Hub42tube gaming - Zombies were people too

What made the Saturn great INSERT RING PUN HERE.

After last week’s Saturn celebration/commiseration I broke the old beast out of storage and went through my Saturn games to check out what it was about the system that made it stand out for me.

The first thing I notice is the game boxes.  Playstation games come in plastic CD style jewel cases, the N64 have cardboard boxes like the SNES, the Saturn however is a little different from the norm, they resemble the cardboard cases the first DVD’s came in, you know the ones- they had the tear out proof of purchase tabs- (what the help were they for?? why were there loads of them in each DVD???).   The card sleeve was glued to a plastic lining that has a CD/DVD shaped recess that allowed you to click the game disc in safely- this gave a really nice bespoke feel to the games and set them apart from the cheap boxes of the N64 and generic CD style of playstastion.

Having dung through the box and realised the AV lead was missing i spent 20 mins looking through draws full of cables trying to find the sega one withe the odd S video style connection for the console.

Ive written at length about the different styles and models of the saturn so im not going to go on about this, suffices to say that it looks great, keeping black megadrive looks and feel.

But its the games that set it apart, Nights, Sega rally and datona are all gold in my eyes and theres enough exclusive titles to keep up with the likes of Playstation.

At the end of the day it was a rushed launch, lack of games and Sony's master stroke of embracing the 20 somthing post pub/club crowd that where the real nails in the saturns coffin, the console its self was pretty damn fine.

Happy saturversary.....birthdaturn....oh forget it! The saturns 20...

Its 20 years since SEGA launched the Saturn on the world. As you know I’m a bit of a SEGA fan, seeing as I believe the Dreamcast to be the best games console ever released, and as such I thought i would post my own personal experiences with the doomed playstation rival.

The media is focusing on the negative side of the launch- Sony’s petty $299 one word price point announcement, the panicked early release and the subsequent supply problems.

I’m going to tell a different story, one of joy and 90’s retail displays, of packaging and the mistaken belief that a certain blue hedgehog would turn up late to the party and save the day.

The year was 1995, Brit pop was king, baggy jeans were worn with pride, unaware of their hideous skinny future and the world (well my world) waited with baited breath for the 32bit gen to start.

Having read all about the up and coming consoles in both Edge and Mean machines magazines I was over the moon to find out the Saturn would be released early.

Back in the 90’s Virgin megastore was still a big deal in the UK; in Brighton it took up 5 floors of a building on what was then the main shopping street. Most of the floors were taken up with music, video and band posters and t-shirts; however the 3rd floor had an entire corner taken up with video games. This was when specialist game shops were not as common as today, you had to go to HMV or V store to be able to play the latest games consoles to release- and they looked great! The machines were encased in Perspex bubbles, game pad cables hidden in flexible tubes with the pads screwed to the ends to stop little toe-rags from stealing them. The attached monitors were hidden in neon and plastic to give the look of futuristic portals to other words- the whole thing looked like future zone from the crystal maze crossed with the Nostromo from Alien. 

Each screen ran demos for the respective consoles, Playstation had wipeout and Toshinden, 3DO had Jurassic park (oh dear, oh dear L ) but the cream of the crop was the Saturn with Panzer Dragoon, an on-rails shooter that had dragons, castles and huge flying gunships, all beautifully rendered in 3D.

This is how I will always remember the Saturn, not as Sega’s next misstep or as a failure, but as a great console that dared to hold onto smooth and crisp 2D sprites in a world of jaggy and low textured 3D, as a great alternative to Sony’s rave loving, lad mag reading zeitgeist snatching monster.

Don’t get me wrong, the PS was an amazing machine and I still own my first one, it’s just that i also still have my original Saturn as well, and in hindsight there is not allot to hate about it- okay it had more graphics chips than a 3DFX landfill, and was a bugger to program for- but when it was done right, it was just soo right.

Well happy birthday Saturn fans.

Head for Saturn!  

Zombie Revenge or a dish best served cold...and dead...braaaaains.

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig a shit load of graves.

After moving some of my collection from my attic to my newly decorated man cave (or the second bedroom if you speak to my wife), I stumbled upon a crate of dreamcast discs that i bought off eBay but never got round to unpacking.

Among the usual street racers and chu chu rockets was a game i had only ever played in the arcade before, Zombie revenge.

Quite what the title means I have no clue- can zombies get revenge? Are the zombies having revenge reaped on them? Is someone using them a tool for revenge? We may never know however here is what we do know.

Released in 1999 in the arcades and at the same time on Dreamcast, ZR was a spin off from the house of the dead light gun series. As such it features allot of the same characters and themes as thotd games.

Having played the first 3 hotd games and several spin off games (pinball of the dead on the GBA being a surprise fav of mine) im used to the francise trying new and bizarre directions (im looking at you typing of the dead),  however this one is somthing really different.

Gone are the on rails shooting range levels, instead we get a free roaming beat em up in a 3d streets of rage style. You can punch, kick and shoot your way through the hoards of the dead that jump, run and even operate fire arms (yes there are shotgun toting zombies in this one).

The cut scenes (they use the ingame engine) feel very hotd, with hamy, stilted and just plain weirded dialogue "Here, take this. A man with golden eyes told me to give it to you!".

The game plays allot like dynamite cop, you move to a new area, punch, kick or shoot enemies till they dont get up again and then move on. After several areas are clear you move onto a boss fight, this is where zr really shines, the battles are fraught and the giant undead freaks
are well designed with a good level of challenge without being to irritating.

If only the controls weren’t so bloody fiddly! Actually aiming is automatic with your character locking onto the nearest enemy, but the camera angles make it very hard to see where you are shooting, this is not helped by the fact you shoot the creature you’re locked onto and so others can sneek up off camera and hit you before you know they are there.

Picking up items and weapons is also a drag, you have stand right on them and press the right button to pick them up, easy enough you say! Well it would be if you could see if you are actualy standing on them, the camera pans to such odd angles that your not sure where exactly the right place to stand is, this is also an issue when level hazards like lasers and fire balls that reqiure you to stand in particular spots to avoid them, you end up guessing and half the time you get killed for not having a clue where to stand.

As per usual in hotd games, you have to rescue innocents who are trapped in the now zombie infested city. These bits are quite good, they usualy take place in a store room of locked off area with little room to manoeuvre and as such add a nice degree of tention while you defend the hapless fool whose got themselves trapped with the dead (if there is not a zombie film called trapped with the dead then someone  needs to make one!).

This is an out dated beatem up for a dead system, hotd has long since been rebooted as hotd overkill, a game that openly parridies itself and the francise.  However it is great fun as a 2 played romp and some of the boss designs are awsome. So if you fancy an early 2000's arcade perfect zombie blast you could do allot worse...now all i need is a sequel - Zombie 2-the re-revengeaning anyone?

Google cardboard (or flatpack VR, or the maketrix...i'll stop now)

Ever since I watched "Tron" and  "The lawnmower man" in the early 90's I've wanted to have virtual reality at home, not the migraine inducing virtual boy, nor the over hyped fail of 3d TV. No, I wanted actual 3d virtual worlds to explore.

Well that dream is nearly here, in the next 12 months we should be able to get our hands on Sony's project Morpheus, face books oculus rift and a whole new world of other headsets and visors that promise to give us access to our own personal holodeck experiences.

 

But for now we have to wait- unless you spend big bucks on a developer kit.
Or so I thought. It turns out that all you need is a smart phone, cardboard box, some glue and a pair of lenes from eBay, you can build your own fully functional VR headset!

 

Having found this out i went straight to google's google cardboard website and downloaded and printed the pdf.

 

While i waited for the lenes I ordered from eBay to arrive i got a head start by building the headset itself. I assembled all the tools needed to make this bit of high tech meets low tech kit.

 

 

 

I started by cutting out the template and gluing it to a flattened cardboard box, this took allot longer than i planned,  the tabs and hole were fiddly and I nearly sliced off my fingers on several occasions.

 

 

After an hour waiting for the glue to set and a further hour swearing at the god of cardboard for letting such a complex and exasperating card folding monstrosity to come into existence, I finally had my full cut out and ready template, now I just needed to fold it , put tab A into slot B, and slot in my old iPhone 4S and would be away!! 

 

 

How wrong I was (I'm married so should be used to being wrong by now). Getting the bugger to actually slot into place was a nightmare- the holes don't line up, the tabs are to small and glue and tape wont keep the thing together!

 

After a quick game of bloodborne to calm me down (in hind sight not the best game to relax to) I tried again and with a bit of creative adjustment (and more swearing) I finally got the thing to look like the web site pics...sort of.

 

 

Now I just have to await the lenses to arrive and I can enter the matrix!! or more likely look like a mental with box stuck to his face- either way I'm happy with the result so far...now where did I leave my light cycle?





 

She mixed it up right there in the sink; it smelled like terps and looked like Indian ink...

Potions’, gaming is full of em.

Need to heal a near fatal arrow wound to the chest? There’s a potion for that.

Need run faster than a speeding train? There’s a potion for that.

Need to fly up through the clouds and punch a god to death? Yup, there’s a potion for that.

From MUD to Skyrim, potions are the practical alternative to the graft of first aid training or hitting the gym, and let’s face it, none of us are going to play a game that requires us to take a break from the action to learn CPR in Tamriel or spend 4 days a week at the gym to stave off Nathan Drake’s beer belly.

 

Good god that's a messed up bottle!

Potion of Transmogrification ; Fable 2

Get to the end of fable 2 and earn yourself 1 million gold (or choose to kill your dog and get given it for free- you monster!!!), you can then purchase the HQ of your now dead nemesis, Bowerstone castle.
Hidden under this imposing pile is the alchemy lab of one of the previous residents.
Revealed in several diary entries scattered around the place are the details of his greatest achievement, a potion that lets you permanently change from he to she with one swig from the disturbingly shaped bottle.

Morrowwind, The elder scrolls.

This speed run aiding creation can be knocked together within the first 10 mins of the game.
Once you have used your alchemy skills to create this potion you can take a swig and instantly fly though the clouds, develop super strength and instantly kill the games main big bad and complete the a game that should take dozens of hours in just under 30 mins- check out some of the speed run videos on you tube.

White Radford's decoction ; The witcher.

The witcher games take potions to the next level, the shear verity of mutagens, potions and elixirs you can create is astounding.

This decoction allows bones to mend, flesh to heal and wounds as deadly as a crossbow bolt through the chest to be shrugged off easily.

The creation screen for these potions is quite daunting when you first start, but with miraculous liquids like this one available its well worth the effort!

Pop idle.

I am not a musician, and I have come to the depressing conclusion that I will probably never be a musician. Much like my F1 racing driver and fighter jet pilot fantasies, this is another the musician dreams will probably stay just that, dreams.

However over the years’ technology, games, PC software ad plug in peripherals have given me an all too brief glimpse of a world where I was a club DJ, a rock guitarist or just maybe a writer and composer of complex and beautiful symphonies.

There are the obvious ones, the guitar and band heroes with their plastic guitars and drum kits, the borderline karaoke of sing start and lips and the one step too far of DJ hero- however these are not the ones that stick with me.

 

Rave EJay

 

 

Back when rave was still under a decade old, I made an impulse purchase from a Brighton book shop that was having a closing down sale- it was a game/tool that allowed you to take beats, samples and melodies, stack them horizontally along a scrolling time bar so you could create cut and paste tracks and create and save them in MP3 format.

The fact that you could knock together a simple track in 5 to 10 mins and then spend hours tweaking and adjusting it with new samples, increased or decreased tempo and even record and convert your own samples to use in the program as well.  It was this last feature that kept me coming back to this simple to use sequencer- I spent hours sampling movies, music and even SNES and megadrive sound effects to make increasingly complex and diverse musical tracks.

In the end I moved on to more complex and professional applications, but none matched the fun and accessibility of Ejay.

 

 

Electroplankton    2006 UK

 

Now this is an odd one. It’s not a music design app, it’s not a rhythm action game and it’s not a tech demo- the only way i can describe this weird fish related undersea music mash-up is that it is a collection of noise making, sound distorting beat repeating mini games that have no other function other than to delight you with their short, useless, musical muses.

This was only on the original DS ad took advantage of the mic, duel screens and touch pad to allow you to manipulate sounds you recorded, add beats and create loops and phrases with the help of the afore mentioned plankton .

The really odd thing about this cartridge was there was no way to save the results and no way to use the tools together to create anything but disposable snippets of what could have been. Why the designer ndieszero did not allow the mixing and matching and even eventual saving and storing of the results is unknown, but what we are left with is a spark o genius that could have been so much more.            

Always online?

Imagine a world where ever aspect of your life is connected. Your fridge tells your oven what it has inside so it can pull meal ideas you could prepare from the net and pre heat itself to the right temp.

Or your car knows when your up in the morning and adjusts its internal temp and plans a route to work avoiding traffic jams and delays.

All that sounds great until the servers go down. All of a sudden your fridge forgets what in it and the oven stays cold and you get home from work with the expected meal still on the shelves at Tesco.

You wake up and the car has not down loaded the new firmware, the screen is icy, you finally get on the road only to find the M25 is Jammed to hell and your late to work.

Always online sounds really good for games to, you can meet friends in game, have a never ending supply of intelligent enemies or tem mates to compleat with, so much better than AI bots.

But once again, what if the service fails? 

PC gamers have experienced this allot in the last decade, Sim city 4 had server errors from day one, this meant hundreds of gamers could not play the game for hours on end. Diablo 3 suffered from the I dreaded "error 37" server busy message- the pop up that spawned a thousand mems as gamers lashed out on forums and blogs after finding that you could not even play the game offline.

And there in lies the problem, if you can't play a game like Diablo 3 offline then what happens when blizzard stops the online support? Some companies are good enough to release patches that allow offline gaming when the servers are taken offline, but not all.

What if you live and work in areas where high speed internet is a luxury? I spent time working in areas of Saudi where I could not get wifi for days at a time, this lead to me lossing access to many games that i had purchased expressly to entertain myself in my work down time.

Retro games at the moment are reach a stage where add ons, characters and even whole levels are missing as the servers have long since shutdown- I recently played guitaro man on the dreamcast only to find i could not play the last level as a download was needed, and if i want to play halo 2 i online i have to pay microsoft a second time for the privilege as xbox live does not let you play the original anymore.

With all the dlc games demand we pay for and download, in ten years time will you be constantly bothered by Arkham city demanding you download the catwoman pack that is no longer avalible? You can bet if you want said items or even to play todays gamesyou will have to buy the 4K full VR remake :(

Lost the plot part 2

Quake 2

The original quake was a tour de force in H P Lovecraft style gothic meets dark science and magic.

The plot saw a creature called quake (later revealed to be the old god Shub-Niggurath) open portals to earth via our own teleportation system and sends its troops to attack humanity.

Quakes troops are genetically created psychopaths, wired up to enjoy killing and violence. Along with an assortment or monsters, zombies and devils, quake prepares to destroy humanity.

You are the Ranger- last survivor of the human strike force sent to take out Quake. Just like doom, it is your job to travel through each of 4 worlds to collect 4 magic glyphs to us to kill quake and end the invasion.

Quake 2 however strayed from this plot line completely.

Gone are the gothic horror themes, the zombies and devils- in their place are the Strog.

The Strog are an alien race that attack other species and use their biological matter to make more Strog to carry on their race- think the Borg but with anger issues.

The only things that the two have in common are the title, the lone solider against the world and the invasion of earth theme.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Quake 2, the sound track, the weapons, the way the grunts reflex fire into wall as they go down- It’s just I would have liked to have seen a true sequel to Quake.   

Lost the plot.

Sequels, prequels and even run by the side of the original titles time line- if you create a high grossing game, movie or book you will want to capitalise on its success with a follow up (or at least your studio or producer will want you to...).

Most game sequels follow on from the original narrative or at least take place in the same universe/reality as the source material that spawned them, such as final fantasy or the metal gear series that may stray wildly from the original but still keep themselves grounded to the overall concept or idea; however you sometimes get games that bare such little resemblance to the original that you have to read the box to know that there is any connection what so ever, here are a few that spring to mind.

Phantasmagoria 2: a puzzle of flesh.

The original Phantasmagoria came out in the mid 90’s, right in the middle of the P.C.s digitised point and click era where games like Gabriel knight ; the beast within and burn cycle were all the rage.

The plot focused on Adriana and her husband who buy a creepy gothic house in the middle of the woods, Adrian is a writer and her spouse is a professional photographer- all seems rosy with the couple going about their daily lives, that is until Adriane discovers a secret chapel hidden behind a panel and ends up releasing the spirit of an evil spirit stage magician who, after being taken over by a demon, killed his first 4 wives and ended up being killed live on stage by his assistant and his 5th wife.

And so begins a story of possession, rape and violent ghost related torture porn flash backs that beat the Saw movies to the punch by 15 years.

  

A puzzle of flesh was the sequel to this and has absolutely no link to the original save for a flyer for a book signing that Adrian from the first game is having in town- you don’t even get to go to it!

You play as Curtis, underling at a software firm that has a dark past, under the building is an abandoned lab where the companies MD used to throw “volunteers” through a hole in space time and into another dimension- your usual evil corporation type stuff.

The rest of the game has you flirting with co-workers, getting involved with German style S&M clubs and generally dickingaround while your friends and family are butchered, punctured by rogue electric cabling and fried in their own blood (I’m not kidding, this actually happens, sorry Tris).

The whole thing comes to head with zombified staff, evil twins and a final explosion that takes the the gate way to the alien world with it.

 

As you can tell this has absolutely nothing to do with the gothic supernatural plot of the first game. True, both have the same visual style with lots of FMV and digitised sprites and backgrounds, there is also allot of blood and an overall horror theme- but apart from these general similarities the two might as well be separate game series.