Which is why they’ll never get another penny of my money. There is no greedier games company in existence, perhaps no more nakedly greedy corporation on Earth.
The other day I finally lost patience waiting for Namco to release an update to iPhone Ms Pac-Man (which hasn’t worked since OS 3.1) or answer any support queries about it, and emailed Apple.
Widely regarded as an extremely grasping company themselves, Apple nonetheless replied within 24 hours refunding the purchase price of the game in full, which is customer relations at what ought to be the elementary bare minimum.
(Actually it’s a little better than minimum – the game doesn’t get remotely deleted in the event of a refund and is still on my iPod, so if Namco ever do bother their backsides to make it work again, I effectively get a freebie in compensation for all of the considerable inconvenience that I went to in trying to get it to run – repeatedly deleting and reinstalling, rebooting, even doing a complete six-hour system restore.)
Whatever it is that makes me love football, it’s not the commonly-cited feeling of community, because I’ve never really had that. When I was young I was pretty much the only gay (“Aberdeen fan”) in the village (“town of 20,000 people”) – the vast majority of people in central Scotland support the vile twin icons of bigotry Rangers or Celtic, or (if they have no interest in Irish history) to a much lesser extent Hearts and an even lesser extent Hibs.
Yep, it’s so good I actually played it twice, which as alert WoSblog readers will realise is a substantial accolade in itself, so it seems only proper that it takes the No.2 slot as well.
Yeah, bit behind schedule on this one. Sorry. You know how it is.
No.3 – Earth Defence Force 2017
EDF2017 pretty much killed static-console gaming for me. Apart from Super Mario Galaxy (which exists in a separate category to pretty much all other videogames), it’s the last game for any of the mainstream formats that I’ve invested any significant amount of time in, because nothing’s ever been this much fun again.
Alert WoS viewers will have seen this a while ago, but as it’s my all-time favourite piece of videogames-related art it’s worth repeating for the hundreds of new readers of WoSblog. Once you’ve grasped what it is you won’t expect that you’re going to watch all nine minutes of it. But you will.
WoSland is planning a two-person weekday trip to London soon. A simple enough undertaking, right?
But of course it isn't. Ever since the UK's railways were privatised by lovable Mrs Thatcher, it's a well-documented fact that (a) we have the most expensive rail network on Earth, and (b) trying to find out the best and cheapest way to travel between any two points is an insane labyrinthine nightmare of routes, operators, countless different ticket types and "magic stations" – places in the middle of your journey where for no obvious reason you can mysteriously slash the price of your ticket by pretending to make your journey in multiple stages, even though you never actually get off the train or even change seats.
The content industry has a long and shameful history of spurious figures when it comes to the subject of intellectual-property piracy. This much we already knew. But the most recent set of “statistics” on the economic cost of piracy – which have, of course, been seized on and repeated unquestioningly by the press – may have set some sort of record.
There’s been something of a Biblical flood of the-end-of-civilisation movies in recent years. From 2007’s 28 Weeks Later(zombie plague) and I Am Legend (cancer cure gone wrong) to Charlie Brooker’s harrowing alleged comedy Dead Set(another zombie plague), the BBC’s remake of Survivors(lethal virus pandemic) and the same broadcaster’s re-remake of The Day Of The Triffids (er, homicidal walking plants), 2009 mega-budget effects-fest 2012(the classic “solar flares cause planet to boil from the inside”), and right up to this year’s The Road (unnamed catastrophic event), the cultural world is suddenly alive with the mass culling of humanity. Hurrah!
The one avenue for the obliteration of mankind that hasn’t been explored for a while is the classic nuclear holocaust, even though – or possibly because – an increasingly aggressive and powerful Russia has been rattling its sabre on the world stage for the first time in two decades. However, with the imminent The Book Of Eli making reference to a war that leaves the planet a ravaged wasteland, it looks like the atomic menace is back, Back, BACK! Which got WoSland thinking – what's the bleakest nuclear holocaust movie ever?
As the writer of the Definitive series of games histories for Retro Gamer, the bane of my life is websites repeating stuff they found somewhere else and didn’t bother to check. Because if the original “fact” isn’t actually true, the weight of repetition quickly causes it to become accepted as the truth anyway, and you end up with a load of cobblers becoming the official historical record, at least until I have to come along and fix it, usually by playing the game(s) all the way to the bloody end myself.
(I suppose I shouldn’t complain, as if it didn’t happen so much Retro Gamer’s first feature on R-Type wouldn’t have been SO full of glaring errors that I couldn’t stop myself writing them an angry letter about it, and thereby managing to secure the Definitive gig in the first place, which has been quite a nice little earner.)
And printing rubbish about games can still be dangerous even if you think you’re really obviously joking, as this picture I recently found lurking on my hard drive proves:
I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that a person's view on Love And Monsters is the single most telling indicator of their personality – specifically, the personality aspect of whether they're a soulless cretin or not.
L&M is by most measures the oddest episode of Doctor Who since the show's reinvention in 2005. Written by series producer Russell T Davies, it's an episode in which he appears to deliberately burden himself with as many handicaps as possible.
Alf Baird on The Wheels Of Industry: “The colonial-UK circus act re-opens with a new ringmaster: Scotland run by clowns at Westminster and its Holyrood department; colonized…” Jul 22, 11:13
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “Clowns spread happiness and laughter to all postcodes. Perhaps hope as well.” Jul 22, 09:44
Captain Caveman on The Wheels Of Industry: “@Hatey I entirely agree with you. However, I’m not sure what this has to do with anything I said; our…” Jul 22, 09:40
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: ““longing for her to rise to the top” Havers, MH. Gingers are over-represented in Scotland and generally under-represented everywhere. I…” Jul 22, 09:04
Oneliner on The Wheels Of Industry: “It didn’t take Barnum long to send in the clowns.” Jul 22, 08:49
Minceheid on The Wheels Of Industry: “Hatey McHateface says: 22 July, 2026 at 8:09 am If nothing else, Mark, how can you NOT celebrate the return…” Jul 22, 08:22
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “Nice try, CC. But if the immigrants have their way (for bloody obviously, it’s them who are behind the historical…” Jul 22, 08:16
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “If nothing else, Mark, how can you NOT celebrate the return of the Ginger Growler? Back to the Housing role…” Jul 22, 08:09
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “Handy place, the House of Lords. If some wrecking cants were to abolish it, somebody else would have to reconstitute…” Jul 22, 08:03
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “Aye, Alf, one person is enough! Like I’ve said before, if you’ve worked out your theoretical framework, then you now…” Jul 22, 07:54
Oneliner on The Wheels Of Industry: “Meanwhile Pinocchio Sarwar has been elevated to the House of Lords where he will be in charge of dental hygiene…” Jul 22, 07:48
Captain Caveman on The Wheels Of Industry: ““Blaming colonialism and white oppression that have nothing whatsoever to do with the present generations – even the older ones…” Jul 22, 07:30
Young Lochinvar on The Wheels Of Industry: “CD It seems depressingly so.. At Westminster they revelled in 3rd place to get airtime and arguably influence matters down…” Jul 22, 00:24
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Wheels Of Industry: “TRANS ACTIVISTS LAUNCH ‘HOW-TO’ INTIMIDATION GUIDE A group promoting violence against gender-critical campaigners has produced a guide to intimidation. Bash…” Jul 21, 23:38
Lorncal on The Wheels Of Industry: “Too many Scots, even those who profess themselves to be independence supporters, worry about other peoples to the detriment of…” Jul 21, 21:09
Colin Dawson on The Wheels Of Industry: ““Were they just waiting for all the momentum and impetus of Brexit, COVID, May, Truss and Starmer to die down…” Jul 21, 20:49
Alf Baird on The Wheels Of Industry: ““You can’t really imagine a spongebrain like Sturgeon, Swinney or Useless penning something of that calibre, can you?” Certainly no…” Jul 21, 20:46
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Wheels Of Industry: “PDF of Herman Dooyeweerd’s book: ‘ROOTS OF WESTERN CULTURE’ https://vcho.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Roots-of-Western-Culture-B-Vol-15.pdf” Jul 21, 20:38
Southernbystander on The Wheels Of Industry: “But you said they are accountable only to parliament. This is not true. If they break rules seriously enough then…” Jul 21, 20:15
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Wheels Of Industry: “« STOIC philosophy (influenced by semitic thought) had introduced into Greek thought the idea of the natural freedom and equality…” Jul 21, 19:57
Mark Beggan on The Wheels Of Industry: “And it never will. The Hope King? I thought Andy Burnham was the Oasis drummer.” Jul 21, 19:36
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “Ach, Mark, you’re sore cos the hope hasn’t reached your postcode yet. Give it a day or two.” Jul 21, 18:10
TURABDIN on The Wheels Of Industry: “in the UK parliament is sovereign not the people. there is no concept of popular sovereignty within the Anglo-British (unwritten)…” Jul 21, 18:04
Mark Beggan on The Wheels Of Industry: “They can always be found around children. It’s clear now that Trans is a shield for abusing children. Fully supported…” Jul 21, 17:32
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Wheels Of Industry: “GIRLGUIDING STAFF STILL FEAR VOICING GENDER-CRITICAL VIEWS Girlguiding staff are still afraid to air gender critical views due to the…” Jul 21, 16:24
Mark Beggan on The Wheels Of Industry: ““A communist slop of low caliber, low IQ, feckless, unprincipled clowns.” The new Labour administration. Being a government take 2.…” Jul 21, 16:08
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “Is it plausible if asked by the police, I had a whole in my purse and the I lost the…” Jul 21, 15:51
