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"I liked it before you other bastards"

Started by Purple Tentacle, November 06, 2005, 01:45:25 PM

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Purple Tentacle

Quote from: "Shoulders?-Stomach!"
Quotehow many times do you find yourself humming the in-game music for Splinter Cell 3

You say that, but I actually own the soundtrack to that game, as Amon Tobin is a hell of a musician.

Hehe, I feel a bit guilty now, like I was having a swipe at you! Lucky guess.
I've never actually played Splinter Cell 3 (just the first two), it was just an example. Music in computer games is all about "atmosphere" now, setting the scene like it was a bloody film.  Nobody can write a good ditty any more, even the music in modern Nintendo games like Zelda Windwaker or Mario Kart can't rise above mediocrity. But then Nintendo seem to be stuck pillaging their back catalogue for ideas nowadays while the other platforms release yet another hyper-realistic Soldiers-kill-the-Towelheads game.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Here's a bit of a contentious point but I think the game Otogi has a terrifical title score, that's actually a terrific stand alone piece of music. It makes a change from the likes of Konami and Capcom who make abysmal music which sounds ten years out of date. I love the old MIDI music but then I love certain modern computer game music just as much. I think you're barking up the wrong aural tree here anyway. Or you're just been needlessly cynical!

Purple Tentacle

Well (and trying to open the thread up to subjects other than computer games), maybe it comes down to tastes in TYPES of music?

Like I say, I find the modern "atmospheric" music functional but no fun... I'm not saying it's crap, but I just don't feel the same way that I DID about listening to Kwik Snax.


I imagine this is much the same for people who LOVED a certain genre of music at a key stage of their life (say prog rock or Motown) and can't get the same exhilaration from modern stuff.  Especially Coldplay.


Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"copying and swapping Spectrum games with my friend (even the SoftAid tape containing Kokotoni Wilf)

Ooh, that's low. I hope you realise that children in Ethiopia died so that you could play Gilligan's sodding Gold on the cheap...

I wish they'd left more space on the tape between "Feed the World" and the game that followed it; I once deafened myself turning the volume up to listen to as much of the fade-out as possible and not stopping the tape in time.

Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"Or, we would get one of those magazines with a 5 page BASIC listing and spend hour upon hour typing in the code, only to finally type "RUN" and find that the thing didn't work because they publisher had forgotten to print a semicolon on line 475.

I used to love the programs in Your Sinclair's Program Pitstop section; no games, just utilities IIRC (and anyone looking for a bit of type-in nostalgia would do well to go here. I remember typing in a program (via a hex loader, which at least had the advantage of checking each line as you typed it) that simulated US Gold's Alcatraz loader so I could make the loading screen of my text adventure appear in a spiral pattern. If only I'd spent more time writing the adventure instead of pissing about with the loading screen, I might have actually finished it. Speaking of which...

Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"Or, on the way to the weekly trip to the fucking communal football field we would work on our plan for the great text adventure we were going to build, but couldn't because we lacked the sufficient coding skills.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who did this. I don't think we ever finished a game but as I had Incentive's GAC we could at least give it a crack. We took the geekiness a little further by actually playing text adventures during playtime (my favourite one was about a man who'd died -- I don't think there was ever any point to it but I had fun making up all the details of Heaven, with gravestones that slid back to reveal a staircase down to your little underground flat, that sort of thing).

Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"Needless to say this pattern carried on throught my teenage years, buying a NES, an Atari ST (yeah yeah fuck off) then a SNES (denouncing all MegaDrive owners as wankers, and vice versa)... and then the Playstation came along with fucking Fatboy Slim and everything in fucking 3D (3D innovation began and ENDED with Mario 64) and digital cretin joypads and fucking Ridge Racer and suddenly computer games went from being a bedroom play-and-wank device and moved into the living room and became a lifestyle accessory.

Spectrum/Atari 2600/Grandad's Master System and BBC Micro (Master 512 in fact, with the built-in PC) > Amiga/CD32/Gameboy Pocket/Grandad's Acorn Archimedes > PC/Gameboy Color > Dreamcast > Gamecube/Gameboy Advance for me. I was actually really excited by the Playstation when it came out -- I was at uni and one of the guys I was sharing a house with went out and bought one. I thought Wipeout was the future, with all the music I was into at the time on the soundtrack (speaking of "I liked it before you other bastards", I was into Fatboy Slim from when he released Everybody Needs a 303 the first time around, ie. about 3 years before Rockafeller Skank came out).

I've been into emulation from the early days (the defining moment being when I discovered via MAME that the game I'd spent so many 10ps on at my local swimming baths was Naughty Boy, and unfortunately to my twentysomething eyes it was actually a bit shit), first getting a Spectrum emulator for the Amiga (which was a bit rubbish but I got to play Saboteur again), then later getting a much better one for the PC (the full version of Z80 on the coverdisk of PC Format). Arcade emulators followed (various individual emulators that were around before MAME became the all-conquering behemoth it is today), then consoles (mainly the GBC, via the amazing Nocash emulator which had a great debugger -- invaluable for when I was involved in the GBC scene, churning out a bunch of trainers). I don't really care that it's gone mainstream, with most consoles having a slew of retro-themed titles -- at least it's out there, and it makes getting hold of parts of my childhood a lot easier. However it does mean I'm a little wary of getting retro-themed T-shirts -- much as I'd like to wear my influences on my sleeve (or more accurately, on my chest) I don't want to look like a Barley...

As for game music -- I used to record music Spectrum 128 soundtracks to tape (Thunderbirds, Starglider, Captain Blood, al that stuff), and I lapped up the 48k buzzer stuff that the likes of Tim Follin did (even though they sound like ass to my jaded ears now, multi-channel sound from a single-channel buzzer is amazing from a technical point of view as apparently it all had to be hand-written rather than using a music editor, and the tunes are still good if you can get past the buzziness).

Purple Tentacle

Quote from: "StuBruise"I've been into emulation from the early days (the defining moment being when I discovered via MAME that the game I'd spent so many 10ps on at my local swimming baths was Naughty Boy, and unfortunately to my twentysomething eyes it was actually a bit shit)

Hehe, every time I smell chlorine I want to play Pac-Land.


It would have been quite a liability in the First World War.

weekender

They didn't have Pac-Land in the First World War you twat, they were only on the original arcade version of Pac-Man then.

To try and add something relevant, I was ZX48->Amiga->PC.  I played on lots of others though, and I defy anyone to beat the sheer simplicity of multi-play Mario Kart for gaming entertainment fun.  Must dig out Snes9X and some emulating online action at some point - anyone up for it?

Purple Tentacle

Quote from: "weekender"Must dig out Snes9X and some emulating online action at some point - anyone up for it?

You know I am, you viscious bastard.

Last time I tried I couldn't get Snes9X to work with my joypad, I use ZSNES for online Mario Kart fun.

slim

Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"Hehe, every time I smell chlorine I want to play Pac-Land.
Heh, for me it's Wardener and Splatterhouse. :)

weekender

Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"Last time I tried I couldn't get Snes9X to work with my joypad, I use ZSNES for online Mario Kart fun.

You're fucking lucky you've got a joypad, I've had to train myself to be the best ever Mario Kart player* all over again, this time using a keyboard.

*See also the 4 million best ever Sensible Soccer players mentioned earlier.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Quote from: "Shoulders?-Stomach!"

Maybe your bitterness is just the natural result of seeing people enjoy something you've been enjoying for years but doing it 'the wrong way' and then resenting the fact just because you used to be seen as a nerd or whatever.

A friend of mine became annoyed when Abba had their first 'ironic' revival circa 1992, saying 'If I'd said I loved Abba a year ago, everyone would have taken the piss...so why is it OK now?'.

Shoulders?-Stomach!


Lt Plonker

Quote from: "StuBruise"We took the geekiness a little further by actually playing text adventures during playtime (my favourite one was about a man who'd died -- I don't think there was ever any point to it but I had fun making up all the details of Heaven, with gravestones that slid back to reveal a staircase down to your little underground flat, that sort of thing).

I love Text Adventures with a passion, even though I wasn't around in their hey day. The sense of freedom is great AND the game would react when you swear at it and occasionaly punish you. My Gamecube doesn't do that when I launch the controller at the wall. The first one I played was Magnetic Scrolls' Wonderland. Perhaps I'm looking at it with rose-tinted glasses, but by christ it was so absorbing - the dainty graphics, the sheer vastness of it and the fact that you could try to undress Alice and the game would tell you off.

I made an IF once, but with a Windows based program. It were great fun.


I think a lot of the game developers that still have a sense of love for gaming and games are casting off from the big boys and going at it on their own. They seem to rely on their internet fanbase, like Telltale.  None of the mainstream developers  would've touched Bone with a 6-foot Gamesmaster Golden Joystick.

And they might be bringing back Sam and Max! Yippee!

I love adventure games.


I've forgotten what the thread was about. Sorry.

Lt Plonker

Quote from: "weekender"To try and add something relevant, I was ZX48->Amiga->PC.  I played on lots of others though, and I defy anyone to beat the sheer simplicity of multi-play Mario Kart for gaming entertainment fun.  Must dig out Snes9X and some emulating online action at some point - anyone up for it?

Yes please.

Purple Tentacle

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"
Quote from: "Shoulders?-Stomach!"
Maybe your bitterness is just the natural result of seeing people enjoy something you've been enjoying for years but doing it 'the wrong way' and then resenting the fact just because you used to be seen as a nerd or whatever.
A friend of mine became annoyed when Abba had their first 'ironic' revival circa 1992, saying 'If I'd said I loved Abba a year ago, everyone would have taken the piss...so why is it OK now?'.

That applies to a lot of fashion as well doesn't it... flares, tank tops etc. would have gotten you pelted with mud and called "a flid" in the 1980s, but now they're the height of Barley-esque cool.  Or at least they were a few years ago.


lt. Plonker... I thought the cunts had discontinued development of Sam and Max?

Lt Plonker

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"
Quote from: "Shoulders?-Stomach!"

Maybe your bitterness is just the natural result of seeing people enjoy something you've been enjoying for years but doing it 'the wrong way' and then resenting the fact just because you used to be seen as a nerd or whatever.

A friend of mine became annoyed when Abba had their first 'ironic' revival circa 1992, saying 'If I'd said I loved Abba a year ago, everyone would have taken the piss...so why is it OK now?'.

I felt the same when Peter Kay started marching along to 'Is This The Way To Amarillo?'  Now it's gone the same way as Mike D'Abo's 'Build Me Up Buttercup' and you've got boozed up chunk-heads bouncing away to it at 'cheeze nites' whilst praising Peter Kay to the sky and back.

Those were my songs. *sob*

weekender

Quote from: "Lt Plonker"
Quote from: "weekender"I defy anyone to beat the sheer simplicity of multi-play Mario Kart for gaming entertainment fun.  Must dig out Snes9X and some emulating online action at some point - anyone up for it?

Yes please.

OK, as I understand it we each need the same emulator (which must be capable of online play, obviously) and the same ROM.  Once we've got that someone needs to be the server and we all need to play online at the same time.  I'm half-cut now so tonight is out for me but that's probably a good thing anyway while we sort out the practicalities.

I can do Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights for preference, although I might be being invited to yet another fucking pub quiz team on Mondays so if we can agree on the other days that could be better in the long run.

Dark Sky

Quote from: "Frinky"Funny, that, since most of what you said applied to me, but I am a sprightly 21 and a half.

Same here.  Let's get married.

I've never owned a games console in my life, but from age of seven to about fifteen I LOVED my ZX Spectrum+.  

Everyone else had their fancy advanced Master Systems and played games which loaded instantly and didn't even come on cassette tape, but not me.  I was there with my fingers crossed hoping that the loading wouldn't fuck up at the last second, before trying to work out what the hell you were supposed to do in Pyjamarama, not quite managing to get to Saturday on Paper Boy, and searching for green umbrellas with my sister in the slow, clunky Spectrum version of Bubble Bobble.

Tenous "I liked it first!" point:

A was recently trying to explain to someone about how two years ago you couldn't admit you were a Doctor Who fan in public without being seen as a nerdy geek.
"Why?" they replied.  "It's really good and everyone loves it."
They just don't understand.  They don't.

Lt Plonker

Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"


lt. Plonker... I thought the cunts had discontinued development of Sam and Max?

Check out the entry for 15th September here.

QuoteWhat I do know is that the game is not a continuation of the cancelled "Sam & Max: Freelance Police" sequel that the Telltale team was working on while at LucasArts - this Telltale Sam & Max game is all new, started from scratch. Whether or not we'll see a few familiar locations and characters from what little was released from Freelance Police, though, is yet to be seen. Telltale's Sam & Max game will be released in episodic form, downloadable from their site and other games portals (similar to the approach they're taking with Bone).

Apparently the rights to Sam and Max have fallen back to Steve Purcell.

Mr Colossal

I had a friend who was notoriously known for proclaiming (rather debatably) how he was the first to like or do such and such.  The 'i was there first brigade' always come across as desperate has beens to me... Its basically 'you think I'm important for something, don't you chaps?!'

Similarly, for somebody who's gone out of there way to find some obscure band, for them to suddenly become mainstream you have basically stripped them of their individual clothes leaving them *gasp!, ordinary.

There are other forms, some people may get attached and over protective about everybody else wanting a piece of their baby. And sometimes the 'played to death' overkill of something, like something that's sweet, start making that taste suddenly very sickly if its continuously rammed down your throat.




ON the topic of games- GTA may have had that freedom, but San Andreas was the first one on the PS2  that i really enjoyed with all the little sub-games. With 3 it seemed to be a case of having all that freedom, but nothing to do with it.

There's a certain factor that these modern games don't seem to have these days, its hard to explain- but as a kid with my amigas, C64's and spectrums you would inherit  a dusty box of disks and tapes, some of them were just bizarre- you had no instructions and you would have to spend half a day trying to figure out what the hell it was, and how to play it.  You would  have those eerie loading screens, and some games would have built in cheat menu's with bleepy music... Everything to me just had a kind of weird feeling lingering over it,  the sense of doing something you aren't supposed to be, or that you were latching onto something special and forbidden- kind of like those number stations, or a cronenberg film.  Definitely very 'videodrome' to me, thinking back.

You dont really get that with today's plug-in and plays.

Deadman97

If anyone's interested, I've just added an article to the databse from this month's Edge- Charlie Brooker, Graham Linehan, Simon Pegg and Peter Serafinowicz chatting about what they see as the problems with game design in todays market.

Purple Tentacle

Quote from: "Deadman97"If anyone's interested, I've just added an article to the databse from this month's Edge- Charlie Brooker, Graham Linehan, Simon Pegg and Peter Serafinowicz chatting about what they see as the problems with game design in todays market.

Why the FUCK can't I find the article database.... it used to be on the forum link.... why have I turned blind?

edit: Found it, eventually....

Quote from: "Graham Linehan said, not"Another game where I thought the moral dimension came in and created one of the most bizarre gaming experiences- in a bad way- that I've ever seen was the last Hitman game, where there's a level set in a party being held by a Russian gangster, and it's in a meat packing place so they're saying "Oooh, these gangsters are kind of cruel and they have parties near meat..."

Quote from: "Charlie Brooker also said, rather than"CB: It's strange that you don't get games like Skool Daze and Back 2 Skool nowadays. Just the fact that you could rename all the teachers after teachers at your school, and all the characters after friends at school. And you could write on the blackboards. You could write: PISS.
[Laughter. Conversation spirals off into discussion about rude graffiti]

Mr. Analytical

A decent enough article.   Cheers for that Deadman.  I used to subscribe to Edge but I let it lapse because all I was reading it for was the editorials and columns.  Now I read The Escapist, which is all editorial and is also free.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Quote from: "Mr Colossal"I had a friend who was notoriously known for proclaiming (rather debatably) how he was the first to like or do such and such.  The 'i was there first brigade' always come across as desperate has beens to me... Its basically 'you think I'm important for something, don't you chaps?!'

Similarly, for somebody who's gone out of there way to find some obscure band, for them to suddenly become mainstream you have basically stripped them of their individual clothes leaving them *gasp!, ordinary.

There are other forms, some people may get attached and over protective about everybody else wanting a piece of their baby. And sometimes the 'played to death' overkill of something, like something that's sweet, start making that taste suddenly very sickly if its continuously rammed down your throat.

But none of those take into account the fact that the show/band/whatever might genuinely have got worse since it hit the big time.

Lots of people complain that The Simpsons went off the boil circa 1999. Is that because it became popular and the I-watched-it-first brigade got annoyed, or is it because it did actually go off the boil? Um...it's the latter isn't it? Claiming it's the former seems a bit insulting to the fans.

So... the gist of all this is that you're all somewhat annoyed at the heathen, pharisaical public claiming sudden affection for treasured hobbies of old?

Mr Colossal

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"
But none of those take into account the fact that the show/band/whatever might genuinely have got worse since it hit the big time.

Lots of people complain that The Simpsons went off the boil circa 1999. Is that because it became popular and the I-watched-it-first brigade got annoyed, or is it because it did actually go off the boil? Um...it's the latter isn't it? Claiming it's the former seems a bit insulting to the fans.

Yes, but those fans would be saying that the show had indeed  gotten shit, not wheeling out the 'I was there first, you bastards'  excuse, which I was topically writing about...

The simpsons was always ubiquitously popular from very early on anyway wasn't it?   Perhaps you could attribute the decline in writing not specifically on the change in writers,  but as popularity and demand increased, they simply had less and less angles to write from- kind of a 'simpsons did it' vicious circle.  Therefore the 'overkill' rule would still technically apply.

Spiteface

I'm gonna say something in here.

Gaming-wise, I do consider myself to be a bit of a sonic fanboy.  From the first time I played Sonic The Hedgehog on the Megadrive when I got one in the christmas of '91 right through to the likes of Sonic Heroes.

The Sonic franchise has gone downhill since the move to 3D.  I don't say this to sound cool, it is the truth for the following reasons:

Too many characters (ie Big, Rouge etc), All Sonic 3 needed was Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Eggman (or Robotnik if you prefer)

Hunting/Fishing/Shooting levels that have no place in Sonic (Big's fishing levels in Sonic Adventure especially)

Shockingly bad voice acting - Sonic's english language voice as it is now disgusts me, and is so far away from the blue Hedgehog I fell in love with back in 1991.  again Sonic 3 shows you don't need any of this - there's a scene in the Hidden Palace in the Sonic and Knuckles half of the game blew me away.  The bit where Eggman attacks Knuckles, and makes off with the Master emerald is awesome, and not one word is uttered.  Go and buy mega collection and play up to the end of Hidden palace in Sonic's story In S&K to see what I mean.

I get the impresion that this is about to change if the forthcoming Sonic remake is any good whatsoever.  If this is good I have one request for Sega for a follow-up - REMAKE SONIC 3!  Infact just disregard the whole thing and just start from scratch with this newie and retell the story without the cack.

In fact, I'd love to see them do Sonic CD for the next gen, that'd be cool.

Urr yeah, my point is:

16-bit sonic in 2D=good, just enough of a cast and straight up platform gaming
current-gen 3d sonic = inferior, spread too thinly.

Quote from: "Lt Plonker"I love Text Adventures with a passion, even though I wasn't around in their hey day. The sense of freedom is great AND the game would react when you swear at it and occasionaly punish you.

http://www.monkeon.co.uk/swearadventure/

Quote from: "Lt Plonker"My Gamecube doesn't do that when I launch the controller at the wall. The first one I played was Magnetic Scrolls' Wonderland. Perhaps I'm looking at it with rose-tinted glasses, but by christ it was so absorbing - the dainty graphics, the sheer vastness of it and the fact that you could try to undress Alice and the game would tell you off.

Wonderland was great, even if the point-and-click interface was a little bit gimmicky. I really should replay it sometime:



I always fancied playing Michael Bywater's Jinxter but never bought it at the time (I only had Wonderland and the Magnetic Scrolls Collection compilation, which had Corruption, Fish! and Guild of Thieves). That's something else I can enjoy now, thanks to the magic of the internet:



See, modern gaming tech can be used for good as well as evil!

Incidentally, I've grown to hate Peter Kay since he's become famous, and I'm pretty sure it's because he's not as funny as he used to be -- I still love his Top of the Tower show (which is in such illustrious company as KMKYWAP and Father Ted when it comes to VHS I've re-bought on DVD) and I even enjoyed Phoenix Nights S2, but his more recent stuff (especially Bolton Albert Hall and Max & Paddy) leaves me cold. I still feel like a snob for thinking that though.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Quote from: "Mr Colossal"

Yes, but those fans would be saying that the show had indeed  gotten shit, not wheeling out the 'I was there first, you bastards'  excuse, which I was topically writing about...

But what's the difference between, for example, the decline of The Simpsons and the decline of The Manic Street Preachers? Why is Simpsons-fan malaise accepted as the show's fault, but fans of the early Manics are considered bitter, I-was-there-first, sad geek cunts?

True, The Simpsons was popular from Day 1. But a lot of British viewers didn't see it until the BBC bought the show in 1996. So I wonder why people don't say 'You're just pissed off that it isn't a cable TV cult any more'.

chand

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"But what's the difference between, for example, the decline of The Simpsons and the decline of The Manic Street Preachers? Why is Simpsons-fan malaise accepted as the show's fault, but fans of the early Manics are considered bitter, I-was-there-first, sad geek cunts?

From what I've known of the Manics debate, it's a bit more than that. I mean, fans of early Manics stuff are seen as the 'intensely intense' cunts from the Melody Maker parody. It's a battle between those people who have pictures of Richey on their walls and over-use the words 'alienation' and 'decadence', and those who came to them in 1996 as purveyors of big stadium-filling Tunes. They're a special case because of the change in sound between 'The Holy Bible' and 'Everything Must Go', so they have hugely different fanbases. So the fans of the early stuff react against the older stuff. To be honest though, I've seen far more mocking of people who like the new stuff than there is of the old.

EDIT: although, The Manics always said they wanted to be a massive band, of course.