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.
It’s taken me four weeks to write this, because I barely knew where to start.
Channel 4 showed the singular and vastly wonderful The Banshees Of Inisherin at the weekend, and as brilliant as it is in its own right, it also came loaded with all sorts of resonances and finally prodded me into action.
The equally singular and wonderful Jonathan Nash, who will be known to readers of this isolated and quiet island parish under a variety of names, died last month, of death. It was sudden yet expected, and in those respects very much the opposite of the man himself.
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.”)
This page lists the various contract tariffs for the imminent iPhone 4S on O2. If you add them up, you get some pretty strange results.
(For the purposes of these calculations, we've worked out the total cost for the term of a 12-month contract, including a £6 "Bolt-On" for 500MB of data, and based on purchasing the 64GB model.)
Not least because I essentially don’t give a shit about the environment. (The result depicted in the image below is from Scottish Vote Compass, and my non-Scotch chums might find it interesting to take the test too.)
I do believe human activities are causing global warming, and that we’re rendering the planet incapable of sustaining human life at a terrifying rate – via greenhouse gases, pollution and overpopulation – to the point where mankind could in my view have well under 100 years left of anything recognisable as our current lifestyle. It’s just that I think that’s a good thing.
Cynicus on The Tactics Of Suicide: “You can get 1000/1 against Tories, Libdems and others” Feb 27, 01:20
Cynicus on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Latest Gorton and Denton May election betting? Greens: 1/12 Reform: 10/1 Labour. 45/1” Feb 27, 01:05
Young Lochinvar on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Why is BBC news continuing the old canard (while reporting on Willie Clinton @ chez Epstein) that Ghislaine Maxwell is…” Feb 27, 00:55
Cynicus on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Agreed. Provided TACO Trump lives up to his acronym.” Feb 27, 00:54
Young Lochinvar on The Tactics Of Suicide: “RAF sites used by Epstein.. Isn’t Gordon Broon (newly thawed out of cold storage) complaining a little too loudly given…” Feb 27, 00:41
Young Lochinvar on The Tactics Of Suicide: “The above public information message has been brought to you courtesy of the Friends of Is Rye Ale and the…” Feb 27, 00:29
Young Lochinvar on The Tactics Of Suicide: “HMcH You need to remember when talking about “who is subsidising who” that for over 50 years Messr McCrone could…” Feb 27, 00:20
Mark Beggan on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Geri is my alter ego. You can thank the Scottish government for my early release.” Feb 26, 23:26
Andrew on The Tactics Of Suicide: “I couldnt ever bring myself to vote for a unionist party. I’ve too much self respect. Plus every vote for…” Feb 26, 22:57
Jimboagain on The Tactics Of Suicide: “You’ve missed the sectarian element in the Gorton vote. Longsight has long since been a muslim area and what used…” Feb 26, 22:44
Hatey McHateface on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Never mind that. What were the odds of both you and Geri re-appearing within hours of each other after absences…” Feb 26, 22:40
Hatey McHateface on The Tactics Of Suicide: “You missed one, Alf, rule from Brussels. Will that be direct or indirect? What was it last time around? I…” Feb 26, 22:33
Mark Beggan on The Tactics Of Suicide: “If you were given a choice to bet on the future outcome of the following people. Who would you put…” Feb 26, 21:58
Alf Baird on The Tactics Of Suicide: ““You seem to be suggesting that as a result of decolonisation, support for Indy will wither away.” According to postcolonial…” Feb 26, 21:42
Mark Beggan on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Man of experience and wisdom. Uncle Alf knows best.” Feb 26, 21:33
Mark Beggan on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Fascinating stuff. Sharing the voting conundrum you find yourself in. You should consider voting for the Legalise Cannabis Party. At…” Feb 26, 21:26
Hatey McHateface on The Tactics Of Suicide: “How can you call it English gold when it’s Scotland which is subsidising England to the tune of £150 billion…” Feb 26, 21:12
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Hands up everybody who, when they read x writing about “England’s largest beaver enclosure”, thought he meant an enclosure to…” Feb 26, 21:06
Hatey McHateface on The Tactics Of Suicide: ““That’s even if elections take place at all. They’re becoming desperate & reverting back to type” Too late, Geri, they’ve…” Feb 26, 20:58
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “AX Sounds a bit like you have beaver fever 🙂” Feb 26, 20:45
Ross on The Tactics Of Suicide: “But your idea is to make snp voters believe instead of potentially wasting their vote, they should actively vote unionist.…” Feb 26, 20:34
Ross on The Tactics Of Suicide: “The other option is to vote Unionist, any unionist party, on the list to ensure your snp list vote doesn’t…” Feb 26, 20:20
Colin Alexander on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Holyrood is an English colonial-crumbs devolution parliament for money-grubbing lying deviant scumbags to rule over us. MSPs are oath takers…” Feb 26, 19:47
Geri on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Scotland will vote SNP because SNP have socialist policies. All that mitigation that’d be up shit creek without a paddle…” Feb 26, 19:17
sarah on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Vote for an Alliance to Liberate Scotland candidate on the list. Why vote Green – they are as incompetent and…” Feb 26, 18:42
Hatey McHateface on The Tactics Of Suicide: “The “pro-woke half” are still colonised then, Alf? Fair enough. So the “anti-woke half” must be decolonised, and they’re the…” Feb 26, 18:13
Ross on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Readers …I’ve hatched a plan that is best of both worlds ?”Hate the SNP? Good. Vote for them on the…” Feb 26, 18:06
Alf Baird on The Tactics Of Suicide: “““SNP’s voters wouldn’t tolerate Reform support”” Perhaps the Rev is thinking about the pro-woke ‘half’ of the indy movement who…” Feb 26, 17:19
