Anita Sarkeesian and the Edgeification of gaming.

You were supposed to see a little bit about Community Pom a super rare PS1 game in my last post but like a doofus forgot all about it.  Some people kinda say it looks like the bastard offspring of Zelda and Secret of Mana but to me its more like the town from Harvest Moon bolted onto SOM as the colours are more muted than Zelda's ever were.

Whatever it is, your character in this is a small girl with her hair in bunches and looks to be armed with a bug net. The sheer joy of writing that, and watching it play out, seems to fly in the face of Anita Sarkeesian and her whole women on the periphery never main character whine shtick and Social Justice Feminism against games and gaming as a whole.

I've been attempting to do a YTP of the whole Feminist Frequency videos kinda like Insector did for Michael Rosen back in the day.  It means I have to listen to a whole bunch of Anita Sarkeesian talk about gaming about tropes vs Women and about advertising and sexism and edit it to say something funny. Even worse trying to keep eye contact (for an autist that's truly painful) and do the whole ironic sexist thing of not staring at her chest!.

Mainly I'll be here to destroy the video Retro Sexism and Uber Ironic Advertising Give it a download and join in if you want.  But first a quick digression into Edgeification.

For those who aren't English we have a games magazine over here (from the bastards at Future Publishing) that seems to do nothing but suck the life out gaming.  Its called Edge and if you want to know why I read Retrogamer and would rather I get my news from sites like Siliconera then this argument sums it up. I used to buy it regular back when it was good around about when the PS2 came out it had a few articles and wasn't afraid to look back and smile (oh and Mr Biffos column helped a lot in this). Then the articles changed, from dull developers to indie gaming, (when they talked to Phil Fish about Fez) they tried to scholarise when it should have just stuck to being entertaining.  I gave up in the end when they got rid of their excellent Nintendo wall planner that was in their Xmas issue, so now I just read it in Smiths.

Anyway review time and our first clip is Mikes Hard Lemonade ,an alcopop named by Beavis And Butthead it has some poolside hotties and a few lame attempts at pick up lines. The Fosters Radlers ads do it so much better and am agreeing with Anita on this only because the guys are douches.

Second clip time, and its Twix, something about some do with a bloke staring at some girls while his wife gets the baby out of the car.  Be honest its a damn sight better than our twix adverts and its left biscuit vs right biscuit bollocks, and anyway if you really want jokey sexism then I'm surprised she didn't flag up the Yorkie ads.

Third ad and its Coors time in the spotlight as a numbskull gets a call from his equally dull friend about venting and convinces his wife to go and see him (its OK its for beer). I guess its portraying women as idiots and the only equivalent that I can currently go is that daft coffee ad from nescafe (you know pretends to go out in the pouring rain for barista style coffee).  I could point out a shed load where men are portrayed as idiots, but the Maltesers advert where the two women make the two sleeping guys cuddle makes me cringe. Put it this way if you can reimagine it from a female standpoint you wouldn't get away with it but if its two guys well hard luck.

Finally some bell end in a camper van is talking bollocks at a hula doll for Carls. Jr burger chain.  The whole advert is painful to listen to, I don't know enough about Hawaiian culture to know if its being patronised or if flicking a hula doll whilst trying to eat a burger is sexist or just bad table manners but, its a shit advert, a life sucking bastard of an ad.
In fact I've saved my best to last to counter this. This is probably the most sexist thing I've seen, some guy getting changed on the beach has his trunks stolen by an old ladies dog so they can ogle his ass for Bertolli margarine and apparently as its women on men its OK.

Finally as I've gone on long enough and as I originally found this in Edge so encapsulates the whole thing, have a link to Napple Tale a platformer where most of the programmers were women.

Edit have at thee with some photos.

This is Old Edge, Old Edge is good.

Ghost Sarkeesian

Nitpicking Chasing Shadows with a busted ankle.

Thanks to me twisting my ankle at work, you'll have two (yes two) posts this weekend.  It happened Monday afternoon as I was walking back to the van I stepped into a hidden ditch that effectively fucked up my ankle and sent me reeling.  Decided to go to our local hospital and get it checked out and being lucky with timing, was seen straight away.  An X ray and a long old wait for the results to come back meant that I had a torn ligament and soft tissue damage.  They gave us a crutch to get around and zero pain relief, the plus side was two days off work and a chance to kill off what remaining brain cells I have left watching the Scots vote on independence and the increasingly dire threats of leaving the union (essentially Armageddon even though no one is quite sure what the union confers in this day and age).

Which is where Chasing Shadows comes into its own.  It stars League of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith as a high functioning Autistic cop bumped from homicide and seconded to the Missing Persons Bureau.  He works with Alex Kingston who Dr Who fans will know as River Song, but she really shines in this, as they have to work together to solve cases of missing kids and murder.  There is also more ex Dr Who alumni in Reeces boss played by Noel Clarke, he was Useless Mickey from the Ecclestone era who for those that care about such things, and I really don't like him as he comes across as an arrogant cunt.  I don't really know any of the characters names but Alex Kingston's onscreen mum is played by Lynda Barron and she has a serial killer obsessed son who also seems to be on the spectrum as it were.

There are a lot of Afro-Caribbean actors in this which jarred me for about the first half hour,  until I got to see where Alex's character lived.  Up on Greenwich Hill, that clock tower in the town center is unmistakable. There are a shed load of West Africans in the borough and when I realised it was set locally I sat back and really enjoyed this.  Which leads us into a few problems with geography and stuff.  As its two, two part drama's the end of part one has them raiding a few spots in Woolwich to catch the killer.  First of all, although Woolwich is a shit hole our DLR station is brand new and entirely below ground so that shot where its above ground is wrong (maybe some rail nerds can work out where it was). Secondly most of our housing stock isn't that badly run down so where they apprehended the killer is totally wrong, though on second thoughts it could be either Woolwich Common or Morris Walk, which are rough enough to qualify.

There are a few errors in the current two parter as well.  There's a nice shot of the council offices / Woolwich library and he gets a 53 bus outside to ride it to the end of the line (which you can do and please do its a nice journey via Blackheath and New Cross).  However he ends up near Southmere Park in Thamesmead and as any fule kno, the 53 terminates on Plumstead common and isn't a single decker.

Southmere Park used to have  a cracking bootsale in which I got a sampler for my Amiga back in the day and both Strings Of Life and Tears cheaply.  They also had a guy selling LCD Gundam and Godzilla games once but I digress.

The last episode is next Thursday and is well worth a look despite a nit picking local ripping into it. I think its scheduled for release on DVD but if you can find it on ITV player or for download give it a go.

PS Pops for yo chops.

You're getting a special thursday edition of King Tibbet, as we not only mourn the death of Snesorama, but give you another red hot guide.  But first the news.

Snesorama.

Though we were never a member, this along with Megaupload was the premier place for non torrent archives.
We would occasionally browse the list of old PS1 / PS2 / Saturn stuff to see if there was anything worth a download, but mainly it was to leaf through the Emulation news at least once a week.  I'm not sure if the playstation museum is still going, they were hosted by Snesorama but contained a wealth of PS1 specific data such as screen shots, PEC code lists for cheating, and cover and iso information (snesorama of course having links to the actual ISOs).  The Playstation Datacenter has a facebook page for those antisocial networkers among you. 

We are not sure what happened to kill off Snesorama, posts up on the PSXdatacenter facebook tell of an hack attack, and they shifted their forums to another host a few weeks back.  Now whenever you visit it says their site is dead and won't be coming back.

Popsloader guide.

We did offer you a guide the other week for an easy way to add ISO support to your hacked PSP, now we'll go one further and add PS1 support for your hacked PSP.

PSN are offering suckers, PS1 classics for your PSP to rebuy and download to your PSP.  This is especially dumb if you have the original games lying around at home going unused.  I warn you it involves more stuff than enabling ISO / CSO support, but adding it its no less difficult than before.

As before here is our recipe list.

A PSP with custom Firmware. (incidentally the modern PRO B firmware adds PS1 support natively so this is for non PRO B firmware.)  We use Godman Firmware which is a hack of PRO B and is rather nice.
POPS loader.   Your PS1 emulation software.
A ProDUO card.
ISO creation software
A PS to PSP iso converter.
Some PS1 games.

Step 1.
First of all you'll need to make an ISO image from the discs you own (If you have PS1 ISO files already on your system, you can skip this bit and go to Step 2).  Insert your discs into your PC and run whatever ISO creation software you have, locate the option to create ISO files from disc and select start.  We favour the excellent Imgburn (and you'll want the option, make ISO from disc if you are using it) for all our CD making needs, its free, and has never failed us.   

Step 2.
You can download both POPSloader and  PSX2PSP at this point as we will need them to continue, you can also connect your PSP via USB (or ProDUO card if you have a card reader) at this point as its also required to continue.  

Step 3. Adding POPSloader.

This is your root directory.

With popsloader downloaded, simply drag the popsloader file that corresponds to your firmware into the root directory of your PSP Memory stick.   I.E if your custom firmware is 6.20 drag the popsloader file that says 6.20 to your root directory.

Stage 4. Converting files.

Extract and run PSX2PSP.  You'll want to click on the top box (ISO PBP file) and search for where you have your PS1 ISO files.  (IMGburn puts them in Documents by default)
Select the second box down and create an output folder to store your converted ISO and if you want add a picture image. (you don't have to it'll just look nicer.)  When you are done click on Convert and it'll convert it.  Check the destination file and it'll show you a folder with your newly converted ISO.

Stage 5. The final stage.

Do not rename the newly created folder, or put it in another folder, but drag it into your game folder in you  PSP memory card.  It'll show up as a file that you can click on to play your game.  We've played both PAL and NTSC games (both SaGa Frontiers) and  can attest that it will work.  Oh and a final notice you'll want to press the home button to bring up POPSloaders option menu, (put it to fullscreen otherwise it'll look windowed), it will also let you quit out here too. Enjoy.

Kuru Kuru Twinkle Onegai Ohoshisama.

My obsession in finding this out stems from a small picture in the only copy of Koro Koro comic I own.

Purchased from Lewisham bootsale and comprising of several oddities in itself, (not least a Mole Mania manga and some maze contest for Fushigi no Dungeon) Koro Koro comprises several strips based on established brands such as Pokemon, Mini4WD and Mario 64.   Its the same size and weight as a small brick.  Were not kidding, you can still purchase it from  places like the Japan center up town and the like.  Its one of these give aways that the pic is from (a puzzle game in which from the picture looks like your battling some sort of crab), for ages my Japanese was poor enough miss out the title, but a recent look through with 1337er skills brought up the name.  Kuru Kuru Twinkle Onegai Ohoshisama.

Snesorama gave us the proper links for downloading and we fired up EPSXE for perusal once we grabbed the iso.

First problem, sound isn't the greatest on this, in fact its not supported at all leaving just the sound effects (and just noise if you use the default plugin rather then Eternals SPU  plug in).

Second problem. Theres quite a bit of text to wade through including a scrolly menu system, and a big intro (thats skippable).  However we've put together a menu translation that will help you out in this case.

Main menu.
おはなし Story mode. Take on twelve signs of the zodiac for items
ずーうと One player mode
セーブ Save
ロード Load
せつめい　Config screen (controller)
つくる Construction kit  use おわり to exit here if you visit here by mistake.
ぱずる Puzzle mode.  You have one move to clear the screen and can play as any of the weirdos from story mode.
たたかえ Battle mode 2P only.

Hitting ずーうと (1p Mode will get you a mass of difficulty settings and afterward special attacks to pick through).
They range from まあまあ very easy Level 1 to 達人 expert mode Level 80, its just a case of flicking through and picking you level and then special attack.

Gameplay explanation.

OK, this is the real meat of the article.  You control a 2x2 cursor on screen.  Pressing X will flip it horizontally and pressing Circle will flip it vertically (Triangle has your special attack).  The aim of the game is to create lines of three gems in a row (or an L shape that works too) that disappear and create chains if there are blocks that can make three below you.
You'll get a whole row falling instead of the odd pair and its game over if it reaches the top of the screen.

Hampering your efforts are garbage blocks which look like breezeblocks.  Unlike any other game where making three the same will eliminate them, you have to make a line of them just like in Tetris. Unlike Tetris, when they drop they will clear everything  under them leaving you with extra space to work with.

Story mode works the same except you get x shaped garbage blocks to work with, and a selection of weird versions of zodiac characters, including the aforementioned crab creature and what looks like Chouanikis Adol and Samson further on.

In conclusion, the game is actually good, the different buttons used to flip become second nature over a while and it provides some tense moments for you especially if you concentrate on clearing blocks rather then watch the top of the screen.   Not quite sure why this didn't get a Midas Game release toward the end of the PS1s life as its the perfect fodder for a budget compilation.  Anyway our over all score is
3/5
Kuru Kuru Twinkle Onegai Ohoshisama
Tomy Inc.
Developer Tomcat
Released 1996.

Edit here are some screenshots.