Despite the passage of almost 30 years, this is more or less exactly the way that the mainstream broadcast media still sees videogaming.
The world moves alarmingly fast nowadays, doesn't it? But right now, at this particular moment in time and until something else shiny and exciting comes along (probably around lunchtime), this is the best game ever.
With a certain amount of irony, then, (and for no very good reason that I can immediately discern), it's called Forget-Me-Not.
Aged viewers will recall this reporter's once-burning love for the Nintendo DS. But it wasn't just the appearance on the scene of the younger, slimmer, all-touching-all-the-time iThings that caused the flame to die.
This week, with the Western launch of the 3DS just a few days away, I went back to the old stager for one last hurrah, to see what I'd missed in what's now almost two years of iOS-focused gaming and also to see how it felt to use a so-called "real" handheld console again. I found out some things, and have written them down here because I'm old and I forget stuff.
Hey! It's time for another WoSblog Challenge! WOO!
We're all familiar with the concept of Where's Wally/Waldo, right? The above is a tableau in similar vein but with a bit of a Biblical theme, taken from the iThing game Where's Jesus? Your job is simple: find the inset character (bottom left) somewhere in the main picture. He usually shows up after you've found three or four others in Level 1 (of 10).
A free copy of Free-App Hero to the winner!
We all remember this, right?
(Click the pic to watch on YouTube. We can’t have it embedded here because the repellent corporate nightsoil at Sony Music Entertainment have laid a copyright block on it and there STILL isn’t a remotely decent video plugin for WordPress. This is the original TV version, incidentally.)
It’s fantastic, of course. But on this occasion it’s not the truly awesome thing.
Those crazy Far East kids really do have trouble with that one, don’t they?
Those crazy Far East kids really do have trouble with that one, don't they?
OMG! It's Tappi Bear All in 1!! 8 in 1 GameBox!! It's all of the Tappi Bear games! All of them! All together in one app! Yay!
"What's new: Quick Link to Tappi Bear All in 1 Pack 2".
WHAT?
There is literally nothing more tedious on Earth than some scared 15-year-old fanboy thicko witlessly pronouncing that the iPod, iPhone and iPad aren't "proper" videogaming devices, because "all the games are five-minute casual Flash rubbish or Angry Birds".
It gets really wearisome having to point out how ignorant and stupid they are in detail every time, so to save myself a bit of effort in the long run I've knocked up a convenient one-stop counterpoint for easy reference.
Get a load of this monstrous boss enemy. Yikes! It's a bit like if Salamander had been written by HR Giger. It'd certainly give me the heeby-jeebies at the end of a tough-level of bullet-hell shmup, or worse yet, if it came hurtling down a corridor at you in some survival-horror FPS. But do you know the most terrifying thing about it?
YOU'VE ALREADY GOT ONE OF THESE LIVING INSIDE YOU.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
