Now With Joystick Action

It has take some months for me to really be able to understand, let alone enjoy 'iOS gaming', the games designed for Apple's various iDevices. My kids (naturally) had no problem at all. They've been Temple Running, Doodle Jumping, and Jetpack Joyriding pretty much since they got their Touch iPods last summer, and long before I had any experience with anything beyond my trusty/crusty click-wheel ipod (which I still use for music). But touchscreens and I have a really hellish history, so I held out as long as I could.

Future posts will include iOS game coverage to a degree, but my viewpoint will definitely be from the old dog learning new tricks angle... that is, a controller-user trying to get some enjoyment out of all the tapping, swiping and flicking you have to do to get anywhere with touchscreen gaming. Or ways around this.

Case in point, and serious nerd-gasm. My iCade.

This is kinda jumping ahead to more recent times... I've bought a lot of iOS games before getting this thing... but the iCade is probably what I'm most excited about. And wouldn't you know it? It turns my newfangled touchscreen based device into an old-fashioned controller-, uh, 'controlled' mini arcade cabinet. Yes, I have wasted little time literally turning back cutting edge tech and reducing it to the same controls used on my favorite games from the 80s and 90s.

But even more uber-nerdy: I ripped the stock stick and buttons out and replaced them all with Sanwa parts. To be honest, the default hardware was okay, but really unbelievably noisy. And the buttons had a really deep push range to them. I'd modified sticks on my console games to Seimitsu parts, but I went Sanwa (the go-to buttons for most fighting games) this time just to see how they were different.

I really like 'em. Not better than the Seimitsu parts but definitely an improvement over what shipped. My kids thought my choice in button colors was crazy when I ordered 'em, but now that they are installed I win the friggin' tasteful mod competition.
The iCade really isn't compatible with that many games available in the Apple store. And the freebie Atari package that you can download with the iCade is kinda crap. Fortunately there is an awesome option available that more than justifies the cost of the iCade and any mods I might've done. An iOS version of Mame (MultiArcadeMachineEmulator).

I never really dug Mame all that much in the past. Mame is largely grounded in the PC, and I've always thumbed my nose at PC gaming because of all the hassle with the tech and the catchup you had to do if you wanted to play the latest games as intended. Mame didn't push PC graphics technology but it had its own set of rules, updates, versions, workarounds blah blah blah. I like consoles because I just want to put the damn game in and go. No fucking around.

But Mame is also controversial. You have to download game images (ROMs) of games that frequently still have a copyright owner... and you aren't paying them for it.

To quickly push past my personal view on whether Mame is piracy or not (because that is mostly beside the point of this post), my feeling is that I'm willing to download and play a ROM for any arcade game that doesn't exist for a console... ie, a viable platform for most gamers (not many people can and do afford a JAMMA setup not to mention buying a PCB for each game). If a company releases a version of the arcade game for a console I am more than happy to buy it. So yes, that IS Truxton II, a pretty rare Toaplan game, showing on the screen of those pics. If someone were to somehow manage to procure rights to publish Toaplan's games I'd be the first in line to shell out for those official releases. In the scheme of things, current video game publishers are not losing money from me because I'm using Mame instead of their products.  Mame (and the game ROMs) is free so that isn't money going towards Mame that could be going to legit game releases either. I follow this model with DVDs too. I'll buy a 'fansub', but happily get the legit one as soon as it becomes available. I can't think of a time I've failed to this. I used to have an all fansub Godzilla film collection, but since four different companies have made USA releases of Japanese Godzilla films, there are only two fansubs left Godzilla vs Megalon, and Godzilla vs Biollante. If the suits will let these out officially, they'll get my money

So the version of Mame I currently have loaded on my iOS device supports a library of almost 2300 games. Yep. 2300 games. Instant justification for an iCade, since compatibility for the thing was evidently important to the iMame4all developers. The jailbroken version also supports wiimotes, but I've found since getting the iCade the wiimote with a Classic Controller is best used for dual-stick games like Smash TV or Robotron 2084.

Of course of that 2300 games a lot are crap. Or clones. Or boring. Or a product of their time and unplayable by today's standards. Or require a one-off controller that came on the arcade cabinet, like a trackball or dial. Also every iteration of Mame had ROMs in their libraries that the guys working on Mame never got around to making work before a new version of Mame came out. So about 10% of the games don't work or have issues that cripple them running. But at the end of it, if I only include games that run, that I like, or that I've always wanted to try that still lists out at hundreds and hundreds of titles. I couldn't give them each serious attention of I was awake 24 hours a day. And at the time of this writing a followup version of Mame for iOS is in beta with an even bigger library. I can barely wrap my head around all the games I've gotten already.

And talk about an awesome way for my kids to discover so may of the classic games and genres from my formative video game years AND the golden age of the arcades in the late 80s and early 90s! They already have favaorites. And they can see where a lot of the titles they play on Xbox 360 or their iPods got their start.

Everybody's Seen It

Yes. Go see The Hunger Games.

Doing better than Twilight and deserves to. Jennifer Lawrence is great, exactly how I pictured the Katniss character. In fact, most of characters (apart from the crazy looking Capitol ones) look and act pretty dead-on to my recollection. Including the two black contestants from District 11 that seem to have certain wacknut elements Twittering their discontent.

Seriously? I can't recall Suzanne Collins' exact words, but whatever she wrote about Rue and Thresh, I pictured them as black. There was absolutely no dissonance for me from the film. Cinna read black too. WTF people? Honestly, Lenny Kravitz is great in the film. The most heart-in-mouth sequence is between him and Katniss.

I'm oddly gratified that this is doing so well. I feel bad Lawrence isn't getting paid enough (1/2 mil plus residuals) but her ticket is in after this one. Probably my gratification has to do with it crapping all over Twilight. I've watched the Twilight films on DVD with my daughter, and Bella is just the whiniest, neediest, common-sense lackingest fem-douche on the planet. I haven't read those books, and can't imagine I'd ever want to.

If I have a criticism of Hunger Games, it is that it is almost too fast-paced. As juvenile fiction published by Scholastic, the books don't have much padding and are paced pretty much just like a film. But the movie is STILL almost breakneck, with no real pause to get a clearer understanding of why all this happens or who the characters are. I'm all in favor of the old 1960s style of picking up the characterization as you go in reading fiction, and the Hunger Games books certainly are that. But this film could still stand another half hour or so of meat on it. As it stands it is pretty much the Cliff's Notes version of an already spare novel. It hits all the major points and events... and is pretty damn dramatic and intense in places... but it seems edited to assume anyone watching it is already familiar with the story. It'll be interesting to see if a DVD fleshes this out a bit.

Wowie Jeez.

It has been almost FIVE MONTHS since I last posted here? Sorry!

A bit back I noted my posting was too infrequent and would try to do better, but then I got hit with the holidays and leaving my job. I have taken a really long time to recover my impetus to write.

I also mentioned previously that I had a reviewing gig, but I resigned... some time before this 'disappearance' actually.

I don't generally like to bring much about my personal life into this blog... I never conceived it as an avenue for me to vent apart from hobby, pop culture, and entertainment matters. So suffice it to say, that while all is not perfect in the Knight of Gold's real world, I feel like this thing has been neglected too long. And I didn't even know how long until I just logged in and saw the date on that last post!

I have still been playing games, watching movies, reading books yadda yadda. So I'll try to catch up and get back to be the web's only real paragon of good taste.

Multiplayer Madness.

I've never really been one to get in on the whole online multiplayer thing. PC users have been hep to this for ages, but I have a personal abhorrence for using computers as game machines (long story), so over the years I've just sort of chalked this up as 'not my deal' and moved on. No Doom or Quake or Unreal multiplayer. No World of Warcraft or Everquest. I dabbled in Alien Front Online wth my Dreamcast (complete with voice mic) and that was fun... but after the Dreamcast dropped off the planet I just couldn't muster the resolve to keep at online play. I enjoy single-player campaigns just fine, and my own preference for competitive play was definitely informed by my arcade days of live, face-to-face opponents.

But I've finally taken the plunge with Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine on the Xbox 360. As I understand it the multiplayer is kind of no-frills, and pretty difficult for its type since the weapons are so deadly. But it is pretty fun and is definitely teaching me why online frag-fests are so popular.... though I don't see myself putting making a huge time sink out of it. Exterminatus just got released last week as free DLC. It probably should've been included with the main game release, but I'm not complaining.

Exterminatus is multiplayer co-op. Basically the survival or 'horde mode' of other titles. You and up to three other players make a stand against waves of Orks, Gretchin and other baddies thrown at you with an unique selection of maps. So far I've mostly played this against my own kid. Being local our connection is good and our headset chatter fun. He's really enjoying it, though Sonic Generations recent release made it kind of a difficult job getting him back to this 'old' game!

Jeez, Sorry.

Wow. Have I been off the blogging thing for a while or what? Sorry about that.

Between my Xbox 360 having drive problems (and having to go in subsequently for repair), working out compatibility issues with same machine over some of the newest releases I wanted, and trying to get my head around a new gaming platform (iOS on my phone), keeping this place up just fell further and further down the priority list.

I also have a weekly gig writing game reviews that is non-paying, but that I want to cultivate. That work has suffered the same absence for all the reasons given above.

I've still been watching movies and buying new music in the gaming downtime. I'm extending the sidebar movie listing to kind of catch up on this. I'll summarize some music opinions in the next entry.

Bloody Hobo Justice

Okay, I have to admit I enjoyed Hobo With A Shotgun a lot more than it probably deserves.

Originally a winner in a contest amongst a slew of trailers made for Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse double feature, Hobo With A Shotgun is the second of those trailers to get made into a film after Rodriguez's own Machete.

Filmed in Halifax, Nova Scotia and armed with Rutger Hauer in the lead, this is an extremely violent, profane movie with its film stock and color saturation look firmly in the seventies and its over-the-top colorful punk style ripped from the eighties. Hobo knows it is a cult film, and is aiming straight at that audience, checking off all the boxes for transgressive or weird that it possibly can. But in amongst all the garish intestines and shouted f-bombs, Hauer is STILL pretty damn decent as the titular hobo.

If you do nothing else, seek out the trailer. It is an edited version of a monologue that's in the film, and it pretty much effectively sums up what the viewer is in for. But unlike most of the old grindhouse movies that frequently couldn't deliver on what their trailers promised, Hobo easily comes through. Even though the film is over the top and cartoonish, I can't decide what the most disturbing, horrific scene is. The film is about vigilante justice in a town that is impossibly crime-ridden (though I'm betting places in Mexico at present come pretty close), with the offenses running the full gamut, of murder, torture, etc. right up to torching a school bus full of children.

Lock this one away in the absolutely-not-for-kids box. I'll let my children see this when they are, say, forty.

Now I enjoyed this. But I've got a fucked-up streak a mile wide. Your mileage may vary.

A Game of Two Terries

Rock of Ages, a downloadable game on Xbox Live (and PSN I'm pretty sure), looks and plays like it was spawned by Monty Python's Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam.

Mash Jones' absurdist method of teaching history, like his Crusades TV series, together with the cutout animation and funny voices of Gilliam's Python days... you get this awesome video game. Neither person had anything to do with Rock of Ages as far as I can tell (the developer is Chilean collective ACE), but I hope they've been alerted to it!

Essentially you play the game as the legendary Greek character Sisyphus. You break free of your endless toil rolling a rock for Chronos' amusement and then move down through the ages of history using that same rock to conquer various kingdoms. The opponent kingdoms are laid out as a pair of paths (with terrain, obstacles, and gaps) that lead to castles. Players must roll Sisyphus' boulder (think Monkey Ball or Marble Madness on a bigger scale) through the gauntlet of their assigned path, ultimately smashing into the enemy castle gates with as much speed as possible. Your opponent will be trying to do the same thing to you, over his mirror image course. At its simplest it'd just be a race between two players (your opponent can be human or CPU), but the game is complicated by a tower defense aspect. You can build additional obstacles and hazards for your opponet to navigate, in an attempt to either slow him down (so you get to their gates first) or damage their boulder enough to reduce its mass at impact... maybe even destroy it altogether effectively costing them a turn.

I think maybe I like this game a lot more than the general run of gamers would. It has awesome, sometimes crude humor, a lot of historical references, and constant continual nods to a Pythonesque aesthetic. Everytime you roll on down toward the enemy gates the path is littered with soldiers and citizenry all represented as moving, dancing paper cutouts that shout 'oohg' or 'blah' when you roll over them. I never get tired of it! All backgrounds and landscapes resemble the bright, airbrush-enhanced backgrounds Gilliam used to do in his animation bits. The bosses are incredible absurd CG creations. The intro to each stage is a humorous history lesson, with some of your opponents a complete surprise.

I dunno, the whole thing is probably designed to appeal to me and very few others... at least few game players that'd be on Xbox Live! It hits a lot of my buttons and basically came out of nowhere. My kids think it is awesome, even though their exposure to Python and the other works of the two Terries is pretty limited. But they don't play it as doggedly as I do. I'm trying to get golds in all the time trials, find all the hidden item, everything. Whatever I can do to stretch out the longevity of this goshdamn game because it is too fun!

I read somewhere a reviewer complaining about how the defenses you build aren't enough to really 'defend' your castle. I think the dude was missing the point. The game is REALLY about rolling the boulder and getting to the enemy gates as fast as possible. It is primarily an action game with controller-facility and an understanding of physics and the boulder's momentum as your top tools. The defenses are there to slow the boulder's course. It is rare that a boulder actually gets destroyed and even going off the course only resets you in place with a small loss of time. Even if you lose some layers on your rock, from getting hit by catapults or running into dynamite, and it is smaller when it hits the enemy HQ, it is still basically going to take three hits to win no matter what. So when it comes to building defenses, you are not going to prevent the enemy from hitting you. That isn't the point. And the computer player WILL be better than you are at making the defenses until you put in a lot of time and learn what everything can do and the best places to set them up on the tracks. But you can still win. This CPU's advantages are balanced out by the fact that a human player is going to be better at controlling the boulder. Finding shortcuts and attempting insane jumps is part of YOUR advantage as a non-CPU.

If you want something really funny (and violent in a decidedly different way), try out the Rock of Ages demo. You'll know in two minutes whether it is the game for you. An utterly different, refreshing break from all the murder and grimdark games crowding the field.