Play pinball, live to a hundred
Steve Kordek, widely credited as the Godfather of Pinball, died last week, aged 100. He didn’t invent the pinball machine, but he came up with many of the innovations that make the modern pinball machine familiar.
Dual flippers. Multiple balls. Pop-up targets. He designed hundreds of the things.
But not the one in the picture, Jungle Queen. That was my machine.
I mean, I played it a whole bunch. The four or five months between the time I turned 18 (and thus could legally go into bars) and the time I went away to college, that was my passion: a brandy alexander, a roll of quarters and Jungle Queen. With bonus games, that could last me a whole evening (or until the third brandy, which stole my superpowers).
See those triangular things near the top? Those are two rows of five drop-targets with monkeys on them. If you caught the ball on the flipper and held it to a standstill, then slowly let it fall and popped the flipper at JUST the right picosecond, you could sling the ball down a whole row of monkeys and take them all out in one move, pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
God, I loved those monkeys.
The last time I saw Jungle Queen — actually the two-player variant, Jungle Princess — was in a fairground in Rhode Island. It was like bumping into my best friend from High School (what the hell – Jungle Queen was my best friend from High School). I had spent a quarter and won a free ball on the first go and I was feeling fine, when a young man with Down’s Syndrome pushed me away and started playing. My bonus round.
I stood there a moment calculating how bad it would look if I got interrupted in a shoving match with a handicapped person, and then I walked sadly away.
February 27, 2012 — 11:11 pm
Comments: 19
Screw poetry — I want to shoot something
And now to the third and final game I got for Christmas — Deus Ex: Human Revolution. So far, I don’t think the facial/figure modeling is really up to the current standard, but the gameplay is supposed to be awesome. So here I go.
Beats the hell out of limping around a deserted Hebridian island pissing and moaning about my dead wife.
I didn’t mean to make another lame computer game post this week, but I was out for most of this evening. Taking notes at a Church council meeting.
I swear to god, the first one of you laughs, gets a slug in the face.
February 23, 2012 — 11:08 pm
Comments: 21
A good idea
Hm. So. I bought Dear Esther last night, which is an Indie game.
Actually, I would dispute calling it a game. You don’t really interact with stuff. You wander around a surreal landscape at will while a narrator (who is presumably you) randomly declaims fragments of a story. That’s potentially a cool ride, but it’s not a game.
I “finished” it tonight — that is, I reached the end scenario, though I haven’t seen all the content. If you watch the trailer at the link, you’ll pretty much have the whole experience, right there.
Dear Esther started life in 2007 at the University of Portsmouth as a free mod, using the Source game engine (Half Life 2). They decided to develop a commercial version, which was released on February 14 of this year. They cleverly charged a pittance (well, £7), and — much to their surprise — made their investment back in six hours.
So. Well. It was kind of like watching many indie films (something I did a lot of in my yoot). It was pretty to look at. Evocative. But after a while, you figured out that nothing was going to happen, nothing was going to be resolved, and they weren’t really ever going to tell you anything. If you like that kind of movie, you’ll love this.
Anyhow, I do hope they keep developing off-beat stuff like this. I think it could be a spectacular experience, with a bit less hippie and a bit more…meat.
February 22, 2012 — 10:57 pm
Comments: 11
My god, it’s full of chickens!
Yes, yes…another computer game post. All the cool kids are playing Skyrim, and so am I (even though it’s essentially the basic game as the last two I’ve played through. If you like a type of game, this is no bad thing).
The typical computer game leads you through a series specifically defined challenges, A to B to C and on to the grand finale. You can do some side-exploring and Easter egg hunting, but the plot is the plot.
In games of the Skyrim type, they just drop you into a big ol’ world and let you get on with it.
Kind of.
There are a few big tasks that must done to advance the game to the ending, but the rest is wandering around doing the hell you feel like.
Be a giant cat! Learn alchemy in your spare time! Smite bandits! Join the Resistance! Steal things! Wander around staring at shit!
While the playworlds get bigger and more fun to look at, these games get a lot more interesting to play. Imagine the fun the designers had hiding a practicing necromancer in a stone circle in the middle of the woods, in hopes you might jog past and enjoy frying his ass.
Oh, and the chickens! There are beautifully animated chickens in all the towns. I followed them around chicken watching for a while.
Haven’t killed any, but I did immolate a bunny in the woods once with a fire spell. On purpose. I felt kind of bad about that, but I did get a meal out of it.
January 17, 2012 — 12:12 am
Comments: 21
Let me explain what a GAME is…
So, I started my Christmas video games, oldest first. That would be the Witcher.
Technically, it’s holding up great for a four year old game. It’s pretty. I’m enjoying all the smiting and the alchemy and the running around all day long without getting a stitch in my side (though dude totally can’t hold his liquor). But the storyline is getting a leetle grown up for my taste.
No, I don’t mean the dryad chick with the green nipples. Or the dwarves who keep grumbling that their balls itch.
I mean the game forces me choose between two bitchy, controlling girlfriends. (Ahhhh…none of the above! None of the above!).
Also, I have to pick sides in a war. Worse, it’s pretty obvious the game doesn’t want me siding with the greedy, racist humans and their creepy religion. I’m supposed to go with the non-humans who have decided anti-human violence is the way forward. (Dear game designers: please don’t make me bet against my own species.)
I suppose this would make more sense if I had read the books these games are based on, but that’s no guarantee I’d like it. I’m here to kill stuff, not make mature choices between difficult options.
Oh, well. I was going to start with Skyrim, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
Good weekend, everyone!
January 6, 2012 — 11:12 pm
Comments: 43
I’m Batman!
I’m Batman! I’m Batman! I’m Batman! Ahahahaha…I love that.
Now that Batman: Arkham City is about to be released, I was able to pick up Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year edition for, like, ten quid. Because somehow, my unemployed ass isn’t embarrassed to play video games all day, but my cheap ass is too cheap to pay new game prices.
It’s a good ‘un. I like the hallucination sequences best, though the game suddenly becomes a side-scroller and the controls are all different and I tend to walk my Batman over a cliff.
I’ll be perfectly honest with you — I’m not in very good control of my Batman. I’m not getting the hang of the commands. I just mash buttons and hope for the best.
Also — while I’m being honest — I get a kick out of it when Harley Quinn leans over my dead body and chants “loser, loser, loser – ha!”
Hey, if anybody else is on Steam, would you friend me, please? I play as AuntieWeasel. You don’t want me on your team or anything — I’m an old lady with old lady reflexes and I avoid multiplayer like a plague of zombies — but it’s just killing me every time I log in and Steam tells me “You Have 0 Friends.”
Geez, rub it in, why don’t you?
November 1, 2011 — 9:27 pm
Comments: 26
Anybody want to buy some rat meat?
You reckon Patrick Stewart is ever sorry he took that Star Trek gig? He’s done the voiceover for about half the games I’ve bought in the last ten years, including Emperor Apple Doll here.
Not knocking Oblivion, which is five or six years old. Even the latest and greatest games, they still haven’t got people quite down yet, especially faces. Dead Space 2 that I’ve been raving and drooling about is good in some scenes (the back of Isaac’s head looks spectacularly real) and creepy in others. I mean, unintentionally creepy (the intentionally creepy faces are excellent).
For the just-released L.A. Noire, they famously strapped real actors into chairs and made them act for some computerized facial scanning doohicky that reproduced the expressions later on game characters. Being able to perceive a liar is apparently important to the gameplay. Yet in all the trailers I’ve seen, the faces look ultra creepy.
I’m a great believer in the Uncanny Valley. Things that look alllllmost but not quite human are guaranteed to give people the jim-jamms. We’re wired to read changes in facial expression that can be measured in millimeters. It’s going to be a while before modeling programs get that good.
Though it would help if 3D modelers would stop making teeth and eyeballs self-illuminate.
July 18, 2011 — 11:35 pm
Comments: 18
I know a game designer with ex-girlfriend issues…
You’re going to think I’m just saying this, but I always knew I’d wake up one day in a straight jacket on one of Saturn’s moons.
Played all the way through Dead Space 2 this weekend. Ten and a half hours at weenie level (I should’ve played at normal difficulty; the gameplay was a little easier than Dead Space, I think). Now I have the pleasure of going back through and killing the scary monsters so I can wander around and look at stuff.
Gorgeous. Here’s the website of one of the guys who worked on the backgrounds. And here’s five minutes of gameplay from a young man with a slight indefinable accent who screams like a little girl.
Happy Memorial Day! It’s a public holiday here, too — Whitsun.
Yeah, I know. WTF?
May 30, 2011 — 9:16 pm
Comments: 8
Probably not what the Chairman had in mind…
Character buffing just took a turn for the weird. According to this article in the Guardian, China forces prisoners to play online games like World of Warcraft to amass gold, which is then traded for non-pretend money.
China traded £1.2 billion ($1.9B) in monopoly money in 2008. That’s 100,000 people who farm gold as a full-time job (presumably not counting the afore-mentioned prisoners). They can make more money selling a virtual commodity than a real one.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what income disparity can do on an international scale. While it lasts.
Me, I bought Dead Space 2 a couple of weeks ago, but promised myself I’d play through Dead Space (1) all the way at regular difficulty before I touched the new game. Finished the final boss fight earlier today, so it’s Adiós Weasel for a while.
New Dead Pool next Friday, 6pm WBT. With the demise of Jeff Conaway, Tawny joins steve on the short list of double dick recipients. Congratulations! And, ummm…nobody sit next to those two, m’kay? Have a good weekend, everyone!
May 27, 2011 — 9:00 pm
Comments: 15
Here. Have some chickens, then
I blew all my free time tonight playing through to the end of Dead Space. I sure got my £5 worth out of it. It was great fun.
As the game went along and the ship got all veiny and mucus-y and organic and I ran across alien/human hybrids stuck all over the walls, I thought, “I’ve played this game before! It’s called Doom!”
Yeah, it’s pretty Doom (1993). Which in turn was pretty Alien (1979).
So we only have one space-horror plot. We just get better and better at telling it.
ANYHOO! The chickens? They’re fine. Not laying again yet. I’ve entered into negotiations with the Chicken Man for another two birds next month, so we’ll see how that goes.
February 7, 2011 — 11:42 pm
Comments: 20