No.2 – Earth Defence Force 2017
Yep, it's so good I actually played it twice, which as alert WoSblog readers will realise is a substantial accolade in itself, so it seems only proper that it takes the No.2 slot as well.
1. That the arcade videogame business is absolutely dead. In the entirety of the International Gaming Expo (formerly/incorporating the ATEI show), occupying the whole floorspace of Earls Court, there was NOT ONE coin-op videogame on display, and only one pinball machine (an unseemly 24 licence – I didn’t see whether there was a hit-the-targets-to-torture-the-suspect mode).
The world of electronic gaming seems now to be wholly about American-style five-reel video fruit machines – there were barely even any with physical reels, and almost none licenced from any kind of British IP. Jaws and Sex And The City were about as good as it got.
Of an old Spectrum game, just because it looks nice in blog format. (You can also click it for a vintage WoS feature from two years ago.)
Yeah, bit behind schedule on this one. Sorry. You know how it is.
No.3 – Earth Defence Force 2017
EDF2017 pretty much killed static-console gaming for me. Apart from Super Mario Galaxy (which exists in a separate category to pretty much all other videogames), it's the last game for any of the mainstream formats that I've invested any significant amount of time in, because nothing's ever been this much fun again.
There is no other word.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]
I knew I’d learned something else in London yesterday, and it’s that if you’re one of the few people still fortunate enough to have a Fopp store near you, this is currently selling for £4. Barg!
1. The Science Museum is incredibly weird, like some mad old inventor’s giant random shed. The basement level, in particular, looks like a building site, to the extent that you’re really not sure you’re actually supposed to be in there.
2. They really knew how to design a Teasmade in the 1940s.
3. The life-size animatronic dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum are fantastic. The only way they could improve them would be if they were sound-activated and watched you as you walked around.
4. There are a lot of unusually eloquent 9-year-olds walking around with camera equipment worth hundreds or even thousands of pounds.
(Still running! Join in! #gamesblamedforrickets)
Sifted out from the flood of suggestions by people who haven’t quite grasped the joke, and have instead just posted a lot of game titles with one or more words replaced by the name of a medical condition, rather than a made-up medical condition that could be in some way caused by a game.
Grand Theft Autism (@James_Batchelor)
Crackdown’s Syndrome (@fumanstu)
Manic Depression Miner (@MrDarrenGarrett)
Super Stardust ADHD (@spadgy_OTA)
Alert WoS viewers will have seen this a while ago, but as it's my all-time favourite piece of videogames-related art it's worth repeating for the hundreds of new readers of WoSblog. Once you've grasped what it is you won't expect that you're going to watch all nine minutes of it. But you will.
1. Get hold of Super Ghouls'n'Ghosts for the GBA. (If you need an emulator, use Visual Boy Advance.)
2. Choose Original Mode, check the time (pro tip: use some sort of clock or watch for this) and start.
3. Finish level 1 (continue or restart as often as you like, but no cheating with save states) and note how long it's taken you.
4. Fastest by midnight tomorrow wins!
This is such a lovely thing.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPbh6Ru7VVM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]
(Salute: alert WoS viewer Subman.)
WoSblog is planning a two-person weekday trip to London soon. A simple enough undertaking, right? But of course it isn’t. Ever since the UK’s railways were privatised by lovable Mrs Thatcher, it’s a well-documented fact that (a) we have the most expensive rail network on Earth, and (b) trying to find out the best and cheapest way to travel between any two points is an insane labyrinthine nightmare of routes, operators, countless different ticket types and “magic stations” – places in the middle of your journey where for no obvious reason you can mysteriously slash the price of your ticket by pretending to make your journey in multiple stages, even though you never actually get off the train or even change seats.
WoSland – now at wosland.podgamer.com
