Alert WoS viewers, who may find much of the text of this review oddly familiar (but do read on, for all is not quite as it seems), will already be aware of my range of views on the history of SNK’s Metal Slug series. From a hugely refreshing beginning, the franchise rapidly degenerated into a cynical cash-milking business punting out lazy and increasingly inferior titles with ever-growing rapidity and desperation.
The nadir actually arrived fairly early, with the abysmal Metal Slug 3, and there have been a few flickers of hope – like the inventive Neo Geo Pocket spinoffs (now excitingly playable via emulation on PSP, finally solving the problem of the NGP’s murky un-backlit screen and awkward controls) and the aforelinked GBA title, which came up with many of the ideas that have been more fully fleshed out in this latest release.
But mostly the announcement of a new addition to the Metal Slug family has been occasion only for some sad reflections on the latest half-arsed indignities to be inflicted on a once-proud name in the name of a quick profit. Metal Slug XX is a step back in the right direction.
It’s good to know that Sony still has one market-leading piece of highly efficient and productive hardware on its books. The ailing megacorporation seems to expend most of its effort these days launching acres of cretinous lying drivel into the ever-compliant media, blaming anyone but itself for the catalogue of ineptitude that has beset the company over the last few years.
The space of that single hardware generation has seen Sony’s games division crash from being the overwhelming market leader by a factor of 6:1 over the nearest opposition (the PS2 has sold around 140 million units worldwide compared to the original Xbox’s pitiful 25 million and just 21 million for the Gamecube) to a dismal last place in every field of operation it competes in.
The company’s products populate the Blue Square Football Conference of the videogaming leagues – the PS3 is still making basically no inroads into the Xbox 360’s lead and gazing far off into the distance at the dust trail of the Wii in the mainstream market, and the PSP has been humiliated by the DS and now the iPhone and iPod in the handheld field. But who’s responsible for the latter catastrophe? You’ll never guess in a million years.
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.)
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.
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.
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:
John McNab on The Queer Parliament: “The reference in the opening excerpt from ‘Trainspotting’ to no more guys or girls, just wankers, was first aired in…” May 20, 19:51
Geri on The Queer Parliament: “The death cult brings censorship, sweeping changes to the law, population control & snoopers charter. Colonisers love division. It takes…” May 20, 19:37
Northcode on The Queer Parliament: “Here’s a plan… Scotland and the indigenous Scots can’t change a single thing about their government, their country, or their…” May 20, 19:27
Captain Caveman on The Queer Parliament: ““However, let’s not crow too soon, because far right is just as bad as far left, so we need the…” May 20, 19:20
Northcode on The Land Of No Laws: ““Well that’s interesting Northcode, because above Geri stated that this country was in fact a democracy.” Yes, Geri did state…” May 20, 19:17
Mark Beggan on The Queer Parliament: “Aye Sven. I need to know more about this 77 Brigade. What’s their mandate, who funds them, who is the…” May 20, 19:14
twathater on The Queer Parliament: “As you are more than probably aware Lorna I was on WOS repeatedly urging and begging Stuart Campbell to at…” May 20, 19:06
Mark Beggan on The Queer Parliament: “No. They got into that mess all by themselves. What damage could any of the security forces do to what’s…” May 20, 18:59
Onlooker on The Queer Parliament: “But the corporations have already basically destroyed all political systems, rigging them in their own favour. They are the (world)…” May 20, 18:53
Aidan on The Land Of No Laws: ““The country you refer to is controlled by an authoritarian regime” Well that’s interesting Northcode, because above Geri stated that…” May 20, 18:39
Northcode on The Land Of No Laws: “I am not Geri’s spokesman, and I’m certain Geri is very capable of fighting her own corner without my help,…” May 20, 18:25
Karen on The Queer Parliament: “Ask the Greens why they have 2 co-leaders. I’ll tell you – one male, one female. Were they deliberately sabotaged…” May 20, 18:17
Bilbo on The Queer Parliament: “With 5 years more years of the SNP/Green coalition, Scotland will make the excesses of the Weimar German Republic look…” May 20, 18:14
Bilbo on The Queer Parliament: “That’s the Greens elected, most likely from 2nd votes of SNP voters. Their job to fill the coffers of the…” May 20, 18:07
sam on The Queer Parliament: “There is a civil service “pronoun pledge” in Holyrood. It aims to encourage civil servants to use their “personal pronouns”…” May 20, 18:05
Lorncal on The Queer Parliament: “Mark: spot on. This is exactly what is going to happen. It is precisely what it is going to take…” May 20, 17:53
James Barr Gardner on The Queer Parliament: “The fake green party is an even worse toxin !” May 20, 17:04
Captain Caveman on The Land Of No Laws: “Characteristically verbose bollocks from you, Northcode; an awful lot of words – a meandering, trademark pretentious word-salad saying pretty much…” May 20, 16:39
Mark Beggan on The Queer Parliament: “SNP second vote, Mickey Forrester scene, ‘For all the good it done me I’d be as well sticking it up…” May 20, 16:22
Mark Beggan on The Queer Parliament: “The best scene in that movie was when Begby found out in the car!” May 20, 16:14
Northcode on The Land Of No Laws: ““…who believes he’s an 800-year old Pict, with Oscar Wilde’s mobile number…” Shall we dance? “To the rest of us,…” May 20, 16:09
bobo bunny on The Queer Parliament: “With this and the football, the whole world is laughing at us. I am ashamed that these people, and indeed…” May 20, 16:07
Mark Beggan on The Queer Parliament: “Just stumbled on a good British TV drama from 1973. The Fortunes of Nigel based on the book by Walter…” May 20, 16:06
Mark Beggan on The Queer Parliament: “If these chancers can get away with the second vote. What’s stopping a far right outfit on the ‘Trans are…” May 20, 15:59
Sven on The Queer Parliament: “Oh, they’re real enough, Mark. I just doubt that they are behind everything they get the blame for.” May 20, 15:52
MaryB on The Queer Parliament: “Perhaps the Stonewall funding shortfall has encouraged more trans activists to go into politics, so that they can keep up…” May 20, 15:49
Mark Beggan on The Queer Parliament: “That’s where the real battle will be fought. All those skeletons and missing children.” May 20, 15:43
Ian McCubbin on The Queer Parliament: “Well done both votes SNP and the let’s vote green cause they are for Indy sheeples. You have given us…” May 20, 15:42
