Wings Over Scotland

Videogame critics are a slightly different breed of people to gamers. The latter, partly because of the investment they've made in a product, will often be prepared to overlook a number of flaws and focus on the balanced pros-versus-cons merits of a game. Critics tend to be less concerned with such earthly matters and much more perfectionist, because they're focused on the game's place in the pantheon of artistic posterity rather than its instant here-and-now worth. The ponces.

As such, they (or I should say, we) can often be a lot angrier at games that are nearly brilliant than those that are just plain mediocre. This week's case in point: VS Racing.

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There’s been some truly horrible stuff passing for videogames journalism in recent times. Whether it’s reviewers telling people to hand over £25 for a shoddy, lazy cash-in because it comes in a cardboard box or writers arguing with each other over the precise manner in which gamers should be gouged for more money, it’s a depressing picture. (And having the president of IGN tell MCV last week that the recipe for the future was “getting celebrities involved“ didn’t paint it any prettier.)

I’ve always believed that writers are there to serve their readers, not their subjects. But as I was bemoaning the last case in a cloud of gloom and shame-by-proxy last month, I had a bit of an epiphany, and it wasn’t a particularly cheering one. Because the truth of the matter is that readers are getting the videogames journalism (indeed, the journalism generally) that they deserve.

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As a Scot who’s made their life happily in England for the last 20 years, and also as someone on the liberal half of the political spectrum with friends and acquaintances of a predominantly similar persuasion, there’s a sentence I hear more frequently than any other with regard to politics: “I wish we could vote for the SNP too”.

But it’s not just the material things – the free tuition, the free prescriptions, the free care for the elderly (and the abundance of lovely natural resources) – that my much-beloved and cherished English pals envy.

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If there's one thing we all love here at WoSland, it's a good old-fashioned All-Time Top 100. And from a critic's standpoint, we've long thought the gold standard was the 1991 Your Sinclair chart for the ZX Spectrum. Not for its writing, or even (so much) the games themselves, but because the list showcased an incredible breadth of game types, such as we never thought we'd see again in mainstream commercial gaming.

That was until iOS arrived, of course. Now, for the first time in 20 years, it's once again possible to create a legitimate one-format Top 100 in which there are barely any two games in the same genre. And to prove it, that's just what we've done. But there's something even more special about this particular list.

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There are two groups of videogamers in the UK (and perhaps the world) whose Venn diagram has a surprisingly small intersection. In Group A we have "People who own a Nintendo DS", and in Group B there's "People interested in buying a Nintendo 3DS".

In fairness, this may be because Group B is so small it'd be a tiny intersection even if it was entirely contained within Group B, but that's neither here nor there. In any event, because WoSland loves Nintendo so much, we're going to try to help increase it a bit.

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We need a new word for videogames. The term was coined back in the 1970s to describe something that at the time was a completely new and revolutionary artform (it must be barely conceivable to today’s gamers that there was a time in living memory when such things as games played on a TV screen simply didn’t exist), and the image it conjured up was a straightforward one of Asteroids, Pac-Man and Space Invaders – that is, an abstract, magical, ultra-modern type of entertainment, born in technology and totally unrelated to any kind of leisure pursuit that had ever gone before it.

The very word “videogame” inherently depicted something that was exciting, glamorous and – because most games were located in arcades, places where under-18s weren’t allowed – slightly forbidden and dangerous too.

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[1] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook1

[2] House Of Commons Library: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook2

[3] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook3

[4] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook4

[5] Financial Times: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook5

[6] The Herald: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook6

[7] The Independent: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook7

[8] UK government: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook8

[9] Professor Brian Ashcroft: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook9

[10] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook10

[11] Hansard/YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook11a

[12] Hansard: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook12a

[13] Scottish Government: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook13a

[14] Financial Times: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook14a

[15] Reuters: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook15

[16] “Better Together”: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook16

[17] Scottish Government: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook17

[18] BBC Radio Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook18

[19] New Statesman: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook19

[20] Business For Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook20

[21] Money Week: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook21a

[22] Investors Chronicle: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook22a

[23] Adam Smith Institute: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook23

[24] Institute for Economic Affairs: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook24

[25] BBC1 Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook25

[26] The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook26

[27] Financial Times: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook27

[28] House Of Commons Library: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook28

[29] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook29

[30] Great Ormond Street Hospital: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook30

[31] The Courier: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook31

[32] NHS Blood & Transplant: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook32

[33] Marcus Chown: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook33

[34] The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook34

[35] The Independent: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook35

[36] BBC Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook36

[37] NHS England: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook37

[38] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook38

[39] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook39

[40] BBC Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook40

[41] The Herald: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook41

[42] Hansard/YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook42

[43] The Scotsman: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook43

[44] DWP: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook44

[45] Prospect: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook45

[46] Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook46

[47] Daily Mail: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook47

[48] The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook48

[49] Money Observer: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook49

[50] National Pensioners’ Convention: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook50

[51] Various: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook51

[52] The Sunday Times: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook52

[53] The Sunday Times: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook53

[54] “Better Together” http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook54

[55] The Telegraph: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook55

[56] The Sunday Post: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook56

[57] The Scotsman: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook57

[58] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook58

[59] Fletcher Tufts: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook59

[60] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook60

[61] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook61

[62] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook62

[63] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook63

[64] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook64

[65] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook65

[66] Portsmouth News: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook66

[67] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook67

[68] The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook68

[69] The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook69

[70] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook70

[71] The Spectator: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook71

[72] The World Bank: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook72

[73] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook73

[74] STV News: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook74

[75] The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook75

[76] The Huffington Post: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook76

[77] Scottish Parliament: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook77

[78] The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook78

[79] The Scottish Sun: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook79

[80] European Commission: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook80

[81] The Herald: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook81

[82] The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook82

[83] Iraq Coalition Casualty Count: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook83

[84] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook84

[85] The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook85

[86] The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook86

[87] Royal Society of Edinburgh: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook87

[88] Research Councils UK: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook88

[89] The Herald: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook89

[90] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook90

[91] RTE: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook91

[92] Wings Over Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook92

[93] Holyrood Magazine: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook93

[94] The Northern Echo: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook94

[95] Daily Record: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook95a

[96] BBC Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook96a

[97] Scottish Labour: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook97

[98] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook98

[99] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook99

[100] Eric Joyce MP: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook100

[101] House Of Commons Library: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook101

[102] The Scotsman: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook102

[103] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook103

[104] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook104

[105] The Scotsman: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook105

[106] The Scotsman: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook106

[107] Alyn Smith MEP: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook107

[108] Scottish Daily Express: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook108

[109] EU Treaty Of Accession: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook109

[110] Radio Prague: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook110

[111] European Commission: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook111

[112] Wings Over Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook112

[113] The Herald: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook113

[114] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook114

[115] UK government “Scotland Analysis”: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook115

[116] National Registry Office: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook116

[117] The Herald: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook117

[118] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook118

[119] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook119

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[121] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook121

[122] Wings Over Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook122

[123] The New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook123

[124] Ploughshares Fund: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook124

[125] Wings Over Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook125

[126] UK government: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook126

[127] Wings Over Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook127

[128] Eric Joyce MP: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook128

[129] European Commission: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook129

[130] Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook130

[131] YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook131

[132] United Nations: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook132

[133] The Telegraph: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook133

[134] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook134

[135] Financial Times: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook135

[136] Economic & Social Research Council: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook136

[137] BBC: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook137

[138] Scottish CND: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook138

[139] Various: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook139

[140] Write To Them: http://tinyurl.com/weebluebook140

You may have seen David Cameron on the news today, anointing himself head of the "New Moral Army", promising a "fightback" against rioters, and praising (at 0.53) "the million people on Facebook who've signed up to support the police". The group in question was created, and is run, by this lovely chap:

That doesn't seem quite the sort of "morality" the Prime Minister should be getting behind, does it? But there are more rib-ticklers where that came from.

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Quickly rounding up some of the more interesting reflections on (and in some cases, prescient predictions of) recent events. By all means send any you've spotted that I've missed and I'll add them.

Riots: the underclass lash out (Daily Telegraph)

"Meanwhile, the view is gaining ground that social democracy, with its safety nets, its costly education and health care for all, is unsustainable in the bleak times ahead. The reality is that it is the only solution."

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Let's make something clear from the off. I have absolutely no idea whether Mark Duggan deserved to be shot dead or not. If the widespread but as-yet-unconfirmed reports that he fired a gun at police are true, he's certainly got nobody but himself to blame. (EDIT: It looks very much as though they're not.)

We live in a time when the police – and especially the Metropolitan Police – will kill you for getting on a tube train or for just going about your normal everyday business somewhere in the loose vicinity of a protest march, so pointing a gun (or even something that might look a bit like one) at them would be pretty much the textbook definition of asking for it.

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Returning from the shops yesterday, I picked up an unexpected A4 envelope from the hallway by the door. Angry letters from debt collectors aren't usually A4, so I opened it. Inside was a short note from my mum saying "This isn't The Dandy as I know it", attached to something so odd that I instantly knew I had to scan it for posterity and share it with my beloved viewers.

Mums are always right about stuff.

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There are lots of great writers. Even within the professional community, let alone the general public, you’ll have a hard time getting two people to agree on who was the best ever. Was it Shakespeare? Orwell? Joyce? Sega Zone-era Jonathan Davies? The arguments echo timelessly through the ages.

I’ve got many heroes and inspirations of my own – Steven Wells, Miranda Sawyer, Barbara Ellen, Craig Kubey, Rosie Boycott, Douglas Adams and more. (Including the fictional composite entity Lloyd Mangram.)

But the greatest writer of all time is someone whose name I don’t even know, and who to earn the accolade only had to write a single word.

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