Early

For the 3rd year in a row I am working Christmas Day!
2 years ago I was doing nights, last year I was doing a day shift, and this year I'm doing a long day shift (0900-2200)! Sigh.

So, I'm going to Kelly's parents' house on Boxing Day (like last year), but me and Kelly decided to open our presents together today, and what a surprise I was in for!
I got her a book (cookery! heh), a DVD (Jim Henson's Story Teller), a Casio Exilim Z70 camera, and a LG Chocolate mobile phone (and I'm really jealous of that last one, it's awesome!).
I got her parents a Nintendo DS with Sudoku and Dr Kawashima's Brain Training. Why? cos they're both Sudoko geeks and her dad plays video games, so I thought it's a good idea. For my mum, I sent money (typical Arabic shit eh?)

Kelly, as usual, got me tons of stuff (like my last birthday, remember?):

1\ A Nescafé Dolce Gusto Coffee Maker: YES! YES! I can now finally do like they do in those coffee shops, make a coffee and go "tap tap" while cleaning the filter on the sink! heh. Seriously though, the thing makes excellent coffee, and it really gives professional results.

2\ Two tickets to see the awesome Blue Man Group in The New London Theatre: Sorry Zzz, I know you really wanted to see them when you were here, but I'll let you know how good the show is :p

3\ A Gorilla-pod: Now this is one thing that I saw ages ago and nearly bought but thought it was just a gimmick. How wrong! It's a mini-tripod that has bendable legs, you use it to fix your camera on to any surface you like. You can also use it to stabilise the camera to reduce that shake that's impossible to control when taking night shots. I have to say, the thing is brilliant and is very well built. One really good thing about it is that it comes with a little detachable base that you screw on to your camera and it stays there, that way you can just slot your camera in and out of the pod with ease. Highly recommended.

4\ A blue jumper from Debenhams

5\ Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze: The follow-up book to last year's "Does Anything Eat Wasps", a book full of trivial questions and their scientific (and not-so-scientific) answers. The cool thing about the book is that it's a compilation of reader questions and reader answers submitted to "The Last Word" column of New Scientist. Makes for really cool trivial reading, recommended to those people that want to have an answer to most things, and those that want to have something funny/cool to talk about in parties (or pubs).

6\ But best of all, something that I really was amazed about, I recently found out that Kelly studied art at school. She learnt how to draw things and she's shown me stuff she's drawn (from her little sister to tigers!). This year, she took 3 days to draw me DONKEY KONG! awesome stuff! the picture is going up in my computer room (read: den, geek room!) and is a really nice personal touch.

So there you have it, Xmas came early for me and it's been a cracker. Hope it's the same for everyone out there, particularly those in Iraq. Be safe.

Finally, as I type this I can smell the roast turkey, mmmm Christmas lunch here I come!

Videogames Live

I should have blogged about this earlier :)

One Saturday morning (25th of November) I was in London when I saw a news article about a once only concert in The Hammersmith Apollo, called Videogames Live. The show was about celeberating the music that's come out of our favourite addiction.
It was very popular in America, and that day was their only UK show before going back to the states.

I called a geek friend who I knew couldn't say no (Wisam) and he booked the tickets for us both for the show at 19:00. I took mum to some big shopping centre she wanted to go to (Blue Water), and then met Wissam in Hammersmith.

The place was full of stereotypical gamers, ie sweaty, over weight-ish men with glasses and T-shirts that say things like "I Zelda You" and the like. Anyhow, we the concert started and we were in for a great treat! They played live orchestral music from loads of games, like Warcraft, Halo, Beyond Good and Evil, and tons more. The show started with a 10 minute Medley of all the classic games, starting from Pong and ending with Tetris!
There were also some nice on-stage effects, like a real-life Solid Snake + guard and loads of lights/lasers etc. A big screen was also showing clips of the games which the music was coming from.

As a nice surprise, some guests came on, like Michael Ancel (Rayman, Beyond Good and Evil), and that awesome Japanese dude who can play 10 Final Fantasy tracks on piano blind folded!
They also had on-stage live competitions like Frogger and Space Invaders. One lucky mofo even won an Acer "ferrari" laptop!
At the end we were all given a free promo CD which had studio recordings of the most famous Ubisoft games tracks.

It was good fun. The tour is now back in America but will be touring other places next year. If you do have the chance to watch a great show with great music, don't miss it!

Wii have games

Wii are gameless

Quick post: for those of you wondering what's happening with the Wii and why I haven't ranted on and on about it, well that's cos I HAVE NO GAMES FOR THE DAMN THING!

Sure it's got Wii Sports in the package, but that's more like a tech demo than anything, and really needs 2 players to be fun. I only have one controller.
So, why no games? well my original amazon order had a Wii + Rayman, Red Steel, Zelda, Super Monkey Ball (wooohooo!), and Wii Play (which includes a free remote). Due to Wii Play being extremely short of supply, the package was only sent out by courier yesterday.

I was meant to receive it today. I had the day off (bliss, been playing EVE most of it, and GoW), but the stupid courier somehow couldn't ring the bell, cos their website now says (Delivery failed, recepient not home). RECIPIENT NOT BLOODY HOME?!!! I haven't seen the sun since yesterday!

So, the depot is open tomorrow (saturday) between 8am to 12.30pm. Am gonna ring them to see if I can pick the damn thing up, otherwise I'll have to wait till Monday as they will attempt redelivery!

As you can see, if I don't get the package tomorrow I'm gonna be one VERY UNHAPPY bunny, ravingly rabid perhaps :p

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

This is a very quick post: YES I did get the Wii on launch day (Friday 08/12/06), but what I didn't get with it is lots of new games (damn Amazon! The games order is separate and still hasn't shipped!). It does, however, come with Wii Sports, which is great to sort of ease you in to this new controller method.

Anyhoot, a more detailed post later once I've got my hands on Red Steel, Zelda, and Super Monkey Ball... oh and the component video cable :)

In the mean time, here's the Wii next to it's big brother

PS: got some new wireless headphones too that I HAVE TO tell you all about - they are absolutely awesome.

Later

Remember That Police Academy Guy...

... the one who made amazing noises with his mouth? black dude?
Michael Winslow was his name, and we all wanted to grow up and be just like him, making funny noises with our mouths and pretending to play video games :)

Anyhow, he does stand up now, and here's a great clip of him in action... gotta love that rave party sketch!

Tomorrow

we get Wii!

Funnily, I'm getting 2 (by mistake). I pre-ordered from Argos and Amazon, and both are gonna deliver! Am gonna refuse the Argos one and get my money back - am not THAT greedy.

Only worrying thing is that I think Amazon are gonna deliver the games and component cable the next day, so might just end up playing Wii Sports all day tomorrow.... that's if I can pull myself away from EVE :D

Updates and impressions later. SoB out

Animator vs. Animation II

Click here to see one of the coolest flash animations you have ever seen in a while.
Remember Icon's Story? well, this one takes the concept way beyond that.

Watch what happens when our Animator decides to call his stick man "The Chosen One".

Pure genius

Amazon Wii preorders sell out in under 10 minutes!

OK, first the happy news: I have theoretically secured a Wii (+games) for launch day (08/12/06), yippeeeee!

So how did I do that? Well, Amazon were one of the last (if not the last) retailer to announce their preorder plans. But, eventually they sent customers an email saying that pre-orders will open on Tuesday 21/11/06 (ie today) at 9am GMT, and they will only take as many orders as they have stock, hence theoretically guaranteeing everyone who manages to pre-order a console on launch day.

This morning at 8:45 I started a "page camp". I loaded amazon in 2 browsers (IE and FireFox), signed in to amazon and loaded the Wii page. I then started pressing F5 every few seconds! Imagine the number of people doing that, it's amazing the servers didn't crash!
Eventually, at about 9:30, the page updated to say "click here to pre-order this item", I quickly clicked and it said "there's been an error - we can't supply this item". FUCK. I thought I had lost out on it so quickly! I didn't lose faith though, so I kept refreshing the orignal page and re-ordering, until finally the item was SAFE in my basket. I quickly checked out, and received a confirmation email!
I then went on to order some games and an extra controller, and combined all the orders together in to one big ball of Nintendo happiness!

And how long did it take for the Wii to sell out? JUST UNDER 10 MINUTES! At nearly 9:40am, Amazon stopped their preorders and annouced that the item was out of stock, madness!

So, come 08/12/06, I should hopefully have a Wii delivered to me. Is it going to be worth it? you bet your ass! Who's going to win this round of console madness? SoB says the Wii60 (people with a Wii and a 360 together, collectively CHEAPER than a PS3). Only time will tell.

A Whole Week With Wii

There's too many W's in that title :p

Anyway, some appropriately named mad guy called yoshimadness has decided to play Wii live online for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He will be broadcasting live and blogging at the same time on his site.

His rules are:
1. I will only be sleeping 4hrs. a day (usually 2:00am-6:00am)
2. I will be updating my blog every 4 hrs. (This should take me about 15 mins. to do)
3. I'll only be leaving my room to (a) use the bathroom (if its a duece than it might take 15min). (b) if my dad needs something (parents and relatives might be over for Thanksgiving).

So, go here if you wanna feel sorry for this poor man, or feel jealous that he's playing Zelda already :)

Faithless - Bombs

Faithless are releasing a new album end of this month, titled "To All New Arrivals".
They have also released a single from the album, called "Bombs". The song is about the war in Iraq, and features some of the best lyrics from Maxi Jazz I've ever heard. The track is excellent and has some female vocals I don't recognise... but part of Jazz's lyrics I wanted to mention here:

Key in the door, the moment I've been longing for,
before my bag hit the floor,
my adorable children rush up and screaming for a kiss
and a story, they're a gift to this world, my only claim to glory,
I surely never knew sweeter days,
blows my mind like 'munition, I'm amazed

After the chorus, Jazz continues the story of the father and his children:

One bomb, the whole block gone,
Can't find my children and dust covers the sun,
Everywhere is noise, panic, and confusion,
but to some another fun day in Babylon
I'm gonna bury my wife and dig up my gun,
my life is done, so now I've gotta kill someone

Really provoking lyrics, especially when heard in the context of the whole song and it's chorus.
Of course, Jazz is no stranger to all this, in the 1998 song "Bring My Family Back", Jazz tells the story of a torn apart family from 3 perspectives, The 3 year old child, The 43 year old father, and the number 53 house where they all lived in. The house's perspective is the most haunting:

I'm on Lonely Street, number fifty three.
Boarded up property,
I'll probably get pulled down.
Litter all around inside there's
no sound and no light.
But yo it gets busy at night, People creeping.
Derelicts sneaking to fix. Speaking.
On the way my timbers creaking,
Roof leaking. And bricks coming loose,
knee high in refuse.
But even though I'm a slum,
I'm still of some use.
There was a time when my walls where decorated.
And under my roof children were educated.
But now paint's faded, windows are all smashed,
a crash in the economy robbed me of my family.
And no strategy, combats negative equity,
so that's it. Like violence it's drastic.
I'm freaking, and seeking to be
more than just a house for crack.
Somebody bring my family back.

So there you have it. Faithless aren't all just about dancing and jumping up and down, they are great at political lyrics, and not that bad at dance music to boot :)

The Coolest Hotel In The World

The Arte Luise Kunsthotel in Berlin offers it's guests rooms that are separately designed by different artists.

Of course, some are purely crap, with funny lines going round the room and so on. One cool one looks like a birds nest, with eggs all over the place and a giant beak sticking through the wall.

But, the coolest (and geekiest, nerdiest) of them all is a cell-shaded room called comic. The picture below is actually of the real room itself, and not CGI

Best thing is, the rates aren't too bad... so if anyone finds themself going to Berlin for one thing or another, you can pay Nile Warp a visit and stay in this hotel at the same time :)

Hello people. I got the XFX today, installed it, then ran a few tests. This is a copy of my post in the DW forums, copy-pasted for your viewing pleasure :)

hi all,
received the XFX g8800 gtx today.
Installation was smooth, had to get a longer IDE cable though (stupid
abit mobo has the worst ide placement in the world!)

forceware drivers are 97.02 (latest)

did a few quick tests on my system - specs are

Intel Core 2 Duo e6700
XFX GeForce 8800GTX
4gig (4x1gig) Corsair DDR800 Dual Channel RAM
Creative X-FI Fatal1ty SoundBlaster
Abit AB9PRO mobo
WD Raptor 36 gig for windows, 2x76 gig in RAID-0 for games
ViewSonic VP201s LCD, native 1600x1200x60hz

Everything is at stock speeds, I don't over clock

3DMark Score 10340 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score 4704 Marks
SM 3.0 Score 4844 Marks
CPU Score 2354 Marks

This is using the free version, so res is 1280x1024.

I tried the same test before uninstalling my old card (XFX 7800GTX), scored 4205 3D Marks

Unfortunately, 3D Mark won't let me publish the results, as they have yet to certify the forceware drivers

I then tested FEAR, I set everything to maximum, including Computer and Graphics. I then set the res to 1600x1200

Results
0% under 25 FPS
21% between 25 and 40 FPS
79% above 40 FPS

again, I tested this on 7800gtx, and it showed that 51% were under 25, and 49% between 25 and 40. A massive improvement.

Finally, I tried the Hardware OC Prey benchmark, with the following settings and results:


Resolution: 1600×1200
Demo: HWzone_co_il.demo
Shader Detail: Highest
Aspect Ratio: [4:3]
Antialiasing: 4×
Anisotropic filtering: 16×
Graphics BOOST: enabled
Score = 80.1 FPS

With graphics boost disabled (I think this is like ULTRA mode for the doom3 engine), the score was 102.3 FPS

Please note that will all the above tests, VSYNC and Tripple Buffer were forced on via the nvidia control panel.
I have a reason for that, as I can't stand tearing... and even if it lowers the FPS for the game I'm playing, as long as it's
not teared I'm happy.

Thanks for reading this boring post

If anyone wants me to test something else, please let me know.

XFX Geforce 8800GTX

Yes you read right, I've just ordered one of these mean babies!
The 8800 was released this week, and just like the Geforce7 series before it, nVIDIA have actually got enough cards to put on the market from day one...

Now, my system has got the Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gigs of ddr2-800 RAM, and this beast. All I need is DX10 and VISTA.... and perhaps one of those sexy Dell 3007 monitors :p

For a massive 27 page review of the new Geforce, click here

I might just take the day off on Friday, when my delivery is due from scan.co.uk.

Good Delicious will be updated with the early performance reports :)

FUCK play.com

Dear Customer,

Due to a European shortage of the Nintendo Wii Consoles, we regret to inform you
that Play.com will be unable to supply your pre-ordered Nintendo Wii at launch.
As an Official distributor of Nintendo products we are guaranteed more stock
before Christmas, but Nintendo have informed us, along with all other official
Nintendo retailers, that the console will not be freely available until next
year.

All pre-orders will be fulfilled on a first come, first served basis and we will
fulfil your order as soon as we can.

If you no longer wish to keep your pre-order with Play.com please login to your
account and remove the item from your Outstanding Orders.

Kind Regards

PLAY.COM

Let The Games Begin!

Winter is upon us, and next month Christmas rears it's drunken head...

So what does this mean to Mr A. Gamer? well, first of all days are much shorter and colder, giving you more of an excuse to stay at home all evening in front of the fire (read: computer or console).
Second of all, it also signals the end of the notorious "summer drought" in the games industry. Publishers, for some odd reason, have decided that we don't like to play games in the summer, and as such keep all their big releases for the winter.

Of course, this year isn't an exception. But why do I blog about it this time? well, mainly cos this winter is going to be one hell of a beltzer for gamers. Especially those with Xbox360's. Here's a few of the gems I can think of

Splinter Cell Double Agent is out already, and I've finished it. Great game, very similar to first 3 though.
Call Of Duty 3 is a CONSOLE EXCLUSIVE believe it or not! The videos and reviews look amazing, so have just ordered it for 360
Gears Of War: no comment on this one. Go to GameSpot and see for yourselves. Comes out 17/11.
Yoshi's Island 2 for Nintendo DS. Again, a classic reborn.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic on PC is out already also. Mixed reviews on this one, but I played the demo and quite liked it. Kind of like Hexen:Source if they were ever to make that.
Fear Extraction Point PC

And last, but definitely NOT LEAST, the Wii is out on 08/12 (in Europe, earlier JAP/USA) and that in itself is enough to make me wet my pants. With it comes what is said to be the best Zelda ever made (Twilight Princess), a new Super Monkey Ball (woohoo!), and Red Steel from Ubisoft.

Someone freeze-dry me till then. At least I've got my Eve Online addiction to feed (more about that later).

SoB - A very happy gamer that owns an xbox360 - out.

The Official Windows Vista Packages

Quote:
Designed to be user-friendly, the new packaging is a small, hard, plastic container that's designed to protect the software inside for life-long use. It provides a convenient and attractive place for you to permanently store both discs and documentation. The new design will provide the strength, dimensional stability and impact resistance required when packaging software today. Our plan is to extend this packaging style to other Microsoft products after the launch of Windows Vista and 2007 Office system.
(Gizmodo)