Richard's Online Journal
[11/03/09] PC Plus: World of Wordcraft
Guess what game I was playing a lot of that month.
This was a fun article to write, even if I’m sure there’ll be at least one folk-etymology in there. I also managed to sneak in quite a few gags, which was a refreshing change from the norm. I love words (and highly recommend Bill Bryson’s books on the subject, especially Made In America) and it’s always good to know obscure little things that will trip you up in techie quizzes, such as where the word TWAIN actually comes from (it’s not an acronym) or the definition of ‘recursion’.
In retrospect, we should have left more space for the actual article part that runs along the bottom. When we planned out the page designs, we weren’t sure there’d be enough interesting stuff to say, but in the end it had to be cut down from about twice the length. It amuses me that while both ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’ are often seen as interchangeable, they in fact stem from completely opposite ends of some imaginary freak-curve. Still, no matter. I think it’s quite a fun little feature.
[09/03/09] Tchotchke-ho! Peggle Edition
More wonderful tat (I mean this in the best possible way - I love getting this kind of stuff) from the mailbox, this time promoting PopCap Games’ wonderful Peggle. If you haven’t played Peggle, you are a very bad person. If you simply don’t like Peggle, you are hereby banned, from this website and from your primary oxygen supply.
Let’s see what’s in the PopCap box today…
My very own cuddly Splork! I’m a little nervous though. That red suit covers him from head to little green toes… so what’s with the big red bulge? Didn’t know he was that kind of tentacle alien…
Badges! And of the mighty Hu too. Just by wearing one, I’m reliably informed that your Peggle skills improve by at least 0*232,543 percent. That’s impressive, especially if you don’t know much about maths.
As ever, I wish to make it absolutely clear that receiving this kind of thing in no way affects the impartial nature of any content we produce, even when a game is as transcendent an experience as a blessed round of Peggle, with its beautiful noises that ring orgasms in your ear and boundless reaches of sheer wonder the likes of which puzzle games have never known. So there. But it is fun. (Peggle!)
[04/03/09] Click Video Magazine
Putting journalists in front of cameras is usually a bad idea, but often quite funny. For proof, you need only look back to 1991, and the release of Click - a magazine on VHS tape which lasted just two issues before vanishing. Each one cost a fiver, which was an astronomical amount for a magazine at the time, but I bought both of them and remember them very fondly. They were very much products of their time, trying to turn the character based banter of most gaming mags of that era into something more like fly-on-the-wall comedy. A lot of it was pretty eye-rolling even at the time, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fun. The writing was on the wall as soon as the first one appeared in shops though, and I wasn’t surprised when Issue 3 never appeared.
I think I’ve still got the tapes somewhere, although I no longer own a VHS player, and for years I had the sneaking suspicion that I was the only person who even remembered them. Then for some reason they came up in a conversation with the PC Format boys this morning, and out of curiosity, I hit Google. And what do you know, it seems that there’s at least one other person who remembers them, and they go by the name PJVonoBox. And not only does Mr. Box remember them, he’s uploaded them to the internet. Hurrah for PJVonoBox! May his bottom always be fragrant.
The second episode was a good bit tighter, attempting to have at least something of a story running through the reviews and features, and with most of the cast a bit more comfortable in their on-screen characters. The features weren’t as good though, mostly because of the trouble of getting early-90s computing to look cool. Whatever happened to all those awesome Virtual Reality games, anyway?
Oh. Right…
The scary thing is that I remember watching these at the time and being deeply envious of all the Amiga/ST people who got to play such awesome looking games, while I was still stuck with an out of date IBM PC without even VGA graphics, along with my Nintendo. To all the people who had those systems at the time, and liked to gloat over us PC users with our strategy games and stats-based roleplaying titles and classic text adventures, please don’t think I’m gloating when I say: Hah! We win!
[03/03/09] PC Plus Issue #1
Technically, it’s Issue #3, but only because the first two were supplements in another magazine. My recent office project was scanning in the complete first issue of PC Plus, which hit the shelves back in December 1986. Trying to get a bit of traffic for this one, so please:
You’ll see the state of the art, back in the days when even DOS was considered new, and the idea of buying a PC to help kids with their homework was still only the third most naive thing a parent can do. There are exclusive reviews of the latest Infocom text adventures, including the infamous Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and its conclusive proof that games reviewers will always opt to play the female character given a choice. Sir Alan Sugar was still just plain Alan, but we think you’ll recognise his style as he deals with his critics over an overheating scandal. You may even see the dawn of Clippy, as one company tries to claim that a word processor with character is just what the disk doctor ordered. Just don’t try subscribing to get the free binders.
[23/09/08] Citizen Journalism
“Wow! I can’t wait to get online and find out what it is!”
(To answer the question: A massive, building-shaking fire just down the road from our office, with the bad taste to burn on a day when I didn’t have my good camera. Touched up iPhone pics just aren’t the same...)