Grig mongers! Now, I ain’t intending to keep posting stuff from Dibbs of the Grig Gaming all over the show here at Grig, but this one you gotta take a butchers at – Transformers Devastation ahoy! And it looks freakin’ sweet! Get ready to run riot with Prime before a showdown with the big man himself – Devastator! Let’s get busy with the Griggy!
So there ya go. Looking pretty darn awes, no? Except for my gameplay. But I’m hoping for good things from the rest of this game coz what I played so far was pretty flippin’ good!
And so, I’ll see ya next time. Same Grig time, same Grig cha…
Grig-mongers! So Dibbs of the Grig Gaming is racing forth at full steam, throwing out content like it’s going out of fashion… which technically it is coz it’s mostly retro. Or is that now officially cool and in fashion right now? Whatever. The point is that I’ve defied my own expectations for how much effort I thought I was going to put in to this li’l endeavour and have plooped out far more videos than I thought I would. So I thought I’d throw another one up on the ol’ Grig for no reason at all. That’s a lot of thoughts! Sega Rally ahoy…
Well, I aint as good as you two Grigadiers, but I was surprised that I could actually get first after all these years after only a little bit of a warm up. And it was still a dang fine time playing such a beaut again! And I now have a catch phrase which I’ll leave you with…
‘So I’ll see you next time, same Grig time, same Grig channel.’
Well here’s something a bit different. So I had the worst idea ever, but rather than stop myself from doing it, I just blocked out the myriad of voices telling me to stop and went ahead and did it anyway. Yep, I’ve decided for this post to step it up a notch. And by that, I mean make the worst YouTube channel known to man.
My thinking went thus – why spend hours scribing for the Grig when I can just stick on a game and warble a bunch of buh over the top of it in about a third of the time it would usually take me to ploop out one of my posts?
And so, I set up a channel, made a li’l logo, grabbed some random title music off my archaic computer that I recorded about 8 years ago, setup some recording stuff, and I was away… in probably even more time to put it all together than I would normally take on a standard post anyway. Fail.
The results of my recording-related tomgriggery (and poorly handled sound) can be found below. I apologise in advance…
Well… there ya go. Hmm.
I did vet it via Lucy before I put it up by showing it to her. She fell asleep. So I waited till another day since she must’ve just been tired. She fell asleep again. I’m not joking. Oh well, if nothing else, at least there are many great life lessons I can take away from all this. Namely that I am definitely not fit for purpose. And I’m not even just referring to being a person on YouTube who makes videos. I mean as a human being in general. But I will soldier on undeterred!
For now.
Oh yeah, and part 2 is also on the channel if you head there.
This is Dibbs… of the Grig, apparently… signing out. Enjoy your day.
What’s that you say? A Pokemon-esque JRPG featuring ghosts and a magic watch that’s made by Level-5 and raked in a billion dollars in Japan and is now winging its way to 3DS over here in the West?!
Holy Handhelds, that warrants a second post in a day*!
The inspo (that’s inspiration, said by a yoof) for this post was a Verge article confirming a U.S. release this autumn which didn’t mention the UK, but if you’re in the know (checked Google just now for two minutes), you’ll remember Nintendo confirming Europe distribution last year or some dang thang like that. So yay!
*Regular users will have noticed this post landed the wrong side of midnight so really it’s a different day. But as there are no regular users other than us three and those in the GRiG dungeon being made to watch by The Grig and his Whip I don’t think that really matters…
News can be slow to reach us here in GRiG Towers, ensconced, as we are, in our veritable fortress surrounded by the latest and greatest security features. I’ll still defend our choice to shut out the world – prompted as it was but the horrors of Teri Hatcher’s haircut – but sometimes the insularity can be a pest. The postman, for instance, often struggles to get across the moat with his little cart. Those Fedex delivery men have a devil of a time getting their vans through the minefield. And don’t even speak to me about the paper boy… What he’s done to offend the archers I don’t know, but it’s been many a moon since I’ve received my copy of the Eastbourne Argus. Who knows how Eastbourne Borough FC fared in their crucial play-off clash with Lewes in the 1997 Sussex County League?!
I shudder to think.
Anyhoo, sometimes messages of import filter through the vast security net. There was that messenger pigeon with the second season boxset of Desperate Housewives sellotaped to its leg that somehow managed to get into Numbnuts’ room on the second floor. Sadly, it was rewarded for its heroics by being pulverised with an old Nike Air Max as, in retrospect, a pigeon is a bad sort of messenger to send his way. I’m still wondering whether Susan copped off with the plumber guy.
A pigeon, yesterday. Some viewers may find these images distressing.
And then there was the time we invented the Transspatial Temporal Dimensional Fluxovator, allowing us to shift seamlessly between time and space, opening up vast possibilities for improving the lot of man, righting historical wrongs and guiding humankind to a kinder, happier future. And I must say, our test run to Ross’s sister’s living room to look up nuddy pics on her dial-up was a BIG success. A shame that I lost the remote control or we could have used it, like, LOADS.
A hint as to the real point of this article, yesterday.
Now for those of you who’ve read this far (which probably just includes me, proof reading this back) I salute you and will reward you with a very distilled version of the facts and link to the much better written article that I nabbed all this information from. Releases will include Streets of Rage (by our very own Yuzo Koshiro), Street Fighter II, and Shenmue – whoop – and, for some reason Battletoads. Actually, I scoff there, but I did listen to the Battletoads music and, while it’s terrible, it’s also kind of amazing for the NES.
My favourite news, though, was that Yuzo Koshiro was apparently influenced by European dance music – notably Enigma, of Return to Innocence fame. Well I never. That little tale has the makings of a film, with the poor repressed dance-music fan being all downtrodden by his vicious Japanese parents who want him to be an IT data cruncher and so he spends all his days holed up in his room with a secret Walkman with a mixtape that’s got Rhythm Is A Dancer on repeat until HURRAH! one day he combines HIS passion with THEIR ambitions and does computers AND music together! Sort of.
If you read the actual article (here), there’s also a little link to another piece about playing Shenmue for the first time, 15 years late. Kind of relevant after Diki’s piece / comment featuring just such an event recently.
Shenmue, yesterday. Or maybe in 1999. Who can tell?
Man, thinking about it, I could have just posted those two links and saved myself, and you two, a lot of time. Ashasha, but then where would we be?! Successful and rich due to capitalising on all the previously-wasted time you say?! Psshhhhh. I’m happy in my cell in GRiG Towers thank you kindly. Yes, Mr GRiG, I will have some more gruel, thank you. And a beating you say? Why, how delightful.
Yep, I’m doing ANOTHER post. That’s two in one month, and we haven’t seen that kinda action around here in quite some time. Well, I thought I might as well do something productive since all I’m currently doing is manning the basement door here at Grig Towers waiting to admit The Grigs girlfriend – er, Urethra Franklin – into his cell for another visit. Dread to think what they’re getting up to in there, especially after the curious deliveries they’ve had recently. A Big Jim diving suit minus the bottom half, 106 ‘heavily-thumbed’ used copies of J.D Salinger’s Nine Stories, an industrial grade leaf blower, and seven lorry loads of cement don’t paint a picture I could even fathom a guess at, let alone wish to see. But while I’m just sitting here, I may as well scribe, if only to try and block out all the weird noises coming from inside (Y’see I say that as if I just wrote this, but just for some behind the scenes buh, this post is actually pretty old. Still, time to unleash it on the world!).
The beginning of a new generation of consoles is always an interesting time. The reaction to the usually excessive price, the furore over there being no games to play, and the confused prods in a myriad of directions developers try out with the new options available to them are all intriguing to witness. It’s all part and parcel of the new machine experience. The Mega CD was one such example, and while not neccessarily a new gen as such, the powerful sprite scaling and rotation chips were great for the time, allowing for some impressive SNES-style shenanigans to be implemented. But it was the huge leap in memory availability was a bound of unbridled significance.
The Mega CD. An absolute Stallion of a machine, but who could tame this unruly bronco?
The brave developers who took up the challenge presented by this new beast waved their arms around in the dark, desperately hoping to find their way. Some achieved this to a degree. Thunderhawk was a sterling example of something that arguably could have only been done on Mega CD, at least to such a standard, and the pretty much arcade-better conversion of Final Fight certainly put the three-sprites-on-screen-character-dropping-multiplayer-devoid SNES version well in its place. Plus it had Snatcher, which as any regular Greader will know, is one of the best games of all time.
But what of the other efforts? One way of filling up all that extra lovely space that game makers far and wide stumbled upon, fairly early in fact, was the use of Full Motion Video, or FMV, thus leading to the advent of the FMV game.
FMV games used memory sapping digitised video footage and sound that would far exceed the limitations of cartridges leading to a glut of titles that were riddled with it. There were several flavours of these games. Some were of the more leisurely variety like the famous Night Trap where it was all about keeping an eye on what’s going on, strategically setting traps, and flicking between video feeds at the right time, rarely relying on reactions. Others however, could be likened to Quick Time Events these days in how they operate, i.e. watch the game playing what’s effectively a cutscene until you’re prompted to interact with well timed button presses. Except in the Mega CD days, they weren’t really cutscenes that crop up every now and then to progress the story. They were the game.
From Mega CD pack-in titles like the anime flavoured Cobra Command and Road Avenger, to Sewer Shark and Tomcat Alley, there were many who tried their hand in the field. But were any of these games actually any good? Have a seat my obsequiously gallant Grigadiers of the Grigmungous order, as we take a brief look at some of the games that broke through their developmental shackles to break out the other side and find their ways into our homes.
Night Trap
Well, let’s not mess around and cut right to the chase. Night Trap. Yep, the game that sparked a whole lot o’ trouble all those years ago, and which, along with Mortal Kombat, lead to video games receiving age certificates in the vein of movies. ‘Sfunny really. The game was about as convincing as an episode of Top Gear, and if you can believe it, even worsely acted. In fact, the only thing scary about this game was the crazy fuss around it, with the press jumping in at every potential opportunity to herald it as the thing that will finally push the youth of the day over the edge.
Course, the thing that they actually should have been focusing on is the bizarre Night Trap song the girls start miming to for some strange reason near the beginning of the game that truly is so bad it’s almost goes all the way round the crap spectrum to become good again. With this song in mind, I’d have argued that the fifteen certificate the game was awarded was lenient in the extreme.
Double Switch
Now I never actually got to play this game back in the day, but I was aware it was treated with some level of prestige, possibly even skating around the notion of being decent. Can’t say for sure if that’s true, but what I can say is that it plays in a similar manner to Night Trap. So chances of that being true are thin on the ground.
Anyhoo, starring a character called Eddie who has been locked in the basement of a building, you are to flick between a selection of cameras while setting traps all over the show. Sounds a bit like The Grigs current situation here at Grig Towers. We’ll be sure to keep any and all copies away from him so as not to give that monster of iniquity any ideas.
With higher production values than Night Trap, apparently the main criticism levelled at the game was that it was too hard. Better than getting called too crap, I guess.
Silpheed
There were some interesting anomalies with the Mega CD, and one such title that you wouldn’t necessarily consider an FMV game was space-shooter Silpheed, which seemed to show the Mega CD pumping out incredible amounts of polygons and throwing them round like the basement bound The Grig does with poop in one of his particularly noteworthy dirty protests… until you realise it wasn’t doing anything of the sort and was just streaming video of said polygons behind your controllable ship that was layered over the top. Sneaky!
Yep, it’s a shooter. But this game had FMV coming out of its ayne!
Dragons Lair
There was also the release of the impressive Dragons Lair, which upon its late 80’s arcade release, was probably the goal post marker for this type of game.
With its voluptuous cartoon graphics and awesome dramatic sound, it was basically as close to an interactive cartoon as you were gonna get back then. And while the Mega CD version had more than a slight tarring of the ol’ grain-o-vision brush, it was still a wonder that this game had made it into the home in its original guise, rather than the awful NES adaptation where it had become one of the worst platform games known to man. I own it and can attest to the buh.
Time Gal
Time Gal was a good one. Well, in that it looked good. The actual game was a pile of Grig, but it had that awesome looking late 80’s anime flava down to a tee. Taking control of the shenanigans of the time-travelling temptress, Gal, or whatever her name is, traversed the circuits of time, hitting up many a period (hee hee! Period!) and taking on an assortment of adversaries as she strove to save her scantily clad hide.
Whilst it looks quite good, with the cartoon graphics using simpler and flatter colours allowing for a marginal drop in the usual graininess found in live action FMV, the gameplay is left wanting with confusing scenarios and so fine a line between what you should and shouldn’t do it can often leave you wondering what the Grig is going on. Close, but no cigar.
Star Wars: Rebel Assault
Rebel Assault was an interesting one. Up until this point, most FMV games on Mega CD were grain-fests of washed out colours due to the seemingly bizarre issue of still sharing the Megadrives very limited amount of colours on screen. New tech was called for, and so Sega developed new rendering methods that allowed for more colours and a bigger FMV display window. In fact, after a brief Griggle search, I can find nothing on this but I distinctly remember it at the time. Another lead for Grig Orig to track down lost in the annals of time! Anyhoo, Rebel Assault was the first game to bear the fruits of this labour.
Converted from the PC original, Rebel Assault sees you controlling your usual assortment of Star Wars flavoured vehicles, taking down the Empire, and generally kicking Imperial ayne all round the galaxy. ‘Twas a fair crack of the whip, though the Mega CD version came off as slightly lacking compared to the PC original and even missed out a few chapters due to the developers being unable to overcome some of the constraints of the system. Me and Lartens had a pop at it a while ago (note: I think I wrote this article about 2 years ago, so it’s now probably a heck of ‘a while ago’)… think we were done in about five minutes. So it’s still got better lastability than a modern FIFA title.
So that was our merry jaunt down the FMV Mega CD memory motorway. While these games missed the mark for most people, there were undoubtedly some awesome games for Mega CD. Usually not of the FMV variety of course, but they were definitely out there, despite the relatively bad rep the machine still seems to have these days. I certainly never regretted buying one and had way too much fun with it to give a crap about all the people talking buh about it. From Snatcher and Thunderhawk, to Batman Returns and Sonic CD, and the earlier mentioned Final Fight CD to name a few, there were plenty of titles to get stuck in to. And that’s not counting some of the gems that snuck past me, such as the Snatcher-esque The Space Adventure and (somehow) Shining Force CD, which I’m surely gonna be checking out at some point! Anyway, we’ll get round to all those games in a future episode of Grig Orig, same Grig time, same Grig channel! But for now, toodle-doo!
Origami makers! Took a different approach there on that one. Always thinking outside the box. What’s the haps?! Well you probably all saw these pics already, but this is Grig Orig, and we need posts dang it!
So the ol’ Yooz-meister general, and by that I mean Yuzo Koshiro, has tweeted out a few li’l beauties of unseen Streets of Rage artwork from the proposed fourth instalment on the Dreamcast that never was. And judging from these tech demos that leaked many years ago, that’s probably a good thing as they look ploop.
Yeah, I know it’s a tech demo, but this really doesn’t look too promising.
But these bits of artwork are new, never seen before snippets of Raging-nuggetry that must be perused.
First thing to notice is that these dudes are not the original cast that we all know and love. The guy who looks just like Axel is apparently Axels son and is named Burn, perhaps insinuating that his mother could be Blaze due to the fire-based-naming-tomgriggery of the whole matter. Didn’t see any other obsequious purveyors of ploop picking up on THAT one! Call me Columbo. But yeah, it would seem that, based off my watertight theory, Axel and Blaze have been making li’l Ragers. I always wondered what went down after the screen faded to black at the end of each stage down those darkly lit back alleys. Not all just eating turkey’s out of bins it would seem… WOOF!
Anyway, next up is the female protagonist of the group, Erie. She ain’t much of a Blaze as she is not fit at all, doesn’t look anything like my old Science teacher Miss Gatehouse, and has a fully clad clothing get up that doesn’t give any scope for some of the up-skirt shenanigans that kept us glued to the game as teenagers. But we’d have probably at least had mercy enough to hear her out for her shame. She might wanna stop off at Clarks though on her way to apply a hearty dose of ayne whooping at Mr.X’s building to get her feet remeasured, if only just to check, coz those massive boots look like they should have a certain moustachioed plumber sitting in them from Mario 3. Just to be clear, I’m talking about that massive clumpy boot thing you can get in. And that ain’t a compliment.
On the subject of Streets of Rage girls foot ware, here’s one that always troubled me – Blazes shoes in SoR2. I mean, what kind of shoes are they? They look more like babies booties or something. Always boggled my buh that did. Thoughts?
The other two dudes we have no idea about. Clearly these are the Max and Skate/Adam equivalents, but no names have we heard at this point, although the Fresh Prince should surely be on the table for the last dude coz that isn’t even a close likeness – that IS him. The big dude, we’ll just call Shamus. Second names, er… The Painus In The Anus. No, I don’t know why either.
Moves ahoy! I don’t think I say ‘ahoy’ enough these days. I really need to up my usage of that word, especially since we have such a nautical theme going on here at Grig (except we don’t – ah, another classic.)
And so ends our epic coverage of two pictures. Just imagine if they’d actually released something of any significant content, we’d be here all year. Or is more likely, I’d write a bunch of excessive buh in the upper echelons of unacceptable word counts, store it in my phone for three years tweaking it every now and then with current references to make it seem more relevant, and then ploop it all over the Grig front page as a last gasp hurrah to prevent a missed month in Griggish archive history somewhen down the line. We really should do a Grig ‘making of’ sometime to enlighten our dear Greaders about the workings of this well oiled machine. Yeah, don’t worry, we know the truth really. We have more low bars than a grigging Ewok’s play park, what can I say?
Uh oh. It’s getting dangerously late in the day for this months post and I can’t detect a sniff of movement anywhere. Don’t worry my Grig-mongers. I got this.
Well, it’s been a good few weeks since probably the most memorable E3 that has ever been, and I needed this long to even slightly digest what happened there.
It all started out much as you’d expect.
Microsoft brought out all their big guns to try and continue the battle to drag gamers back to Xbox after the most disastrous console unveiling of all time 2 years ago for which it’s still suffering, and in many ways, they did that. All the usual boxes were ticked with Halo, Gears of War, Forza and so on, plus the interesting treat in the Minecraft/Hololens demo which looked very good and generated the kind of intrigue reminiscent of their original Kinect demo with Peter Moleneux seemingly interacting in real time with the virtual kid, Milo. In many ways, this recent offering echoed that same conference, and it was no bad thing as that was one of Microsofts finest showings, even though Kinect turned out to be one big pile of buh.
But the lineup could have easily been the exact same games as they could have revealed 10 years ago, albeit with reduced numbers after each title. It was a predictable showing, yet a solid showing, and a much needed showing, tapping into the familiarity of yore to try and make the excessive number of PS4 defectors look back over their shoulders. If only for a brief moment.
For while Microsoft brought the big guns, Sony brought the legends.
Last Guardian, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Shenmue 3.
I could never imagine again such a lineup of games shaking the foundations of gamesville as much as those three have ever again. Particularly the last two. In many ways, the unexpected announcements from the Sony show could likewise have been a games lineup we could have had 10 years ago. Indeed, it was probably about that long ago that they first showed off Last Guardian. But this was different. These were the games everyone wanted, that we’ve pestered the makers endlessly for, and that ultimately, we thought that we were never going to get. Like, ever. It was a real testament to what was going on when grown men in the audience could visibly be seen weeping at the reality of Final Fantasy VII Remake materialising, and then following that with Yu Suzuki taking to the stage to take the lid off of Shenmue 3.
Plus, there’s this. You’ve probably seen this video a bunch of times, but this is a real moment-catcher…
For me, it was the most bizarre of moments when I woke up and hazily picked up my phone to check what had gone on in the night at the Sony conference, and I had a reaction that I’d never experienced before after the show. E3 was always about the hype, the KABLOOM of the next most awesome games, and the laughing and picking at the stupid things that some idiot had inadvertently given us all something to cringe and chortle at. But there was no Cammy Dunaway, no ‘massive damage’, no Don Mattick, and not even a hint of ‘Riiiiiiiiiiiidge Raceeeeeeeeeeer!’ this time.
No sir. This was on too big a scale for the usual tomgriggery of years gone by.
For me, there was a bizarre calmness. Almost as if the hype needle had shot off the scale and I didn’t quite know what to do with myself other than sit still in silence. I even put my phone down to try and comprehend what I had seen, leaving it there for a good period of time as I tried to sift through the information in my head. It’s weird, and I sometimes get like that. I’ve had it when I’ve discovered a particularly amazing retro games shop for the first time and I’ve had to leave after only a few minutes and go for a walk down the street to try and take in the overload of data before I can go back and try and make sense of things.
Things became even more tricky when Lucy tried communicating with me, getting frustrated at how distanced I seemed as she speculated about who was doing what in our usual morning routine. I believe I only managed to utter something about how they were making a Final Fantasy VII remake in response, knowing full well that she would neither know or care what the grig I was talking about, and would still not understand how a games announcement could send me into some kind of weird trance even if she did.
But I couldn’t help it. And I will surely never forget this E3. And that’s saying something when I literally couldn’t have given a skiddy rats ayne about the prospect of this show beforehand, only really feeling inclined to check out what was happening out of pure tradition before I feel increasingly distressed at the way it’s all going. Indeed, if EA and the usual suspects had had their way, it probably would have been just that, especially when the EA representative went on to say ‘Ok guys, it’s time to talk about mobile.’
At E3.
At grigging E3.
No sir.
It is never time to talk about mobile.
Even though they will continue to do so and will get their way eventually.
But I digress.
And while these games will likely not cause a stir amongst the youth of today who are more interested in Generic Future Army Shooter Man Who Swears A Lot With EXCLUSIVE Excessive Removed Content You Can Buy Back As DLC Oh And Don’t Forget To Pick Up Your Season Passes That Cost As Much As The Actual Game Spring/Summer 2015 Edition, or something… for the older dudes, this shizzle is big time.
But only time will tell if these games turn out to be as awesome as they should be. Each of the games heritages should ensure they are, but you never know what can happen. The stench of modern day gamery will surely hang over them in some capacity, be it microtransaction materia in Final Fantasy, pay-to-win ability scrolls in Shenmue 3, or coughing up dabloons to have Yorda tag along in Last Guardian or something, there will surely be some kind of buh at play at some point. It’s not really going to be whether these games have that stuff in them, but whether or not they will still be what we had all hoped they’d be despite those things. But if they can only sidestep that turd just enough to ensure a genuine experience representative of the dreams that everyone has for them, then we could be onto a winner.
We await further details with foolish optimism. But till then, I’ll bid you a good morrow my medieval perveyors of ploop! And by that, I mean bye.
Yep, Mario. He now holds your destiny in the palm of his hand. Because this little Italian-American-Japanese is my opening player on Super Smash Bros – and the one who’ll determine… if I like it.
And what’s that got to do with your destiny?
Well, Mario won’t just determine if I like Super Smash Bros. Because I sense there is no liking Super Smash Bros. This is going to be an all or nothing encounter, people. Either you pick it up, pootle about, feel a bit meh and forget it ever existed.
Or it changes your life.
And right now, there’s a chance it could enter the realm of… Classic.
*shouts* Just a chance, mind you!
*whispers* Just a chance.
Right now, it’s just peering… Peering round the frame of a door… A door left ajar… A door marked ‘Legend’. Only time will tell if it pokes a toe into that room, steps into its hallowed air, and finds itself a comfy seat by the window. Only time and… Mario.
And then? Well then, my chums, you punkasses are getting down to Amazon dot co dot interweb, and you are freakin hi jinxing yo’selves a copy. IF Mario delivers, that is. IF it fulfils the potential it’s showing…
This is it! This is the moment that I defeated Ganon! After TWENTY years!
Yep, I figure I was 14 when I first started playing through Zelda. Many times I made it to the Dark World – hell, I must have got to the Master Sword about thirty times, and probably rescued Zelda about a hundred – but I never made it close to the end. And the reasons were myriad. Broken SNES’s, sold SNES’s, battery back up fails… I’ve had it all. But in a real life version of Link’s heroic quest, I persevered! And now, TWO DECADES later – battered, broken, beleaguered, but victorious – I’ve made it…
The sense of accomplishment is intense! Regular readers of the Grig (you two) will know this has been more than a gaming adventure – this is a very personal mission, exploring my own inability to see anything through to the end. So many games, projects, and avenues in life lie incomplete or failed behind me – but now, we look forwards! With Zelda, the very first objective coming to a final, belated fruition, there’s a sense of personal growth. Development. Completion.
And what did I do with my new found sense of self? Well, played Mario Kart of course. Ashasha…
