An odd round up.

Richer sounds punts Playstation 2 Telly combo

This is odd Sony are keeping quiet about this flat screen Bravia / PS2 combo.  Apparently its small screen TV with an added PS2 Slim on the base.  Currently only available through RicherSounds chain of HiFi emporiums, it boasts a line of ports and other stuff I don't understand to keep it future proofed for all eternity (subs please check).  Slims are harder to mod than the original PS2, and for the price they are doing it £200ish, It's not bad at all.  Although my dream set up would be a Modded PS2Fat used as a SKY+ box  receiver (though not sure of the size of the HDD you can add to a PS2).  Failing that would love to see Sony rebadge its PS3 the same way, with neutered PS2 backwards reinstated (Region free of course).

Either that or a VCR in the guts of an old XBOX.

Enid Blyton and Google.

To prove I'm not just a pretty face I've been reading over the xmas period some old Enid Blyton books. More specifically Circus Days Again and despite its worrying preoccupation with "bears"* theres this passage from  page 57 about Mr Galliano hiring new clowns.

"Well the third clown is Google.  He's really funny too.  He has a wonderful motor-car, and everything goes wrong with it - and in the end it blows up into a hundred different pieces! Google has a little dog called Squib.  You'll like hin.  He helps Google with his nonsense."

Make of that what you will.

* Get your mind out the gutter, they are real bears as its an old school circus, no ones queer in Enid Blyton except little Noddy.

Merry Boxing Day.

Todays awardoriffic round up is.

Music of the year.  We listen to a shed load of stuff every day, whether its unwinding after a hard days work or via the radio or online.  The following stream of consciousness is what I consider the best of 2010.

Best KFC Advert that never was.  Cee Lo Green FUCK YOU.
Come on who remembers the old soul tracks that they used to play out over KFC ads about 5 years back, they got into trouble by singing with their mouths full and people thought they were mocking Spaztards.  Well good news it seems that this sort of soul is back and its probably the commercial hit of the year.  Get the one that says fuck you as forget you is for pansies.

DUBSTEP track of the year.  Katy B Katy B On a Mission.
Because its not only haunting but it can be mixed with the Nitro Deluxe track of the same name for retro goodness, especially if you snag the acapella thats on Youtube.

ACID track of the year.  Jared Wilson. Drug Related Stories. Smocid Edit.
Though it can't surpass the original from 2007, this is a pretty bang up old skool acid track.  He also released a non acid set of tracks check out Night Sky JPG From the rise of the machines EP vol 1

METAL of the year.  Merzbow Yurikamone.
We know this as a black headed gull in English, anyway this isn't your daddy's noise, but a proper noise metal track. Proper metal guitars and white noise, and best of all a drum that is simply there as noise rather than beats.

R+B of the year.  Neyo VS Nightwriters Let the monster use you.
The original Beautiful monster was a channelling of Josh Wink style acid with Neyo's old school lyrics.  This is probably the best I've made ever made.  We stripped out the acapella from youtube and added it to the dub version of Nightwriters Let the music use you.   With a lot of sweat and tears it improves the original 10 fold.

Best Techno.  Model500 OFI Huesca.
Even a misfiring Model 500 is still better than 75% of everything ever.

Best 6 seconds of the year.  N-Dubz Girls
Of the intro and that is all you need, the rest is pure shite.

Best commercial pop of the year.  Lady Gaga Lovegame Brian Ice Version.
This is only available via the medium of Youtube but this bootleg of Brian Ice Talking to the night is my Italo Track of the year.

Best YTPMV.  Chriddof It Doesn't do Anything.
Hard electro beat, tough samples and, the cat solo, worth seeing as a video and as audio.

Merry christmas.

Just a small note saying seasons greetings and a big old merry christmas to all our loyal reader(s).

We are putting together a year review thing, you know the best of's worst of kind of thing so over the next few entries we'll rating you up good so sit tight.

Today is BEST GAME OF THE YEAR. 

Bear in mind that a: we have no current gen console aside from a DS and b: no willingness to poke about in PC gaming other than emulation.

The winner by a long chalk is Dragon Quest 9 from SQUENIX. 

For offering a tight quest, endless customisation and a witty and pun laden translation from the original Japanese.  It also gets a mention for using proper UK English and not going overboard with the accents.
The only black mark is with Nintendos stupid monged up advertising that totally played down the strengths of the game for Jedward spunking about with fans, thus putting the back up.


Runners Up, 
PANG Magical Michael, Rising Star / Mitchell Corp
Laudable reboot of Mitchells seminal balloon popper.

PCSX2 PCSX2 team.
For finally getting and proving that Playstation 2 emulation is doable on an  (un)reasonably specced machine.  Now how about putting CD support back.

PacSmiles

We've recently been messing about with Engrish friendly PC Engine emulator Ootake seeing as I've always had a curiosity about the system.  The PC Engine or to give it its full American name of Turbografix 16 was one of the consoles they had on show at Trading World in Bexleyheath (now Primark), I remember them showing Marchenland and maybe Cyberlip for NEO-GEO as well as a few NES and SNES games.  

Playing around with Ootake, on a few games I own versions of  (Parasol Stars (NES) and  Pac Land (C64)) I've come to like the little guy.  Maybe because of crack cocaine use or maybe a bad rom dump the PC Engine version of Pac Land is really odd. 

Instead of using the D pad to control Pac Man it simply makes him jump whereas the regular buttons move him either left or right.  Its really messed up and bears all the hall marks that Cave would use some 20 years later for its Loli Horror style Shmup, Deathsmiles.  One button simply switches your position onscreen to face either left or right.  So its the same for Pac Land but much, much more awkwardly done.  We hope this is simply a bad rom dump (all I've found online are) but if it was intentionally programmed like this then man Namco have balls of steel.

Cue Duo Industries AD.

From the We've got a warehouse full pile.

Hup de de ha ha Taiiito!!!!

Seriously lay off the skag.

This weeks scan is of the Taito heat wave, a load of old games from Taito, not limited to but including, Punchbag sim Sonic Blastman.  Cameltry (rebranded as On the Ball here.) and if we're being honest proto only Hit the Ice.  No in fact the only reason we have this guy here is simply the fact it looks just like he's spent most of his life mainlining heroin.

In fact having googled it, he looks just like a young Begbie from trainspotting, minus the tache but with his addiction already in place (seemingly to NES games).

 Similarily I have a major hard on for Bubble Bobble on the NES.   Bought with Xmas money from Boots when they did games as well as aftershave and cotton buds.  In fact they would set up a Megadrive booth around Christmas time and put Sonic in,  we're pretty sure it wasn't a display thing but it was probably the only Sega exposure I had while growing up. 

So Bubble Bobble then, we played it to death as a kid going so far as to make it to level 76 in one credit, (not easy, though it is generous with its lives).  In fact, and this is no boast,  looking at Twin Galaxies Rankings, my 13 year old self, would easily have made it to at least 4th place (though ironically we had no way of verifying this, then).  The NES version was easily the best I played, including the arcade via Legends PS2 compilation or the C64 version (in which it looked like Bub had his neck wrung).  The main reason was lives you got extra at 30,000, 100,000, 200,000 and 400,000 and through extend making it very generous to lame fisted players like myself. 

Sadly making it to level 20 in the NES version would not open the magic door, as in the arcade version, nor were there codes to get permanent stuff or unlock things.  The only thing it had was passwords that let you jump ahead to the boss screen, that in the Disk System original allowed you to save to disk (we'll bore you another time with differences between the two), and stealing lives with select and start.

 Bubble Bobble NES remains special to me as it allowed me to dominate it rather than me like most of my C64 collection.

Saaay Gahhh.

Scanned badly for your convenience.

God where to start on this, yeah we know its a horrific scan, get over it.  This weird young / old guy's foot is supposed to say Kick A(rse) but it got sheared off in the scanner.  Judging by the foot he's either smashed through a plaster or dare I say it a wall made entirely of cardboard.   All to make wildly implausible claims about some dodgy peripherals, from STD.

Coupled with his strange outfit of green jacket, blue baseball cap and rubbish armband, makes him look like an irate leprechaun, than a typical nineties youngster.

STD of course changed their name from an acronym for Sexually Transmitted Disease to the more radder InterAct, and released the gameshark line of game enhancers for which they are to be applauded.  Sega of course had millions of ads out at the time proclaiming to do what Nintendon't.   Largely bombast and bullshit, though to be fair it would be ages before Sega itself caved in and allowed their games on Nintendo consoles.

Thanks to pirates, you can play a ropey version of Super Marioworld on your Megadrive (or Genesis if retarded) and even Super Mario Bros via Emulation (though SMB is actually homebrew).

1 year on

Well well, a whole year has gone by.  We started with slang and ended up with scan of the week.  I'd like to do one of the whole flashback to earlier times but I've had a look at my early posts and boy we really didn't hit our stride till May. 

Anyway here is some more slang,  courtesy of my boss.   It concerns the bass from radios and when its really strong like on some dance genres we call it Woofy.  From the bass, as it goes woof, woof, woof in a song or a chavs motor as it rattles along with its windows down.

Anyway we'll be back sunday with the scan of the week from Sega.