Enter stranger....

“I don’t have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They’re upstairs in my socks.”
― Groucho Marx

Nostalgia is an odd thing, we all long to return to the past, the films, music, people and places we loved in our youth.
It's great to think of these things fondly and reminisce with others about them, however you can't go back, you can't do it all again and get the same feelings back, you can never go home.

Someone really should have told the jerks who just remade Knightmare!

Knightmare, if you didn't watch it when you were a kid (which, if you didn't is a form of child abuse, you should report this to the Daily Mail at once so your parental units can be strung up in the town square)  is a kids TV show from the late 80's.
The show premise is a dungeon master called Treguard must defeat an evil overlord who is plotting to take over the realm. To do this Treguard takes the logical step of summoning a group of posh school kids, 3 of which will sit next to a magic viewing port (a 14" colour telly with a rug over it) and guide the 4th member of their team while he stumbles around a blue room full of Z list actors and bumps into the furniture.
The blue screen was there, so early CGI could be super imposed over it and give the illusion of the dark creepy dungeons and crypts the dungeoneer (the blind 4th members of the party I mentioned earlier) was supposedly exploring.

The team would work together to avoid pit traps, giant spiders and all kinds of fantasy creatures to gain clues in the form of objects such as food to replenish health, scrolls that contain spells and other items like keys and the like.

Spells are cast in a kind of mini game where the pre pubescent pricks have to spell (clever) the words of the spell in order for it to work- this was kids TV at it's zenith!

As the show was 30 mins long and there were only a certain number of episodes per season the chances of anyone actually getting to the end was almost nonexistent especially since the teams would get killed every other show, " go right...no your right...there's a pit! run.. no walk no go....oh shit you're dead! 

We now jump forward to present day and the abomination that is "Knighmare returns".

The first thing to note is that they have ditched the school kids and have gone for the mass market appeal of the emo teen.

Look at them!!! With their hair and their clothes. good god in heaven he's wearing a retro gaming T-shirt!! You're in a remake of an 80's kids game show, did your really think that was needed??

These cocky style monkeys actually think they are funny. They have lines prepared for the situation, I can only imagine that these were force fed to them before the cameras started rolling by the guys who used to write for the contestants on blind date.



The format seems to remain the same with no added extras and no improvements made. I know that this is a remake but there have been so many advances in CGI and virtual reality, surly some of these could have been implemented with great effect.

The CGI itself has had the res upped a bit for the HD era but remains flat and cartoony. Once again I know this is a shameless nostalgia fest but still, it could have looked so much better.

All in all this is knightmare with all the 80's charm and fun sucked out of it. What's next?  Funhouse with an ageing Pat Sharpe shouting at my chemical romance lookalikes as they get hit in the face by foam pillars and dropped into gunge tanks........hang on...I'm just off to call ITV.....imagine what Melanie and Martina look like now!!!! 



 

Shield your eyes!! Its another new handheld.

So I was on my nexus 7 tab the other night and I booted up the Nvidia app. After some surfing I found a feature on a new bit of of hardware called project shield.

Said gaming gadget is a cross between a streaming service for PC content and a hand held games console with full tegra 4 support.

Having watched several videos of it playing harken (a mech run and gun for the PC ) and several top PC titles I am now of the opinion that this is the greatest thing since sliced horse (like sliced bread but from tesco) and I must have one !!!.

Once I have more details I will post again, or I might just buy a PC engine and post about retro stuff like usual, I'm in two minds.

Go away now.

One from the vaults....

One from the vaults....well..... from a dusty box in the second bedroom actually, but you get the idea.

 

It's snowing outside and as is the UK tradition all the trains stop running and people jump in their cars and crash them into each other, and that's what makes Britain great!

 

As I live in the back end of beyond I cannot get into work, so I thought I would tidy my houses version of a refuse centre, the second bedroom.

 

every one has a room in the house that they slowly and almost without realising it fill with junk. Stuff like dolls houses from when the kids were young, desks or ikea furniture that you thought would look great in your lounge but turned out to be cheap flat packed crap, and in my case boxes and boxes of cables and old gaming junk.

 

After about an hour of choking on dust and nearly being killed by a falling halo head box set (still cant get the cat to put its head in it :( ) I found a sealed box marked Ben's stuff from when I moved house 3 years ago. It's snowing outside, there is an unopened box of unknown treasures and I don't have to go to work, oh this is better than xmas!

 

So I went and got my Stanley knife (other lethal cutting blade are available)  and cut off the package tape.

Inside was the first 5 "Johnny the homicidal maniac" comics, they are going on eBay! a set of screwdrivers, two note books and my old warhammer fantasy battle box set from back in the early 90's.

 

All this was fine, but it was the item jammed in the side of the box that really stood out, it was my first Nintendo Gameboy advance! This little beauty was bought for me by my wife before she was my wife (she got it for me before we were married, the snow may be affecting my brain).

 

We were in Las Vegas  in September 2001 and having seen the gba (not yet out in the uk) in shop in ceasers palace mall I was excited, however as I had just spent a week playing blackjack and poker at a sub school child level I was broke and had no cash left to purchase said item.

 

To cheer me up Rachel bought me a ride on "race to Atlantis", an awesome 3D imax ride that lasted about 15 mins, she did not go on it herself as she said it would make her sea sick.

 

When I got off the ride I walked to the exit and there she was with a new boxed GBA in her hand plus batteries and a carry case ( god I love that woman :) ).

 

So I'm off to the shops to get some second hand GBA games!!!!......as soon as the bloody snow stops....