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Flame Rounds: Peach's Mushrooms

March 6, 2019, 2:00 am
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Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?)

Cunzy1 1: Last time around we corrected a bad timeline by removing Timesplitters: Future Perfect. It's ladies' choice this week, what do we have?

Richie: Right! I'm going super-niche here. On the final boss of  Super Mario World, when you are fighting Bowser in his clown face flying reverse helicopter basket thing. Every so often Peach will pop-out scream, "Help!" and throw a mushroom at you. Now admittedly this is a nice thing to do, but it fucks me right off! You have 2 feathers, or maybe you have even mixed it up and gone all maverick and have a fire-flower in reserve! I ain't gonna Judge. But does Peach care about your game plan? NAH have a mushroom, a passive aggressive fucking flung mushroom which is happy to replace your backup item. You now actively have to dodge, along with the mecha-koopas you are keeping stomped as ammo for the boss fight. And it just takes too long for her to go through that animation... Beat it peach, trying to kill Bowser here! There is tech to drop the item with select and catch both, but why are you actively doing this? Argh. So yeah I would like to Flame round "that bit in the end boss fight of Super Mario World where Peach throws mushrooms at you".


Cunzy1 1: What? Just avoid them man!
Richie: Yeah, true dat. My gripe here is we don't need it, it also provides and annoyance for the final boss. Extra animation of the "helpless princess" (it was a different time). When she throws this out you are forced to stand in a spot, away from the mushroom, for fear of it replacing your good stuff. Which is really fun gameplay. God forbid the actual Bowser boss bit after this animation forces you to go in the direction of the mushroom. I didn't ask for this Mushroom, I don't need a reminder that Peach is somehow stuffed in there with Bowser...

Cunzy1 1: Look all I'm saying is, if it's enough to provide a dangerous distraction then it's dangerous enough to warrant potential last minute Super Mushroom.
Richie: Yeah I suppose it could be a last minute band aid, but if you have got to the boss beaten star road etc, chances are you are good enough to get through this fight, it is not hard mechanics. My point is and this just feels like a case of, "the path to hell is paved with good intentions" or "no good deed goes unpunished". I resent Peach for it

Cunzy1 1: Where does those mushrooms come from anyway? Does she need some natural yogurt or Daktarin? One of the few things to love about Super Mario Bros. film is the design decision to go literal with the fungus in the mushroom kingdom.
Richie: Yeah not only that Princess and her Mushrooms, are somehow cohabiting that Clown face balloon thing smooshed against his undercarriage, along with giant bowling balls, mecha koopas etc. Not to mention what ever machinery is used to keep that "vehicle" afloat.

Cunzy1 1: To be honest, I'm not even sure that's Peach...




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WIMMD: SF30 Pro

March 7, 2019, 7:00 am
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Introducing a little micro feature on the the buttons we press and joysticks we waggle!

Recently I was rummaging around in my computer detritus box. A box which contains, SD card adaptors, proprietary USB cables for devices I have long since lost, devices which have long lost proprietary usb cables, external dvd drives, scratched DVDs with ancient Linux distros  etc etc and Controllers, I have collected quite a few, and I'd like to share a few of may Favourites.

First up is this bad boy! The expertly knocked off SNES Controller, the 8bitdo SF30:
Oh man there is so much to love about this controller. First up, just look at it! Its a fucking upgraded SNES controller. It is a thing of beauty, and honestly I had my doubts and reservations before I took the plunge and bought it. Given how good it looked, it was a bit concerning: what were the sacrifices here? Is it going to feel cheap, is it going to me heavy cuz its wireless etc. Most specifically I was concerned about those sticks, because they have been added in, is this going to ruin the controller? As with them the pad becomes the love-child of a PS2 Dualshock and the classic SNES controller...

And upon trying it, Most of these fears were put to bed. Most amazingly the button presses and the DPad actually feel like the original controller, which is just nuts and nostalgic. Apparently 8bitdo actually went out of there way to replicate this. Kudos.

Despite its size it actually does pack the full feature suite of buttons, including L1/L2 and R1/R2. This makes its fully compatible with most things. Speaking of which...

...I'm gonna stop right here I have become very consciously aware that as I am writing this it's beginning to read like those fake article advertisements. Which either means either these articles have got so much more convincing, or my ageing brain has dulled to that of a marketing graduate.

Annoyingly I want to gush about this controller, but every sentence I write about it feels more and more like the overly wordy reviews by Notanemployeee23 on Amazon that gave it 5 stars. Geez in a world of influencers, and crowd sourcing, the consumer has now been conscripted as junior advertisers, cogs in the wheels. Oh man fuck it... 

...this controller is fully compatible with PC, but amazingly also with the Nintendo Switch!!


So I tried it of a few Games:

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch): It worked perfectly fine here, the main gripe being that the joystick positioning, with Smash bros it does lend itself to the old asymmetricals. and you don't need the dpad as prevalent, but always better than a single joycon.

Resident Evil 2 (PC): Big Blockbuster, worked fine, but the game makes heavy use of all shoulder buttons which are not super accessible especially in those, Stab-the-Zombie, Runaway moments 

Katamari Re:Roll (Switch):  Spot-on! I played the original on PS2, and due to the waggling nature of spinning up the katamari

SoulCalibur VI (PC): Usable, fine, but this bad boy needs an arcade stick!

ZSnes (Emnulator): Oh man this is where it shines, until the Switch pulls its finger out its arse and makes SNES content, playing the old SNES titles with a wireless controller is something you didn't even know you wanted.

In conclusion! Its a great controller, if anything is bad it feels a little small, however that remains faithful to the SNES controller!

Love and why should I feel like "I sold out" i mean I just really like the controller, Ugh...

Richie X


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Acid Rounds: Super Mario World SNES

March 10, 2019, 4:00 am
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Acid rounds is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish.

Cunzy: Theme to this week then is there?
Richie: Yeah, I am old and I have been getting some SMW nostalgic feelz recently. It happens every so often, this game is so heavily inscribed in my DNA.  Occasionally it works it way up through social responsibility, financial woes and my crippling suicidal depression, and I get prangs to play this chirpy early 90's platformer again. To my mind I have beaten this game at LEAST 5 times, and by beaten I mean doing every level getting the alternate colour "96"

Cunzy: It is a great game and to my mind Super Mario World really mixed it up. It's the technical Super Mario game as evidenced by the Super Mario Maker SMW levels I have no idea how to beat with spin, run and toss tech.
Richie: SMW itself touches only very lightly on tech the tech you mention and is more forgiving than its predecessors on heart breaking fuckery. Mario Maker should really be treated independently, as it's own beast and just expands on some of the AWFUL fuckery things they could have put in the original game. Keep in mind also the Mario Maker only has a fraction of the items and enemies seen in the original game too!
The most challenging tech in the original game can be found in Star road, where they stretch the awfulness such as P-Balloon floating (Sic Flappy Bird) and Yoshi time berries.

Super Mario World is odd, there is tech in there that when I was younger even through magazines was never ever properly made clear to me in it:

The Bonus Block
This block appears in only three levels stands out as its green with a star on it, What does it do?
Super Mario World introduced to us brand new "!" boxes which can give direct power ups with out the need for Mushrooms first, and the yellow rotating block the brick that spins around allowing you to pass through it but then stops and becomes solid again, and can only be destroyed by spin jumping. So what could this stand out green one with a star do? I mean its rare, its so different so it must be special, right?
Nope.
Sometimes it gives you a coin, sometimes it gives you a 1-up (depending on number of coins you have). I mean, that is WEAK. 1-ups are not exactly few and far between in Super Mario World, they are super farmable in Forest of Illusions and, I mean, 1-ups can just come out of normal blocks. Why does this exist?

Chocolate Island 2
Fuck this level man, some bullshit mechanic whereby you can only progress to certain areas using coins/Yoshi Coins and... Well nowadays you can just look up the exact requirements for exiting that level, but man back in the day... When you completed that level and then you exited the level and did a wee loop around and came back to the level entrance was akin to the same sort of middle-finger at you as the dog in duck hunt snickering away.


Cheese Bridge
Equally as infuriating! This bastard level involves a nasty mechanic of flying UNDER the final goalposts*. A trick which involves a timed cape divebomb and last minute pull up, just at the right point so you dont:
a) hit the post and complete the level
b) die

*Note you can also do this by getting to the end and then just "jump-abandon" Yoshi, however if you do this, I have to judge you as a human being. As maybe I don't need you in my life

Cunzy: Where does this rank in your all time list of best Mario series games (excluding Sports/Party etc.)?
Richie: Fuck, its hard to rank these I mean this one has to be my all time favourite (I havent played Galaxy or Odyssey, so reserving judgement for when I may be able to play them at some point.)
  • Super Mario World
  • Super Mario 64
  • Super Mario Bros 2
  • Super Mario Bros 3
  • Mario Sunshine
  • Super Mario Bros + Lost Levels.
Um, there is a plethora that should also arguably be in there with New Mario Bros and the RPG and Paper, even Mario is Missing. So I have just chosen a very debatable core of Mario games that are my faves.

Cunzy: I ponyed up for those stupidly expensive and limited use NES controllers for the Switch but, Science has proven that I'm better at NES games with NES controllers. There's a plethora of ways to play SMW, is it sacrilege not to play on SNES with a SNES controller?
Richie: Hmm... I'm gonna say yes. I have played it with this, and its pretty flawless, but I cant really imagine this on a 360 controller as the D-Pad is king... Plus well those feels with teh SNES controllers!

Cunzy: That music tho?
Richie: Oh Man that music! Such a great Soundtrack relentlessly chirpy with your normal over-world song! Excellently sinister for Castles and Fortresses! Atmospherically Echoed for the underground caverns! On Man so great...
Pro Tip! the music changes and gets more percussion beats and such when you get on Yoshi... Check it next time! just jump off an on him!


Love and Yellow Yoshi Stomp farts,
Richie X
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As the air to a bird....

March 10, 2019, 1:39 pm
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As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.

Addendum, so is love to the lovable. And I FUCKING LOVE the new Devil May Cry and It's Super Sexy Style!

I'm sure is you are even half interested you already have googled/youtubed the hell out of this one, and quite rightly so! So I shan't rant on about Nero Exceed or V's fluid combat. What was a little surprise to me was the setting being London! the Game opens up on Tower bridge with Nico doing some jumps and stuff in her Mystery Machine. But later on what really hit home was V's opening section which is the streets around Burrow Borough amazingly recreated in game!


I mean I cannot wait for more Surprises like this!

Love and just fucking play it!
Richie X
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Judging Journos Nintendo Labo VR Kit. How did they do?

March 12, 2019, 2:50 am
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In what was a rather typical week in gaming for some reason journos gave a lot of air time to that rape game, crap opinions about Anthem evolved and game journos all had the same opinion about Nintendo Labo VR Kit. It continues to be disheartening to us that games journalism just isn't very good still. The broader games industry has a wealth of issues from understanding employment law to widespread amoral attitudes foster on the forums and in spite of this rather than because of it, it produces those games we love to lose ourselves in.

Having a respected and professional industry of critics around it would also help a little bit to raise the perception and cultural standing of gaming instead, with rare exception, it's a race to the bottom for coverage of the hot topics and well, why read a hungry hack's regurgitated press release when you can watch your favourite streamer play the thing for four days straight instead. Considered critical opinion is very rare and many of those voices leave to the comics or film industries because it carries with it a shred more kudos and only widespread sleeze, sexual abuse, nepotism and financial mismanagement rather than rampant.

There's also the annoying trait that modern journalists have of eschewing any kind of connoisseurship by playing armchair CEO and giving one specific kind of financial success much more weight than it should have. Given that accurate data about games sales is still quite patchy and the fact that people who beg for food/rent money on Patreon in between article commissions perhaps don't have an especially useful opinion on business matters you'd think they'd stick to, you know, developing an expert opinion on the games themselves? Don't get us wrong, we're not asking for those ridiculous 'objective reviews' that incels seem to think could ever possibly be a thing but at the same time it's still refreshing to see evidence of at least two brain cells being rubbed together to create what might, from a distance, if you squint, be considered good writing about games.

So although this week had a broad choice of hot takes abut trivial things we'll have forgotten about in three days to weigh and measure good old game journalism against it was Nintendo's announcement of a Labo VR Kit that perhaps saw the shlockiest coverage this week. So naturally we'll use that as out completely objective dipstick.


What actually happened? Nintendo announced that a 4th Labo Toy-Con kit and several expansion kits would be coming out in April this year and a price point. The Labo kits are pitched as fun and educational craft kits that come with buildable cardboard peripherals that cleverly use the switch console and the joy on controllers in a range of ways to create, for the most part, shallow but novel gaming experiences. This 4th Labo Kit is themed around Virtual Reality and aside from a few press images of children with cardboard on their faces, not much more is known about the games themselves at this point.

How was it covered? Well rather than giving this announcement a bit of space until more details were known or you know assessing it for the very different gaming experience that this Labo series is aiming for, we ended up with the recycling of a limited stock of crowd sourced opinions to make cheap (and for the most part shit) copy of this 'story'/press release.

The Opinions From The Internet Are As Follows

a] The previous Labo kits now gather dust in the corner after one maybe two plays cf. much more expensive VR peripherals, Kinect (remember Kinect?), Xbox 360 etc. etc.

b] Lols cardboard

b(b)] Lols Virtual Boy

c] The specific phrase 'Nintendo is entering the VR market'

d] Something about VR pretty much being dead already but without qualification or links to the two years of articles every games news site dedicated to VR being the next best thing since 3D televisions, cloud based gaming etc. etc.

e] Isn't all this cardboard expensive for what it is? Penned by the same guy who has written that contrarion piece about how Anthem might be alright actually because it's a £60 product which might function at a basic level properly in two years and we sort of miss that from whatever Destiny we were on.

How Did They Do?

Wired perhaps had the shortest but most adult take being that that organ is trying to actual do journalism and isn't quite so Uroboros as the gaming specialist rags are espousing this as a cheap VR kit and Labo's target market.  Eurogamer ran with this trash leaving it to a commentor to read the bottom half of the press release with the actual info in it. Venture Beat has already written it off for everyone from the six press images.  Games Industry. Biz sensibly just ran the press release and on the podcast raised concerns about kids eyesight and the lack of a proper headset(?). Kotaku, well when did Kotaku last do journalism? Gamasutra, WOW. Gamasutra still hanging in there. Good for you. Lastly, Polygon accidentally faxed a Jack of Clubs to a Chinese wholesaler bless them.



The TGAM Take

Every now and then the industry gets a brain worm and everybody stops thinking. Their eyes move around the jaw moves up and down but they go into default mode. Unfortunately, this happened around VR (again) and despite nobody really being that interested, eye watering price points and almost total lack of a killer game or two, the games press and the industry would not fucking shut up about VR. Three years later and we're struggling to pick out more than 2 VR titles we'd recommend. The announcement of this Labo VR Kit, however, must have given energy to the dormant brain worms and got all the journalists jawing on about Nintendo entering the VR market even when they quite clearly aren't.

Instead, in our humblest opinion, the Labo series, much like 1-2-Switch, Nintendo Land, Wii PlayMotion and Wii Play before that are quality products that act as a tech demo of sorts to show the potential of their hardware and, and we think this is too often overlooked, create formative and memorable experiences for younger or new gamers or gaming families. Unfortunately, perhaps gaming consumers, the wider industry and worst of all games journalists seem fixed in assessing all games against the latest face shooting games and the potential for commercial success. What we find particularly frustrating is that none of the ideas that Nintendo showcases in these titles listed above are ever really picked up and run with and we've seen on all the DS platforms, Wii, Wii U and inevitably it's happening on the Switch that game developers can't gravitate away from a very conservative spectrum of gaming possibilities. We've written about this before. Tanks! from Wii Play was our ironic game of the year for 2006, 2007 and 2008 simultaneously and barely got any column inches. Similarly, we'd have bought a thousand copies of any kind of game like Star Shuttle (our game of the year 2011) but instead the gravity of game development and general lack of creativity and keeps bringing us back to slightly different flavours of men with brown hair shooting other things with brown hair.

Interpreting this announcement as a direction change for Nintendo is especially misleading and we'd like to see more coverage along Wired's lines judging it for what it appears to be at the moment. Not every product has to be a fucking industry changer and have we not learned from failed experiments Kinect and VR that actually it might be a positive thing for consumers to be able to have a little play with tech in engaging ways without banking the whole farm on it? There were and are very few critics amongst the critics who don't just gobble up the latest line about the future of gaming entertainment and then act shocked when studios are shuttering because a gamble was taken on the allure of the new.

In short, how games journalists and news sites reacted to the Labo VR Kit announcement is just another microcosm of how games journalism is still hitting wide of the mark when it comes to opinions worth clicking on and for the time being continues to be a bit amateur hour.

Same time in ten years for a check in?



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Flame Rounds: Half Arsed Data Gathering Social Companion Apps

March 13, 2019, 3:00 am
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Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?).


Richie: Last time on Flame rounds we found a verdict was suspended, due to a creepy revelation.  Yo Cunzy, what do you got for us this time?
Cunzy1 1: Right, we had a bit of a discussion already about what the collective name for these things are. This week, I want to consider those publisher 'Social Club' type websites that are annoyingly advertised on menu screens (even after you sign up) with the incentive being that your data will be harvested, sold or just leaked logging into this side app (link your Facebook, Twitter, Google and Insta accounts for no reason!) rewards you with 'icons', 'epic loot' and probably a smattering of one of the fourteen in game currencies. It's your Resident Evil. Net, Ubisoft Club, Rockstar Social Club and the fourteen different kinds of Nintendo ones currently out there. Now, here's why I want to Flames Rounds them, it's not the principle of them, it's that with rare exception they're all a bit crap. A bit half-arsed. Often they're completely unintuitive, requiring speculative clicking around to try to find where 'challenges' or 'unlockables' are. There's almost always an extremely limited social element to them as well that rewards Tribes/Clans/Buddies/Friends but ends up being just you and that one random person who requested you and then never logged back in. So why flames rounds them rather than just ignore them all together? Because occasionally, there's some really cool stuff buried in the dung pile of these social platforms or whatever you want to call them, and I imagine a lot of people miss out on them altogether.

Richie: Maybe you are just too old to understand how websites work nowadays?
Cunzy1 1: I wish that were the case instead I think the obfuscating UI on many of these is a deliberate attempt to mask how shallow they are.


Richie: What "really cool stuff" have you missed out on, or had to fight to find?
Cunzy1 1: Well in the pre-'share' button era these HADSCA were often the only way to take screenshots and unfortunately I think this is where all my artful photos of dead people are forever stranded thanks to a throwaway email address I signed up with now lost to the mist of time. Resident Evil Revelations 2 has a loot-box-lite thing that rewards you for logging in daily (almost not worth the effort). Although Nintendo have scaled back recently limited edition soundtrack CDs and other high quality merchandise was only available through the Nintendo S.T.A.R.S (not that one) catalogue and we've picked up more than one 'free' game with platinum/gold points points on the My Nintendo account. Then there's all the shiny legendary Pokemon International Tournament giveaways we keep missing on the Pokemon Global Link. You've been looking at Steam Cards and there's a whole Square Enix Members Club. There are some cool tracked stats buried in here, for example I know that my Splatoon 2 lifetime Octoling inking covers the same area as the CERN Large Hadron collider. And these are just the ones I know of/use!

Richie: If you could improve one thing about video game microsites what would it be and why?
Cunzy1 1: Tricky. It's a toss up between better optimisation for mobile, just general UI improvements or actually invest in them to genuinely have a compelling reason to come back to them.

Richie: On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your experience in this blog post?
Cunzy1 1: 3

Richie: As part of our ongoing satisfaction program can you please enter your card details?
Cunzy1 1: Sure, do you want my Blockbuster card and expired Subway stamp card too? Can never be sure how much information to give you!

Richie: As a cog in our machine what morsel of dopamine type of "epic loot" would keep you hooked be most appealing to you?
Cunzy1 1: I'll have to answer honestly here and say probably something that I already have but with a bigger level/damage/rarity number on it

Richie: For a chance to enter our prize draw, please let us know, your pet's name, your mother's Maiden name, the town you were born and your CVV number.
Cunzy1 1: Oh cool, I've been hankering for a new forum icon since 1996*. Let's see. Robofish, Alexa, Raccoon City and L337.

Richie: To reset your password please click here
Cunzy1 1: I do need three more Advance Wars Dual Strike wallpapers**.

Richie: 100% No brainier, of course these get flame-rounded! Linking your game to any additional site/microsite platform etc. beyond the already compulsory sign-ins is just going to spread discomfort and annoyance. Games don't last forever and these sites just end up poorly maintained holding a silly domain name for some reason. They are a underhanded scummy way to grab your details cuz someone in "marketing" says its important. It is pursued in the name of "engagement" is it bollocks!  Fuck these sites.

Please also sign in to www.fuckthesemicrositeengagementplatformthings.com and express your distaste for these sites, you too can get a wallpaper for your original iphone in a resolution that is no longer pertinent, best part is that its already a picture we used for promo art, but trimmed down to portrait, and called it exclusive wallpaper!


* Secretly really glad these existed actually for the images on this post. Err thanks Resident Evil.Net actually.

** I don't. I still have a dozen from the good old S.T.A.R.S (not that kind) catalogue days and I've never used them. Because they're desktop wallpapers for Birkin's sake.
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Dead Or Alive 6 Season Pass 2

March 15, 2019, 7:06 am
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Scoop! The next set of Season Pass from Koei/Temkc/Team Ninja's Buxom Bosom Bouncing Brawler: Dead or Alive 6



Also definitely no way this was mocked up! no way, no sir, nuh-uh...



...Jokingly when dicking about with these images, I put that section on "Glasses for Everyone", but any variations on the glasses would have to be purchased extra. However it ended up being accidentally metaphorical and ringing a little too close to the truth, it does not sound implausible, especially based on the recent trends of DOA6 DLC

Just to be clear, our stance on DoA6 is that this latest batch of outrageously expensive DLC is, more pornographic and offensive than any fucking video of DOA players pausing and moving the camera to make it look like they are sexing! But ultimately not that different as someone is getting shafted/screwed!

Allowing this game to happen, when the base game is not even complete and the DLC is more costly outright is wrong, there cannot really be any excuse for this, if this is to recoup development costs then something is more fundamentally wrong.  The consumer should not be held responsible for this, nor should we be lining the pockets of the wrong people industry people here.

Love and Don't buy this fucking game,
Richie X
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Acid Rounds: Detective Pikachu (3DS)

March 17, 2019, 3:00 am
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Acid rounds is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish.


Richie: Oh a Pokémon Game! that's different does this game have new types, how do you transfer Pokémon across?
Cunzy1 1: Well, I'm a sucker for the Pokemon series and that's somehow translated into almost all of the spinoffs from pinball to a feudal era Japan isometric tactics and typing game to whatever a trozei is. Detective Pikachu is not quite the weirdest of the lot but it's certainly up there. Its a perfectly playable and extremely pretty point and click detective story that came out as a downloadable game for the Nintendo 3DS in Japan and then two years later got an expanded physical version of the game worldwide. You play as Pinocchio nosed Mary-Sue Tim who meets a talking Pikachu who likes coffee, has amnesia and is a detective. You can tell it is a detective because he has a deerstalker hat. Tim's Dad is also a detective but is currently missing. Tim and Pikachu then slowly walk about  talking to people and Pokemon and solving crimes. Each chapter has a theme. E.g. in Chapter 1 they bust a baby Pokemon Paedophile Ring behind a Pokemon Centre front, in Chapter 2 they uncover a Lickitung sex trafficking cartel out of Vermillion City etc.

Richie: Does the world need Detective Pikachu? Surely all 17,000 Phoenix Wright games fill this niche?
Cunzy1 1: Aside from the theme of solving criminal (and not-so-criminal) mysteries Detective Pikachu has nowhere near the depth of mechanics that Phoenix Wright does. It's a very basic walk around, talk to things, unlock more things to talk to and 'solve' the case. There are sections where evidence has to be considered and even the odd QTE but really the only taxing thing about it is the odd obscure link between a character's statement or other case fact and what it is supposed to be evidencing. I played this game in several short sittings over the space of a year and remembering details of the plot and previous cases over the course of different chapters was difficult (although it's not harshly punished).  

Richie: Ryan Reynolds or Danny DeVito?
Cunzy1 1: Although Detective Pikachu is a bit gruff in this game, unfortunately, he doesn't have the nature to match it, memes be damned. Ryan Reynolds is a way better fit.

Richie: How much did you beast this game? Does it have replay value, new game+ or unlockables?
Cunzy1 1: It's pretty much a good old fashioned 'one and done' which I appreciate now and then so there isn't the guilt of not having seen every three second cutscene hanging over me. The only extras are the worst amiibo implementation since Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival. If you shelled out for a the Giant Detective Pikachu amiibo, you can tap it to see all the 'chatting to Pikachu' prompts you missed. You can pick Pikachu's brain at almost any point in the game and there's a lot of programmed interactions some of which are location based but they do nothing. They're a few second long interactions of Pikachu kicking a ball or saying something about coffee. So you could keep playing the game over and over talking to Pikachu every three seconds to unlock every prompt or alternatively keep tapping a giant amiibo to unlock and view them. I hate to say it but this is actually worse than nothing.

Richie: Philosophical question, is Pikachu the hero we deserve?
Cunzy1 1: We don't know. It looks like the film will follow some of the story beats but SPOILERS FOR THE GAME the central mystery to the premise of the game isn't wrapped up. So potentially a Detective Pikachu sequel on the way.
One last thing, Detective Pikachu has an absolutely amazing menu screen. Better than it has a right to be.
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Vampire: the Masquerade: the other one: colon

March 19, 2019, 5:30 am
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Now just quickly I would like to emphasise that I ain't no geek, I don't know anything about vampires or shit like that, certainly nothing about rolling D20's for initiative, or the white wolf series, that sort of stuff is for nerds.

So Paradox have recently teased us with some tweets and images of some new project they are working on.



This has lead to an out cry of journos everywhere going, "Oh my god that is that bit from the original Vampire: The Masquerade game!" Which is in part right, they are locations from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, however Bloodlines was not the Original game, it was Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption.


People tend to forget the original Vampire: The Masquerade game overshadowed by its sequel, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines (ed: so many colons!), yet VTMR (ed: phew) really caused a stir for being an obscure PC game from 2000. VTMR was released at peak Nihilistic Antihero trenchcoat time. Post-Matrix, when everyone nerd who even slightly listened to rock music was now dressing as a (fat) variation of cyberpunk vampire matrix people likening themselves Keanu Reeves meets David Boreanez or Carrie Anne Moss meets Dark Willow. Vomits. And the game captures this brilliantly. VTMR *Spoilers!?* is set over 2 time periods, 12th century Prague and Vienna, and late-20th century London and New York City. The latter being the most broodiest, full of 90's bleak Lawnmower Man, Johnny Mnemonic, Blade, techno Rob Zombie, nine-inch-nails-y atmosphere. Skulking about the backstreets of a pseudo London/New York in permanent night and grime, hacking with dial-up modems, and using payphones.

Knee-deep in nostalgic rose tinted late 90's references, I thought to myself it would be good to revisit this game, it seems it has been well looked after, both GoG and Steam have fully endorsed a fan made patch that fixed a ton of issues and both games can be purchased there. Fervently I fired up my copy...


Oh my got WTF fucking is this! You turn the camera by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen!?!?

*Vomit*
*Vomit*

/Uninstall.

Wow, this game did not age well, I guess that is why we forget it in favour of Bloodlines!

Love and :Colon:
Richie X

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Flame rounds: The tacked-on collection quest

March 20, 2019, 5:00 am
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Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?).

Cunzy1_1: What're you flaming?
Richie: So you have completed the story of the is sandbox game. Congratulations! Now go to all these places on the map and find 100 of this thing. I hate this, so many games specifically around the advent of achievements and trophies would have this additional achievement to walk round the map finding glowing orbs or such.  They dub it in the name of exploration, but is just often descends into a nightmare of keeping track of an online item location guide. This is also usually coupled with a lack of any reward short of perhaps a 10GP blip. Tacked on and just annoying.

Cunzy1_1: But Richie, people spent a long time meticulously placing that comical skeleton next to a bin at the bottom of the well. You weren't going to find it otherwise unless you were hunting for all the Glowing-orby-pickups!
Richie: If I cared I would do what every other sane person would do and google/youtube [insert Game name]+easter eggs, and should I care enough (unlikely) I would visit in-game. However, putting in that 'quest' just so you can see a development teams in-joke, is the equivalent of liking your own posts. Ref. meme from circa 2006:


Cunzy1_1: I've got mixed positive and negative memories of collecting pigeons, graffitti tags, zygarde cells, shells, letters, alien garbage, stunt jumps, agility etc. orbs, tower emblems, Kafka signs, insect larvae, hidden packages, Yoshi coins, stars, moons, chests, jigsaw pieces, QR codes... What's the worst it's ever been for you? 
Richie: There are several examples of this, but yeah the pigeon is a good one, no indicator on the map of where they are, no counter for how many you have "got". So you are left reading that online guide for the fourth time (prompting you to print it out), going to all the screenshots of the item and the minimap that. Then catching yourself crossing off that 100th one that is no longer there, but you must have got it? you have crossed off all the other ones... Why hasn't the achievement come up? is it bugged? maybe it was the order you picked them up in, maybe if you start a new game? no! Lets just spend another 6 hours going over the entire map going over all 100 this time... tears.

Cunzy1_1: Waidagoddaminute. The TGAM archives show you're a huge LEGO game fan and they're almost nothing but collecting gold bricks, red bricks, true hero/jedi/master builder, characters, minikits and studs after completing the story. What gives?
Richie: Well and this is where my argument falls down, there are great examples of this being done well! With Lego, there is usually a puzzle connected to unlocking the mini-kits for 100% completion not just "looking hard". And the same can be said for the Batman games and the Riddler Trophies, each one of them is unlocked by using your gadgets in a specific puzzley way, but not only that your progress on these puzzles unlocks more side plot, and an eventual final scene with the Riddler. 

But how do you differentiate these two? Ultimately my argument becomes I want to get rid of all tacked-on collection quests except the good ones. Which can be said for pretty much anything, (therefore my next Flame Rounds will be "Flame Rounds: Bad things") but the pain of what I described above should not be fraught by anyone as such, should you allow this one through, I names it, Flame rounds: The tacked-on collection quest. 

Collection in games is often great, when done well, however when it feels tacked-on and offers you no challenge short of reaching for a printed out GameFAQs txt file, I object to that serving only to fill out the list of achievements, or even worse as you mentioned to frame some silly dev reference to meme or something. These collection quests doubly feel tacked on, usually because they come at end game. As you were proceeding through, you may have picked up a few items, but you cant get a certain item, cuz you cant jump that high yet, or you don't have a grapple long enough, etc etc. 
A very prime example of this is the Heart containers in Zelda OOT, many of these are unreachable without a guide your final upgraded items, but what use is this? you get maximum life, but you have probably already defeated *spoilers* Ganon , on half your hearts (more than enough) already.

Cunzy1_1: Gonna chime in here. In the first two LEGO Marvel games the reward for collecting 100% of everything was a character (Deadpool and Stan Lee?) but there's absolutely nothing left to do in the game at this point. 

Richie: In short, I wanna flame round collection quests which serve only promote a few more hours of longevity to the game, but offer little-to-no return in plot or characters, and more in the way of just aggravating joyless OCD completionistic desires.

Cunzy1_1: LET The tacked-on collection quest BE A-FLAMED ROUNDSDED! Just as long as we don't have to make a ruling on who decides what constitutes 'tacked-on'. 

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The Secret Language of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (and Mario Kart 8), Kartography and Motion Language

March 21, 2019, 4:00 am
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Mario Kart 8 was released for the WiiU in 2014 and the Deluxe version of the game came out for Nintendo Switch in 2017. The Mario Kart series of games remain highly popular and although the longevity of these titles through online racing means that these games demand high prices years (almost decades in the case of Mario Kart 7) after release, the communities that build up in these games are rarely subject to academic enquiry or basic coverage in the average games media. 

Fascinatingly, because Nintendo EAD, the developer of the game and Nintendo the publisher take online harassment and bullying seriously players of online Nintendo games and games on Nintendo platforms often have a highly limited mode of expression to communicate with other players when playing online together. This is of interest because enterprising players use the limited tools they have to contrive and develop new languages and forms of expression through cosmetics in games (costumes, 'emotes', equipment, vehicles) and from specific actions within the games engine (teabagging is perhaps the best known in game action to signal humiliation, ridicule and prowess in besting an opponent). 

With a nearly five year lifecycle, unusual for contemporary video games, a very sophisticated language has evolved within the game Mario Kart for players to express feelings, sexual preferences and to advertise business opportunities. After several months of 'digital field' ethnography (Foucault 1962) in the game world of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe some of this language has been studied and a partial lexicon is presented here to aid further study in this exciting new field of ethnographic study and linguistics. 

Character Choice
Of the limited ways in which Mario Kart 8 Deluxe players can express themselves within the game world, one of the primary methods of differentiation is through character or avatar selection. 42 preset characters are available initially, however, there are a number of costume variants and the Mii character option allows for near infinite variation and on top of that costume options with use of amiibo (statues of game characters with an NFC chip to interact with games) unlockable accessories. Character choice is not always a direct signifier, the below list charts some general observed trends have been observed:

Gold Mario- Indicates into pee stuff, genital play and object sex.

Waluigi- Indicates submissiveness or ADHD

Baby Peach- Foot fetish, soiling. Alternatively short stature.

Baby Daisy- Diarrhoea play, spitting, gagging, tucking your willy between your legs and saying 'Look at me I'm a Ladeeee' etc.

Ludwig- Cannibalism, Self-cannibalism alternatively into R&B music.

Dry Bones- Preference for more mature sexual partners(sometimes m).

Dry Bowser- Preference for more mature sexual partners(sometimes f).

Bowser- Preference for larger built sexual partner or eyeball/eyelid licking.

Inkling Boy/Inkling Girl- Interacial couplings or alternatively street theatre.

Rosalina- Stretch play/insertion/piercings or likes horoscopes

Shy Guy- Voyeur/peeping or alternatively racist/homophobic depending on the costume colour.

Tanooki Mario- Testicles. Hairy testicles.

Cat Peach- Vomit play or butt stuff.

Luigi- Depravity/dangerous/chokeplay or asexual.

Figure 1. For example a player choosing Rosalina in a Comet is 'saying' to other players "I like stretch play and have long arms and short hair"
Kart Choice
Despite there being a more obvious link between character choice and physical human form, curiously Kart choice is shorthand for physical characteristics of the players behind the avatar. Tyres  and gliders customisation don't appear to be widely used, perhaps because these can be harder to discern in-game. 

Inkstriker- Hung

Splat Buggy- Incontinent

Bone Rattler- Physically fit/muscular

Teddy Buggy- Prosthetics/missing organs

Wild Wiggler- Virgin/inexperienced

Standard Quad- Eyesight problems/glasses/partially sighted

Yoshi Bike- Island nation

Jet Bike- East Asian

Varmint- Teeth missing/false teeth

Comet- Short hair/long arms

Koopa Clown- Atheist

Streetle- Working class

Tanooki Kart- Big balls/hanging balls

Prancer- Large breasts

Cat cruiser- Ichthyosis

Figure 2. Tanooki Mario in the Tanooki Kart signals big balls. Really big balls. Giant danglers. 
This concludes the initial foray into this developing exciting virtual language and although not the focus of this study, there is evidence to suggest that this signalling and language has diverged across time and between the WiiU and Nintendo Switch communities. Furthermore, there is a whole language around in game interactions (driving off road, reversing clockwise, holding onto a Golden mushroom, tooting the horn) yet to be decoded. 

With more time and resources, this burgeoning field of study could be applied to other online games, their subcultures and novel languages.

References
Foucault, M. 1962. 'Un si cruel savoir'in: Critique, July 1962, no. 182, pp. 597-611. (cit. SL)
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Castlevania Collection: Revenge Night of Care Factor Dark

March 22, 2019, 4:00 am
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Konami announced a Castlevania collection (among others)  due for some point this year in summer, for some anniversary. As ageing gamergirls, one would expect us to be "flooding the basement" on this one. Nah. One of us once played the one with Jean Luc Picard and Begbie, and found it too hard, so we locked it away. We did play "that bit" in Smash bros adventure mode, does that count?

Due to the impact these games had on us we listed out the full titles as best as memory serves, I'm sure the right one is in there?

Castlevania: Shadow of dark
Castlevania: Dark shadows
Castlevania: Shadows Lords
Castlevania: Lord of Shadow
Castlevania: Lord of Shadows
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Castlevania: Lords of Shadows
Castlevania: Simon's revenge
Castlevania: Belmont's revenge
Castlevania: Samus' revenge
Castlevania: Castlevania two
Castlevania: Dark of the night
Castlevania: Shadow symphony
Castlevania: Fates of Shadow
Castlevania: Return of the King
Castlevania: Attack of the Clones
Castlevania: Curse of Dracula
Castlevania: Shadow Curse
Castlevania: Curse of Darkness
Castlevania: Dark Curses
Castlevania: Dark Aria
Castlevania: Symphony of Dracula
Castlevania: Despair Darkness
Castlevania: Dracula Moon
Castlevania: Blood Moon
Castlevania: Blood Dracula
Castlevania: Moon Sorrow
Castlevania: Sorrow Symphony
Castlevania: The Masquerade
Castlevania: Redemption
Castlevania: Bloodlines
Castlevania: 64
Castlevania: Night Symphony
Castlevania: Symphonies of the Night
Castlevania: Dark Dracula
Castlevania: Darkness moon
Castlevania: Dark of Sorrow
Castlevania: Sorrow Shadows
Castlevania: Fates of Shadow
Castlevania: Dark Dracula Fate
Castlevania: Dry Entry
..
etc etc, You see where I am going with this.

Love and throw enough shit at a wall...
Richie X






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Acid Rounds: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360)

March 24, 2019, 4:00 am
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Acid rounds is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish.

Cunzy1 1: Ahhh yes the game that started it all The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Aside from a few ill fated forays into Skyrim, I've not touched the Elder Scrolls games at all so interested to see what you have to say. First up this is that sword one in first person with the dragons, dwarves and fairies right?
Richie: Just the one dragon in this one, unlike Skyrim where it's hard to move with out one overencumbering you with bones. No Dwarves or Fairies either, Dwarves are in Elder Scrolls are long extinct, dunno about fairies, maybe. But yeah this is the fourth Elder scrolls game, set in Cyrodiil, notably with Jean Luc Picard, Wonder Woman and Ned stark doing the voiceovers.

Cunzy1 1: Did you play any of the other Elder Scrolls games?
Richie: Well, Skyrim, to death, but back in the day I did play Morrowind, but it suffered very heavily from PC-game-itis. Relying heavily on keyboard and mouse interaction on the hud, it ended up feeling more like a fantasy game overlayed with an excel spreadsheet. Additionally the game just had awful GFX spindly jagged polygon people. Its a game I tried hard to like, but in all of it's great effort, it just went into too much detail to the nth-degree, even just to barter a sale involved cumbersome stats and boxes on the screen! Given how long I spent on Oblivion, I feel if I did the same thing for Morrowind it would have been tenfold that time.


Cunzy1 1: What got you playing? What kept you going and how many times did you play through?
Richie: Doppelganger had a copy of it, he embraced it and charged through the game as a (mostly) righteous battle mage style character, as he was playing I found myself thinking how much I wanted to make a less righteous character...

Cunzy1 1: Who did you play as? Were there classes? Were you a sexy elf or an Aryan knight?
Richie: Neither, I played as an Argonian named Lizardboy, mainly because you don't really get to play as a lizard in many games, but also the Argonian racial ability of being able to breathe underwater really appealed, as I had seen drowning cause so much pain to Doppelganger.
Oblivion is a lot more free with classes, it's tough to give a high level explanation the system... there are preset classes, but classes just defined by your primary skills. So if you tell Oblivion you wanna be a 'Healer' it will focus on making your primary skills "Regeneration" and such. Similarly if you wanna be a Knight it will focus on "Swords" and "Heavy Armour" and similar. But of course you should can just go in and make whatever class you want.

For Lizardboy the focus was (and frankly is for all my Bethesda characters) long range combat, and sneaking about. The weapon of choice was Bow and Arrow, and gearing all enemy encounters to allow me to creep past them, or take them out with one shot, often causing the person they were talking with to exclaim, "What was that!" then remain where they are, looking down at a corpse muttering "must have been the wind". Yes I was that prick.

Cunzy1 1: Didn't Oblivion have that issue with enemy level scaling, so the environment levelled up as you did, so were you inclined you could run the whole game at level 1?
Richie: I mean, there wasn't really anything wrong with enemy scaling, yes if you levelled up, a new subset of enemies were available and you were going to have a challenge on your hands! But with that came better armour weapons etc.
Now, levelling is an odd beast in Oblivion, it is actions that dictate how you level up. As I mentioned before your character gets skills these skills can be Primary or secondary and as these skills progress so do you, but they require actions. So if you want to improve your swords you need to successfully hit things with a sword.
Remaining at lvl 1 would be a hard task! Almost everything from fighting, jumping, walking, speaking to people or picking herbs are skills, and doing any of these things can actively level you up. So you could fuck yourself up, pick thousands of herbs, then get to lvl 100 in herbs, and that will make that combat after a level up pretty harsh. That being said the game offers an unpunishing slider of difficulty if you have messed up your build and need to rectify it by hitting your sword off some enemies for a while.

Cunzy1 1: How does the main story work with such a massive free roaming game like this?
Richie: Well and the fun thing with Oblivion, You can just walk away from the main quest. In my original game I had become a Thief, Assassin, head of the mages college, the best fighter in Cyrodiil, and performed silly tasks for a mad god, before the first oblivion gate was even opened!

Cunzy1 1: Where does this game stand amongst the Elder Scrolls aficionados? Why wasn't this ported to every machine with a circuit like Skyrim has been?
Richie: Um, I think it's only PC/360/PS3 because that what was around at the time, and I think this may have been to adult a game for the Nintendo wii at that point. It has a "healthy" PC fanbase, mods and such, but I think the base game is dated and wouldn't really be worth a port without an overhaul.

Cunzy1 1: Touched it since? Would you ever return to it? Please tell me there's a cargo cult of Oblivion true believers out there still keeping this game alive and rejecting Skyrim?
Richie: I'm sure there is, though in my opinion Skyrim did everything much better! I would happily play Oblivion again in the Skyrim engine. Like I said, it does need an overhaul. In chatting about this I have actually installed, and then promptly uninstalled Oblivion. Oblivion is of its time, and yes there is a plethora of mods etc. but the deal breaker for me was  the lack of native controller support, it may be trite, but I played this originally on the 360 and the transition to a "PC game" version of this is just too much for me. That being said I have returned many times to Skyrim its great and Lizardboy lives on there, sneaking about on rooftops, and hiding underwater indefinitely !
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Turrican: SNES

March 26, 2019, 4:00 am
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With the advent of the Nindies and the recent Konami re-releases, over the past few weeks the term Metroidvania has been slung about a lot at me. While this has not really given me a desire to play either Castlevania or Metroid, is has made me wanna play their estranged cousin - Turrican on the SNES: 


I decided to pick up the SNES version of Turrican and burn through that, though... my first fond memories and experience of Turrican was on the Commodore 64:
On the C64 the game was a different beast, for starters it was just "Turrican", not "Super Turrican".

Note:And just to add further confusion to the whole thing, there was also a "Super Turrican" on the NES, which was a mix of Turrican and Turrican 2... Phew...

Turrican on the C64, or the original Turrican had vast expansive levels and despite Turrican being referred to as a "Run and gun" it had many secrets and paths and caves to negotiate and explore which you certainly were not going to find if you were running and gunning. In my travels to replay this game, I stumbled up on a great site, here, which has painstakingly mapped all of these levels on the C64 out.
My initial experience of Turrican, is testament to how the value of games have changed and how we used to treasure games. Turrican cost me £3.99 from a John Menzies store, and I spent so long on that game, learning the ins and outs, finding 1-ups in hidden blocks, and all before the internet.
I don't think I got far past lvl 2 which was surprisingly ok, considering all the lastability for me was exploration of level 1 to it. But also, it was the C64. It was AWFUL, quite often you would deliberately die on level 1!  As between levels you used to have to stop/pause the tape player and then when you had finished the level press play again. and each time it was a fucking lottery as to whether the game actually loaded or if you were just left with bands of floating colours on a screen as it just "loaded" into infinity.

Granted, it's cheaty as fuck, but in my youth I also played this with an Action Replay Cartridge*:
Mainly because it was a fucking hard game too! I wasn't very good at it, 3 lives and that was your lot, It was great to be able to put in a "code" to turn off time and be invincible to find all those extra hidden areas, to routinely hunt for the hidden blocks and generally wander and appreciate the map, without the constant and unrelenting onslaught of death and destruction that would have otherwise been at your heels.

..,Sorry where was I...

Oh yeah SNES! Just to be clear I had a go at Super Turrican for the SNES, which as it turns out actually has less levels, and honestly I felt had smaller maps! Anyways lets have a look at the levels and what can bee expected in Turrican...

First up, World One, #Genericworld Sets a standard. On the bottom right of that pic you will see a wee Ed-209 thing, they are walking goomba like enemies you can jump on, and thent the get smooshed and can walk faster and can be jumped on again, like the blue standing dinosaur enemies in Super Mario World, you know the ones right?


World 1 Boss is a fist... Hang on! Is that Master hand? I think we know who our next Smash Bros Character is!
Turrican: Almost indistinguishable from Samus, just with more schlong.


There is a Lava World...

And an Ice world! complete with slidey ice trope too!

Now, World 4 is the real reason I have brought you here, and Kudos to you for reading through my nostalgic Commodore 64 bullshit! World 4 is special, a complete rip-off homage to H. R. Giger, more specifically the Alien films:
I mean just look at this screenie, here are little facehuggers on the right on that "platform" is an egg that facehuggers pop out of. And also yeah that "platform" is essentially the heads of Xenomorphs, two in profile and one looking directly at you, they even have an animated drool, why their heads are floating platforms I have no idea! 

Also fuck these facehuggers, grab on top you and drain your life bar so quickly, you can only shake em off by turning into a sphere, oh and you have to kill the egg or they keep spawning. Fuck those facehuggers!

On the C64 version of this level. I have what I believe to be a false memory of the face hugger after grabbing your face letting you go on minimum energy but after a few second you would just keel over and a chest burster came out and then you lost a life. - Nice idea for a mechanic but it seems a bit too much, it was also not present in the SNES version

Super Turrican came out just shortly after Alien 3 yet in this iteration they managed to squeeze the Alien 3 dogs into it, good for them!

Final big rip off boss, giant gold alien queen thing, spits bullets, you fight her on her tail which swooshes up and down, and you never see the rest of her body.

Oddly the game ends after this boss, the original Turricans went on for another level, which was robotic skyscraper future themed world and you fought a floating cube with faces boss, but I guess there is reasons for this only Factor 5 know (I bet its money).

Turrican was fun to return to, and playthrough, though in retrospect of this retrospect I should have found a way to play the C64 version. Don't get me wrong Super Turrican, did hold testament to the original Turrican I played, keeping the mechanics and the hidden exploration stuff, but because teh levels were altered it was the same but different. Like an itch in a hard to reach place, I have managed to scratch around it enough to get some relief, but ultimately I still need to scratch that itch!

Love and, More like Turrican't amirite?

Richie X

*There was also an added benefit to the Action Replay, it could take "snapshots" of the game code and allow you to dump where you were on a blank tape, and load the tape from that point and because of "magic" it also loads super fast.
I actually ended up doing this on World 4 for the C64's version of the H.R. Giger level as one of my mammoth exploration run-throughs of the game with invincibility and no time limit on. And it worked, loaded super fast, but it came with a catch, when you completed the level it had nowhere to go... the action replay had only taken a snapshot of that level, so when it was time to loading the next level "press play on tape..." Sad face.

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Flame Rounds: Boss Bass

March 27, 2019, 3:00 am
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Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?).


Richie: So! What trope has bested you this time!
Cunzy1 1: Super Mario Brothers 3. Level 3-3. You're having a good time with your brother Luigi fighting the Koopalings and making progress then this level happens and it gets real. It gets brutal. Boss Bass just outright murks you. It's not so much the being swallowed by a big fish thing it's just the sheer bluntless of it. You're there one minute, fish boy jumps, open gobbed then. Gone. I want to remove Boss Bass from gaming so I can sleep at night without waking up bolting upright and screaming because I thought I'd been swallowed out of fucking existence.

Richie: Just dodge him/her?
Cunzy1 1: Now not to get bogged down by pronouns but I'm reliably informed by Super Mario Wiki that when it's that rising see level hopping mother fucker it's Boss Bass and when it's underwater with that baby fish middle mouth shit that's Big Bertha. Anyway, dodging ain't easy pimp. That's what they all say, until you fluff a jump then you're down to that panic jump hop swimming to get out and OH SHIT BIG BOSS BOY COMIN' then not just death. Not even death. Worse than death. ERASED. Sure, you can take him out. But he come back.

Richie: The good old OHKO, did it make you feel like a newb at lvl 15 in westfall getting ganked by some Hordey?
Cunzy1 1: It was soul emasculating. Boss Bass cares not for your super mushroom or even Tanooki suit.

Richie: Were Boss Bass and Angry Sun ever in a level together? OH or Phanto from Mario Bros 2! How awful would that be!?
Cunzy1 1: My friends' Uncle works at Nintendo and they said that Angry Sun and Boss Bass were supposed to be in Super Mario Maker at one point but people found out that if you put those two, Lakitu and a Hammer Bro in a level together. You die.

Richie: Just dodge him/her?
Cunzy1 1: YOU CAN'T DODGE DEATH. Not forever.

Richie: How come all the comnets are between themselves?
Cunzy1 1: I wonder what Amber Night is up to.

Richie: Big balls bastarding Boss Bass, somewhat unique in his ability to OHKO you, and yes it turns out he is a he, or at least identifies as so, his Japanese name is Kyoudai Pukupuku♂...

thatguys.co.uk bringing you the news you wanted to know....

Anyways despite your fevered sex dreams about Boss Bass and his mouth and your somewhat niche vorarephilic* tendencies, I'm going to Flames Round this guy just for his Instadeath mechanic!...

But I also wanna touch his design. I mean I guess he is supposed to depict a gang boss? But just looking at the way he is drawn, with the bucktooth and those eyes, it seems he was drawn like old racist cartoon depictions of people from Japan/China, put a conical hat on him and its awful!



Boss Bass, is just a little bit jarring now... Is he "of his time"?

I will leave you that to ponder whilst a cathartically *aroused Cunzy1_1 feasts on Boss Bass' charred flames roundsded remains...

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EXCLUSIVE: Stadia and Apple Arcade Games List

March 28, 2019, 3:00 am
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Having historically shown but a half-arsed interest in video game development and support to date it's interesting to see that both Google and Apple have recently announced half-arsed plans to continue.
In the Red Corner we have Google Stadia. A website which...YouTubers...terraflops at 60 fps which is technically very impressive. In the Blue Corner Apple have announced Apple Arcade which will...games...apps... so expect to see that in coffee shops all over the world!
The pixellated elephant in the room however is WHAT VIDEO GAMES ARE WE ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT? The administrators and system designers have spent so long on the beanbags in the flexible working open plan offices, they forgot to tell us the key part of these boring projects. Fortunately, dear readers, we have the ultimate inside source, it's Alcamoth Citizen reporting from inside Xenoblade Chronicles and she has EXCLUSIVE news on the games to share. This, her first report from the stream cloud piss:

   
So there we have it! Excited about any of those announcements? Care to speculate what kinds of genres those new games could be?
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Acid Rounds: Starlink Battle For Atlas (Switch)

March 31, 2019, 3:13 am
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Acid rounds is a semi-regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish.



Richie: Sunday is the day of God, apparently it was made his day cuz he had just churned out a 6 day week, and decided he was gonna rest on his laurels. Every week we do the same, except instead of resting on our laurels we brag about games we have beasted from start to finish, Last week I went off on one about Oblivion this week Cunzers tells us about yet another spaceship game! So What's this one about?

Cunzy1 1: Starlink: Battle for Atlas is an interesting mix, it's part space game, part planetary exploration and part RTS with a more-complex-than-it-needs-to-be toys to life element. Pilots, ships, wings and weapons can either be changed on the fly by plugging and swapping around physical parts or used to unlock parts and pilots for time limited use in digital/handheld mode. The story in Starlink won't be threatening narrative titans of Sci-Fi, Starlink is a band of colourful characters from an alien which is fireflies in a spacesuit through to an annoying 'Influencer'. Story goes ancient race of forerunners, evil robots, yadda, yadda, yadda. The game is set in a fairly large pocket galaxy and includes a mix of planetary exploration and conquering as well as space dogfights and large spaceship combat.

Richie: What are your favourite power-ups
Cunzy1 1: As far as the weapons go there's an element system as well as different types so there's an ice missile launcher, an ice rail gun, flame thrower, gravity cannon etc. Hands down my favourite is the Meteor Mk2 which is a fire based melee weapon. On a ship. Think about it.

Richie: Did you take pictures of all the dollies before you soiled them?
Cunzy1 1: I only took pictures of some of the dollies. The Switch version of this game has some exclusive themed Starfox content and Fox and Arwing dollies and I honestly thought I'd just play using these but the team did a really good job with some of their ships and designs. There have also been a few 'toy trial' weekends so you can try the ships, pilots and weapons you don't own for free and I've been converted by some of these.


Richie: Why is this better than Resident Evil 6?
Cunzy1 1: Oh Resident Evil 6. It wasn't a bad game just unmemorable for the most part. A lot of Resident Evil 6 levels are reused in Resident Evil Revelations 2 Raid Mode and I barely remembered any of it.

Richie: If you could de-make this to a 16-bit era style game, what would be the best bits to carry over?
Cunzy1 1: All told, and there's a lot to love in this game, it's actually the freedom of movement in the spaceships, especially the faster ones that is particularly liberating. So I'd preserve that sense of speed and ease of movement in a de-make of this game. Oh and the planet designs. In an age of infinite universe space games, the limited but hand crafted planets here really shine from methane lakes to gas globule trees, blood red savannahs and swiss cheese cliffs.


Richie: Daddy or Chips?
Cunzy1 1: Daddy would you like some sausage?
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The Steam Marketplace

April 2, 2019, 4:26 am
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*shudder*

The scene opens in a seedy backstreet, a valve hisses with steam, a jittery dropout approaches a shifty looking man in a trench coat. The twitching skinny looks like a university student, wearing jeans and a half life 3 t-shirt and is fervently clutching a Devil May Cry 5 "V" card. He utters, "Please sir, I'm collecting for a badge on a devil may cry game a really like... I bought it from you."
The man in the trenchcoat is unflinching, the light in the alley is dim and shadows flicker across his face, only his eyes are really visible, piercing yet soulless.
"I have two of these 'V' cards, I was hoping to trade it in for one of the cards that I don't have. Can you help me Mister Marketplace" pleaded this geeky student-looking man, stretching out the card before him.
Mr. Marketplace, reaches down and plucks the the card from his hands, in his gruffest poor-people east London accent he replies, "I might know someone, who might buy this for the average of £0.10, then I'll give you £0.08 for it!"
The pale geekier man, went paler still, "But if you take 20% that is not enough for another card..."
Mr. Marketplaces eyes lit up, "Maybe you wanna get rid of some of your other cards, make some cash to buy some more" leaning forward his silhouette hanging over the cowering geek, "or better yet, why don't you give me your money,  and you can buy as many of my pretty little picture cards as you want", breathing heavily, with bull-like snorting through his nose, "maybe if you are really good you can make some money!"

The steam marketplace is awful.

Most of the games you play will send you a nice little message every now-and-then with a notification you have earned a trading card for the game. What are these mystical cards? What do they do? Why do they exist?

On each game you have a chance to get cards, once you collect all of them you get a pack with "rewards" these rewards are rehashed promo artwork and icons for use in the steam application, but still compelling, nice to get a little extra to show some love for your faves. However there are some odd mechanics around it. You can only get roughly half the cards per game, so if a game has 10 cards attached to it, you will only ever be able to get 5 card drops from scratch, that is it. The remaining cards have to be acquired from the marketplace. Also little bit of insult to injury, that is 5 card "drops" therefore you can get the same card to drop multiple times.

The actual process of selling and buying these cards exists tucked away in the "Community" tab, where you are expected to engage with other "humans" to ask for and trade cards. Similar to that of ebay, or in my experience the WoW auction house.
1. General:WTB: Huniepop Cards

This is also where other in game commodities are sold:


Most of these are weapons or some kevlar armour, homestly this stuff makes it look like how i imagine the "dark-web" looks. Oh and for extra scumminess, as illustrated above Steam will skim off that 20% for themselves.

All that aside, as fans of the new Resident Evil 2 remake, I decided I wanted to spruce up my Steam to reflect that.
I promptly trash-sold all my half collected cards or doublers for games I have no desire to collect pack for (Thanks every jackbox game I own!) and then put up my request for the Resident evil cards I didn't have (undercutting the average because I am a total skinflint)


Eventually, after about a week I got my full set of 8 cards. 

But there is yet another layer of Random loot-cratey Gatchaness,  the rewards you get are also random, here is me hoping for a Police station background, and then finding out it is the least common one! (of course it is!)

Anyways as a little epilogue to my tale of sadness, I got the gas station... and 50% off a game I am sure I already detest, just from the name alone!


Love and falling into the trap,

Richie X
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Flame Rounds: Ice Levels

April 3, 2019, 3:00 am
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Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?).

Cunzy1 1: What're you selling?
Richie: Fucking ice levels, most specifically that annoying inertia slide which get applied to your main character. Annoying, get some crampons.

Cunzy1 1: Are we just going to cycle through 90's gaming tropes is that it? We had five original ideas and are now just rehashing our old forum posts?
Richie: Looking back at our archive we are subconsciously rehashing ourselves over and over again. Ironically we are probably the only blog in existence with the label "bored of the same arguments" however time for us to take a long hard look in the mirror, sunshine. Doesn't make slipping on ice a game that is fun though?

Cunzy1 1: Okay when it comes to these staid level designs I fear you've started with the wrong one. Yes, ice levels do give you slidey mechanics, obfuscating snow and polar fauna, however, it gives you excellent fucking tunes. LET THOSE SLEIGH BELLS RING!
Richie: Totes, rehash the main theme but add some jingle bells, dig it. Top 3 snow/xmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/secular holiday tunes in games, go:

DJ Cunzy1 1: Welcome to Smash Hits Ice Levels Edition, with me, Radio DJ who is definitely going to be exposed as a for sex crimes in 30 years. In at number three, Kirby Air Ride's Frozen Hillside can jingle my bells, if you know what I mean.



In at number 2, it's the ice level theme that everyone likes to remix, it is of course Ice Cap Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 3: 



And at number 1. Put your Beanie hat suit on and hit the yuletide slopes with Phendrana Drifts from Metroid Prime. Music to ice dudes by. 



That's it for Smash Hits Ice Levels Edition, tune in next week when we take a look at the top three save room themes. 

Cunzy1 1: Unlike lava levels, ice and jungle levels don't really exist in real life so I only get to visit them in video games.
Richie: True, and I can only murder swathes of demons/terrorists/zombies/mutants/big boobed dominatrices/elves/polar bears/mushrooms-with-feet/dragons/sheep/lemmings/time-travelling-parasites/monkeys/gods/fairies/devils/helpless-NPCs/goblins/French-people etc etc  in games, whats your point?

Cunzy1 1: Without ice levels you wouldn't be able to have the crazy mix-ups e.g. the whole of Donkey Kong Country Returns: Tropical Freeze or Freezeflame Galaxy. You can't have the melting pot baby is there's nothing to melt?
Richie: I suppose what we are both arguing is that this is a trope. And yeah, its tired and predictable. slidey mechanics and secular, non-secular music. There are so many ways to go, and I feel like I have played this zone/level/trope/theme a million times. Done with it.

Cunzy1 1: Come for the slidey mechanics, stay for the Northern Lights ICE WORLDS SAVED.
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RETROspect: Predictions of a SoulCalibur kind

April 5, 2019, 3:00 am
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Thatguys.co.uk is old, we have been doing this shit, and "getting too old for this shit" for an excessive amount of time. Our site has gone through a plethora of iterations all wonderfully designed in by our expert in-house team. Half of our old links don't work/exist any more, our SEO is duct-taped together in separate timelines, but on the upside we did close down our Myspace account... right?

We rewind time to see how painfully cringe we once were. We go through our archives to find out how right or wrong we were, and wince at the non-woke-ness of the of our past selves.

In today's RETROspect we look back at a classic Richie Post: Soul Calibur Wankery

In this post I get all excited about SoulCalibur IV, mainly I get all fanboy geeky about the addition of Darth Vader and Yoda. And on top of that in a predictable Richie response, conscript Cunzy1_1 and we made a list out all of our favourite fantasy additions to the roster:

  • Zoro (One Piece) 
  • Anyone from Final Fantasy with a sword
  • Master Chief
  • Link/Spawn/Heihatchi
  • Altaïr
  • Pyramid Head
  • Dante
  • Scyther (sic)
  • The Companion Cube
Yeah from that list you can see how archaic this geeky head-canon is! That being said we were bang on the money for Assassins creed man/woman who made his debut in SoulCalibur V! Similarly Halo type Spartan people turned themselves out for the jiggle-fest of Dead or Alive 4. Cloud for Smash bros. And lastly but obviously Dante for Marvel vs Capcom 3.

The rest well, let's just say they were Cunzers contributions shall we?

Love and over 11 Years ago!
Richie X










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