Due to continued flight restrictions thoughout the UK and Europe, there may be a delay in receiving orders overseas and to certain locations in the UK.
The Royal Mail are still shipping packages to these destinations via alternative methods, however there may be a delay in receiving your orders until the situation changes.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
People were obsessed with impending nuclear Armageddon in the 1980’s, presumably as a way to take their minds off the awful music and rubbish clothes. However, even in 1980, with Two Tone dominating the charts, the mod revival in full swing and the decade still quite fresh and exciting – apart from all the rioting – Chicago student and technology tinkerer David Theurer was a troubled young man. Obsessed by ghastly recurring nightmares in which neighbouring cities were wiped out by atom bombs, and strongly influenced by American attempts to train pigeons for military purposes in World War Two, he set about writing computer games.
Theurer claims that the pigeon training stuff was gleaned while studying for a psychology degree, and came in handy when creating addictive computer games. While this may or may not be true, he was certainly adept at turning horrific dreams into arcade gold: another common nocturnal frightfest involved decomposing bodies emerging from holes in the ground to attack him, which formed the basis of Tempest.
So, putting aside the belated advice that it might have been an idea for him to switch from cheese sandwiches to cocoa before bedtime, let’s prepare to release the launch codes, paint the living room windows white, and go to DefCon 1 as we embrace the starkly marvellous world of Missile Command.
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As we discovered last time when we examined Manic Miner, Miner Willy’s working life was arduous, risky, and set to royalty-free classical music on an endless loop. So, like anyone in the 1980’s, his chosen method of relaxation was to have a massive house party, which, if the popular cinema of the time is to be believed, would have been generously populated by nerds, dorks, dweebs, babes, jocks, frat boys, and mutant humans riding motorcycles up and down the stairs.
This kind of thing does require a bit of clearing up after, however. In this, the second in the hugely popular Miner Willy series, our partied-out subterranean robot dodger has to get his Marigolds on and tidy up his entire house before his housekeeper, Maria, will let him go to sleep. This is a slightly strange premise, as tidying up is presumably the sort of thing he is paying a housekeeper for in the first place, not to mention how an entire mansion can be purchased on a miner’s salary. But let’s leave hair-splitting to one side for now. Prepare to join Willy in his unfeasibly large house with its just-sack-me housekeeper and start chucking Domestos about.
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In the 1980’s, miners were more notable for picket lines, pitched battles with the police and their part in an ideological struggle with Thatcher’s Britain that threatened at times to boil over into an actual gloves-off class war. There was little time for jumping around on conveyor belts in abandoned uranium mines to Johan Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz. Unless, that is, you were the lucky owner of a ZX Spectrum, and were playing the Software Project’s ground breaking platform game, Manic Miner.
It was, in fact, the royalty-free Danube Waltz (and also the equally gratis Hall of the Mountain King by Grieg, which also featured) that made Manic Miner a bona fide legend: they comprised the very first in-game soundtrack. It was generally felt that a computer would collapse in on itself like a black hole under this kind of pressure, and Matthew Smith, who wrote the game, achieved a considerable feat by doing so. Smith discovered the fairly obvious trick of switching processor time betwixt game and music, which accounts for Manic Miner’s occasionally slightly jerky soundtrack. Smith’s breakthrough is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that he was also trying to do his A levels at the time.
We thought you’d like to know that our friends over at handbakedarcade.co.uk are putting on a night of retro gaming fun in East London on the 27th March.
Their retro gaming installations have been well received all over the country at festivals and nightclubs, and featured on the Gadget Show. This, their largest set-up to date, will take over Pure Groove Records EC1.
As well as a great set up of freeplay retro games, some of which on 7ft screens, there will be a great line up of DJs including Hand Baked’s founder, E:LF providing chip tunes and other game inspired music.
Venue: Pure Groove Records,
6-7 West Smithfield, London, EC1A 9JX
Date: Saturday 27th March 2010
Time: 19:00 – 23:30
Entry: £3
It promises to be a great night!
Apparently, in First Blood, a character called Sgt Galt falls from a helicopter, and registers his concern by screaming. Elsewhere in the film, someone called Deputy Mitch also has a bit of a scream upon discovering that Rambo is hacking his leg off with a bayonet. In 1989, it was surprisingly tricky to capture noises like this and reproduce them in a video game.
If you have a good working knowledge of thinly veiled mainstream homoerotica, you’ll also hear the outrushing breath of someone leading something called a Snake Cult in Conan the Barbaian. Conan himself has just caused the breath in question to vacate the thoracic cavity by elbowing the Snake Leader in the solar plexus. This sound was also incorporated into the same video game, as was the understandably crestfallen cry of someone called Thorgrim as he is – yes, that’s right – fatally impaled on a rotating spike of some kind.
Bearing all this in mind, it’s time to pump up those pecs, remove your body hair, get all oiled up, develop a surprisingly good eye for interior furnishing, and follow in the footsteps of Golden Axe, as he battles his way through a medieval fantasy world. Don’t worry ladies – he’s a good listener.
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Railroad Tycoon 2 is one of those games where the best way to play is to not win. It isn’t as if you are going to get overrun by barbarians or sacked by your board of directors or, well, die, which are the standard penalties for dawdling about in other, more clear cut gaming genres.
Certainly, if you are playing one of the many scenarios that the Railroad Tycoon franchise offers – which are as diverse as getting Herbert Hoover around every city in the American Midwest during the 1929 General Election to reconstructing the Trans Siberian railway – you can fail to move enough freight or not get your company’s share price high enough and find yourself out of a job, but, considering that this is the worst thing that can possibly happen to you within the confines of the game, it’s pretty benign. So – if you’ve cleared the peasants out of First Class and filled the drinks trolley with crisps and tonic water, let’s fire up ol’ Steaming Jenny for a blast around the Industrial Age.
A dark, disease ridden era in which non existent social mobility, fear, war, and
religious fanaticism dominated the increasingly apathetic and supine populations
of western Europe. But hey – it’s time to forget contemporary society, shake
off a few centuries and dive headlong into the middle ages for a right old dust
up.
Of course, ‘Total War’ itself was conceptually impossible
in the middle ages, largely because the idea of nationhood as we understand it
had yet to evolve, but also because the industrial infrastructure required to
support an all out war effort involving every member of a society simply did not
exist. Happily, in the interests of turning out a quantum-leaping mind bomb of
a game, designer Mike Brunton and developers The Creative Assembly decided to
ignore all that and concentrate instead on charging through Europe and the
Middle East at lance point. So oil up your metal underwear, stock up on wild
boar sandwiches and mead, and prepare to release ye dogs of warre.
The phrase ‘classic is a phrase that is used too much these days’ is, in turn, a phrase that is used too much these days. Civilisation 2, however, is a classic in the literal sense. It’s also an epic in the Homeric sense, and genius in the Archemedian sense. It was the first of the really big strategy games that you didn’t so much play as marry. This article is late because, in the interests of research, I decided to download a copy of the old time guzzler for a quick half hour blast and effectively deleted Wednesday October 21st 2009 from my life.
But no matter. The Civilisation franchise is one of the cornerstones of modern strategy gaming, along with the Sim City, Railroad Tycoon and Total War famlies, and everyone with even the vaguest interest in the genre will, at some point, feel the embrace of this migraine-inducing mistress.
The aim of Civ2 is to nurse your small wandering tribe of pre-historic also-rans into an uber-advanced, industrial-military powerhouse over the course of about eight thousand years. So, if you’ve booked your annual leave, bid adieu to your loved ones and stocked up on food that requires no preparation, brace yourself to go right back to the beginning of everything, ever, and start history all over again. It’s a bit of an ask, to say the least, so we’d best crack on.
The concept is simple. It’s a hospital. People come in with illnesses, your
excellent staff cure them, and they go home happy – like holding a mirror up to
real life, in fact.
The hospital you will be building, however, is more
akin to the child of a diabolical union between Fawlty Towers, Green Wing
and Carry On Doctor. Your patients will be troubled by Bloaty
Head, which will need deflating, or Slack Tongue, which will need trimming up
with a guillotine. You’ll need to shoot any rats you find scurrying about the
place quickly, before anyone sees them. Scrimp on your cleaning budget and risk
entire corridors being literally swept away on a tidal wave of vomit.
It’s time, then, to snap on your rubber gloves, polish your stethescope
and prepare to cure the afflicted as we explore the demented world of Theme
Hospital.