Come Dine With Me – Awesome

The Guardian’s “not Nancy Banks Smith” TV reviewer Sam Wallaston is a reliable sort of guy. I watched last night’s Come Dine With Me and was agog. “This is the best thing I’ve seen on Channel 4 in a long time” I exclaimed while watching between my fingers. Sure enough Wallaston’s review: “the worst programme on television”. He didn’t like it. And that’s why I read his reviews. “Never knowingly correct” goes his strapline. (Don’t get me started on his “ha ha geeks eh, this IS complicated and silly” he did the other day on Battlestar Galactica.)

Anyway… COME DINE WITH ME. Last night’s was more than awesome. This show has grown — a day-time staple, it’s gathered celebrity editions, and now it comes in a new format. No longer a short show every day of the week covering 5 people — they now compress 4 people in to a one hour show. It’s a sensation. Well for something that’s come from day-time. (It even has a rip off version on the beeb hosted by Simon Rimmer who seems to be trying to be on telly every day of the week for an entire year.)

But then having established a regular format, with often witty and interesting people who occasionally come to verbal blows, it goes HAYWIRE. Remember that first edition of Wife Swap with the foul mouthed racist woman — it was well train wreck. This was much the same but written by Mike Leigh. … read on …

HitchHikers Text Adventure Sequel – Oh Em Gee

waxy.org – Milliways: Infocom’s Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

From an anonymous source close to the company, I’ve found myself in possession of the “Infocom Drive” — a complete backup of Infocom’s shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I’ve ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary interactive fiction game company. Among the assets included: design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made.

If you want to play it here is the z-code file. You need an application that loads z-code files.

MJ Hibbett & The Validators - Do The Indie Kid

It’s a song you can buy with money. Here’s the professional video:

Legend of Zelda Movie Trailer

An April 1st (2009) release, but if it is another joke it’s an amazingly good-looking one! There have been previous fake Zelda movie trailers, mostly by fans, and you can tell.

Twisty little passages - mazes re-solved

Maze War is the grand-daddy of not only first-person shooters, but also networked multi-player games like World of Warcraft. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are mazes in WoW, Second Life etc, as they are the nursey-slopes for 3D environment creating. I doubt they feature highly in such games.

The persistence of mazes in the text adventure genre of computer games is due perhaps for two reasons. Mazes seem to have an affinity with things literary - they can be used metaphorically or as entities in a magical realist settings, in ways that wouldn’t cohere in more ‘realist’ graphically-oriented game. There is also the metaphor of ’story as maze’ of which Borges ‘Garden of Forking Paths’ is the most well known.

More importantly, the genre just seems to attract game designers who like mazes as mazes, and as a historical ‘in joke’. In Graham Nelson’s Designer’s Manual he puts it bluntly: “it is designers who like mazes … players do not like mazes.” I would also go along with his description of mazes as the ‘locked room’ of text adventures. Provide a novel solution, and you please everyone.

So it goes that in modern text adventures, mazes in name and appearance only often have peculiar and map-free solutions:

SPOILAZ ALERT
* an unsolvable maze - you … read on …

Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Series 2, Week 16

Lost in Trance-Nation: Mark leads the way with Alix, Alan, Meg and Steve on Knobs.

Hammering tongues - is Cornish past-it? Pit Er Pat ‘Pyramids’. Lost in mazes, shops and computer games. Presets “Down Down Down”. Sporting rituals to ward off losing, and music to lose by, in which The Lollards finally play some Cast. This week’s midweek download #1 is Connie Francis “If It Takes Forever”

Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Series 2, Week 15

This week we’re privy to a ‘drinking establishment focus group’. Tom leads, Tim, Pete, Sarah
and Magnus follow. Drinking songs as a chaser.

Gary Gygax 1938–2008 RIP

AP story on wbay.com “Gary Gygax died this morning at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin”

Yes, he’s failed that final saving throw and the Official D’n'D site has a black front page today.

Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Series 2, Week 14

Time Team: Eli, Mark, Kat and Katie.

Something has happened to Tanya. Making haste to chase lollards reach… 2007. And run amok. But what of free-will, butterflies (and Ashton Kutchner)? Arthur and You’s “Black Bear” retro stylings. Mark lives for the moment, and internet flash games. But what if you could go back in time and kill Hitler and CarSmile Steve? Crystal Waters “I Believe I Love Ya” and the fate of “one hun dred percent, puuure love”. Kat’s memory plays tricks on her. Our midweek number 1 is Sunshine Anderson “Heard It All Before”

All this has happened before.

And will happen again.

Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Series 2, Week 13

In a field of their own: Magnus, Katie and Ewings Tom and Al.

A song of two halves. The RAH Band’s terrific ‘Clouds Across The Moon’. Marvel’s stock aliens. Ellen Allien’s ‘Wish’. Tolkien’s footling theories on the essence of Fairy Story. Fleet Foxes sing. “Aslan” magazine and improv RPGs.

With a twist - GASP. The midweek number 1 is Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. OR IS IT?