Category: Meaningless Ramble

Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Retro Gaming

Smashing CRTs: Unpicking Sonic’s Boxes

Anyone who dares follow me on Twitter may have picked up on my recent obsession with the CRT monitors (AKA Boxes!) that litter the various zones of the early Sonic the Hedgehog Games. I don’t exactly know why my brain has been idling on these iconic ingame items, but the more I turn it over in my mind the more bizarre it seems: Hedgehog smashes CRT monitor… gets stuff!

I’ve certainly not been one to shy away from applying ‘science’ to Plant Mobius in the past, but all I have to work with here is that Sonic smashes CRT and one of five different things happen (taking the SMD original as the blueprint): He picks up 10 gold rings; Grabs the Power Boots for Super Speed; Gains a one hit shield; Becomes invulnerable for a short time; or gains an extra life. So the big question is:

Is there a scientifically feasible explanation for the CRT item boxes in Sonic the Hedgehog?  Continue reading “Smashing CRTs: Unpicking Sonic’s Boxes”

Hundstrasse4 Comments
Gaming, Gaming News, Meaningless Ramble

Google Stadia: Game Breaking or Game Changing

Google made some controversial splashing in the gaming world recently by announcing the Google Stadia and being the ultra-switched-on-mile-a-minute person that I am…. it kinda passed me by. I think I have a certain noise filter when it comes to gaming news and promises of live-streaming have been the right amount of hyped and disappointing over the years for me to mentally file it under “Meh”. This morning’s commute however saw it crop up on my twitter feed a few more times and I decided to take a look at the details.  Continue reading “Google Stadia: Game Breaking or Game Changing”

Hundstrasse17 Comments
Editorial, Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Resident Evil

Editorial: July – Wait?! What Happened to June?

Hey! How’s it going you July people? All good out there in Someplaceville? If you’re a sunshine-type person then I hope you’re out there enjoying the good weather, or if you’re like me then I hope you’re safely locked indoors away from all that pollen and we can collectively hope to get a few good storms out of the humidity. Either way it’s July already, … Continue reading Editorial: July – Wait?! What Happened to June?

Hundstrasse14 Comments
Gaming, Meaningless Ramble

Nice Try: Can We Make Things Better Serverside?

I haven’t played Apex Legends for a while now. I seem to have drifted away from it for the moment, but still think that it is the incarnation of the whole battle-royale-thing that suits me the best and I generally been enjoying jumping in to rounds with the randoms that inhabit King’s Canyon. It’s the events of one ill-fated round that I want to focus on as they keep coming back to me even now, several months later… Continue reading “Nice Try: Can We Make Things Better Serverside?”

Hundstrasse4 Comments
Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Resident Evil, Retro Gaming

Resident Evil: Director’s Cut; What’s the Deal With That?

… oh yes, it’s another Resident Evil related post!… 

A few blog posts ago, I vaguely said that my next streaming outing was going to be ‘Resident Evil: Director’s Cut’ (RE:DC) for PS1. Unfortunately life got in the way of me actually streaming, and whilst I might cover this in more detail in an editorial, the cinematic release version of events is that I got crazy busy (both home and at work) and went on an impromptu blogging hiatus because I just couldn’t find my blogging motivation with other things happening. Part of the upshot of the hiatus was that I really wanted to play RE:DC but didn’t have the time to set up a whole streaming evening and finally gave in to playing it as-and-when I could grab a gaming session, sadly without having all you good people over to watch…

… this doesn’t mean that streaming is off the table, I still have to come up with a time and theme for my next evening on Twitch…

Part of the reason I wanted to go back to RE:DC is that it is the version of the original Resident Evil that I own, but I’ve never played it half as much as the sequels. Resident Evil 2 was my initial ticket to Raccoon City and the original game was something I discovered afterwards. The other thing that I’d never really considered was what exactly that ‘Director’s Cut’ subtitle meant or why it existed in the first place. Continue reading “Resident Evil: Director’s Cut; What’s the Deal With That?”

Hundstrasse3 Comments
Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Mobile Gaming

Rotten to the Core: Winning my Own Way

I’m a commuter. For almost two hours every weekday I’m held prisoner on West Midlands Railway’s ageing rolling-stock trying not to make eye contact with a group of strangers who I see more of than most friends or family. The snippets of their lives that I encounter I even share with my wife when I get home…

… for example the saga of the lady who’s daughter wouldn’t accept that her stuffed bunny had gone to live in a lovely toy shop when infact it had been lost, so she ended up trawling eBay for several days to track another one down. Or the teenagers who spent most of a journey discussing why pyramid schemes were illegal and how they probably shouldn’t put money into the one their friends were running….

For all you non-commuters out there who are wondering why commuters don’t speak to each other the reason is pretty simple: We’re all terrified. All terrified of making a ‘commuting-buddy’; someone who we’re then obliged to say hello to everyday, make smalltalk with, or worst of all sit next to for two hours everyday struggling to avoid controversial conversation with, so endlessly dissecting each aspect of the weather or sarcastically berating whichever generic train company runs the service that week. Continue reading “Rotten to the Core: Winning my Own Way”

Hundstrasse6 Comments
Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Review, VR

Super Hot VR: There’s a Screen Strapped to Your Face

… you’re frozen to the spot… 

A bullet hovers, stationary, abruptly halted along that incomplete vector from barrel to your face. It’s barely a foot from its intended destination. Without moving your head you allow your knees to bend. The very act of crouching seems to gently turn the crank on the passage of time and the bullet slowly proceeds forward. You continue to crouch, but can’t resist letting your eyes follow the projectile as it sails over your head. This is a game played out long-form over fractions of seconds. 

Super Hot is a game that’s been on my radar for a long time; novel time disrupting mechanics often interest me and the concept of Super Hot, an FPS where time only moves when you do, was a serenade to that bit of my brain. Unfortunately I’ve also got a superficial part to my personality and I’m entirely guilty in this case of judging a book my its cover; in short, that angular stark red on white aesthetic turned me off the whole idea of even trying the game. It’s just not something I found appealing and each time I browsed the store page I couldn’t ever quite get past the initial nose-screwing-up to hit the buy button.

My evenings recently however have involved much furniture shuffling as I’ve had a spree of VR gaming. During various internet delvings to find out which VR title I should jump in to next, I consistently saw high praise for the VR version of Super Hot, so I took a deep breath and set aside my visual preferences to give it a shot. Continue reading “Super Hot VR: There’s a Screen Strapped to Your Face”

Hundstrasse5 Comments