I Had the Power (Up)!

On Sunday, I went up to That London to go to the Power Up! exhibit at the Science Museum, prompted by reading about Orlygg's visit... except I didn't go until Monday for unimportant reasons I won't go into.

(I went and ate spicy paneer chapati wraps in the park instead.)

On a scorching day pushing past 35° Celsius, I did what I always used to do on hot summer days, and went into a dark room to play computer games!

This is only half of it!

It's debatable whether Power Up! is truly an exhibit at all, but I don't suppose it matters. For an old fart like me it was an exercise in nostalgia, playing games from my youth on the original hardware, and for youngsters -- of which there were not many, as it was a school day -- it's an opportunity to see where computer games came from, and that there is fun to be had with the older systems.

This was a pleasant surprise. A version of this -- I think the Mark 6 -- was my first console.

It was £12 for a day pass, which isn't terrible for a London museum and by my rough count I played around 27 games, so that's money well spent I reckon. Yes, I could emulate all of them, but it was good to play on the original hardware and I got the chance to handle some consoles I have never seen in the flesh before, like the 3DO, NeoGeo, or WiiU; there is something of a thrill to experience them for the first time, but perhaps I'm just a big saddo.

Aside from the N64 controllers almost all having that distinctive loose thumbstick, all the hardware was in excellent condition, and I wonder where it all came from. It's a brave collector who would donate their vintage console to be handled by thousands of grubby mitts, and I can't imagine the Science Museum itself has a stack of old SNESes in a back room. That said, the Amiga CD32 had its launch at the Museum, so it's possible that the machine there was indeed owned by them!

I have only a couple of minor criticisms. There were a few notable omissions, such as the PC Engine and any handhelds that weren't produced by Nintendo, and not all of the games were the best showcase of their machines; are we really saying Frogger is the Commodore 64's killer app?

(I would also have loved to see a Wondermega or "tower of power" in the flesh, but those are the nittiest of picks.)

Otherwise, Power Up! is an interesting if superficial look at the history of computer gaming, but also a great day out if you're a fan of computer games.

Arbitrary score: Blast Processing out of MOS6510.

Your humble correspondent, having completed Sonic 2, entirely legitimately, honest.
(And no, no idea what happened to my hair.)

Jay Arr Pee Gee

I want to love this book. It's very handsome and well designed, and it's (mostly) exhaustive. It is in many ways, lovely.

But.

The lead writer isn't very good. He has an unfortunate tendency towards presenting sweeping, unsupported, statements as fact, and has a lazy approach to research; if it's not part of his direct experience it's going to get dismissed, if it's acknowledged at all. It is very obvious if he hasn't played -- or just isn't interested in -- a game about which he's supposed to be writing, and it's not clear if he's fully aware that Europe exists.

(As this book has a team of writers, this is a trivial issue to resolve: just say "I don't feel like writing about Ax Battler; can someone else do it?" There you go. Wasn't difficult.)

I'm familiar with the writer from his website, and the same problems are apparent there too; if I'd realised he was the head writer for this book, I'm not sure I would have bought it.

The organisation is a bit odd too. It's not clear why games are ordered the way they are, and when other games are mentioned in an entry they are sometimes given a page reference, but most often not. Why? Who knows? If a game has multiple titles -- for example, English and Japanese titles -- they are listed only by one, and again it's not clear why that name is chosen. There is an index, but it's just an alphabetical list; again, if a game has alternate titles, they aren't indexed. Indexes by year and platform would have been useful too.

So it's a beautiful book, and there are plenty of surprises even for the most enthusiastic JRPG fan, but I would be very wary of treating it as any sort of authoritative, let alone scholarly, text. Ignore the title; it's not a "guide", it's more of an overview, albeit a fun and (very) pretty one.

16 Going On 30

Thanks to Stuart I am now the proud owner of a PlayStation and Playstation 2.

(Well, a re-owner of the PS1 as my father threw mine out, and this is my second PS2, but the other one is American.)

So I thought it was time for a family photo!

Sort of. I wasn't going to unplug the PS3, PS4, and PS5 just for a photo opportunity. Yet.

It shouldn't bother me, but I don't like how they dropped the button colours from the PS5. If anyone fancies getting me the 30th anniversary controller, don't be shy!

We Are Moved to Tears by the Sheer Size of This Thing

I am a terrible person!

I forgot -- or rather didn't realise -- that Monday the 18th was the 20th anniversary of the release of Katamari Damacy, one of my favourite computer games of all time.



I remember first discovering the game on a Penny Arcade text page. The description was wonderful, a gameplay first sort-of-puzzle-sort-of-action game of the kind that you would get on the Commodore 64 or Spectrum in the 80s, but had become basically non-existent by 2004. I knew I had to have it, and have it I did!

(Although I was apparently quite lucky as it had a limited release and only about seven copies made it to North America, where I happened to be at the time.)

It more than lived up to expectations. Simple in concept but often challenging, and quite bonkers, with bizarre imagery and a plot that had zero to do with the game itself. To get a feel for how mad it is, here's the first thing you see when you start the game:



As you can probably tell from that video, the soundtrack is great too.

I always thought it was a shame the series never made it to the Wii as it would be perfect there, but some version is available on pretty much everything else these days -- the first video above is from the PS4 re-release -- and you can even play it -- sort of -- in your browser if you go to google and search for "katamari".

Happy (belated) birthday Katamari Damacy!

Greater Spotted Beakie

Cyberdyne Warrior, Commodore 64, 1989.

Scale creep was always a problem, apparently, even back in 1989. Look at the size of that Beakie in comparison to the player sprite at the top!

See the game in action below, and perhaps note that the chunky marine isn't the only bit of IP borrowing going on...

That ending music sounds quite familiar too...

Eager Watcher of Birds

I have started streaming on Twitch. It's just for fun; I have no illusions about being a Big Time Streamer™ but if I'm going to play the games anyway, I may as well stream while doing so. That way everyone can see how terrible I am at computer games!

I don't have a firm schedule at the moment as my life is about to get a bit... erratic in the latter half of 2022, but if you follow me on there, you will get an alert when I'm, as they say in the business, "live". I am thinking about other things to do on there besides being terrible at computer games. Perhaps I'll do some drawing, if I can work out the logistics.

I don't speak on-stream, in part because I don't have a headset or microphone and in part because I hate the sound of my own voice. In the unlikely event that a community does spring up around me, I may have to reconsider and try to be more gregarious.

You can find my Twitch page here. I'm also uploading the videos to YouTube, because Twitch deletes them after a few days. Here's my most recent stream, part of a -- very slow! -- playthrough of Borderlands 3 on the PS4:



If you do decide to follow me on there, thank you, and I hope I can entertain you!

Let Me Be Your Phantasy

I finished Phantasy Star!

It only took about 30 years.

I'm pretty sure Phantasy Star was the first computer role-playing game I encountered. The genre wasn't common in the UK in the 80s, I think because tape was the medium of choice for home computers and most of the big name rpgs were released on disk, and because console rpg releases were spotty in Europe until Final Fantasy VII crashed in and changed everything. I got my copy of PS at some point around 1992, second hand and without a manual, five years after the Japanese release, from a fellow called Graham, who operated a "computer club" from a converted stable, and yes, in hindsight the whole thing seems a bit dodgy.

I have no idea why I picked Phantasy Star up. I hadn't heard of it, and I wasn't into rpgs in general at that point, beyond the Fighting Fantasy phase every 80s kid went through. Whatever the reason, I fell in love with the game, and despite having no manual, and with no coverage in the magazines of the day -- because, remember, it was five years old and it was all about Sonic by then -- I somehow muddled through. I remember getting about halfway through the game when the save erased itself; it wasn't the battery because I started again and the saves were fine. A mystery for the ages.

(I also played it for hours in a bedroom that my father was painting, so I always associate the game with the smell of paint, and vice versa.)

I didn't finish that second play either, because I became distracted by other things. The PlayStation came out. I discovered actual tabletop rpgs. I mutated into a hormonal teenager. Beer. Girls. And so on.

In 2009, Phantasy Star came out on the Wii's Virtual Console, and I gave it another try, this time as a sort-of-professional. I didn't finish it that time, either, which is probably a breach of journalistic ethics.

Later, I got it as part of a collection of old Sega games for the PlayStation 3 and decided that this time I would complete it. Reader, I did not.

This chunky fellow is standing right on top of a hidden trap door. Does he set it off?
He does not. Unfair, I say!

And then in January 2022 something in me -- possible because we recently had our kitchen painted; that smell! -- made me try again, this time via emulation, and in four lengthy sessions, I did it. I finished Phantasy Star. I didn't get every character to level 30, but there's no difference to the game if you do so, so I'm happy to let that go. I did defeat the "impossible" Saccubus, which I had done only once before in my many, many playthroughs, so I'll consider that an achievement.

But finishing the game at all, after a literal lifetime, is what's important. Well, not in fact important, obviously, but you get my meaning. Important to me. Phantasy Star has been part of my life for so long, always there, from when I was a child, discovering the world of console gaming, to when I was -- briefly! -- a computer game journalist, and now as I turn grey and withered, as an actual games designer, albeit in a different medium.

Will I go back and play it again? I'm not sure I will, in part because I've seen everything it has to offer over my many attempts, but in part because I always put off playing the three sequels until I finished the first one.

The road, as they say, goes ever on.

Mean Machines

(Found in a rubbish bag in the rain. Lucky me!)