** with your host, rob remakes **
I weirdly enjoy people finding out that no, I’m not making them up, Alcatraz Harry was a legit, two game, videogame mascot character.
Whilst everyone else was off with Ramsey The Racist Raccoon or something, here was Barry Jones making a game about a dude in Alcatraz, called Harry. Amazing. Probably dodge too but here he is.
Pity poor I, Ball, not only a largely forgotten character in the annals of videogame but who, for their second outing, became a being of purest chrome. Still, they looked pretty chonky and far from an executive toy so it could have been worse.
I have a fondness for Steinar Lund’s take on the character more, though both are pretty fine really. So that’s the one I went with when it came to doodling them, army fatigues, laser guns and helmet and all.
I’ve always, always, found myself drawn to the small, the janky and in some cases, downright tatty when it comes to my tastes. Whether it’s watching (and enjoying!) cheap films, games or whatever, I’m much more at home with rough edges and jank than I am with super polished, super slick stuff.
Obviously, the dawning of home computer games and the wild spread of stuff being made, listed, or sold meant I would rarely be short of stuff to tinker with and the notorious Don’t Buy This – five pointedly crap games for a couple of quid and a bit – didn’t exactly help either.
And sure, most of the games on the compilation were games I was in no rush to play. Fido, however, was an exception. A simple and juuuuust about responsive enough to play whack a mole videogame with a cute doggo, Fido got a lot of play. More than a whole bunch of higher rated, better remembered videogames.
I could rarely be arsed with Fido 2, solely by virtue of having to put effort into forwarding the tape on far enough to get to it rather than having any particular beef with it but the first one? I still like it and still reckon I got more than my two pounds and fifty UK pence worth of videogame from it.
I can’t recommend anybody else play it! Well, unless you’re like me and thrive on tat, then definitely, definitely, definitely grab Don’t Buy This and give it a play.
Despite being perfectly fine mascots (and certainly cuter than that egg) Olli And Lissa got short shrift in the cover art stakes. A screaming dude for the first, their names reduced to a barely noticeable size for the second as a spooky witch takes centre stage in their place and in the third, inexplicably becoming dogs.
A bit silly because whilst slight, they were a perfectly fine bunch of games and really quite pretty to boot.
I guess this is just my way of making it up to them somewhat. Better late than never and all that.
It’s been a while since I last picked on the egg.
I’ve got no excuse for this one really. Yes, I was watching a Vincent Price film whilst sketching it out but that was House Of Wax, not Witchfinder General.
At least I can honestly say the pun isn’t mine. Everything else though? Yeah, sorry. Sorry about your egg.
First world I’ve taken to exploring after polishing off the quest to open up the new star systems for exploration and its got a 400 unit deep ocean that takes an absolute age to reach the floor of.
It’s immensely beautiful down there, I’ve found myself just slowly swimming about the place, occasionally grabbing some resources but not with any intent, and enjoying the view.
I spent an extraordinary amount of time doing the “that doesn’t look right” face whilst sketching this fella out and I had to keep reminding myself that’s not my fault, Monty genuinely doesn’t look right in Impossamole.
I’ve never really made peace with it as a game either. For all their unfairness, Monty On The Run and Auf Wiedersehen Monty are still all timers in my book and Impossamole just isn’t. I’ve never found anything to enjoy in it and on occasional revisits, little has changed my opinion over the years.
Still. Plenty of characters have met a worse videogame fate.
I love it when a game I’ve been looking forward to turns out even better than I’d hoped. 3d Don’t Die, Mr Robot is even better than I’d hoped. I’m incredibly happy with this outcome.
3DDDMR (because even tho the name is partially my fault, I am too tired to keep typing it out in full so often) is what happens when you combine cartoony Minter-esque visuals, Omega’s Every Extend style explosion chaining, the understanding that a videogame often needs fruit to be its best self and a cacophony of speech and things that go wub wub.
Infinite States have taken a couple of prior shots at the game and I’ve been rather enamoured with all of them (and certainly felt pretty chuffed when one of the character unlocks in one of the elder DDMR games was mine and your favourite fishy chum, DRM), and this is the one where I feel like “yes, that’s it, nailed it” fully and completely applies.
The general gist of the game is that a bunch of hazards come swinging in at you, fruit drops onto the board and … it’s exploding fruit, yay! So, use the exploding fruit to chain explosions together to blow up some meany bad guys and score as highly as possible and (depending on the game type you choose) last as long as possible to do so. Don’t hit the baddies but do get close to do some grazing, if you dare.
The results are a barrage of arcade bleeps, bloops, robot voices and pings, fruit puns, colours and fireworks everywhere, lasers and everything that’s good in videogames.
Bluntly, I bloody love it. It’s out now. Also, “Lime Attack Mode”. Fuck me, get out and don’t come back until you’re ready to say sorry.
I haven’t had much of a chance to dig too deep into the latest No Man’s Sky update yet, what I have played so far looks incredible though. Every time I think “okay, that’s as good as this game is going to look now”, Hello pull a blinder and make it look even better.
Just a few pics from my first bit of travelling through Worlds II. More in a short while, no doubt,
I’ve done a couple of versions of this for Jeff to use but I had a very specific idea of how I would like a version for me and just me to look so I figured may as well tweak it to please myself.
I’ve redrawn the main character, it’s still pretty close to the original sketch but I wanted to lose some detail for a more cartoony look. The maze is exactly the same because I’m just really happy with how that turned out. And to wrap it up, a less busy, brighter background.
Stuff that makes for less striking box art but a nice enough standalone picture.
Don’t forget you can buy the game for just a few Earth squids and it comes with the Rob seal of approval, as well as a picture or two from me.