Upon installing Grand Theft Auto 4 graphics enhancement modification: iCEnhancer 1.25, I was compelled to do something many have never done before. In this virtual city analogous to the epic metropolis that is New York City, where the player is a free agent, unbound by social, moral or ethical constraints and totally free to wreak havoc; in this urban playground where I may do as I wish, I…
…went for a walk and took some pictures.
Yes, oddly enough having installed iCEnhancer, the usual acts one would associate with a bout of GTA 4 were far from my mind. Running gun battles with rival crime syndicates, evading local law enforcement and purloining pilot commanded petroleum propelled mechanised transportation pods (also known as cars) had suddenly been displaced by this far more benign activity.
Liberty City’s substantial aesthetic overhaul imbued the already impressive scale of New York’s evil twin with the capacity to showcase vistas that, for me at least, cultivated a desire to see familiar locales visited long ago (now quite literally rendered) in a new light and capture them in pictorial form for the sake of posterity.
This post is an updated version of something I wrote for my old blog, Games Theory. Given that the sum total readership of that blog was me, I’ll post it here. Enjoy!
The C64, like riding a water slide with nubile blondes apparently.
I received my brand new C64 on my seventh birthday, my variant being a less bulky device than its predecessor and complete with a built-in slot for box cartridges, a data storage format which loaded games instantaneously. This was a potential godsend as C64 gamers had previously been using cassette tapes which took a millennia to load and would often fail to work, providing the cassette deck hadn’t already mangled the tape, which mine frequently did.
Whilst the cassette loaded, you would be treated with a picture related to the game to stare at for half an hour or a spasmodic mess of convulsing colours, an effect not dissimilar to the direct application of LSD on the retina; arguably not so fun for those of an epileptic disposition.
Good times.
Terminator 2 was the big film at the time and I was ecstatic to see that the cartridge version of the game had been bundled with my C64. Despite a graphically superior version appearing on Commodore’s premier machine (the Amiga 500) the C64 version was, in my opinion, the better game. Given that both were actually somewhat rubbish, the C64 wins a hollow victory in this case.
1:12 – Arnie dispatches the T1000 in a somewhat ungentlemanly fashion.
Despite my own joy at receiving the C64, the computer itself suffered in the Nineties, having been rendered obsolete by rival machines offered by Nintendo and Sega, who were the dominant players in the computer games market. Nintendo and Sega’s mascots, Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog respectively, were emblazoned on the consciousness of gamers. Unfortunately for Commodore, the closest thing the C64 had to a mascot was Seymour the potato.
Seymour takes the decline of the C64 rather badly.
The most popular consoles of the time, The Super Nintendoand the Mega Drive, were both far more powerful than the C64 and generated substantial profits for their parent companies, in stark contrast with the C64, which was a dying games platform.
The C64′s own cartridge system failed to achieve the ubiquity of its rivals, at least that was the case if my repeated failed attempts to source them are anything to go by. This may have been the result of the cartridge’s expensive manufacturing costs in comparison to the cassette tape format. The C64′s disappearance from high street retailers was somewhat of a premonition of Commodore’s own business fortunes, the company would go bankrupt in 1994.
Whilst Commodore had disappeared as a business entity the computer itself lived on, with magazines such as Commodore Format and Commodore Force continuing to keep C64 aficionados happy with cover mounted game demos of recent releases (as game developers hadn’t abandoned the machine just yet) and home brew games, all available in the cheap and prolific cassette tape format.
By this point, the C64 had accumulated a huge back catalogue of great games, the most famous of which were produced in the Eighties. With their distinctive blocky graphics, limited colour palette and catchy music, these games possessed a charm that captured the innocence of a bygone gaming era, preceding the lucrative and gargantuan modern day gaming industry. Jonathan Dunn‘s title track for the game version of Robocop (the C64 version having been released in 1989) was even used in a televised advertisement for home appliance company Ariston in the early Nineties.
Ariston, a company that today, like Commodore, remains a cherished household name. Or not.
I was fortunate enough to be gifted an old C64 cassette deck, Though looking like it had been extricated from the rear end of an elephant, after a good clean it worked for the most part. So began my affair with the C64 classics such as: Arkanoid, Commando, Impossible Mission 2, The Blues Brothersand IK+; to name but a few.
Thanks to many dedicated Commodore enthusiasts you can even obtain programs which emulate the old C64 (unsurprisingly referred to as ‘emulators’) as well as games files (known as ‘ROMS’). Although copyright issues often surround the legal use of many C64 games, no meaningful action appears to have been taken by the copyright holders of old C64 titles against creators and distributors of C64 game ROMs, nor is there much financial incentive to do so. Those who are so inclined are more or less free to play the games they remember from their early gaming years.
Proof that you can never have enough copyright infringement.
The Commodore brand briefly resurfaced in 2007 under the guise of Commodore Gaming, which offered high performance, custom built PC gaming machines. The success of this venture appears to have been somewhat limited, given that the website for Commodore Gaming is no longer active.
Yes, I said I’d see you next year, but with ‘next year’ being an hour or so away (unless you’re reading this in 2011), I hope you will forgive my previous misrepresentation. You might be wondering what I would most likely be doing in the minutes post Big Ben making a racket twelve times. More likely is the fact that you’re not really bothered.
In any case, the answer is : staying at home playing computer games!
Now, I can imagine some would respond to that comment with pity and most likely a superior sense of disdain.
Why, surely all normal people spend their New Year’s Eve, and the minutes and hours past midnight, consuming copious amounts of alcohol, flailing various limbs in an illogical expenditure of energy to brain pulsating techno and thereafter making inappropriate advances towards a fellow party goer, who turns out to be a wilting potted plant – right?
Now, I’ve tried this dancing thing once at a family party. When I say tried, I mean I was subjected to intense psychological manipulation, manhandled and forced under extreme duress to suffer an embarrassing trauma.
With all possible exits blocked by those purporting to be my family, I was left trapped and confused. Whilst feigning (unconvincingly) a sense of enjoyment by sporting a rictus grin, I clapped and shimmied with the grace and charisma of a cadaver subjected to electrolysis.
How dancing defeated the Batman.
I began to perspire, burning from a sense of self loathing. As the minutes passed, I realised I was metamorphosing into a cretin.
However a plan was being formed.
My eyes scanned for possible escape routes, those with minimal patrols and negligible exposure to electronic surveillance (the sweaty man with a video camera). Surely having mastered stealth and evasion tactics in computer game form, I could transfer these skills to reality? Alas, just as my past claims to be the Batman have proved erroneous, so was my confidence in this escape plan.
How not to extract one’s self from a situation of extreme duress.
After this ordeal, relatives would say something along the lines of “Now, wasn’t that enjoyable?! You seemed to have a good time!” Well as you can see here, that wasn’t really the case.
Now, to turn the tables on someone who has no interest whatsoever in gaming and force them to play computer games would seem ridiculous and stupid, as would deeming them somehow subcreature-esque for not wanting to partake in that kind of thing.
I mean, what good what it do to have a thermonuclear weapon pointed at Bruce Forsyth, whilst he wobbled on Strictly Come Dancing, imploring that under the threat of molecular annihilation he play Left 4 Dead 2? Not as much good as you’d think.
Of course, should you enjoy it then by all means go ahead, do what you want. Yes, even if it means doing the whole aforementioned prancing, shimmying thing. There you have the moral (or very thin excuse) for this story.
Dancing under duress: bad. Dancing whilst doused in burning petroleum: worse.
Whether you’ve decided to spend your New Year’s at home with family, out with friends, or severing the head of a gargantuan genetic abnormality that’s attempting to purloin your spleen, I hope you all have (or have had, as the case may be by the time you read this) a good one.
Or, at the very least, one that doesn’t rekindle a sense of abject horror when you look back on it.
With the year almost over, it’s often a time for many to prepare new year’s resolutions to ignore and recycle for the following year.
For me I’ll try and include one, in and amongst the most likely unachievable (get into shape, become black clad bat themed vigilante, learn the guitar), and try and actually update this neglected blog (neglected to the degree in which Indian films often neglect the laws of physics).
Horses in India are more durable than anywhere else (Video)
Perhaps the lack of page views was somewhat of a disincentive, but at least it’s a way of me keeping the creative writing (or ‘creative writing’, if you want to be cruel) part of my brain exercised.
In fairness, there has been a writing project that has been keeping me busy for the most part (excluding games, TV, DVDs and staring into thin air for prolonged periods of time).
Staring into space, not so fun without oxygen.
Now, I would tell you about it, but you’d have to agree to immerse your cerebral cortex in caustic soda afterwards.
Or watch this over and over, the effect of which also has the same memory erasing qualities.
Eduard Hill, proof that communism worked. (Video)
Hopefully some time in the coming year, I’ll be able to provide some sort of teaser as to what it is. Though holding your breath would be a most medically unsound option.
When receiving air underwater has unintended consequences...(Video)
Who knows? Maybe my subsequent blog posts won’t be the same claptrap and may even be completely devoid of any Batman references.
If you honestly thought this would be the case, abandon such absurd hopes immediately and enjoy…
...BATMAN THE MUSICAL! (Video)
Until next year, bye bye. Or, as my dad would say, “OKAY BAI”.
I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see that my copy of Batman Arkham Asylum had arrived on the day of release (especially seeing as this was via Amazon’s usually sluggish Super Saver Delivery option). Having acquired some Amazon vouchers, I thought I’d save a bit of cash and buy the PC version of the game, I ended up paying only 95 pence for the game.
Whilst I wouldn’t be able to run the game at full whack, owing to my somewhat aged hardware, the demo ran well enough on the medium settings and looked pretty good.
After the usual install and defrag (so my poor hard drive wouldn’t struggle when loading the game) I fired up the game and was looking forward to dishing out some brutal vigilante justice. Of course, there are some things that even the formidable Batman can not battle, the execrable Windows LIVE in this case.
Upon loading the game, I was informed by Windows LIVE that an update was available for the game. I thought I might as well download it, so I clicked to commence. For some reason, Windows LIVE refused to download the update. I thought to myself: “No probs, will just skip the download (after all it was just the new challenge map pack) as it isn’t necessary for the single player campaign”.
Unfortunately, Windows LIVE thinks otherwise, as refusing the download resulted in me being signed out. If you are signed out, you can’t save your progress in the game. Effectively, I couldn’t play the game until I downloaded the map pack.
Somewhat annoyed, I tried the in-game download – which failed to initiate again. So, after quitting the game, I was back at desktop downloading the update via the external Windows LIVE program. Initially, it got stuck before it even began, but started downloading after a restart of the program.
With the download complete, I thought I could finally get on with playing the game. I was informed again by Windows LIVE that an update was available for the game and asked whether I wanted to apply this update. Clicking in the affirmative, a progress bar popped up. It remained motionless for a few seconds, then trundled along until deciding to halt a smidgen before completion. Then I waited, and waited and… you can see where this is going. Alas, the bar didn’t budge.
I closed down the game. I a few more times, only to have the screen below taunt me – the bar always a fraction away from completion and thereafter immobile.
"HAI IM WINDOZ LIVE, WHAT U MEAN IM OBNOXSHUS?"
I didn’t even want to play the new challenge map yet, I just wanted to play the single player campaign. Thanks to Windows LIVE and its nonsensical insistence that I download the map pack I’m here typing this rant instead enjoying what is meant to be an excellent game.
Apparently if I create an off-line account, I can play the game without having to download the map pack. But what about when I want to download it some time later? Why should I even have to go to the trouble of creating a new account in the first place?!
Windows LIVE, a pointless and feeble attempt by Microsoft to provide a service for PC users that nobody asked for in the first place. With Steam providing a far superior service (despite its problems) there really isn’t any reason for this hippo’s arse of a program to exist. Windows LIVE, do us all a favour and piss off out of PC gaming.
Windows LIVE, like being molested by a smug bear hitching a free bike ride without permission. Actually it's worse.
A poster for the film Raging Bull, created by Swava Harasymowicz
Spotted some striking posters made by Polish artists for famous films on the Guardian’s website. They really are something special and well worth taking a look at.
If only their western counterparts were as visually interesting and diverse. From just a cursory glance of posters for films on the horizon, you can see that illustrated posters are largely sidelined in favour of montages comprised of photos of certain sequences (the uninspired original DVD cover of Children of Men serving as an example of how not do not do cover art for a film) . Of course they’re not always as bad as that, but greater artistic variety would certainly be welcome.
Of course you may be of the opinion that as long as the poster advertises the movie adequately, then its purpose has been served. Clearly the above mentioned poster appears to convey a darker tone than that in the film itself.
Whilst film posters may largely serve as throwaway advertisements, it’s always nice to have a few that stand up on their own, many years after the release of the film, as visually arresting art which, as evidenced above, can often prove superior to their film counterpart.
If the pics from the Guardian website have tickled your fancy, be sure to take a look at these artist’s pages:
At this point, my interest in watching these films descends faster than a marathon Mexican bean eating contestant’s underpants. Given the critical mauling received by all nearly all film adaptations of games to date, we haven’t exactly been proven wrong.
A notable exception to the poop stained line of games as films is the quite good Street Fighter: The Animated Movie, which probably went unnoticed by anyone other than fans of the game or animé.
Unfortunately, when people unfamiliar with computer games mention the ‘Street Fighter’ film, they’ll mention ‘the other one’, the bastard offspring which should have been locked in an asbestos cupboard, whilst chained to plastic explosives so as to prevent tampering. The Hollywood version, in which Guile (played by Jean Claude Van Damme) expresses his wish to cause grievous harm to M.Bison’s bottom in one cringe inducing scene, should be regarded as a cure for constipation rather than a good film, as your bladder will combust in response to its sheer hilarity inducing awfulness. The links to the source material are as tenuous as the Fox Network’s claim to ‘news’ reporting (as opposed to partisan right-wing dribble).
Nobel peace prize winner Jean Claude Van Damme as Guile, imparting his post-fight wisdom to a defeated Blanka, as portrayed by Mick Hucknall.
In an effort to aid these floundering Hollywood types, albeit to a small degree, please find below a list of ideal candidates to play as famous game characters, together with some mock up shots created via the use of state of the art effects.
Thierry Henry as Louis. “Eh Bobby, whaz ze French for get me ze tourniquet?”
As you may have guessed, these suggestions are about as feasible and straight-faced as the prospect of former BBC news presenter Michael Buerk winning America’s Next Top Model. Still far better than Hollywood’s casting though.
Hello and welcome to the Arbitrarium! A place where the ramblings and images trapped within a diseased mind are translated into text and pictorial form and injected into the internet. Instead of focusing on a single subject, I’ll arbitrarily be going to and fro between the things that I love most (and involve the least physical exertion), namely:
Computer games
Comics
Films
Technology
The odd random rant
Hence the dubbing of this blog as, ‘Arbitrarium’.
Hopefully over the coming months, years and into the far future (during which time my pickled brain will have been melded to a killer robot interface) you will pop by and enjoy the posts made here. I can only apologise if they turn out to be shambolic, poorly created and libellous. Chances are that they will be all the aforementioned.
"Rampaging robot in your neighbourhood? Don't delay, claim today!"
