Matt Charlton

They just don’t make them like they used to.

That’s an overused term by all accounts these days and is often applied to so very many things.  Many of these things are pure nostalgic throwbacks with rose tinted glasses to a “better” time when things were different. 

I think computer gaming is one area where this is a valid figure of speech, for the most part.  I know there are some pretty damn good games out these days across a wide variety of platforms, but something keeps taking me back to the good old days. 

There are some games which I wish we could erase from history, but others where I’m really glad that conservative efforts such as ScummVM are keeping the dreams alive. 

I’ve spent most of this evening playing through Day of the Tentacle.  I remember first buying this from a computer fair oh so many years ago.  The game came with a hints FAQ that was sealed with a sticker to prevent accidental exposure to puzzle hints.  I also seem to remember a lot of fun with the sound.  Back in the days when memmaker ruled and it was all about the first 640kb of RAM. 

You had to have a special bootdisk for games that only loaded your sound card drivers and your cd-rom drive drivers, special autoexec.bat and config.sys, heh that was fun.  Probably explains why I like poking around in a Linux console so much too. 

Today’s gamers never had it so easy with their plug and play technology.  I remember plug and play when we used to call it plug and pray.  I also remember having a PC mag that detailed the upcoming processor technology named MMX (MultiMedia eXtensions).  I think the POD racing game was one of the first games to take advantage of that. 

Heh, that was back when you could have a Cyrix CPU too, wow, memories are flooding back now.

Anyway, Day of the tentacle.  It’s all about the story.  All of those Lucasarts classics – The Secret of Monkey Island, Full Throttle.  Even the non-LA games like Beneath a Steel sky.  I can sit down and play through these games from start to finish and have fun – even though I’ve played the game a gazillion times before.  It’s like watching a really good movie.  An interactive movie.  Where I call the shots.

“if my body were being controlled by some demented, sadistic puppet-master”

Bernard Bernoulli- Day Of The Tentacle

Sure your First Person Shooters are good for a bit of mindless fun (and some are good for thinking fun – bioshock is a thinker for example), but the point and click adventure game is your thinking man’s game.  Where you can take your time to work out just what you need to do with the rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle or just who you need to speak to in order to find out the secret of Monkey Island(TM). 

You couldn’t die (for the most part), there was never a case of you doing something so stupid that you couldn’t complete your task) and you could always find a way to get ahead in navigating. 

There’s no doubt that I like a broad variety of games, but these particular ones hold a special place in my heart.  It’s a shame that so many companies felt that the time had passed and cancelled such projects as Sam and Max 2 (which turned into a bunch of episodic games, weren’t a patch on the original though) and Full Throttle 2 (WHY LUCASARTS, WHY????).

Before the PC, I remember having Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island on the Atari ST.  No messing around with memmaker on that system :p

Monkey Island is a particular favourite of mine too.  The first two are probably the only ones written in the true spirit of the whole thing, probably because they were done by Ron Gilbert.  Some of the dialogue in that game is just simply priceless.  Without a doubt the best part of the game for me is when you’re learning the skills for swordfighting. 

Guybrush Threepwood “You fight like a Dairy Farmer”

Scary pirate “How Appropriate, you fight like a cow!”

The Secret of Monkey Island

I remember my dad buying Full Throttle, again from a computer fair.  Back when games came in cd cases inside huge unnecessary boxes.  I miss those things, at least you felt like you were getting something for your £30.  It had a slightly different menu from the push, pull, give, use block I’d been used to, but it worked surprisingly well.  Again, the dialogue, story and gameplay made it an amazing game. 

Ben “You know what’d look better on your nose?”

Bartender “What?”

Ben “The bar” *THWACK*

Full Throttle

We need more games like this back in the mainstream, there’s still a market for them.  The adventure game studio provides an engine with which to build your own games and there are hundreds available for download.  You’ll even find some from Yahtzee (of Zero Punctuation fame). 

Some of the games are even worth a play through.  There’s a fan version of an Indiana Jones game coming out (when it’s done, it’s not been in development for quite as long as Duke Nukem Forever though)

I can’t tell if my love for these games stems from me playing them as a child or just because they are so damned good.  I do know the world is a worse place with out them though. 

This has been my first decent content post for a while, I missed writing, hopefully it won’t be too much longer before my next post

Come back point ‘n’ click adventure games, we miss you dearly.

I knew it was going to happen.  

The Sims 3 was supposed to be out in three weeks time on the 20th feb.  

Was browing Joystiq (I’ve not had chance to look at it all week again!!!) and EA are currently evaluating the release window.

I know it’s old news, I only just noticed and I was sort of looking forward to it, I know Sue was too.

More left 4 dead this weekend methinks.

Well, today is the first time I’ve used my laptop (properly) since probably sometime on Christmas Eve.

We spent Christmas at my mum and dads and we’re at Sue’s mum and dads at the moment, or at least I am – Sue is at work and is driving back over tonight (she drove back there this morning at about 5:30am!)

I felt rather silly but brought over my Xbox 360 along with my laptop table, my 20″ Dell monitor and all my games.  The plan was to set this up somewhere (probably upstairs) and actually play some of the games that I have accumulated over the last 12-18 months and just not had the time to play.  I ended up setting it up in the front room, so that although I was being anti-social playing on the console, I wasn’t doing it in another room. 

I managed to start and finish the Battlefield : Bad Company single player campaign on normal.  I liked it – it was fab.  I especially liked the way that the game handles death – you just respawn at your nearest save point but with the game having carried on up to the point you died – ie infantry and tanks you took out prior to dying are still dead – makes progressing a little easier.  I fancy replaying it on hard to get some more achievements

The rest of my Christmas presents arrived from Amazon (the ones I ordered myself using various gift vouchers) – Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour are fantastic.  I transferred all of the songs across from Rock Band to Rock Band 2 for 400 gamerpoints which means I no longer require the Rock Band 1 disc – wonder if I can get £10 for it on Ebay.  Then again, everyone is probably doing the same thing which means it’ll be hard to shift – it might be best keeping it for backup purposes – in case I lose my hard disk and I have to restore.  Everything else is redownloadable – this isn’t. 

I also ordered some graphic novels – Serenity and the Buffy season 8 books.  They are now on their way back to Amazon in a jiffy bag.  Completely and utterly useless.  Just under £30 they cost altogether and they’re really thin.  Interesting route the writers took though, turning Buffy into a lesbian, that was interesting.  Wonder if they’ll carry on that theme if they ever make a(nother) movie. 

I plugged the Xbox 360 in to the net yesterday to backup my achievements online (sad) and to update Rock Band/Guitar Hero/copy songs across to Rock Band 2. 

Rock Band 2′s first set begins with Eye of the Tiger.  Awesome song.  GHWT kicks off with Living on a Prayer – just as good if not better. 

GHWT also has Oasis – Some Might Say – I love the guitar riffs in that song. 

I didn’t get much of a chance to play some of the games but got some time in on Fifa 09, The Simpsons and some XBLA games. 

Sue is working Friday afternoon when we get back, also all day Saturday.  I’ll be bean bagging it up in front of the TV with my Xbox 360 methinks.  I might even find time to unwrap Little Big Planet from it’s shrinkwrap and play that too.  If I get time to plug the PS3 back in that is.

I’d wish everyone who reads this post a happy new year, but I’ve not finished posting today yet :p

My PS3 is currently restoring 29GB of data to my brand new 320GB hard disk.  I’ve upgraded from the original 60GB that came with it due to purchasing PlayTV – with games taking up to 6GB on installs you have a couple of games installed and say maybe erm 150 singstar songs, you start to think about space. 

If we’re seriously considering dropping Cable and V+ for the PS3 we need as much storage space as possible. 

It took around an hour and twenty minutes to backup the data from the original hard disk.  I left it going whilst we went to Bevs for a wine evening.  It had long finished by the time we got back. 

I powered the PS3 down, removed the cover and the main screw and slid out the caddy.  Removed three screws before the 4th one completely disintergrated.  Fuck. 

Tried it with all sorts of screwdrivers, no dice (what does that mean anyway?)

Came back downstairs and googled “PS3 hard disk caddy”.  Found a thread full of people asking if anyone else had any suggestions on what to do when a screw head goes.  There were seven or eight people in the same thread who had performed hard disk upgrades who had encountered the same problem. 

Thats bizarre.  I can understand one or two people but it sounds like a major issue with this last screw being far too tight. 

Anyway – they suggested using pliers.  I tried and after a few minutes I managed to get the screw loose and out. 

Swapped the hard disks over, re-installed the caddy and booted her up.  First thing I see is a message asking me to format.  Yay \o/

Disk formatted and restore started.  Should be done in around 45 mins, just in time for CSI finishing. 

Super.

Very impressed with the PlayTV – picture quality is better than the V+ box without a doubt, channel line up is better than expected – the Freeview website said we wouldn’t get as many channels as we do. 

Once the restore has finished, I’ll work on getting the series links set up and working.  Now we’ve got the hard disk for it, it should be fairly simple.