A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Category: Pulp
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It is unbelievable how many developers always seem to be closing due to financial difficulties. With so much riding on each title because of increasing production values, some developers and publishers are seemingly always just one game away from financial ruin. Jester Interactive was one such company, going into administration in 2003, before a brief…
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Today I bought myself a brand spanking new Nintendo DSi XL to add to my seemingly ever growing stable of Nintendo handhelds for a paltry sum of A$40. As someone who still owns the original 3DS with its small screens, and retain my DS Lite for all things 2D, holding the XL in my hands for…
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Licensed videogame toys can range from good to bad to ‘don’t open me I’m horribly collectable‘, and they only seem to be becoming more and more prevalent accompaniments to big game releases. Like their film counterparts, sometimes they even start to show up in stores well before the product on which they are based is…
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The 30c cone from McDonalds – high in sugar and low in taste – 30 cents OR Super Metroid – high in action, high in gameplay and high in awesome – 30 cents You decide.
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I cringed when I spotted this – I mean a game about Wedding Planning? Those Germans do they ever rest in their quest to develop the PERFECT video game? But wait I hear you say, give it a chance. It may be a really great business simulator – the Football Manager that we can…
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MTV’s Daria may be long gone, but it’s perfect representation of growing up as a teenager in the late 90’s continues to be the most accurate depiction of that time around. The music, the attitude, the fashion and the general disdain for the cool people, younger people and older people -for humanity basically- viewed through the…
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Primal Rage is pretty awesome. I admit that it’s not the deepest, most playable, best designed, best looking, best sounding game in the world. It’s not even really that great of a fighting game when all is said and done. But that doesn’t stop me from having a bit of a laugh from loving it.…
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I actually remember the time when the house that Mario built was on top of the world. Nintendo was a hot commodity and it was hard to come across anyone who had not played a Mario game. It is a stretch to say that Nintendo’s success was solely built on the humble plumber, but it…
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My co-podcaster Ian (see 101filmsyoushouldhaveseen.com) spotted this little oddity on his travels round Walthamstow. It seems the Riddler has escaped Arkham once again and has been leaving trophies a bit further afield than Gotham… Sadly, Ian didn’t have his batsuit with him, so he was unable to scan the trophy using detective vision.
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There is something personal about the hand-drawn art that permeated through every aspect of video game culture 20 years ago. From magazines to box art to awesome little drawings in instruction manuals, hand-drawn art was everywhere. Yesterday I wrote about Agro Soar, a Game Boy game based on a children’s television show in the 80’s…
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Sometimes when I sit back and really think about how much everything, including videogames have changed since I was a kid I am blown away. I’m nearly thirty and its only in the last 12 months or so I’ve started to feel my age. How is this for old – kids listening Blink 182’s album ‘Dude…
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Casey Jones is just cool. He is funny, tough and has that sense of ‘vigilante moral ambiguity’ that every guy just wishes he possessed. I know every time I see some punk kid crossing against the lights I want to hook his legs out with a hockey stick and smash him over the head with…
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I woke up screaming last night. I was being chased by a horse with what seemed like a green mohawk and steam (or smoke, it was hard to tell) coming out of its nose. Okay I’m lying, I just wanted an excuse to share my favourite video game box art of all time which you…
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HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY! It’s Australia Day down under and we Australians like a good celebration. The First Fleet arrived in Australia on 26 January 1788 and marks the date of European settlement in this great nation. Of course on the flip side of that it marks the beginning of a rather difficult period in the…
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If you’re like me, video games are one of many things that I spend my free time doing. You may also be like me in that I find I am having less and less time to actually spend with games, what with all the earning money, keeping fit and domestic duties that have quietly seeped…
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Midnight in Paris is a great film if only because it’s an accurate commentary on an aspect of the human condition – the nostalgic and often skewed view of the past. Owen Wilson plays an aspiring novellist who romanticises a 1920’s Paris and everything surrounding it, from the writers to the artists and philanthropists, all…
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If Wonderbook is anything to go by Sony is all for getting kids to read, and that’s cool. I’m not going to be harsh on a partnership that encourages the imagination of the next generation of authors, artists, mathematicians, astronauts and economists, because at face value I absolutely agree, kids definitely don’t read enough. Actually…
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I am a big fan of Star Wars and despite all of the killing and talk of the ‘dark side’ I still find the original trilogy a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun that can be taken as seriously, or not seriously as you like. I am a few years too young to remember the original films…
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Is Mean Machines Magazine returning in some form? If a tweet from video game publication luminary, Julian “Jaz” Rignall is to be believed, it may be in the works. Mean Machines magazine was a video game magazine published in the United Kingdom and distributed globally as far stretching as Australia. The magazine was a lynchpin of…
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Sometimes the reach of video games surprises me. The fact that you could pretty much take any small cultural or sporting phenomenon and there is probably a game based on it somewhere in the world is pretty amazing. So I really shouldn’t have been surprised when I was casually browsing in a nearby second…
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I love portable gaming. The sheer audacity for Capcom to claim that the graphics are ‘So Real You’ll Forget It’s Only A Game‘ is nothing short of hilarious. Of course back in 1990, Gargoyle’s Quest probably was the best looking game to grace a handheld, and to put it in context, it was a fantastically…
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[written in complaint by Sir Gaulian] From what I understand, necromancers are vile, vile creatures. If you thought that those kids you see in malls all across Australia (and no doubt other parts of the world) wearing black from head to toe were bad, wait ’til you meet a necromancer. They are so obsessed with…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 