I think my Formspring page has run its course, so before I shut it down I might as well round up the last of the vaguely interesting questions it raised.

The collected Parts 1, 2 and 3 have already appeared on WoSblog, so here's the 4th instalment, which comprises more questions about gaming and media and is scarily as big as the first three volumes put together. Tomorrow we'll do everything else, and that'll be that.

 

GAMING

 

Why don't PC games interest you?

Ooh, a whole bunch of reasons. Many of them are because of PCs themselves – indie games especially are adept at using full-screen modes that fuck up your desktop, and few things enrage me more than playing some dolt's game that insists on starting in full-screen mode by default (or doesn't offer a windowed mode at all) and then quitting out to find all my carefully-arranged windows and folders and browser screens jammed into one corner of my display.

For some reason indie coders get very huffy if you raise this issue, so I have to be really, REALLY interested in an indie game to take the risk of booting it up at all. Fuck the fuck right fucking off to fuck with starting in fullscreen mode, indie devs. You don't seem to be able to make it work reliably and there's absolutely no excuse for it. If I want to play Russian Roulette with my desktop I'll tick the fucking "fullscreen" box for myself.

There are other technical reasons too – I don't really want stuff pissing around in my registry, or to risk it installing evil DRM and spyware, on the computer I use for work. And, y'know, who wants to spend even a minute of their life trying to make sense of modern PC graphics cards specs to try to get games to run nicely on a PC that didn't cost £2000?

As far as mainstream games on PC go, I'm disinterested in those for the same reasons I'm largely disinterested in mainstream console games these days, except that PC releases are even more weighted towards overblown orcs-and-dungeons rubbish (very broadly speaking, games set in any kind of world that's essentially pre-19th century make my soul weep), and genres that I might otherwise find worthwhile are ruined by the cancer that is mouse-and-keyboard control.

Basically, there's nothing about PC gaming that's worth all the hassle. If I want indie-type games I play them on my iPhone, where most of the worthwhile PC ones end up anyway. If I want triple-A blockbusters, I have an Xbox 360 that I can just put the disc in and go. And if I ever want to play World Of Warcraft, please kill me.

Do you own any arcade machines?

Not any more, unless you count JAMMA boards (eight or nine) and a Supergun. I don't have any cabinets.

I just read your 50 free iPod games stuff – brilliant, generous work. How do you find all the games? Is there a method for finding games or do you just hop onto iTunes and let chance guide you?

There's no secret, really – I just look around and stumble across stuff. You can generally get a pretty decent idea of whether something's going to be any good or not just by the title/icon/screenshots/write-up/reviews.

It's instructive to note that Amiga Power's only dalliances with reviewing unfinished games occurred after you'd gone to Sensible Software. What was your reaction when you found out about those three particular reviews?

I was a bit disappointed, mostly in the editor (JD in the case of Super Stardust – I can't remember the other two games involved). As we'd proved before in We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together, a lot of space can be filled at short notice if an expected review game doesn't show up, and I've never believed that readers care about exclusives. So there aren't really any excuses for reviewing unfinished stuff.

In fact, I believe that doing so is counter-productive to both the magazine and the game's publisher, because if people read about a game and then can't go out and buy it, they (a) get annoyed, and (b) are reading about something else by the time the game DOES come out, and are more likely to buy that than something that in their minds is months old.

How did you feel on reading AP's review of Cannon Fodder 2? Were you genuinely cross, or were you just having a laugh with the occasional narked-sounding comments in your subsequent appearances in the mag?

The latter. I did think the score was a tiny bit harsh given what the actual words of the review said (basically, "this is a better game than CF1"), but I understood the reasoning behind it.

Of all the The Publishers on AP, who was best and who was worst, and why?

I liked Colin The Publisher the least, because he interfered the most. To be honest, I can barely remember anything about the others. After I left, the rest of the team seemed to quite like Simon The Publisher.

How much do you love Cooking Mama?

0.

What's the worst game you've ever played?

There are a thousand possible entirely valid answers to that question, but it's hard to get away from Rise Of The Robots. Not only is it absolutely godawful as a game, but it's beset by constant disk-swapping too, to ensure that every single facet of the experience of playing it is utterly miserable.

Why have you taken the decision to call iPhone / iPod touch games iPod games? The norm is to refer to them as iPhone games. Are you trying to make a point?

Saying "iPhone games" is stupid, because it puts off people who don't have one. If you call them that, people tend to naturally assume you need an expensive phone and contract to play them. Until only about a year ago, I certainly had no idea that you could play "iPhone games" on an iPod, and only last week a professional current British videogames journalist asked me if they'd need a contract to play iPod games.

If you say "iPod", on the other hand, it sounds more like a simple games machine with no strings attached, which is what it is and what I want people to see it as. (Dedicated consoles are also media players these days too, so the iPod is no less of a "proper" handheld console than the DS or PSP are.)

Also, it just seems more right to me to say that an iPhone is an iPod with a phone added to it, than to say an iPod is an iPhone with the phone taken out. Because if you take the phone out of an iPhone, all you've got is an i.

Can you play a handheld games console in public without feeling embarrassed?

Yes, of course. You'd have to have a really feeble mind/personality to be embarrassed about playing a videogame.

If someone bought you a Nintendo game as a present (say, SMG2), would you play it? Would you buy it second-hand?

I wouldn't let anyone buy me a Nintendo game if I had prior knowledge of their intentions, but if it was out of the blue I'd certainly play it. And buying second-hand is fine, because Nintendo don't get any of the money, but even secondhand something like SMG2 will probably never come down to the sort of price I'm prepared to pay for a disc-based game these days, which is about £20 max.

Which is your favourite GTA game?

GTA3. The others may well be measurably better games, but they've all suffered from the law of diminishing returns, as after putting dozens of hours into it and learning the layout of Liberty City backwards I couldn't face the investment of time it would take to get into the subsequent ones properly. I played GTA4 less than San Andreas, and San Andreas less than Vice City.

With GTA3 I didn't know what I was letting myself in for, so I was just messing around with it for a bit and then found myself utterly hooked. With the others, I knew that if I started I'd probably end up waving bye-bye to another chunk of my life, and in each case it looked like being a bigger chunk, so I never fully engaged beyond an initial exploration/few missions. GTA4's framerate was also noticeably distracting, and all the mobile-phone business a massive pain in the backside.

Red Dead 'GTA In Cowboy Boots' Redemption – interested at all ?

Can't say that I am, no. See above for at least part of the reason why.

GTA3 or Mario 64?

If anyone tried to force me to make that choice in reality, I would beat them to death with a spoon. Imagine how long it would take to be beaten to death with a spoon. Brrrrr. So let that be a warning.

Given your vast knowledge of all types of videogames, could you start a WoS guide to LCD handheld games? I have some sort of compulsion to buy every single one I see at car boot sales, and they often turn out to be quite rubbish.

I'm a little busy at the moment. I recommend checking out the excellent simulations that exist for many of them, for example here.

What's your highscore on Drop7?

Modest:

Normal 268,859
Hardcore 313,247
Sequence 199,691

Bubble Bobble or Snow Bros? Everybody seems to remember Bubble Bobble more now, but Snow Bros was a big part of my childhood arcade days. I never even heard of Bubble Bobble until a few years ago.

I'm not a huge fan of either. In that single-screen platforms-clearing genre, my favourite games are probably Tumblepop (arcade) and Monster Business (Amiga).

I've never gotten into those survival horror things like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Do you reckon I'm missing out on much?

I do not. None of them have ever done much for me. Resident Evil 4 was a good game, but about a quarter as good as everyone said it was.

Thanks for kindly linking me to the SE edition of Hyper Lode Runner. What's your favourite version of Lode Runner? Mine's the Mac Plus version.

Probably either the Game Boy Advance one or the fantastic N64 game.

Which official Tetris game is your all-time favourite ?

It's a toss-up between the original Game Boy one and the Pokemon Mini one.

Is the puzzle mode in Tetris DS a puzzle game?

Yes.

Will you complete your New Games Taxonomy, or are you going to leave it at that?

It's not "new". Tetris has NEVER been a puzzle game, by any rational definition of the term. The taxonomy doesn't need changing, idiots do.

But… I've been told all my life that Tetris was a puzzle game. Have I been lied to or misinformed?

BOTH.

You are at your desk, you can see a computer. Exits are N and E. What were your feelings about text adventures when they were popular? And do they have any place in gaming now?

They have a place in gaming if anyone still wants to play them. I'm not part of that community myself. I always found the genre too frustrating, because of the double barrier – first you had to work out what you needed to do, then you also had to work out how to communicate those actions to the computer in a way it could understand.

Also, I like pictures.

Do you think Wario Ware would've been popular in the 80's or 90's?

The 90s, certainly – gaming was already getting stale, formulaic and overblown by then. So much of it is focused on referencing the past that I'm not completely sure it would have had enough to work with in the 80s, but I like to think that the sheer intensity would have gone down well with the arcade crowd.

Do you like any of the more recent Soul Calib("re") games?

I'm not actually sure what the "more recent" ones would be. I think the last one I played was the PSP one, which was very disappointing.

Once upon a time a game was made that featured black people as end of level bosses. Some people freaked out, calling such a thing "racist". Is it really racist or does it pave the way for future black people who aspire to become end of level bosses?

Of course it's not racist to have a black end-of-level boss, unless it's a golliwog or something. Equality means equality of playing the bad guy too.

Which is your absolute favourite pinball table ever (or top five if you can't narrow it down)?

As with all these list questions, there's no concrete answer – my favourites vary all the time. Ones that I have a special personal fondness for include The Machine (Bride Of Pinbot), Mr And Mrs Pac-Man, Party Animal, Lethal Weapon and Special Force.

I really can't get on with Bangai-O Spirits. Does this make me a bad person?

Yes. Yes it does.

Do you have a special fondness for the Spectrum, or is it just another machine in a long line?

I have a special fondness for the Spectrum.

Your showbiz chum J Nash is another big Spectrum fan. What made the computer special (as opposed to, say, the Amiga)?

Personal memories. I'm not sure there's anything all that inherently "special" about the Spectrum in itself compared to any other computer of the era. It was British and quirky and attracted developers of a similar mind, but that's only a good thing if you value quirky British things. As it happens I do, but for other people, say, a proper sound chip and non-clashing colours are a prerequisite. What made the Spectrum special? The fact that I had one.

If some group in southeast Asia started selling Manic Miner The Lost Levels on DS cartridges would you care? Would you be curious as to how well it sold?

I can't speak for the Headsoft guys, but personally I wouldn't care in the slightest, and I'd certainly be interested to know how it sold.

Regarding that Manic Miner Lost Levels being sold in southeast Asia scenario, if it became a huge hit and there was a load of merchandising and an animated tv series with a character named after you would you find it amusing?

Obviously. Although at that point I'd clearly also be suing them for a cut.

Do you have much time for the various Mario RPG series (Mario & Luigi, Paper Mario, etc)?

I absolutely love Super Mario RPG on the SNES, and the first Paper Mario (never played the second one, found the third a bit disappointing). The GBA/DS ones went a bit overboard on the controls, which drove me away. You'd come back to Mario & Luigi a week after playing it, have forgotten all 263 different move combinations, and basically have to start again.

Who do you think would win the fight if the protagonists of Jet Set Willy and Horace goes skiing squared up for a biff?

Willy, easily. Horace has little flipper arms that he could barely land a punch with, no mouth for biting with, and great big vulnerable eyes that even a drunk man couldn't miss. A couple of quick jabs and he'd be all but helpless.

When you first found out that Pac-Mania involved jumping did it blow your mind?

I can't say that it did. My mind is resilient beyond normal human levels.

When did the retrogaming movement/phenomena emerge?

The first time I was aware of properly playable emulation was around the beginning of 1994, in the shape of Digital Eclipse's emulations of Defender, Joust and Robotron for the Mac, which I played while working at Sensible Software. There had been emulation previously (eg Spectrum emulation on the Amiga), but nothing that ran at playable speed, and I was completely blown away to be playing genuine arcade Robotron at my desk. (Once I'd bought a Gravis gamepad, as insanely the keyboard control required 16 keys.)

Retro really started to take off not long after this, with retro compilations like Nichibutsu Arcade Classics for the SNES (1995) leading the way for a whole clutch of similar titles for the PS1, and the beginnings of PC emulation with the likes of Dave Spicer's incredible Sparcade (also 1995).

Sparcade was the thing that really kicked the door down as far as emulation went, and the advent of the powerful PS1 was the catalyst for "official" retro.

Which 8-bit games console in your opinion was the best?

The NES had lovely joypads and a lot more good games than the Master System, so I guess it'd be that, unless we're counting the PC Engine as 8-bit in which case there's no contest.

How slow is John Walker at playing Words with friends? Do you think he cheats? I bet he cheats, which is rather unchristianly of him I think.

Imagine a sphere made of steel that's the size of the Sun. Imagine that once every 10,000 years, a butterfly brushes its wings against the sphere. Imagine how long it takes for the sphere to be completely worn away. That's how long it takes John Walker to play a word in WWF.

You consider the Outrun series of games to be over-rated, but do you still like any of them?

I like lots of them. Outrun 2/Coast To Coast are wonderful games, and I like Outrunners too. Most of them are perfectly okay games – it's not that I dislike them, it's just that people wildly over-rate them due to nostalgia and the fact that they had nice graphics for the time and memorable music.

If you could preserve only three videogames for future generations/civlisations in an indestructible time capsule, which games would you choose?

Grand Theft Auto 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Earth Defence Force 2017, Bangai-O Spirits and Pic-Pic. NOBODY TELLS ME I CAN ONLY HAVE THREE VIDEOGAMES IN MY INDESTRUCTIBLE TIME CAPSULE.

Do you like any of the Animal Crossing games?

I tried to get into the DS one, and it seemed very tedious.

Is there a company you think could make a good games console or handheld?

Yes. Eddie Stobart the international hauliers.

Did you ever play Mr. Do! on the Game Boy? What did you think of it as a conversion?

It was a very decent effort, apart from the horrible music. (What was wrong with the original Can-Can music? It can't have been in copyright.)

Like all GB arcade games, though, it was almost useless due to lack of highscore saving. And annoyingly, it's one of the very few games that doesn't work under GB emulation on a DS flashcart, which would have solved that problem.

Do you like any of the Metroid series?

I absolutely loved Fusion and Zero on the GBA.

Do you still find the classic Pac-Man games entertaining still, or outdated?

I was never much of a Pac-Man fan in the first place, to be honest. I'm not generally one for games that are trial-and-error memory tests, which is basically what Pac-Man is. That said, I do enjoy the occasional game of Pac-Man Lite on the iPod.

(I have the full version of Ms Pac-Man, but I actually prefer the demo of the original. I'm not sure why – I think perhaps the solid walls make Ms. Pac-Man feel a bit claustrophobic.)

Pac-Man Championship Edition is splendid, though.

Would you agree that Tyrian, the vertical scrolling shmup for DOS, was a slow and tedious mess?

Yes I would.

 You only like Phantom Hourglass out of the Zelda games? You liked Link's Awakening as well right?

I played it for a few hours and got bored of waiting for something to happen that wasn't just meeting Character A and being told to go to Location B and talk to Character C, who sent me to Location E (Location D being mysteriously blocked off at this point) where I talked to Character F who told me to go to Location G and talk to Character H, who sent me on an errand to Location etc etc etc etc.

At no point did I feel like I was doing anything except cranking the handle to move the plot along, and if someone says "Ah, but after EIGHT hours the REAL game starts!" then they can fuck right off.

Do you consider any of the Sonic The Hedgehog series to be any good?

I like the first one, and the Neo Geo Pocket one. Basically I like Sonic when it's about zooming through fairly linear levels at high speeds, and I don't like it when it's a huge sprawling mess of methodical, boring exploration in levels with no landmarks. Most of the Sonic sequels, even just in the "classic" 2D series, are like Turrican with rodents instead of robots. All the extra characters can piss off too.

Isn't it weird how Outrun 2 didn't get a Wii version?

Um, I guess.

Can a video game make you cry?

Me personally? Nothing's ever come even remotely close. And I can blub at movies, TV shows, sporting events or even songs at the drop of a hat.

Have you played and enjoyed any of the Katamari games?

I played the first one and found the control needlessly tiresome and fiddly. So yes and no, in that order.

We know that you like Super Mario Galaxy, but do you think it's 3D Mario predecessors (Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine) still hold up today?

Mario 64 is still brilliant – I played it all the way through again when it came out on the DS (albeit with a healthy slice of new content). Sunshine doesn't stand up at all well – my first impressions of it were far too optimistic, and I lost interest in it very quickly.

Do you like Rez?

Sort of.

Jumping Flash – the first 3D platformer, and sadly mostly forgotten about?

That's an oddly formatted question. But basically, yes. It was hugely popular at Sensible, especially with Chris Yates, but I think it was just too fiddly for most people. There haven't really been many of what you could properly call 3D platform games, because control systems just aren't really up to giving you the freedom of sight and movement necessary to make them pleasurable. Even the likes of Super Mario Galaxy aren't really platform games in the sense Jumping Flash is. They're 3D adventures with some platformy bits.

Do you think that good free games (whether FOSS or Flash or whatever) should get equal notice and credit as pay-for games?

I don't know what FOSS is, but basically yes. It's a bizarre idea that a great game should somehow become less noteworthy if it's free.

(The traditional argument, of course, is that people can try free games for themselves without risking money, so they don't need reviews or other coverage. But there are so many free games that nobody alive has the time to try them all out personally, so we still need to be told about the great ones.)

In Bangai-O Spirits how come I hear the same maniacal laughter when I get a game over and when I win and beat my best time?

Nobody else hears any maniacal laughter, man. It's just you.

Do you think Nintendo should've kept making the DS compatible with Gameboy cartridges instead of getting rid of it?

No. The way they stuck out was really ugly. You're much better off with a flashcart and a GB emulator.

3DS – inevitable hit that will repeat the success of the DS, or consumer-confusing disappointment?

Having not seen one, I have no idea. I'm not convinced that gamers (or anyone else, come to that) are crazy about 3D, but so far everyone who's seen the 3DS appears to have been totally wowed, despite the machine itself being a bit lumpy, so maybe there's something in it. (And at least it's not as monstrously tacky and ugly as the new 360.)

It's a shame none of the useless excuses for websites (hello Eurogamer) who posted video footage of themselves poncing around with a real-life 3DS actually bothered to show us ANYTHING ON THE FUCKING SCREEN, for example.

I'm getting an iTouch tomorrow! What 10 games should I get for it? I have pretty broad gaming tastes i.e. if it's good I'll probably like it.

Orbital, Drop7, Fruit Ninja, Espgaluda 2, Soosiz, Truckers Delight (if it's still 59p), Run!, Squareball, Pac-Man Championship Edition and GeoDefense is a good starter pack.

What do you think of Donkey Kong Country returning?

It looks lovely from the trailer, and it does make me happy to see 2D platform games continuing to make a comeback. Of course, it's a moot point to me, due to the whole "never giving Nintendo any money again" thing, and half the joy of 2D platformers coming back is that when anyone else does it it's a cheap download game, whereas you know Nintendo are going to punt it out on a disc for 40 quid, the hateful greedy fuckbags.

I sometimes come across people who tell me the Donkey Kong Country games were overrated. What is up with THAT?!

Poor-quality friend selection is what is up with that.

If there was one video game power-up you could employ in real life, what would it be?

God mode.

What's your favourite style of graphics and sound in games?

Neo-retro, eg this.

Do you think "Balloon Kid" for the Gameboy would be an even better game if it scrolled the other way?

You'd think, but I've adapted to it now, and if it went the "right" way it'd feel weird.

Is there a game you've reviewed which, you now feel you rated too harshly (or indeed, not harshly enough).

Nothing that springs instantly to mind. Obviously I've reviewed hundreds of games over the years, and with the benefit of hindsight I might add on 5% here or knock 10% off there, but off the top of my head I can't come up with anything where I now think I really got it badly wrong. I was a bit hard on Irem Arcade Classics for the PS1 in Edge, maybe.

Have you played Rocket Slime for the DS? It's not an RPG and the tank battles are worth checking out.

I played it, but I remember giving up on it very quickly. I don't remember why, but it came out at a time when the DS was absolutely swamped with great releases, so anything that annoyed me even a little bit – unskippable cutscenes, overlong tutorials, overcomplex controls, a title screen in the wrong shade of blue – got thrown in the bin so I could spend more time with Slitherlink or Actionloop or Castlevania Portrait Of Ruin or New Super Mario Bros or Ouendan or Advance Wars or Robocod or Pic-Pic or Space Invaders Extreme or Bangai-o Spirits or (cont'd page 94).

Do you think updating older games (better graphics, fixing bugs, adding new features/modes, etc) is a good idea? Is it just a way for developers to cash in? Do you think they'd be better off just coming up with new ideas?

It's a great idea. Now that the controls are fixed, Perfect Dark XBLA is a thing of enormous beauty. It's still a fantastic game, but now all the framerate issues are gone, it looks prettier, and you get instant access to it on hard drive for seven quid. How much, out of 100, would we like to see Goldeneye get the same treatment? The answer, of course, is "a billion".

In relation to the last question, Goldeneye is being remade for the Wii. So this is the worst possible scenario for it being remade, right? Also why add in Daniel Craig you think?

Well, because it would look a bit odd if they did it with Pierce Brosnan now – Goldeneye the film is 15 years old now (no, really), so half the audience wouldn't have a clue who he was. And yes, having it done by Nintendo is the worst possible remake scenario – it barely looks any better than the N64 game, you're going to have to control it with the Wiimote and it's going to cost six times what Perfect Dark in HD did. Ugh.

This "putting games on discs and charging 40-70 quid for them" business really does seem ridiculous. How much should a game disc cost on its day of release?

I've always maintained that there's no justification or sense in charging more than £15-20 for a new videogame. It's a system which serves nobody except a handful of owners of triple-A franchises and strangles everyone else to death.

It's it amazing how many time's Sega's mistakes as a hardware manufacturer are repeated (e.g. Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's PlayStation Move)?

Not amazing, no. The videogames industry is largely populated by total idiots.

So, what do you think of Microsoft's Kinect?

It would be hard to exaggerate the magnitude of my total disinterest.

I haven't got a latest generation console, (PS3, Xbox, Wii). I'm not loaded but could afford one. I do have an iPod Touch thanks to your recommendation and love it. Should I get a console, do I need one and which if any?

I do think the 360 is pretty good value, largely for XBLA and Indie stuff but also because you can pick up loads of very good mainstream games for under a tenner for it. And of course it's got EDF2017.

As long as you can connect it to the internet, I reckon the 360 is a very worthwhile purchase, and the only one of my current home consoles I'd really miss if they all got blown up in a power surge.

Have you ever liked Wizball?

Not really, no. It's one of those things that people really love but I just don't get the appeal of.

Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll basically broke Sensible Software while you were its Dev Director. Is that your responsibility in any way?

SDRR was nothing to do with me. When I left Sensible there was nothing of it except a few graphics.

Blast Corps or Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction?

Blast Corps or [almost anything] = Blast Corps.

Except for Poker, do you ever play card/board games?

Any chance I get, which sadly isn't very often.

Have you played the PC Tempest 2000 tribute Typhoon 2001? If not, why not, do so now and move on to… What did you think of it?

I did play it, some years ago, and even made a donation. It's excellent.

I sometimes feel guilty or ashamed of my gaming hobby. How can I get over this? I don't want to give up playing games.

The secret is to man up and grow a pair.

Is there a company out there you know of that has never made a bad videogame?

Firemint (Flight Control, Real Racing) seem to be 2 for 2 so far. And loads of other iPod developers.

What kind of person do you think would appreciate Gradius V as a present? I have an extra copy.

What sort of person WOULDN'T appreciate Gradius V as a present? I'll tell you what sort. Cunts, that's what sort.

Getting the "AAA" smiley from Outrun 2 with all the flashing hearts dotted around it's head is an amazing feeling. Is this what it feels like to fall in love? I've never been in love.

Falling in love is 2% better.

You like Super Mario Galaxy a great deal, but do you have any particular favourite games from the 2D Mario series?

Super Mario World. Yoshi's Island is a bit too faffy for my tastes and I don't really care for the graphical style. SMB3 is a smashing game (in its Mario All Stars incarnation), but it misses out from being designed for the technical limitations of the NES. The atmosphere, glorious aesthetics and irrepressible invention of World was the first time I ever experienced a home videogame that just seemed to exist on a different plane to everything else.

How long do you play video games every day?

As long as it takes.

Do you like Tennis?

Since you've used a capital "T", I have to assume you're referring to the Game Boy game of that name, which I like very much.

When did you first encounter Gravity Force 2, who did you play against and who won?

We really have exhausted all the interesting things anyone might ask me about gaming, haven't we?

 

 

MEDIA

 

 

Was contributing to Digitiser for so many years generally a positive and rewarding experience?

Enormously so. I loved writing for Digi, I loved having a big audience, and I loved having a small association with the love for it that Mr Biffo created among its readership. (And the money was extremely good too.) When GameCentral replaced it, British videogaming was never the same again. It was a big victory for the dullard faction.

Which was better, Crash or YS?

Crash for information, YS for entertainment.

As in you could actually trust the reviews in Crash? After reading a load of YS that would be a novelty. Man, their reviews were SUSPECT until Linda B took over.

Yes, that's what I meant. I wouldn't trust YS's reviews as far as I could throw Belgium, but Crash never made me laugh. Our conscious mission on AP was to try to combine the best aspects of the two, and I like to think we got there eventually.

You say Crash were good for reviews and yet they gave the diabolical Human Killing Machine a ridiculously high score and the review was boring. Though I'll never forgive YS's Outrun Europa review, on the whole it didn't seem too bad. And was fun.

Wasn't Human Killing Machine "reviewed" by US Gold's PR person as some sort of attempted comedy feature? Because that just kinda backs up my point that Crash was rubbish at being funny.

As a former contributor to PC Zone will you be sad to see it go ?

Well, I've got no interest in PC games, so I haven't really read it since I worked for it. As far as I'm concerned it pretty much died the day Future took it over (in principle, that is – I'm sure the guys writing it continued to do the best job possible in the circumstances), so the recent news about its official closure seems like old news to me.

I guess in some ways it was the last surviving link to the "Golden Age" of games mags, though, and it's certainly sad to see that light finally extinguished.

Which was worse, CU Amiga or Amiga Format?

CU Amiga. Format was rubbish, but at least it didn't give Rise Of The Robots 81%.

You have a fairly … robust writing style and it attracts a lot of positive and negative feedback. Aside from the Train Trackers weirdness, has any criticism ever really gotten to you?

I don't think any public criticism has ever got to me, no. (In the Train-Tracking case it was the threats and their unusual plausibility that were a bit troubling – not the criticism, which was mostly moronic, and was in any event centred on my actions rather than what I'd written.)

In 20 years I can think of three occasions when editors have expressed some unhappiness with work I submitted, though, and that always upsets me. (I thought it was very unfair criticism in one particular case, but you always want people to be happy with what they've commissioned.)

Some of the stuff that was said when the WoS Forums access changes were implemented a couple of years back (and subsequently) was pretty outrageous, but since none of it was true I couldn't say it cost me any sleep. I'm never very distressed by idiots telling lies, especially cowardly anonymous internet idiots.

Have you ever read a book where you hated all the lead characters and were cheering on the bad guys? (I have: The Stand by Stephen King)

Not exactly. But I've read a book where I hated the central character and really wanted there to be some bad guys who would kill him. It was this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Techno-Pagan-Octopus-Messiah-Ian-Winn/dp/0953327515

A friend loved it so much that they very kindly bought and sent me a copy, and I've never loathed a book's central character more in my life. Sadly, as it was basically an autobiographical story I knew he wasn't going to get murdered at any point, and as a result it's one of only two novels I can think of that I've ever given up on before the end.

(The other, which shares some of the same characteristics of being set primarily up the author's arse, is "A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers, which ought in accordance with trading standards laws to be titled "An Insufferable Pile Of Fucking Shite".)

Did you have much input to what was included on the Amiga Power coverdisks?

Not much. I never liked talking to games companies, so other people always chased up the demos. I did nearly always pick the PD games, though.

Indeed, I was generally keen to have full PD games on there instead of commercial demos. I tried to ensure we always had some high-quality PD on every issue from when I was editing the mag until I left, between issues 26-39. That was when we gave away the likes of Defender, Super Obliterator, Atom Smasher, Digger, Bob's Magic Garden, Llamatron, Asteroids, Tetris Pro, Nipper, Premier Picks, Poing, Monaco, Gorf, Space Invasion and more.

If you look at the year before ish 26 you see hardly any PD games, and the six months after ish 40 also have far fewer than my era. (Beyond that, demos started to get very thin on the ground, so PD made a comeback out of necessity.)

Which AP feature/review/piece was the most amusing for you, personally?

To read or to write? If the latter, We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together. In the former case, probably the giant Doom feature, particularly Doom – But Not On The Computer.

Why is it that when the internet broke down all the barriers between VG magazine superstars and their readers, 90% of all conversation is a one-way simpery street of people hoping to have their heads patted by their erstwhile heroes?

Is it? That's not my experience by a long chalk. I'd say about 20% tops of the public interaction I have on the internet is people being nice, with the rest coming from bitter, hate-filled loonies spouting vile abuse.

I consider you to be the 'Mark Kermode' of the games industry. Are you happy with this?

I've been called worse things.

What made you the most happy during your time on AP? And what made you the most cross?

Colleagues and management, in that order.

You have a (possibly cult) fan-base: what's this like, and (how) do you view them as a whole? Generally is it a love/loath/like/pity/fear/symbiotic relationship? How do you other friends view your cult icon status?

Most of my friends aren't really into videogames, so my status – "cult icon" or otherwise – doesn't impinge on their consciousness to any significant degree.

As for me, it's nice having a few people who appreciate my work. I can't say I've ever thought about it in much more depth than that. I don't really think of my readers as "fans" as such, any more than I'm a "fan" of the Guardian because I buy it every Saturday.

Isn't it about time games journalists found a new way of saying 'visceral'? I think it's one of those words like 'gameplay' that should only ever appear under the heading "You're Fired If You Type This"

I dunno, man. It's pretty good for when stuff is visceral, and it's not like there are a lot of synonyms.

Did you know any of the ZZapp64 reviewers? If so, were they good blokes?

Not at the time, but I subsequently met Gary Penn, Julian Rignall and Paul Glancey and they were all very nice people. And as far as I know, still are.

What did you really think of Matt Bielby's tenure as editor of Amiga Power? The "Golden Age" moniker always seemed, to me at least, to have an edge of sarcasm behind it.

You are a perceptive viewer.

How were the AP dual-writer reviews (Titus the Fox, Lethal Excess, etc) composed? Were they really written by two people jostling for position at the keyboard (as the writing suggested), or were they actually written by one person (like most Ed comments)?

They were genuinely written by two people jostling for position at the keyboard.

Exactly how much do you resent Paul Rose's moderate success within conventional media. And your fucking idiotic aces question on the forum registration doesn't tell you if the tournament is a satellite or not. If it is, you should obviously fold.

I don't resent it the slightest bit. Biffo is a very talented chap who deserves to be successful. Now, that cunt Brooker, on the other hand…

Exactly how much do you resent Charlie Brooker's moderate success within conventional media?

Not the slightest bit – I was jesting before for hilarious comic purposes. He's a fantastic writer with a wholly admirable worldview and I hope he continues to do well, especially with Newswipe. We need lots more stuff like that on TV. The gameshow, not quite so much.

What do you think of some people in the games industry being treated like rock stars? Everybody seems to think Suda 51's really cool.

The last disc-based videogames I devoted any serious amount of time to for pleasure were Ridge Racer 6, Earth Defence Force 2017 and Super Mario Galaxy. I think the most recent of those was released in 2007. I'm almost totally disconnected from, and disinterested in, that mainstream gaming world now. Though I currently spend more money and time playing videogames than I've done at any previous point in my life, I'm now almost 100% a "casual" gamer.

So I have absolutely no information on which to base an opinion about your question, I'm afraid. I have no idea who "Suda 51" is, or in what way some people in the games industry may or may not have been treated like rock stars. I have as little to do with "the games industry" as humanly possible.

Should someone start a Nintendo DS magazine now or just start making one for iPhone/iPod touch instead?

It's obviously far too late for a DS mag, and I don't think there'd be a big audience for a newsprint-based iPod one. The market moves far too quickly for a print mag to keep up.

Let's say a quote from a review you wrote appears on a game's packaging or ad. What quote would you like it to be and what game's packaging or ad would you like it to appear on?

"Some kind of dangerous spiky custard", James Pond 3, Amiga Power.

What was it like to work at Future Publishing in the early '90s?

86%.

When was the last time you were in a Future publishing building?

Probably late 2001, when I did an interview with Greg Ingham for CTW that he took huge (and totally unjustified) exception to. I can't recall a time after that.

What's the deal with you and Future, for those of us in cheaper seats?

It's a semi-long story.

http://s2.zetaboards.com/worldofstuart/topic/810361/1/

Is there anybody, that you don't personally know, who you now feel immensely let down by? For example I feel let down by Chris Morris, Mike Tyson, Lindsey Lohan, Ant & Dec, the majority of the Wu-Tang Clan, Iain Banks, Obama, Buck 65, David Lynch, Kier…

The judge in Future's appeal hearing.

Do you ever regret taking legal action against Future? How do you think your career would be different if you had?

I don't regret it, and I doubt things would be very different now if I hadn't – Future doesn't publish any magazines about anything I care about any more. But even if they did I couldn't live with myself if I'd just rolled over and let them rip off my work on a massive scale. How can you work with cheats and liars who just ignore your contract with them whenever they feel like it?

What did you like about NGamer the last time you read it? Would you write for a magazine that was like that?

What I liked about the issues of NGamer I've read was that it had the "user club" feel of 80s and 90s mags like YS, SuperPlay and N64, where you really got the impression that the staff loved the games as much as you did and just wanted to share their enthusiasm with the readers, as opposed to being shills trying to sell them stuff. That's the kind of mag I always want to write for.

Do you miss those small tips books that used to be taped to the front of SNES and N64 era magazines that always contained the same repeated cheat codes for Pilotwings and Turok over and over? The best thing about those books was the smell.

I absolutely loathe tips books given away with magazines, in every conceivable aspect and way.

What's your favourite scoring breakdown for games reviews? e.g. Out of ten, per cent etc.

I love 'em all. If I was editing a magazine nowadays, we'd use different ones for every review. So the first review would score 74%, the second would get three stars, the next 6/10 and so on and so forth. I feel that that would be a deeply excellent thing.

What weekly/monthly magazines do you still read on a regular basis?

Viz, Private Eye, Retro Gamer and Esquire, though the last one is only because I got it on a special £1-an-issue subscription offer. (I get Retro Gamer for free, but I'd buy it if I didn't.)

I see you're a Viz reader. What are your favourite strips, current and all-time ? I think 'Drunken Bakers' is existential genius and very well drawn.

I'm firmly in the camp that finds Drunken Bakers (and all the similar strips) about as funny as Kevin Eldon. Generally speaking my favourites are the one-offs featuring real-life historical figures in comic-style japes, like Pope Benedict The Dodger or the best one of recent months, Fire-Walking Alan Turing.

Of the regular strips, I love Eight Ace the most, but Roger Mellie, Sid The Sexist, Biffa Bacon and The Fat Slags can all be relied on to tell the same joke every month in endlessly clever and inventive new ways.

What TV shows about games did you like and what internet broadcasted video features about games do you like if any?

Video Gaiden is the only TV games show I've ever liked (though the Sky one, possibly called Gamesworld, with Bob Mills, was quite watchable). I always thought Gamesmaster was shit, and Bad Influence was aimed at people half my age (even at the time).

The only internet "show" I ever watch is Zero Punctuation, and that pretty rarely. It's very good, but I can never be arsed to find out when there's a new one, so I watch half a dozen at a time and then never see it for months.

Have you any tips for storing old games magazines?

Um, put them in boxes? Most games mags from the last 20 years are printed on pretty glossy paper that'll do fine in an old crisp box, though if you want to keep them extra-mint (or if you don't have such a steady supply of crisp boxes as I do) you should invest in some of those plastic storage crates that supermarkets everywhere sell now.

Just don't buy the extra-giant ones, as they'll hold a couple of hundred mags safely but you'll never lift the fuckers if you ever want to move. Personally I can't wait for the day when every mag gets scanned when it's six months old and we can store every one ever printed on a tiny portable hard drive that fits in your pocket.

What should Amiga Power's writing and editorial teams have done differently?

Well, we shouldn't have lost J Nash on the way to the Viking Funeral, and we should have built a more seaworthy vessel. Apart from that I think we did pretty much okay.

Would you ever again contribute to a Digiworld-style online games magazine type thing? If so, what form would you want said mag-thing to take?

I'm a word-monkey for hire, so I'll contribute to just about anything that offers cash money. What I'd like to get involved with would be some sort of iPad/iPod mag (ie one ON the iPad/iPod, not necessarily just ABOUT them) – I think those offer incredible potential for doing brilliant stuff far beyond what you can get from a website.

It's a pity nobody seems to have properly sorted out the economic model for delivering print-style publications via the App Store yet. It'd be awesome if you could get a "magcast" as easily as you can a podcast.

Are there any newspapers that you for which you wouldn't accept a writing job?

Don't think so, no. (Well, apart from the BNP Gazette or something.) Preaching to the converted is too easy, and the ego of the writer is usually such that they feel they may be able to enlighten an instinctively hostile audience with their great wisdom and effect change for the better. And if that doesn't work, oh well, big cheque.

Despite TV listings being readily available on the internet, I find i still buy a TV magazine. Worse still I buy one of those awful TV Choice type things which give star letter to 'I think programme X was great'. What are your thoughts on TV mag buying?

I find it incomprehensible. I just flick through the EPG any time I feel like watching some telly and see what's on.

"It's like someone magnified all the bad bits of Kieron Gillen by about a thousand, and ruthlessly cut out any of the redeeming qualities." Kieron Gillen has bad bits?!

Yes.

-Kieron Gillen has bad bits?! -Yes. Which ones are those?

I'm not sure this is a productive line of discussion.

You appear to be text only. No chance of a podcast or vlog?

Not much. I never ever listen to podcasts, and can't imagine why anyone else does, so I'd have no idea how to make a good one.

Why call people "insufferably useless, stupid cunts" when you find something in their game you don't like? PD controls are the product of a dev working under publisher direction. Flaming them for doing what they were paid to do is mean spirited isn't it?

No. Whose precise internal corporate fault something is isn't the consumer's problem. If you put your name on something shit, expect to be held responsible. I have to tolerate that happening all the time when idiot subs change my copy to something stupid and leave my name on it, it's one of the petty unfairnesses of life we have to live with.

I mean, what is it you're proposing? That every time some cretinous stupidity happens in a game, I phone up the developers and say "Did you want to do that or did someone else tell you to?" before I write anything about it? Because the matter of exactly who did it is of absolutely zero importance to anyone thinking of buying the game. What matters is that it's happened, and that the game's been ruined. Anything else is extraneous detail, and people have too short an attention span these days for extraneous detail.

Would you say the barrier to you calling someone a "cunt" is a lot lower than that of the general populace? If so does that mean something is wrong with your or something is wrong with most people?

No, I wouldn't say it was lower. Evidently you're a nun or something, because every time I go outside I hear people calling other people cunts all the time. I only do it when I'm especially angry about something, because I like the word to retain some power.

(It's why, despite its becoming increasingly commonplace to use the word "rape" to mean something other than violent sexual assault, I never do.)

In six months of writing WoSblog, for example, comprising 230 separate articles and hundreds of thousands of words, I've used the word "cunt" on four occasions as far as I can see, one of which was a throwaway joke.

I can't help but feel that you're dancing around a point you can't quite bring yourself to make here. Why don't you just come out and say it?

Can't you at least find out if people are "insufferably useless, stupid cunts"before you call them "insufferably useless, stupid cunts"? Wouldn't you just drop them an email or phone them up? Or if it's not important just don't call people names at all.

Apparently you weren't listening the first time, so I'll try again, but more concisely. The specific identity of the guilty individual/s is irrelevant. What matters is the act, and if you identify yourself as collectively responsible for the act, expect to be held collectively responsible for it.

If a developer emails me and says "We really wanted to put proper controls in, but Idiot X at the publisher told us we couldn't", I'll happily add that to the story. In fact, I'll probably do a whole new story about what a cretin Idiot X is. But I'm a reporter, not a detective. It's my job to say HOW things are, not WHY.

I have never heard someone call someone else a "cunt" in the street. Ever. Do you live in a rough area?

Yeah, I live in Bath. It's notoriously rough. I'm bored of this now. What's your actual job at 4J Studios?

If you could get a column in any internet, newspaper or magazine, which would it be (obvious money considerations aside)?

If we're ruling out money as a consideration, the only other thing a journalist is likely to care about is the size of the audience they might reach. So in that case, it'd be the Sun or the Radio Times or something like that. Off the top of my head I can't think of anything I like so much I'd want to be in it just for "cool" value.

Would you ever take up a full time position on a games mag? If not, what would convince you to?

It's hard to imagine the scenario ever arising, for a number of reasons, but I've certainly got no objections to the idea in principle.

So Stu now your showbiz chum J Nash has joined the now-est gaming of the modern zeitgeist can we expect a modern and more successful equivalent of the excellent but sadly short lived DigiWorld? A kind of RPS but for an interesting platform?

I sure hope so!

Can you explain why about 37,148 people reminisce about how wonderful Zzap 64 was when absolutely nobody on the web recalls or mentions Commodore User? I'm rather perplexed by this as I used to read both and CU was at least very nearly as good as Zzap.

Beats me, as I never read either of them. But I could tell you nearly everyone who wrote for Zzap! 64 and I couldn't tell you a single person who wrote for Commodore User, which might answer the question. I'll bet you 50p that 20 years after Edge's last issue nobody will remember it fondly either, for the same reason.

Do you think it'd be possible to write a program that would emulate your writing style convincingly?

Probably. If so I wish they'd hurry up.

 

And finally.

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