Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello chums, I hope you are all well. Except for those of you I wish dead in a chemical fire, natch.

We may have discussed this before but stick with me, for I have an idea..........

From time to time (i.e not on a weekly basis but sporadically) we play an old game. Not for scoring, but for the pure fun of playing something that others may not have played before.

We all get to discover and play a game. There's no competitive element. At the end, people can post their thoughts in a specific thread.

[puts on the voice you hear on the shopping channels]

But wait, there's more.......

If enough people play, your thoughts will be collated into an article for Up For No Friends, our popular [subs please check] gaming site.

What's not to love?

If you, the unwashed masses, are up for it, I do have a game in mind for a launch article.

We get to play a game, the site gets material, what's not to love? The only rules should be that if you nominate a game you will have to be prepared to write the article for the main site and we only do one game at a time to save confusion.

Thoughts?

Depends entirely on the format for me. Not all retro is worth revisiting.

I'm in! Discovering games I haven't played, or revisiting ones I've played briefly, is a favourite pastime. Right now I'm revisiting Undercover Cops. Yeooo!

Put me down as a probably.

We used to do this for a while and it was pretty successful IIRC, but eventually it kinda died out as things generally do. But yeah, I'd be up for it.

I'm up for this. Only caveat is that if emulation's involved, I don't own a PC so that limits the amount of emulators I can use. But then most of the biggest mainstream formats have emus available for the Mac and jailbroken Wii, so that shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully I could get to use my under-utilised knowledge of obscure videogames.

I'd be interested. Never been bothered by HIGH SCORE CHALLENGE type things, but I'm willing to have my eyes opened to new (old) games.

F'rinstance, I never really gave 'It Came From The Desert!!!' a decent go, even though I remember it looked like a great game.

Is it an Amstrad title by any chance?

Oddly enough yes, because I found the floppy the other day. This:



Because I think it is pretty much a forgotten game now. Is it as good as the reviews at the time? Does it stand up?

But there is nothing stopping anyone suggesting any game from the 8 or 16 bit eras providing emulation is straightforward. I'm happy to get a list going.

I'll dig out links etc for Sorcery + tonight.

I'd be up for it if it was old games, but sounds like we're talking purely retro so I think that's a dead horse I'll leave to others to flog.

UGVM BOOK CLUB FTW!!!!

We did something like this for a while at ugvm, it was a massive success and is still being done today....

<cough>

The idea of limiting it is down to ensuring that the games are easily obtainable and don't cost any money

I miss Dimrill.

Bloody hell you were quick. I corrected that within 10 seconds of posting.

*blows on typing finger*

*gets turned on*

The idea of not limiting it would be to get more people interested and thus increase the chances of getting it to work. Going the retro only route pretty much guarantees only 2 or 3 people will really bother and the whole thing will die on its arse within a month, IMO.

Also, getting content is one thing... Getting content people care about reading is another. I'm really not sure how many readers would be lured in by the chance of reading about games from 1992, although I'm prepared to be proved wrong on that.

If someone wants to collate a newer game that's fine. This is intended to be a group thing, and the person suggesting the game has to do the write up bit. But be aware the game needs to be available or "lets all play" becomes "let two of us who have some nearly new X-Box game play".

I'm probably in. Depends on the format, though. I get very little time to play on ze funsquare, plus it's unlikely I'll have the game, and even less likely that I'll spend money on a new one. PC would be a lot more convenient.

Suggest we limit it to a set length/number of attempts/whatever to prevent it from trailing off halfway through, as many of my proj

We do one at a time and we do them as and when people suggest. If people don't suggest I'll try to.

I'm just sorting number 1 out now.

We may as well take our cue from, say, gog.com , or direct "2" drive, or (ugh) steam if they have a sale on. Except not Steam, because I can't use it.

I mean, they mostly have weekly sales, so if we get a shortlist based on that, we're more likely to pick one that lots of people can try for very little.

Certainly possible. Although for our first game I'm going retro because its free and easily available.

To give an example from ugvm, the best fun, turnout, and overall satisfaction came from all of us buying Marble Blast Ultra from Xbox Live. Cheap, easy to pick up and play and supported lots of people multiplayer

I was of course forgetting the cheapie options from XBL.

Lets give Sorcery a go for now (because I've had the disc sitting on my desk for months meaning to do something with it). Next time an XBL cheapie may be the way forward. Most of us have Xboxes so OK it may cost a little money but not much. My big concern was asking people to chuck proper money at this.

Plus a lot of the xbla games are remakes of older retro stuff so there's room for those who really must talk retro to do so when discussing and offering opinions on them.

I'm a fucking 35 point hero, lest we forget.