Holiday round up.

First some sad news, Alex Higgins known to millions as the Hurricane has been blown out from this world sadly due to complications with cancer.  I'll repeat this that I first saw him on TV as a kid, playing Jimmy White, the guy won a match against him pulling off crazy shots, half the time not in position at all.  He will be missed.

Secondly out thoughts go out to those victims of the loveparade tragedy, the more I read of this, the more I'm saddened by the whole organisation.
Go here and click on the video for more info, actually, fuck the BBC and go here for all the info. Man they had Anthony Rother playing as well, thats tough dudes.

Finally some good news WosBlog is back up and running, no thanks to shameless plagiarist Olin Coles at Benchmark reviews.


Ah You'll be wondering where we were for at least a fortnight, Well we were living it up in Mallorca at the lovely resort of Son Baulo.  Its in the north east of the island to the east of the town C'an Picafort, notable attractions include.

Son Real Necropolis, an Iron age {though they call it stone age, its in operation circa 7-5C BCE so really iron age.}
Bar Puput, which we previously thought of only as onomatopeia for africans talking but is actually the English for bar Hoopoe (a type of bird). 
A good 2 miles plus of Sand dune coastline, complete with eel grass covered beaches and wild leeks.

Not your conventional trips out but still worth a look especially if you looking for nature.  Most of these areas are of course covered by the environmental protection and the Mallorquin take real pride in their natural landscape, which is how it should be.  We saw a lot of butterflies, including Swallowtails and Brimstones and an awful lot of cicadas, which was very unusual by their extreme conspicuousness.  Also they have walks organised to the Son Real estate, a farm that also operates as the local museum.  Its pretty cool to see, a mix of farming implements and memories of the way of life of the workers.  The top two floors held a photo exposition on the local birdlife (ducks featured prominently there's quite a lot of standing water there) and the necropolis down on the coast.

One of the things they didn't mention, was that they had wild tortoises. We only saw the one, but it was utterly entrancing.  Its about the size of a rich tea biscuit and near enough the same colour, it spent its time slowly making its way across the path in the woods.  Just in case you don't believe me we took video to back up our information.  In this case we will leave you with ten seconds of tortoise magic.

This is why we can't have nice things.

For those of you who are slow on the uptake WosBlog has been taken offline.  It had been running a story against the site Benchmark tech for pilfering  from puff pieces and marketing guff put out by a posh chair company in its review of a swanky chair.  Full drama plays out here.

Consequently they put up a cease and desist order along with blocking the Revs many Email Addresses from posting comments in their forums, the upshot is WosBlog is banzored.

Now I don't agree with all that Stu says and that: I wasn't around in the Early 90's years when he was in Amiga Power, only getting an Amiga long after it died in the mid to late 90's.   I only got into him as the angry guy from Digitiser, who pissed off Amiga owners in their droves (or rather drove) calling for its extinction, and railing against laborious PC setups and non re definable keys in FPS games.

I've been a WOS member long before the long and acrimonious split that created BX from his whole £2 a month subscribers bonus supergroup, and long, long before world of trolls and the whole flat top hate site.

We fully hope that this whole mess will be sorted out sooner or later but for now from me (Adam) we'll say this.

Happy 50th post

If you haven't gathered were back from holiday, two weeks in the sun, so we have the equivalent of being snowed under by various junk mail and of course Youtube updates.

Consequently theres no update this week, but we'll keep plugging away throughout with various bits of shit.

Hiatus

We'll not be updating for a while so to tide you over here is a short video we made to get you in the mood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsjjsB8-LKI

Ne Yo Beautiful Monster 80's Cover.

Contains 303 beats and Chris Crocker.

What is Purgatory

You know there is a 10th layer of hell reserved right now for people who do this, and by this we mean tennis.

Probably the most boringest of games imaginable so imagine my utter dismay when they had this crop up during Wimbledon fortnight.  70 - 68 thats over 12 bloody hours to resolve a fucking tennis match.  Though unpopular this is what I propose that tennis should become.
Get rid of love , advantage, power serves and double bounce and all that shit.Takes far too long.

Instead implement this.  Get it into the boxes to win the said amount. People run on in Mascot costumes and could be hit with a tennis ball for big points.

If it looks like an old Binatone game made live, then yeah, so what, thats what tennis should be.

Two guys (or girls ED) slogging it ou, andt the first to fifteen wins, by my reckoning you would have Wimbledon done in under three days, sorted.

Terry vids

Amiga gameplay vid complete with ItaloDisco theme and eyepopping graphics.


C64 level 1 speed run with Jazzy music and a more pleasing colour scheme.

There that should illustrate what that big wall o text I wrote out much better than me struggling to explain everything.

Terry's big adventure.

There are certain games you grew up with, that although no one ever new, you know deep down they would be special.  NES Bubble Bobble, Valkyrie Profile PS1 and Terrys Big Adventure C64.  Picked up from a market stall in Woolwich market for the princely sum of about £2, Terrys Big Adventure was an ace platform game sort of in the style of the Mario games but of course on the C64.  Unlike such blatant clones as Giana Sisters (which was German and riddled with cheap deaths) Terrys was a completely balanced and tough platformer in the vein of Mario. 

A small character that looks like the tenor from the Go Compare adverts, Terry is armed with rocks and his trusty yo-yo to dispatch enemies, in fact later levels would make use of the rocks to dispatch enemies immune to a  good yo-yoing!.  The fact that learning the layout of the levels meant that you could with some skill make it through to the later levels with no problems was all the more wiser for a hamfist like myself.   It was also tough too, learning to duck under enemies and lightning bolts, avoid poison mushrooms and leap on certain bricks to reveal hidden bonus rooms were all part and parcel and while old games were tough Terrys was completely fair.  If you died its because you hadn't learned the layout or misjudged a jump. 

Random events lead me to the fact that there was an Amiga version available, and with some curiosity, download it from Zophars Rom Subdirectory.  And thats when it all went wrong. 
Memories from  C64 days have not been kind, whereas the original C64 game was quite subdued in its colour scheme, the Amiga version has that strange colour pallete that old A500 titles had, making it seem like its escaped from the Playschool set.  The gameplay is still the same however and even now I made it to Level 2 with little loss of life (where I was tragically slaughtered, thanks to poison mushrooms and the push scrolling). 

Musically though, its gone through some changes.  The original C64 theme was pretty jazzy and fitted the mood perfectly, possibly due to the fact the score was done by Allister Brimble, though he's only credited for the Amiga Score. Full Brimble Discography Pdf Heeyar.

The Amiga score doesn't really fit, being a storming Italo disco / Euro style track, which makes you wonder what the original was based on. 

All in all its a missed opportunity and  though still good, is a come down from the excellent C64 game.