Sodding Football.

This could be considered a round up of sorts, we really don't have much of a liking for the "beautiful game" as I find it boring, and besides whenever I watch my token  team (Liverpool) they lose.  To be honest, this antipathy extends to videogames as well.  There must be at least 60 copies of  Fifa Soccer for every man, woman and child in the UK and there are further variants punted out every year.  Whether its hardcore management or five a side, there are millions of the buggers, there are even online variants of Panini Football stickers but with a FIFA edge to them. 

One of these days we will pick up Sensi for Amiga or one of its console variants as it seems closer in ethos for what football should be to me.  I.E  unlicenced and utter nonsense, if I recall correctly they had a granny team as well as various other fabulous sides. 

In fact here is a few games we'd love to see being made under the FIFA licence.  Oh and yeah dig our new site remodel, TBH we've been wanting to do this for ages now.

FIFA Park.

Yeah we know its kinda derivative of FIFA Street but, and this is the big but, it really is nothing like we played
football as kids.  What we want are.

Jumpers for goalposts.
Rush Goalies (they were allowed to come out of goal and be striker and as memory serves we made to feel foolish whenever you tackled them and scored)
 Fat or Geeky kids in defence.  The personal place of choice for the terminally unathletic.
Girls.  Yep sometimes girls played football, often though they'd just watch and talk with their friends.
More than eleven players on each team,  but often much less.

For this to work it'd have to be sort of like Inazuma Eleven, or Nintendo World Cup but not as shit.  Though without the super powers or anything else, just kids playing football in the schoolyard or the Park.

FIFA Soccer Womens Edition.

This incarnation of the popular game is probably the most mundane version of the lot.  A ladies version of the popular football game but with the proper licences from the Womens F.A and that.

To be honest this doesn't stand a hope in hell of being made.  I can't remember the last time I even saw a woman take part in a football game and the people who usually buy FIFA are not really that interested in womens soccer, unless they are particularly fit.  In fact google says that there is a game by American Soccer star Mia Hamm {though her name actually sounds like a cartoon pig} that was devoted to womens soccer, although that was just a crudely rebadged Michael Owens Football.

FIFA ate my hamster.

Actually the idea I'm gravitating to more is this one.  Rockstar ate my Hamster was a pop simulation game, where through constant stunts and pop tracks you tried to gain notoriety for your act and tried not to get yourself killed.  Due to the bad behaviour of footballers nowadays youi could easily replicate this type, but instead of getting killed, the outcome would be dropped from you team or jailed.  Add in some two footed tackles or unnecessary diving on pitch and you would have a winner or at least an interesting IPhone game.

FIFAsona.

This is a version of the above game but much more serious.  It would play out a lot more like the Persona RPGS, which involve strong team mechanics (a team of school kids investigate supernatural occurences, with the focus on team building and such).  I'd love to see a game where you are a new transfer into a made up team, in a lower league club.  Going through the footballing year, working on relationships with your team mates and playing in various cups.  Like Persona you would need to get on with your team, choosing who to hang out with and taking part in training sessions with your team. 

Where as I'd love to see this, even more so if they used a Sensi style overhead view, your average punter wants his RPGs to involve orcs and Goblins, like Skyrim, and not to involve footballers.

 

Fantasy Game post idea ting.

If you play games for any length of time you kinda want to make your own, untill you find out how much trouble that is.  No seriously coding is a bitch, and for me its one of my holy grails to actually learn how to do this.  Of course I won't, its horrible, tedious stuff, unintuitive and illogical (plus our lateral thinking is massively massively fucked) instead we'll just post our ideas for games here.  You'll get three increasingly monged ideas.

1. Superhuman Riderborgs vs Spectre Rangers SRPG. (tokusatsu vs kaiju edition)

This is going to take an awful lot of explaining so here goes.  I would love to see a tribute to Super Robot Wars,  but instead of anime robots imagine that it involves more super sentai shows instead.  Think Power Rangers, Masked Rider, and any number of rubber suited monsters and beasts from saturday morning shows and cheesy 60's b movies.   It would be licencing hell of course to bring this to the west, I'm not sure that Japan would fully co operate but damn, controlling the big G with Mothra as his wingman and getting support from Spectreman and some of the Beetleborgs as well. 

In fact the only way to do this is probably to create homages Think Disgaeas Prism Rangers as prime example of this and you can't go far wrong.  To add to the idea, there are a few Super robot wars games that have official translations, these are based off of original IP and thus avoid the whole licencing trap.

2. The Final Fantasy parody.

Our last two ideas are probably the worst of the lot. Parodies of games seen through mass hallucinogens and far, far too much sugar, and as a consequence will never be made.

They already have a loving retread of some of the original FF games, whether its FF4: After Years recapping what Rydia did when she grew up or FF9's homage to the original games with its fan service and excellent card game.  (Hey Squenix why not release the card games from FF8 and 9 for IPhone, whack on a RPG mode and you'll have mucho profit, they were good.)

What we are proposing is a run through of all the games in the series told via the memories of a bullshitting old man.  Inaccurate memories told via Kamishibai, recapping famous scenes with a healthy dose of ad lib parody and sight gags.    These bits of the games would be the cutscenes as he gathers the audience around and eventually it fades into a playable scene from one of the games.  Think of the quests from Crisis Core but played for laughs and with the narrator chiming in at set times to provide commentary which is often at odds of what really happened.

3. COD of War Comradeship is Manic.

I really hate modern FPS shooters, with 15 colours for brown, ultra grim and sweary storylines and its online world.  We recently had a go at Gears of War and it understated all that is wrong with gaming.  (of course I sucked at it, but man, I would love a top down viewpoint in those games, just so it looks like I'm playing a SNES game on drugs).

Which is where our new game idea comes in.  Its 2015 and the Russian goverment lead by Sergei Orlov and his trophy wife Vivian Leigh have devoted the last quarter century to ressurecting the Soviet empire via the medium of counter terrorism and cybernetic bear droids.  The EU and America of course do not want the Soviets to rule the world again and decide to parachute in Billy the Fish from Viz.  Armed with nothing but twin laser rifles which are upgradeable via tech support from Rasputin and Nikola Tesla, the Goalkeeper cum mercenary must single handedly bring down the evil empire and thwart the meerkat army and its undead leader Zombie Octopus Leon Trotsky.

The graphics are of course presented via the medium of Cel shading and should look something like Jet Set Radio for the Dreamcast complete with low poly modelling and variable ragdoll physics (set from none to hilariously over the top) if it resembles a late era PSOne game, that would be cool.  Oh and all cut scenes must, must be presented with Engrish and all voice acting intentionally over the top.   We are aiming for House of The Dead levels of acting here.

On line modes would mute voice chat by default and have variable physics as well with things that explode randomly or summon massive things.  Something along the lines of this would be cool.  But much expanded, possibly some of the bosses from single player mode but vs teams of folk. 

Revisitation

So we decided to go back to Walthamstow.  Just to see, if after a month or two, that signed Michael Rosen book was still there.  Of course it wasn't and so this unconventional round up begins.

There's a lot of sadness to report here, so without further ado we'll begin.  Walthamstow was just a brief stop here instead of the main focus this time and there wasn't that much different than last.  We were on the look out for any unusual records, and we got Popcorn by Hot Butter and Stop/Start by The Assembly.

The former is a cover from the old Gershon Jackson synth track from 1969, and its still a killer tune after all these years.  The latter is a side project for Depeche Modes Vince Clarke and pirates friend Feargal Sharkey and we really hope its not too bad (it promises guitar along with synth)*.

Though these were nice, the real prize was finding a copy of EGM in their post office.  Times were we used to pick up nearly every issue of EGM whenever it hit UK shores (which weren't often).  Then in the mid 2000's they changed the layout, culled most of the foreign news and add Seanbaby to the mix (which wasn't so bad).

We seemed to have picked up the yearly honours edition, and that was piss weak at that, like an American edition of Edge with all the design knocked out of it.  In which they had relegated Tobias Bruckner (trash game commentator) to a small side column, which about summed it up.

The main destination was as always, Tottenham court road.  Akihabara for the English and home to the only decent arcade in town, the Leisure Casino.  They had a few new cabs to play including Cave/Atlus team up Esp Ra De and a slightly flickery R.Type Leo.

                                                            Now for some sad news.
We found out that another Indie game shop has closed down.  Game Focus was an excellent little shop selling all sorts of old and new games for a  reasonable price.  They had a window full of rare stuff including the last time I visited a Hyper Neo Geo 64 and some reasonably priced Saturn games.  Though they used to have a decent games such as a pretty boss selection of DS games the downturn really affected it and these dwindled to absolutely nothing which was a shame.   I did get some great things there including Disgaea DS back in the day.  Though they were a shadow of themselves they were still worth a look.

PSVita. Are we having fun yet?!.

Scan of the week.

We picked up a promo launch mag for the PSVita, Sony's great white hope, a while back and flicking through came across this guy.  I think he is meme worthy and sums up the publics apathy to the Vita in all its guises. 

*Edit.  Its patchy, whereas the first side (Never Never) has Fergal singing on it and is largely wank, the B side (Stop/Start) is of course much better being as its all Vince Clarke synth work.

Snap the pieces together...

All shapes and sizes, snap the pieces together Lego blocks.

So sung, Glass domain back in 1991. We had the bigger, Duplo blocks as a child back in the early 80's, along with a Dukes of Hazzard Playset and a Snoopy school bus (complete with Lucy and Charlie Brown figures).  But its Lego that I came back to.  We had a space set as a kid and a fire station set too, complete with astronauts, Lego firefighters and another set which had Percy pig with a wheelbarrow. 

I still have Lego on my main desk, a space plane remade now and again, and added to whenever we have new bricks.  In fact we never had Lego at school though we did have a substitute.  Polydron.

Though their site at the moment seems to be knacked, Polydron was a triangular based  (and looking at other sites, had hexagonal and square pieces too).  You got to play with it at school only on special occasions possibly as part of maths class, we remember making spinning tops out of the triangular pieces (and them falling apart at the slightest touch).  I hadn't thought about it for a good 20 years, till we, talking with my parents over dinner, the topic came round to old toys.

Its funny what you remember and what you choose to forget.