Posts from 25th July 2006
25
Jul 06
I WAS A GOBLIN: Encyclopaedia Goblinica
Or: Games I Have Known. For the sake of my patience and yours, I have mostly restricted this to games I either owned or played – ones where I read a friends’ rulebooks and only dimly remember have been ignored, with a couple of notable exceptions. If you want to know more about any of these, you have but to ask. Games listed in order of my encountering them:
Dungeons And Dragons: The original in its simpler and frankly more elegant form. If you’ve ever played a computer RPG, you’ve played this, pretty much.
Advanced Dungeons And Dragons: Sprawling Gormenghast-like monster with 20 rulebooks that somehow became the most popular RPG in the universe. The default setting for most “I Was A Goblin” posts.
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IHM LYRIC WATCH: Horse Sense
If you’re one of the millions who bought Sandi Thom’s “I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Tanya’s Gob In my Face)” then you’ll surely be on the lookout for something else that combines half-baked sentiment, trite generalisation and tuneless howling in exactly those addictive measures.
Step forward…Sandi Thom! Who now brings us “When Horsepower Meant What It Said”.
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Nintendo DS: Wired for Silence
I think we’re all agreed by now that the DS is GRATE, are we not? Despite all fears of RSI, styluses going missing all over the shop (*fingers xed) and a redundant second screen – it’s worked! We love it! We love washing the Nintendogs in front of Big Brother, mining down in Mr Driller: Drill Spirits on the train, ignoring our holiday companions by playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (translate more Gyakuuten Saiban games NOW pls Capcom) and even though we’re stuck on like the 4th operation in Trauma Centre: Under the Knife, we’re SURE we’ll get those aneurisms operated on one day.
But what’s missing? Nowhere in these games have I made any mention of what’s supposed to be Nintendos fabulous biggie – WI-FI! WHERE ARE YOU??
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Love Don’t See No Time Zone
In Primer (nonsense “clever” time-travel movie last year), the chappies accidentally invent a time machine that goes back two weeks and manage to fuck their lives up with it. In The Lake House Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock discover a mail box which does exactly the same thing – but with a two year gap. In Primer the chaps spent ages fiddling with money and getting paranoid that they might get found out. Sandy and Kenny write love letters to each other.
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Stop Getting Martinis Wrong Bond
So Smirnoff is back then in Casino Royale. The grand-daddy of product placements (if you discount the cars wot fall apart in Keystone Cop shorts) has taken over from young buck Finlandia which Bond flirted with in Die Another Day*. But then he had an invisible car in that one!!!
Bond drank a Smirnoff Martini in Dr No, and is probably the reason why vodka martinis are more popular these days that the MUCH NICER GIN ones.
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