Be Excellent To Each Other

I can do Elite if no one else wants to do it. I'm no linguist, though. Or very cunning.

I've had a dozen or so submissions so far. Most of them are in a master Google doc for now, but that won't do screenshots. When I get 10 min at home I am going to transfer them to an UpToJump draft article and make a list of who has and hasn't submitted. Then I can start chasing people

My submission might be a bit late. Bit of a shitty time at the mo, and I've got to do that review for LewP.

You'll have mine before the weeks out Doc.

Mine's late due to stuff. Not sure when it'll be done. Will endeavour to make it sooner rather than later.

Oh. We're doing these now?

Well, soon, please

You're all shit.

Keeno!

Even I've done my bit already. It passed the time during the dull bits of the tennis final on Sunday.

Want to borrow a chainsaw?

I thought I took a long time. I hope people aren't writing epics. My Rainbow Islands was overlong, but as Heads Over Heels was supposed to be one of the "expanded" ones, I think I might get away with that one.

Scream if you need more screenshots.

I've posted this before, but while on the subject of Head Over Heels, take a look at the Amstrad PCW version.



Nothing special I hear you cry but look again. The full room is on-screen (even the CPC version chops off the very top left) thanks to the PCW's resolution.

But there's more than that. The PCW wasn't even designed to do graphics, let alone a computer game. Over to Wiki:



In fact Batman (from the same authors as HoH) was the first game for the PCW. The designers at Amstrad didn't believe a game was possible on the PCW, let alone titles that looked as stunning as Head Over Heels. Here's a (poor) screeny of Batman PCW style:



Amazing that a text only word processing computer could actually end up with one of the best conversions of Head Over Heels, even if it was all rather green.

It was all green on my 464 anyway.

You had a max of 16 shades of green at one time though. The PCW had two colours, black and green! All the shading you can see on that PCW screenshot is done by "stippling" which is where you alternate black and green pixels to achieve the effect of different shades of green.

And then the apes climbed down from the trees, they grew tall and they started talking.

Not very fair. It was a high resolution screen intended for text only. For text it was one of the best screens around as it did 90 columns allowing for the standard 80 columns on screen but also a margin.

Not in a million years was it considered that the machine would ever run games, but some publishers managed it. Yeah they lack colours, but with a resolution of 720x256 when you did manage to get graphics running on it they looked pretty detailed. There was a game called The Pawn that used digitised full screen images that looked amazing because you had enough resolution there to reproduce something that looked good.

Look up. Look waaaaaay up.



See that? There goes my attempt at a joke. Detach yourself from your retro for a moment.

That was actually worse than the poster who claimed to have met someone famous but it turned out to be some gurning fat bloke in a car who nobody had heard of.

4 bananas.

I've finally sent my little batch off, along with some bonus (but pretty uninspired) words about Ocarina of Time. Most pleasing of all, I managed to squeeze in a reference to the shockingly absent Tetris in one of them.

Hurry up everyone else. I want to read the finished article.

Just sent mine. Which others haven't been claimed?

Just realised my R-Type may have two typos in it, depending on which version I submitted. "Than" instead of "then" and misspelling of "gamers". Dr Gaywood, can you confirm?

I can't confirm just now. I will have time tomorrow to edit all the current entries together -- I will then name and shame everyone outstanding!

No need to shame me; I know I haven't done mine. A good excuse is that I have no computer.

I'm outstanding. And not in a good way. Will try to get it done before my internet drops out again.

To be fair, a nice man sold you one and showed you how to use it.



"Look sunshine, to load the game you press control, shift and enter, and then press any key".

"Where's the any key?"

"Are you pulling my chain?"

Alright then! I have caught up with my PMs. Sorry to everyone who passed me comments alongside their review which I have not caught up with yet.

My master draft document on UpToJump now has these reviews in it. An * indicates there is a screenshot. A + indicates it's longer than two shortish paragraphs.

* 2. Final Fantasy VII (Grim...)
7. OutRun 2/2006: Coast 2 Coast/Online Arcade (The Rev Owen)
9. Super Mario Galaxy (TsuMuch)
10. Doom (The Rev Owen)
11. Elite (ltia)
13. Fallout 3 (TsuMuch)
17. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (TsuMuch)
18. Ico (Zardoz)
19. Bubble Bobble (WullieOoster)
*+ 23. Chaos (devilman)
24. Shenmue I and II (TsuMuch)
+ 26. Rhythm Tengoku (Dr Lave)
27. Frontier: Elite II (Dr Lave)
28. Animal Crossing (The Rev Owen)
* 30. Rainbow Islands (chinnyhill10)
*+ 38. Head Over Heels (chinnyhill10)
39. Landstalker (devilman)
41. World of Warcraft (Malabar Front)
*+ 42. Hypersports (zaphod79)
43. King's Bounty (Bluce_Ree)
+ 44. EvE Online (MaliA)
45. Transport Tycoon (TsuMuch)
48. Pirates (Dimrill)
49. R-Type (chinnyhill10)
31. Crackdown (The Rev Owen)
35. Grand Theft Auto Series (3D Versions) (The Rev Owen)
* 38. Head Over Heels (chinnyhill10)
39. Landstalker (devilman)

If you've submitted to me and it's not above, shout out so I can track it down -- I've probably overlooked the PM. I'll start some redrafting on these now. I'm not proposing to do much editing, if only because of the scale of the task!

I'll get a screeny done for Ye today at some point.

Will just the one suffice?

Actually, do you want me to standardise them all to a particular size, Doc?

Dr Gaywood Sir, I did send a screeny for R-Type.

We only need a sprinkling of screenshots to break the text up, so don't go to any great effort. And the site itself does resizing.

Well fuck you then. Ok mate.

Is it done yet?

LOL! LOL?

He's still trying to work out a way of getting all the opening letters from each review to spell "GET TO FUCKING FUCK YOU TWATTY LOAD OF TOOLS". Allegedly.

Illness last week has slowed me down, I'll admit. I have three submissions in my PM inbox to add to the draft, and I should be chasing people.

Can you at least send out our cheques? How much was it per word again?

5% of however much Grim... charges per page view of the article.

OK! I just spent over an hour editing about half of the submissions I've had so far. You all use commas too much, and Lave's attempt at spelling "Beyonce" should be preserved for the ages ("Beonice"). I'm going cross eyed so I'm going to stop now.

If any of our usual editors would like to volunteer to take a second pass at them, that'd be aces.

Below are the writeups I still don't have to complete the article.

(DG) 50. Syndicate - 9
47. Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - 10 - RuySan
40. Samurai Warriors 2 Empires - 10
37. Championship Manager 01/02 - 10 - myp (or Runcle?)
36. Osu! Tatake! Ouendan! - 11 romanista
(DG) 34. Deus Ex - 12
33. Perfect Dark - 12 - TheVision
32. Gravity Power - 12 - myp
29. Tekken 3 - 12.5 - curiosity
25. Half Life - 15 - myp
22. Baldurs Gate 2 - 17 - Mr Chris
21. Super Mario Kart/Mario Kart Advance - 18.25 - throughsilver
20. Street Fighter 2 - 19 * - TheVision (alt. throughsilver)
16. Rock Band/Rock Band 2 - 22 - DoctorGlyndwr
15. Advance Wars Dual Strike - 23 romanista
14. XCOM: UFO Defense - 24 - curiosity
12. Civilisation IV - 25.25 * - Curiosity
8. Wario Ware - 30
6. Goldeneye 007 - 32 - TheVision
5. The Secret of Monkey Island - 34.75 * - myp
4. Call Of Duty 4 - 37 - curiosity
3. Sensible World Of Soccer - 41.5 * - myp (alt. romanista)
(DG) 1. Resident Evil 4 - 46.5 *

If anyone fails to write a review, I'll do a replacement for them. It will read:

"This game was made after 1993, therefore it is cack."

That is all.

I'm happy to do some more if other people are finding it a chore. Wouldn't be too hard for me to prepare... something about say UFO or Wario Ware. Might take me a little time but I promise not to do it in rhyme. Although maybe it's best forgotten if the Doctor, doesn't like my use of the comma.

What's 'DG' stand for?

Dogging Gayer.

Also, on a side nte, I discovered where Glwndwr/whatever comes from ni my most excellent book on English History. Man, the King was a a cunt and a half at Agincourt.

Luckily Super Mario Kart was made before 1993.

Oh, and I'm writing it up. Between bouts of nausea.

It's Beyoncé.

Any fool Knowles that.

Yeah, my laziness struck. I'm not all that sure how to type é on the Mac. I think there's a dead key, Unix-compose-style system.

Alt+e, then e again makes é. In other news, YOUR É WILLY.

ALL YOUR É ARE BELONG TO FAVUS.

Oh BETEO Bestest List of Games 50 ever, where for art thou?

I will do some or all of mine tonight.

Huazzzahah!