Does ANYONE understand them? Depressingly it seems not.
If you're joining us late, many years ago there existed a thing oft bemoaned by fans and pundits alike, called the "professional foul". This was a cynical deliberate foul, typically committed by a lumbering centre-half when he'd been skinned by a forward who was then heading clean through on the goalkeeper, but still a long way from goal. The centre-half would blatantly haul him down, making no pretence at a legal attempt to win the ball, and give away a harmless free kick perhaps 30 or 40 yards out.
The forward would thus be denied a chance to go one-on-one with the keeper and very likely score. The defender, meanwhile, would suffer only a yellow card at most – because his foul was in itself usually innocuous (being a simple trip or shove), leaving the referee no grounds on which to issue a red. It was clearly unfair, and something had to be done.
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.
(To enjoy this feature TO THE EXTREME!, install the excellent Spotify and click the song titles to hear the songs. Failing that, I’ll just have to try to paint you a picture of some sounds, but made with words instead of paint.)
In the heady atmosphere of 1985-1986, I never thought I’d live to see the day when The Jesus And Mary Chain – musical revolutionaries, performers of shambolic 20-minute sets of hellish white noise and inebriated chaos, banned from Student Unions across the country because of their concerts’ tendency to end in (sort-of) riots, scruffy council-estate urchins from the industrial wastelands of West Central Scotland – would be having their music celebrated and given away free with copies of The Times.
I guess if you’re right, and if you wait patiently enough, the world sometimes comes round to your way of thinking eventually.
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.)
Whatever it is that makes me love football, it’s not the commonly-cited feeling of community, because I’ve never really had that. When I was young I was pretty much the only gay (“Aberdeen fan”) in the village (“town of 20,000 people”) – the vast majority of people in central Scotland support the vile twin icons of bigotry Rangers or Celtic, or (if they have no interest in Irish history) to a much lesser extent Hearts and an even lesser extent Hibs.
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.
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “Informative exploration of MacDiarmid’s use of the term ‘antisyzygy’. (I don’t necessarily endorse Malgrati’s entire pitch.) ‘ANTISYZYGY’: AN ESCAPE ROUTE…” Sep 18, 15:51
Spartan 117 on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “There’s something stunningly ironic (some would even say offensive, but I’m not easily that way) in a non-Scot lecturing *me*…” Sep 18, 15:47
Alf Baird on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “…and this is why the colonizer (and his group acting collectively btl here) ‘hates theory’ (Memmi) – because it unveils…” Sep 18, 15:07
Alf Baird on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: ““being in denial, stubborn pride maybe, regarding Scotland’s current status is a psychological aberration which the thinkers you quote would…” Sep 18, 15:04
Mark Beggan on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “But all you get is the C word nicely feathered in a word salad. Maybe you could ask him to…” Sep 18, 14:51
TURABDIN on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “@ ALF BAIRD Those who attack you make your case. Scotland did not start out as a unionist colony but…” Sep 18, 14:13
Hatey McHateface on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “Naw, Mark. Every time Alf reads one of my posts he starts choking and somebody has to perform the Heimlich…” Sep 18, 13:37
Spartan 117 on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “Ah Alf, so it’s somebody else’s fault ye huv tae yaise thon Coloniser’s tung, nae yur ain? An whit “Scots”…” Sep 18, 13:34
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “Book review: ‘SUPERHERO COMICS AND SCOTTISH IDENTITY: The Comics Art Of Frank Quitely’ « The authors are academics, interrogating Scottish…” Sep 18, 13:20
Aidan on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “@Alf – repetitive, excessive, and largely meaningless writing focused relentlessly on the same subject, often to the point of becoming…” Sep 18, 13:16
Aidan on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: ““There are several others regularly contributing BTL who post nothing but hate, single-minded psuedoacademic wibble or just plain unintelligible drunken…” Sep 18, 13:07
Hatey McHateface on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “@ Alf Baird says: 18 September, 2026 at 12:34 pm “The main point here is the need for a colonized…” Sep 18, 13:02
Alf Baird on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “The main point here is the need for a colonized people to understand the linguistic and cultural impacts of colonialism,…” Sep 18, 12:34
lothianlad on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “They are mnoe starting to really panic. Their attempt at distancing and evasion wont work. They will be held to…” Sep 18, 12:27
Hatey McHateface on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “@ Spartan 117 says: 18 September, 2026 at 10:34 am I think Alf finds himself in a bind. Although he…” Sep 18, 12:07
Alf Baird on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: ““Is this tae dae wi’ thon Colonialism yur aie haverin’ aboot?” Colonialism is ‘obscured by assimilation’ (Memmi), and the colonized…” Sep 18, 12:06
Hatey McHateface on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: ““a culturally-intertwined political identity (Pettigrew), which creates ‘a manufactured being’ (Memmi)” As always, Alf, you give us much to think…” Sep 18, 11:54
Spartan 117 on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “Ah huv tae sae Alf, how come ye’ve nivver gien ony o’ yer lectchurs or speeches thit ‘uv been watchin’…” Sep 18, 10:34
Spartan 117 on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “There are several others regularly contributing BTL who post nothing but hate, single-minded psuedoacademic wibble or just plain unintelligible drunken…” Sep 18, 10:17
Hatey McHateface on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “An insightful, forensic dissection of my post and the article I link to from Dave. Whilst I may not agree…” Sep 18, 10:12
Alf Baird on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: ““when it comes to Scottish Indy, ideological purity is all” There you go again, Hatey, blaming the colonized native for…” Sep 18, 10:04
DaveL on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: ““Words of wisdom”; you have none. You have hate and death supporting obnoxious rants and that’s all. Who’d be Hatey?” Sep 18, 09:30
Hatey McHateface on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “An interesting article about the people who are going to have many BTL readers unable to afford to keep themselves…” Sep 18, 08:48
TimePilot on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “Exactly that. They got a 50% reduction in the fine because its a public body/tax payers money and the impact…” Sep 18, 08:35
Hatey McHateface on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “Guardian Opinion piece gung ho for Indy: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/18/westminster-celtic-alliance-scotland-wales-ireland-uk If Jenkins has even heard of Fanon, Memmi, etc, he sees no…” Sep 18, 08:15
Hatey McHateface on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “Sure, twathater, state ownership would guarantee the ports were run competently, transparently, and with the best interests of Scotland at…” Sep 18, 07:56
twathater on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “However, Forth Ports said its focus had shifted to “delivering alternative activity at the port” after considering “a number of…” Sep 18, 03:11
twathater on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “When you go on to the ICO’s website about the investigation into Police Scotland they state that ” Where we…” Sep 18, 02:59
Mark Beggan on A Thousand Islands In The Sea: “Vasily Grossman was reporting on the invasion of the Motherland in 1942 and found himself on the run from the…” Sep 17, 22:41
