<Insert Obvious Pun Here>
At first, I thought it had to be a hoax - that Nintendo's new console, the only one of the "next-gen" I'm even remotely interested in so far, was going to be renamed from "Revolution" to "Wii". (As in "We"). Sadly, I was wrong. It's official. And I can't help but feeling that unless Nintendo come to their senses and rename it for Europe - in the manner of the Famicom/NES - they may have just lost the next-gen console war before it even begins.
So long as it has games I want to play, I don't really care what it's called. I'll still buy one. But how many kids are going to be telling their parents that they want a Wii for Xmas, or will be boasting to their mates in the playground that they've got a Wii under the telly at home? Only the ones who are already bullied to the extent that any extra humiliation won't matter much. No matter how good the actual console is, it's hard not to see this as marketing suicide. It's not even as though we can blame Nintendo for being Japanese and not understanding how the name might go over in the English-speaking world. They are a huge multi-national company nowadays. Surely someone at Nintendo Europe or USA put their hand up and went "er... are you sure that's a good idea?"
Still, maybe they've got a plan of incredible marketing genius up their sleeve that will avert disaster. It's going to take that, a name change, or the PS3 being released as the "Sony Poostation" to avert disaster, I fear.
Labels: games
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Tuesday, April 25, 2006
2001: A Space Odyssey
Edited down to 2001 seconds, and with a killer soundtrack. Bit of a hefty download, but worth it - manages to keep the important bits while losing all the sitting about watching spaceships go by.
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, April 24, 2006
An Olympic-Standard Mayonaisse
Do you ever have days when you feel - not tired as such - but as though you haven't quite woken up all the way? When everything is sort of fuzzy and indistinct and you start to wonder if electro-shock therapy might not be such a bad idea? No? Just me, then. I feel like that today, and no amount of caffeine is shifting it. Maybe it's something to do with the cat waking me up at 5.30am demanding food. Or maybe it's sunspots or the government putting drugs in the water or something.
Yesterday was the first really nice day of the year in Glasgow, and I was able to go out in just a t-shirt. And trousers, underwear socks and shoes, of course. I went to the gym for the first time in weeks, had a good ol' workout, then went and bought a fruit smoothie and salady things on the way home, protected by the warm glow of healthy self-righteousness that exercising always imparts. Lovely.
It's been a long time since I last lusted after a piece of technology, but with all the ace games that are out, or in the pipeline, for it, plus the snazzy new redesign, I reckon that my next self-indulgent purchase will be a Nintendo DS Lite. But can I hold off for the UK release (nebulously reported as being "in the summer", but with no actual date announced), or are the delights of network-play Tetris and Mario Kart, and the ability to play my GBA games on a screen I can actually see in anything other than direct sunlight, going to make me an impatient idiot who buys an imported one?
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Fluhffeh Buhnneh
"Make sure you take your brolly. It's an awful wet place," said my mum, queen of the optimists, when we told her we were going to Manchester.
Naturally it was warm and sunny the whole time, and the first rain we saw was upon leaving the station on arrival back in Glasgow.
Calexironandwine were fab, though the Manchester academy is a hot, hot place in which to be.
R is tickled with the Northern English accent - particularly around the Bolton area - and we had fun listeneing to the accents change as we travelled down and back again.
I had never been to Manchester before, but liked the little we saw a lot, and would happily go back. Many, many great record shops, amongst other things, and we had to keep our blinkers on to stop us from spending far far far too much money. Anyway, a fab little break, and one all too short.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Videogames Made Me A Terrorist
The TV was on the other night, and someone - some evil, unknown force - tied us to the sofa with unpleasant equipment on our heads to keep our eyes pinned open like in A Clockwork Orange and made us watch Nanny 911 - the show in which an American couple who have spawned some irritating squealing brats get a visit from an improbably dressed British "nanny" who helps them get their kids under control. It's awful and makes me feel dirty, but it's terribly compulsive. I particularly like the bit where this week's parents blankly refuse to admit there's something wrong - "So my kids beat the shit out of each other. Boys will be boys! Who is she to tell me how to raise my kids?" - when they've gone and bloody invited a nanny into their house in the first place. It's almost as if the producers give each family the same script to recite to camera every week in order to give the final moments of the show, where order is restored in their household and they have to admit that the nanny knows her stuff, more emotional impact. Anyway, it's shite car-crash reality TV that invites the viewer to sneer and feel superior to its subjects, and I can help but love it.
In this particular episode, it was clear that the parents were using video games to babysit their kids. For hours every day they were dumped in front of an XBox or Gamecube while mum got on with a nebulous "running of the house" (Dad, of course, was out working a gruelling "35-40 hours a week." Poor lamb.), and even in the car they were handed Gameboys to keep them quiet. Naturally, whenever they weren't playing games they were little terrors, having screaming tantrums and beating each other, and the family dog, black-and-blue.
All throughout this, I could sense R glaring at me as if to say "is this what our kids are going to be like?" I didn't care much, though, 'cos I was in the middle of a game of Advance Wars on the GBA.
An example of terribly bad, negligent parenting, then, but all throughout the show statements like "these videogames are responsible for your child's bad behaviour" kept cropping up, and the implication that gaming is inherently evil and will turn your children into violent psychopaths was a constant throughout. Which, frankly, got on my tits and made me want to camp outside the headquarters of the company that made this show with a high-powered sniper-rifle and take out as many employees as possible in a fit of rage.
The truth of the matter, of course, is that too much of anything is a bad thing (that's why they call it too much, see?) , which doesn't make videogames any more evil than movies, books, or cheesecake. Interestingly, it was never made clear exactly what games the little tykes in that household were playing. For what are presumably reasons of copyright, TV screens were blurred out whenever they were in shot, and suspiciously generic-sounding "gunfire-and-death" noises dubbed on. They could have been playing fucking Tetris for all I know, but obviously, if you let your 8-year old play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, an violent game with "adults only" warnings all over the box, the game is not to blame for any effect it has on your child - you are.
Videogames are getting a rough time in the media just now, thanks in part to morality crusaders like Jack Thompson. In the eyes of the anti-gaming brigade, there is no difference between GTA and Animal Crossing. Being of the same medium taints one with the negative connotations of the other simply because it's a young medium that is poorly understood. This is highly troubling to those of us who love games, but we should take heart. This is not something to be feared, but a sign of an art-form coming of age - when it is prevalent enough for its most extreme artifacts to get up the noses of the establishment.
Anyway, the point of my little rant is that there is an excellent wee article over on Wired about how new forms of media have traditionally elicited knee-jerk reactions from society's self-appointed watchdogs, including comic books, the telephone, and that evil corrupter of morals, the waltz.
Labels: games, links, television
link | 2 comment(s) | links to this postThursday, April 20, 2006
Boring Life Catchup Post
Here are some things I've been doing instead of blogging:
Working Work was exceptionally hectic for a while there. Fortunately, it's all calmed down a bit now, and I've got a bit of my life back.
Playing with Flock Basically a very-highly customized verison of Firefox, I tried it when the first release was made public, thought it looked kinda interesting, but binned it because, frankly, it didn't work. Still, it was early days and it showed a lot of promise, so a couple of weeks ago I thought I'd check it out again. It definitely seems a lot more stable, now, and I'm probably using it and vanilla Firefox about 50/50. I like that it's got del.icio.us support built in, and I'm writing this using it's blog editor. I'll be cutting and pasting it into Notepad before hitting "publish", mind.* It's still a wee bit flakey, but it's getting better all the time.
Rolling up the world We got We Love Katamari the other day. I'm told it's not as good as the original, but as that was never released in the UK, and my PS2 isn't chipped, it'll do nicely. So much fun, even the Mrs can be persuaded to have a go. If the original is genuinely better I'm probably best not playing it in case I damage myself.
Trying to write Not very successfully.
Sleeping Very successfully.
Tomorrow we are off to Manchester for the weekend. While there, we will be seeing Calexico and Iron and Wine, who are both excellent, but mostly I'm just looking forward to being in a different place for a while, and I've never been to Manchester before. Hardly exotic, but any change of scenery is good.
Update - It did publish! It bombed immediately afterward, but it did publish.
Labels: diary, games, links, music
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postIn Which The Author Says "Hello"
Hello.
This is a nice, shiny, clean new blog intended to replace my manky, crufty, old one which was somewhere else. For now it has the defaultest of all default templates, which will probably embaress me greatly when my own attempt looks far far worse. I expect I'll post here quite a lot, for a while at least. The vast empty newness of it is like a fresh field of snow that hasn't been walked on, or, perhaps more appropriately, a brand new notepad accompanied by a nice sharp pencil from the stationary cupboard. (You know: that cupboard that never moves.)
Right now, however, I'd better get this published. Back later...
Labels: site
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