Writing about games.
I’m not a Creep. I belong here. # If you’ve just joined us, welcome to my series: Wristwatch Roulette , where I furnish my forearm with two fancy finds a fortnight, from fan-favourite Ali Express, market of choice for my 2023 series Shenzhen Safari , and 2024 series Shenzhen Sojourn . Your Skin Makes Me Cry # Synoke: Face Pusher # There are four ways to press my face. And many ways to push my…
Watches. Watches never change us. # If you’ve just joined us, welcome to my series: Wristwatch Roulette , where I furnish my forearm with two fancy finds a fortnight, from fan-favourite Ali Express, market of choice for my 2023 series Shenzhen Safari , and 2024 series Shenzhen Sojourn . Ghoulish Behaviour # Remember when games were good? Ahahaha. No. Things keep getting better. The possibilities…
What’s this; Now/Then? # If you’ve just joined us, welcome to my series: Wristwatch Roulette , where I furnish my forearm with two fancy finds a fortnight, from fan-favourite Ali Express, market of choice for my 2023 series Shenzhen Safari , and 2024 series Shenzhen Sojourn . Hello you//I love you # The duality inherent in manly, womanly, and beastly endeavours is not lost on Synoke. Perhaps this…
What's this; Now/Then? # If you've just joined us, welcome to my series: Wristwatch Roulette , where I furnish my forearm with two fancy finds a fortnight, from fan-favourite Ali Express, market of choice for my 2023 series Shenzhen Safari , and 2024 series Shenzhen Sojourn . I'd buy that for a dollar! # But, is it even possible to top the regal highlight of Wristwatch Roulette Ⅰ ? I should just…
Wristwatch Roulette # As I gazed upon a bustling tub of burgeoning envelopes, my eyes settled on the invitation to a new game. Welcome to Wristwatch Roulette, where I’ll be furnishing my forearm with two fancy finds a fortnight, from fan-favourite Ali Express, market of choice for my 2023 series Shenzhen Safari, and 2024 series Shenzhen Sojourn. R-Shock: Proving red and green should never be seen…
I found a TV on the street. Face down. Cord cut. Bending knees, I squatted down and embraced it in my arms. I took it home. Washed it. Carefully removed its shell, avoiding the lethal high voltage shock. Inspected it for damage before trusting it with mains power. None visible. I reglanded on a new power cord, and plugged it in. Soft image became sharp. Booming magnetic energy. Life. No way to…
Identical Twins? BOGOF!? # Just over a year ago, I was dating a gorgeous little keyring polyp. A teeny pink and blue teratoma, now with a bulging back-end thanks to the trio of non-rechargeable LR44 button cells questionable integrity. Yet emblazoned in my fan's memories as the inaugural Shenzhen artifact, immortalised in Shenzhen Safari Ⅰ . One Ugly Faux-Nugget # So why do I harken back to…
The Future is Now # In the Virtual Reality game Beat Saber, imaginary light blades emanate from the handles of your baton-like physical controllers. The notes that float directly towards you are represented by alternating coloured cubes. Along one face of each cube, an arrow points inwards, and only by slicing through each face correctly do you accumulate points and maintain the song meter. Too…
Lights, burning, holy water, turning, in sighs out. Breathe in, sighs out. # Have you ever tried spraying supplemental magnesium into your skin, only for it to turn to fire on contact. A fire totally unlike Deep Heat. As your subdermal gremlins desperately inhale through turgid slabs of fat, bisected with strung tendons,clinging to sedentary meat, and layers pale, grey skin. Crying out for…
Colour is more important than you could ever imagine # Red is the colour of hatred, anger, power, aggression, adrenaline, worry, jealousy, murder, blood; faux-love, hearts, strawberries, stress, lust; and Mario. In theory, red is not my colour. My skin is olive undertone. Tall, dark with brooding thoughts, ever cogitating. Autumnal, exuberant and fiercely loyal. I have no raw red. Not mainlining…
Are you Toxic, Phalli? # Mushrooms…A wonder of nature; neither animal, nor plant? Or a unified alien life-form, angelic and demonic? With one mis-identification leading to internal organ failure. Permanent cancellation. Id est: Death. Mercifully, real-life doesn’t always tend to such terminal extremities, all the time. (Contrary to a modicum of exposure to any online media.) It is the pollution of…
Sir, your desire is translucent # What the hell happened to us? Do you have any idea how beautiful nineties electronics were? In an era a decade prior to the demise of the vastly superior CRT TV , companies were experimenting with materials, design, and aesthetics. A peekaboo trend of translucent hardware peaked at the same time as British lad mags . The Clear Craze inspired Nintendo’s Game Boy…
Zero Tolerance (Mega Drive, 1994) # ◑ Chilling strings ◓ Not chilled ◑ Highly-strung ◓ Ready to snap A nauseous thrum circles the melody, predating it. Stalking these, the bowels of hell stir and bristle. Alarm bells ring; too late. Dum-dee-dee-dee-dee-dum-dum # ☀ Regurgitating a horrific atmosphere, the dark, slick, demo-scene quality lights and parallax scrolling shafts of light blind are…
Bouncy Castle Ocean: The Game (Twine, 2023) # “A rambunctiously silly 5–10 minutes of fun!” —an experienced Text Adventurer. Play Bouncy Castle Ocean over at itch.io. or ☟ play it full-screen right here. # Scroll down to the bottom-right of the game’s frame. Click the expand button you find there (It looks like four arrows). Press ‘Escape’ key to exit full-screen mode.
Frankly, Data Frog # Well? Do you really want to buy a chuntering, spluttering, late ’90s SNES Pentium II era emulation experience, in stick form, that plugs directly into your TV and comes with two wireless controllers that feel nice but are about as surgically precise as cutting a Mars bar with brittle plastic cutlery while wearing winter gloves, scarves and coats—of many colours—, and a wooly…
Peek at Peak, ah… # “On this day 22 years ago, Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance console, and Nintendo’s web design was so great back then.” ― @Web Design Museum Tweet from 3:55pm Jun 11, 2023. This is it. The peak of web-design is in this image: You can even click here to visit the June 2001 Nintendo homepage, served by Internet Archive (archive.org) via their wonderful Wayback Machine…
Games. Cheaper by the Half-Dozen # Forty pounds, Forty dollars; Forty years ago, Forty pounds, Forty dollars; Thirty years ago, Forty pounds, Forty dollars; Twenty years ago, Forty pounds, Forty dollars; Ten years ago, Forty pounds. Forty dollars; Now. Now. Now. Now. Hold your horses there, pilgrim. Disarm and dismiss your “well, actually”, your “in my experience”, your pathethetic, snivelling,…
The Best Game Ever, and Jesus # “The best camera is the one you have with you!” ― Jay Maisel, b. 1931 / Chase Jarvis b. 1971 So they say; and since 2008’s 2MP iPhone 3G, I have traded quality for convenience in this fashion; shedding my hip-holstered 6MP Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01, in favour of an inferior—but ever-present—pocketable fruit. No, that’s not entirely true. I flirted with the idea prior…
Strewn among the hasty image below (a late response to a friend’s request) is the bulk of my current “every day carry”, or EDC; an idiotic term that requires further explanation to define meaning. It’s the stuff I normally take with me when I leave home. The next photograph was taken using my trusty old Canon Powershot G10 (circa 2005) at night on full-auto, under a cheap LED bulb with on-camera…
Hey…(hey)…you…(you)…get outta my mind! # I lost my Burnout virginity at a friend of a friend of a friend’s house. The reason I beg two degrees of separation is this particular troupe were big into drinking lukewarm super stubbies , mugging their arms around each other’s shoulders, and chanting Oasis lyrics into the salted fish air of my coastal hometown. Teenage kicks, right through the night,…
A CRT Story # Call me Ray, Cathode Ray [Tube TV ] # Note: Most images in this post link to much higher resolution versions. Just click/tap an image to see the higher resolution version. Try it with Dracula’s true-form in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night ( PS1 ) Let us begin # Recent articles ( 1 , 2 ) covering the boons of cathode-ray tube ( CRT ) televisions in gaming have given me pause. Pause…
The Chinese company Skmei make fantastic and inexpensive watches. Some are in the style of a well-known Japanese digital watch-maker, some are bizarrely unique designs. All it took was the removal of four screws and a gentle levering out of each mechanism to give my rose gold Skmei the perfect face: Before # After # During # On Wrist #
Hell’s Teeth! # It starts off cold in Frostpunk . –30°C/–22°F very quickly feels like a Newcastle night-oot with t-shirts being the maximum level of PPE . It takes us to the end of a steampunk-era world experiencing an unexpected(?) ice age. Where’s global warming gone? Replaced by climate change it seems. And the mercury tumbles still. “Our band of survivors is led by me as Captain, and it’s…
My self-built 2013 gaming rig (3770K @ 4.0 GHz , 16 Gb DDR3, GeForce 670) has struggled these past few years. DOOM (2016) especially, has been painful to play at potato settings. Having spent the last couple of years hemming and hawing over upgrading, a close friend got in touch for advice on maxing out (era appropriate) his 2008 Mac Pro (not for gaming). These can take a GeForce 680, 780, even a…
I had a Commodore 64 from around 5 years old. Before that we had a C16 , but I hardly remember it. I believe the C16 was a cast-off from my father’s work. Around the same time as the C64 we had a 286 PC , which I can’t remember much about, other than a CGA Breakout clone. The C64 was miles ahead of the Spectrum. Burned in my memory is the silky smooth synth sounds, and gorgeous, colourful sprites.…
Historic Schooling # The year was 1998 and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (SOTN) was my first Castlevania and Metroid-like experience. It came to me unprompted. A school-friend ponied it up after his kid-sister scratched up another PlayStation game I had loaned him. (I cannot for the life of me remember now the game I loaned him.) At school, there were three-inch by three-inch square posts…
This is a tale about how I received a 2007 Mac mini (1,1) from my closest and dearest friend, how I’ve fixed it up, and what I intend to use it for. Background # In Scottish schools, from Primary 1 (around age 5), the students learn to read and write. Every bedtime in our home consists of reading a few new books, thanks to regular use of the local public library. As my eldest of two daughters…
Or, my week with an Apple Watch. # In 2013/4, as modern smart watches began hitting the market, my thoughts were, “Oh, that’s a neat idea. I’ll wait for some year-on-year advances to the functionality and single-charge longevity and get one.” The Pebble, Apple Watch, Samsung and so many little known manufacturers launched their take on the smart watch. Fast forward to the last week in September…
You are launched into a dark street, with violent hoodlums looming into view and circling menacingly. Brawling through eight stages of unspeaking, violent thugs, your goal is to eliminate the clichéd gang lord, Mr X. Streets of Rage is a rhythmic experience. The fusion of control, movement and music. Feeling, seeing, hearing, thinking, reacting, planning ahead. Immersing yourself into a state of…
Final Fantasy VIII (1999). Inside Timber Maniacs office. # Final Fantasy IX (2000). Qu’s Marsh. # Final Fantasy VII (1997). Near Cosmo Canyon. #
This pioneering split-screen racer was a masterpiece, and one of the first games that blew me away with the depth of immersion and gameplay mechanics. During a race, there was no cheery chiptune soundtrack. The music came from the gradients of pitch generated by the tuned racecar engine. Playing alone, the C64 SID chip would output a beautiful symphony from this one sound source. Playing with a…
A peculiar, entrancing and pure experience, unencumbered by backstory or objectives, Dream Simulator allows you to explore within the expansive terrain of vivid dreams. Accommpanied by a frenetic electronic soundtrack that is as haunting as the fast-paced footsteps that are disjointedly attached to your character, the game is often eery and unnerving. Each night, you are dropped into the…
I play Battlefield 4 on the PC a few times each month with fellow adult males and females from an online circle of friends, called a clan. We all have a great time voice-chatting with each other while we play together on the same map in squads to achieve objectives and hold strategic points to win each round. The chat is often filled with campfire stories and banter, interspersed with tactical…
A close-up photo of a tape measure. The hooked tab resembles Dr. Robotnik from the Sonic the Hedgehog games. #
This piece is intended as a homage to games in general, a discussion of my experiences with gaming platforms, and a proclamation of my love for gaming, speaking as a rapacious appreciator of this wonderful interactive art form. This is not a controversial PC Vs. Consoles opinion piece. That would be an utter waste of time and energy. The main points I shall put forward are: The best single-player…
The Elcor (an elephant-like monotone talking species from the videogame series Mass Effect ) prefix all verbal communications with an implied emotional tone, or a pseudo-emotive statement. This, @cactopops (on app.net ) pointed out , is an incredibly effective way of conveying tone in text-based communication (without simplifying to emoji I might add). Prefixing tweets and app.net posts with an…
My favourite games were made in the nineties. For a long time I thought this was because I did a lot of growing up and had a lot more free time, and less commitments then. In 1990, I turned five. In 2000, I turned fifteen. I went from C64 to Master System to Megadrive to Playstation with a big dose of DOS throughout, and later Windows gaming too. Gaming turned a corner in the second half of the…
Mutt is “a small but very powerful text-based mail client for Unix operating systems”. The problem I find with many clever computer programs, is that they are written by people who are exceptionally intelligent, however they demand a large amount of specific knowledge to install and use. Considering myself competent in using computers, but not knowing much about the command-line, nor *nix of any…
While visiting the monthly auctions at Taylors Auction Rooms, Montrose , a friend happened upon a cardboard box. Not just any cardboard box, though. It was an old Gateway computer box. (Remember the black and white ‘cow spot’ branding, based on the Holstein breed of cow.) Within the box was not a lovely, old, decrepit Gateway Pentium-233 or suchlike. Instead, a glorious Amiga A1200, basking in…
Booted up the Playstation to have a quick game of Battlefield 3 . However, Sony demands I download a ~180Mb update (version 4.00). In countryside broadband terms, that’s an hour gone. What is the frequency of Sony PS3 updates? Because it seems every time I turn it on (infrequently since I bought an XBOX 360 when HALO: Reach was released ☟), I have to download another system update. Whereas, the…
Through the vernacular of a once loyal MS Windows user, Siegler takes our hand and walks us through what is so great about the newest iteration of Mac OS X, 10.7 Lion . But the following is my relationship with Apple, inspired by Siegler’s account: The year was 2005. I bought my first iPod, a 2nd generation iPod Nano, with a John Lewis voucher work rewarded my team with as a thank you . I still…