As readers may already be aware, my main hobby to distract myself from my day job in the profoundly depressing world of politics is to delve into retro videogaming via my Retropie. It’s an endlessly rewarding fount of discovery and entertainment for many reasons, but sometimes the two spheres collide in extremely unexpected ways.
So let’s talk about GORF.
Midway’s 1981 arcade hit was a pioneering and innovative game. It was the first game to be comprised of multiple highly distinct sub-games, boldly including direct lifts of other people’s coin-ops in the form of Space Invaders and Galaxian. And while it wasn’t the first arcade game to feature synthesised speech – it was beaten to that punch by the likes of Berzerk and Wizard Of Wor the previous year – it was famous for the extensive and iconic vocabulary with which it taunted and goaded the player.
It got numerous conversions of variable quality to various home systems, whether as contemporary licences or later homebrew ports, and that’s where we come in.
Earlier today I happened to pop into to a ZX Spectrum forum I used to frequent to look for a bit of info about an obscure old game, and my eye was caught by a post there.
It regarded an article called “20 Indie Games That You Could Beat in the Time It Would Take You to Watch That Hbomberguy Video”, which is about an almost four-hour-long YouTube video that gamer types are currently talking about on social media, relating to plagiarism by someone or other, but which I’m not going to bother watching or linking to because (a) it’s by a monstrous arsehole, (b) it sounds really really boring and (c) it’s almost four hours long.
Like the forum poster I was disappointed that the headline didn’t mean you could beat ALL of those 20 games in less than the video’s 3h 51m 09s running time, but merely that you could beat any ONE of them, which didn’t seem much of a fun fact.
But it did seem like a bit of a challenge, so to liven up my afternoon while I listened to some lawyers also droning on tediously for hours I thought I’d try to find out how many old Speccy games you could complete, one after the other, in the same timespan.
The Spectrum community is arguably more on top of the machine’s history than any other in the world of gaming, so it’s always quite noteworthy when something and/or someone escapes its notice entirely. And so it is with Lukasz Kur.
The screenshot above is of a game called a_e Adventure, or sometimes a_e in King Chrum’s Gold Mines. (According to Kur the character’s name represents “a portion of a forum member’s user name which inadvertantly looked like an emoticon of sorts – a little face with asymetrical eyes.”)
In the modern world, presentation and packaging is absolutely central to how we experience (and sell) everything. When videogame arcades tried to break that rule, it almost led them to disaster.
If you went to a shop to buy the latest blockbuster videogame, handed over your £50 and were given in return a blank unboxed disc with the name scrawled on it in marker pen, you’d be really unhappy about it – even though the disc would contain the exact same game code and play exactly the way it does when it comes in a pretty case.
It’d be like ordering a cup of tea in a cafe and have them bring you a cup of cold water, a teabag and a kettle – you’ve technically got everything that you need, but it’s not the experience you were hoping for.
And yet, for many years – and to some extent even today – that’s exactly the way we treated arcade games.
Ashby Computers & Graphics Ltd, better known under their trading name of Ultimate Play The Game, were the most reclusive and secretive videogame developers of the 8-bit era. Almost never doing interviews and giving very little away when they did, they preferred to let their stream of smash-hit games do most of the talking for them. The anti-Bitmap Brothers, if you will.
The games themselves were just as enigmatic, never really explaining your goal or even how to play. You'd be told the control keys, given a bit of cryptically florid plot waffle and left to get on with it.
But even now, 37 years after the last new Ultimate release, remarkably little is known about how they managed to arrive full-fledged on the scene, already making games that most other releases of the time paled and quailed beside.
And as I'd given myself the week off writing about politics and there wasn't a poker game on, I decided to spend last night having a bit of a dig.
Galaxy Wars, released by Universal in 1979, is one of the first wave of "proper" arcade videogames (defined here as coded on ROM chips rather than being semi-mechanical or solid-state like Pong).
Running on a hacked Space Invaders board (as most of the first wave did), it actually bears a lot of similarities to Taito's 1978 blockbuster. It's got UFOs running across the top of the screen, above a field of asteroids which move one way across the screen, then drop down a level when they reach the edge and start moving back across in the opposite direction.
The screen was a monochrome reflector – sometimes supplemented by sheets of coloured cellophane to mimic a colour display – and all the sound effects are ripped straight from Invaders.
It was a pretty dull game, and other than an inexplicable Japan-only SNES port in 1995 (which seems to have been the only ever licenced home version on any format) it made very little impact on posterity.
Until this week, when it suddenly threatened to become mildly interesting.
"Those who have been angry about all this – don’t investigate the people, investigate the system." (Robert Florence, writing on John Walker's blog last week.)
Well, that was exciting. The entire English-speaking world of videogames journalism just about convulsed itself into a coma yesterday because someone did that rarest of things in the English-speaking world of videogames journalism – spoke openly, frankly and truthfully about something. If you've been having trouble keeping up with the dizzying pace of developments, allow us to lead you gently through the most concise and accurate timeline we can manage.
Below is the originally-published version of an article entitled "A Table Of Doritos", which appeared on Eurogamer this week, before being censored by the site following a complaint from Lauren Wainwright, who was mentioned in the piece. Lauren Wainwright is a journalist whose entry on Journalisted includes Tomb Raider publisher Square-Enix in the roster of her "current" employers.
WoSland republishes the article here, without the permission or knowledge of either Eurogamer or the article's author Robert Florence, in the interests of news reporting. It is unedited save for the fact that we've highlighted in bold the passage that Eurogamer removed. If it's libellous, as Lauren Wainwright claims, we invite her to sue us.
As regular readers will know, we've always been keen admirers of Bruce Everiss's almost-unparallelled videogames-industry knowledge and expertise. So we've been thrilled to recently see him storming back to the cutting-edge as chief of marketing for David Darling's new company Kwalee, which has hit on the genius idea of making it big in the ultra-competitive App Store market by employing a vast team of staff to come up with two-player-only knockoffs of ancient board games.
The well-documented problem with the App Store, of course, is visibility. To have a chance of getting your game noticed you need it to get lots of great reviews, and when your games are extremely mediocre and competing against hundreds and hundreds of existing clones of the same thing which DO offer single-player play as well as online, the chances of that happening are slim.
Unless you cut out the middleman and write the reviews yourself, of course.
As the sun made its first appearance of the summer at the weekend, Wings over Sealand wasn’t slow off the mark. On the “B” of the “BANG!”, we leapt onto a train for a scenic two-hour journey to the seaside, specifically the lovely south-coast town of Weymouth. It’s a remarkable place, changing character every time you turn a corner.
The front is a traditional resort promenade, with beaches and ice-cream stands and arcades. Just behind it is a picturesque working harbour town, tatty fishing boats mingling with some extremely fancy millionaires’ yachts. (Don’t miss the tasty and gigantic battered faggots at Bennett’s On The Waterfront fish and chip shop, by the way, the closest thing you’ll find to haggis in an English chippy and heavenly with a splash of onion vinegar.) Adjacent to both is a scruffy but bustling town centre, almost entirely free of the empty shops littering every other urban conurbation in Britain.
And if you embark on about five minutes’ leisurely stroll from the western end of the prom or the busy, noisy harbour and marina, you’ll find the town’s only sizeable area of public green space, in the form of the beautiful and peaceful oasis that is The Nothe.
For the thousands of readers who slightly startlingly visited yesterday's piece on Bath's retail economy (you never know which are going to be the popular stories in this business), here's the December 2009 WoS feature on Newport referenced in it, which I've unlocked from the WoS subscriber section. (I tried to just copy it over into this blog, but it was a hideous technical nightmare.)
If I can find the time one day next week, I'm going to try to go back to Newport and see how it's getting along two years on. Stand by for upbeat feelgood action!
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: ““Young women” can well speak for themselves, but I particularly deplore your anti-Jewish pitch. I would draw people’s attention to…” Jan 10, 17:45
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Aye, Confused, the towel heids just like being oppressed. Their women can’t get enough of being beaten to death if…” Jan 10, 17:18
James Cheyne on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “I don’t think Scots, germans or Americans are welcome to invade Englands Britain, only the old crusading Countries are made…” Jan 10, 16:15
James Cheyne on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Willie, Thought provoking post, He did indeed fly the flag of Scotland from his limousine when in the Country of…” Jan 10, 15:48
James on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “I gave up on your post after a few lines…. Did Confused upset your Anglo sensibilities?” Jan 10, 15:42
Sven on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “willie @ 14.55. Gosh, even though I can’t quite believe a word of that imaginitive scenario, you didn’t half bring…” Jan 10, 15:37
willie on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “when Trump came for his trip to Scotland and his motorcade went to Turnberry the Beast limousine bore not the…” Jan 10, 14:55
Chas on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Isn’t it remarkable the breadth of knowledge that the regular nutters on here possess when it comes to world affairs.…” Jan 10, 14:54
Confused on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Anyone who doesn’t think the iran situation has the CIA/Mossad all over it … I have a high yield investment…” Jan 10, 13:39
factchecker on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “NC quotes a definition of ‘Argument ad baculum”; namely that “This fallacy is often used to intimidate or coerce agreement…” Jan 10, 13:36
Confused on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “rumour has it, trump saw 2001 : A Space Odyssey the other day, thought it was an intelligence briefing from…” Jan 10, 13:34
James Cheyne on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Aye, a few more might help Scotland shake on the dumbing down effect of minds controlled. I For one are…” Jan 10, 13:29
Insider on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Blimey ! Alf Baird, “James” Cheyne, Willie and Northcode have all come out to play together ! The four Nutters…” Jan 10, 13:05
James Cheyne on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Just acknowledging that Scotland does not hold and never did make a treaty with the Great Britain parliament in 1707…” Jan 10, 11:47
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “What an odd post, sarah. It’s like CM’s defection to Your Party in October last year has completely passed you…” Jan 10, 11:37
James Cheyne on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “How can the Great Britain parliament even challenge a 1707 Scottish parliament that no longer exist and that never made…” Jan 10, 11:27
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “A Setterday sermon, Northy! Fit are ye angling at noo? Ye’ll be claiming the Picts were the Lost Tribe next!” Jan 10, 11:15
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “My Great Brutish Empire and my British Labour? Like many Scots of a certain age, I worry about creeping cognitive…” Jan 10, 11:10
James Cheyne on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Alf Baird, I agree with you regards Colonialism, However I do come to that conclusion from a slightly different angle…” Jan 10, 11:08
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Should be a slam dunk. 319 years of documented real world history rendered, what? Imaginary? Overnight! An absolute bummer for…” Jan 10, 11:03
Vivian O’Blivion on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Perhaps this is why Jenny Gilruth falsified her Register of Interests to remove her connections to the US State Department,…” Jan 10, 10:59
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Sorry, Willie, you were on a roll until you wrote “all that renewable energy”. Edit that out and re-submit your…” Jan 10, 10:37
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Or in other words, Cesaire was just another of the whiny, pseudo intellectual, pretentious eternally gum bumping tribal Marxists which…” Jan 10, 10:33
Willie on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Just heard a rumour that the USA has surrounded Scotland with military assets.That certainly seems to be the case as…” Jan 10, 10:28
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Argumentum ad baculum will, of course, be from the vocabulary of the purest Scots. Ah’m oot the day for some…” Jan 10, 10:22
Alf Baird on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: ““Salvo/Liberation talking Scotlands case to the UN stating that the act of union doesn’t exist” Not so. The Treaty and…” Jan 10, 10:20
Aidan on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “@Northcode – being in the sun here in Cairo has nearly put me in a good enough mood to read…” Jan 10, 09:23
Northcode on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “By the way… the “Argumentum ad baculum” fallacy was pretty much the only rhetorical device used by the unionist (colonialist…” Jan 10, 08:05
Northcode on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Sic is ma langsome boredom, which remains unspent bein confrontit as it is wi aw the *bauchness an *dullskitishnes flotterin…” Jan 10, 07:19
