Return of the Flailing

Flailing With Ink is back, now with more brownish-purple. A couple of the latest posts (hit for full view):

iApple

The passing of Steve was the first time I’d emotionally responded to the death of a high-profile figure. I wandered past the Apple Store here in Bath at lunch time the day after and saw that tributes had been coming in, as well as a Cancer Research stall nearby.

I popped back to the studio and put together something to add myself, which you can also find on dribbble.

I haven’t got too much to add that hasn’t already been expressed with eloquence and beauty. But a dark cloud hung over me all day, looking at peoples tributes, reading Steve’s quotes, reading the blog posts of people who had met Steve which I loved. I was obviously never fortunate enough to cross paths with the man, but his products have had a profound impact on my life and I found it interesting to reflect on, so here’s my personal story, iApple.

My dad was a layout designer for many years, Syrian born (remind you of anyone?) and working on Arabic newspapers and magazines here in the UK. As a little girl I used to go with him to his offices frequently, back then they had huge drawing boards (admittedly they’d probably not seem quite so vast now, but at the time I could sit in front of one and it would fill my vision) and not a computer in sight. The computers were kept in their own room, remember that?! Four of these, Macintosh II series:

Most of the time I was happy drawing my own Sonic the Hedgehog comics at the drawing boards, but every now and then I’d wander over to the Mac, turn it on and move the mouse around a bit. This was enough excitement as the only computer I had come into contact with prior to this was an Acorn with a CLI interface and no mouse, which was already forming a lasting fascination with computers.

I’d click on a few things I didn’t understand before resorting to just moving the mouse around the desktop, drawing invisible hedgehogs. Then I’d toddle off into the photography dark room, comment on the smell and chew Fruit Pastilles slowly while watching photos develop, my childhood was the epitome of excitement I’ll have you know.

I didn’t see much more of Macs once I wasn’t visiting my dad at work any more, we acquired a mouse for the Acorn and some semblance of a GUI but it was pretty uninspiring, I didn’t feel compelled to draw hedgehogs on it. I did, however, feel a desperate need to type random command lines and flood error messages before taking the whole thing apart to look at it’s innards, much to the disgust of the adults who caught me before I could reboot. These days I build my own gaming rigs and overloading a system with error messages is… frowned upon.

By the time I saw another Apple product I was firmly in the PC camp, I could customise the decks in Solitaire don’t you know. I was keen on messing with settings, changing the way folders displayed and how the Start Menu was laid out. Did I mention I wasn’t that popular at school? Coincidence, I’m sure. I was about 12 by now and my dad was doing the same kind of work, one weekend he was taking me to Segaworld but he had to go in to work for a couple of hours. I went with him on the promise of Galaxy Minstrels in the vending machine, but when we got there I saw something I wanted more:

An iMac. After a short while acclimatising to the taskbar being in the wrong place and stuff having a tendency to bounce for attention, I spent a short while exploring everything every menu had to offer, which was my default response to being at a computer, but it didn’t last as long as on a PC. I found that I wanted to use this thing to draw hedgehogs again. I opened Photoshop for the first time and made some utterly dire crap that I was extremely proud of. I wish I still had it.

And then I never owned a Mac. The end.

But not really. My dad moved abroad and so I never visited him at work again and never really came into contact with Macs. We had a PC at home and within a couple of years I started having IT lessons at school, which I was good at and frequently helped other kids out when they managed to unlock and hide their taskbar, sending them into a frenzied panic of unhelpful clicking.

It wasn’t until I went to university that I had a decent PC, and I went all out with an Alienware and life was blissful because I didn’t have to go make a cup of coffee to pass the time when Microsoft Word was opening. I studied video game design then illustration, the former was entirely PC based and the latter had the kind of fear of anything digital as a neanderthal would if you showed up in his cave with a toaster. So no Macs there.

And then I needed a new phone, and had ignored the first two iterations of the iPhone. I had a Sony Ericsson which I liked but when I tried using it’s upgrade I felt it morally obligated to not own it because the UX punched me in the soul. The iPhone 3GS had just come out and I had just got the deposit on my flat back so…. you know… priorities…

I fell in love with the damn thing and it quickly replaced a lot of physical gumpf in my life like my Filofax and calendar, which pleased me because basically, if I had my way, everything I own would be digitised and live on one device and my house would be empty. Except a bit of it would be an aquarium. With a shark.

After uni I started working as a designer in a studio with G5s and iMacs, and had to become as familiar with OSX as I am with Windows. Turns out that’s really easy but, judging by the amount of frantic phone calls I had from OSX colleagues encountering Windows, not so easy the other way around. Again, I did a bit of delving and tweaking but this was a tool I used to create. When it came to the time I needed a laptop, what was always going to be a PC ended up being a MacBook Pro. I still have, and always will have, a PC for gaming and for the satisfaction of working on something I built, but my Macs are a joy to use, beautiful and effortless.

Then comes the iPad, and not being a total rabid Apple fangirl just yet meant that I didn’t get one immediately on the basis that I had two computers, a laptop and an iPhone already and didn’t think that there was a gap that needed filling. And then I realised that that wasn’t the point, the point of the iPad (in my eyes) is to enhance and enrich. I waited for iPad 2 and now I couldn’t be without it, as most people with an iPad will probably tell you. I travel a fair bit which had probably helped me get a good amount of use out of it; where a 17″ laptop is cumbersome and an iPhone is too small. Another little bit of magic, which I’ve only experienced from Apple products, is that even though I can type faster on a computer keyboard (although only just these days), I prefer to write emails on my iPad because it’s just a nicer experience.

I’ll be in the queue at 8am on Friday morning for an iPhone 4S, I have fallen to the cult of Apple totally, following keynotes live and excitedly anticipating new releases. I hope they remain faithful to Steve’s standards and ethos, time will tell, but throughout my lifetime so far I have been inspired and enriched by the products only one man could have made. So thank you, Steve.

Explay Game Jam: Buggr™

A theme, a team and 24 hours to make a game. The Extended Play Bristol game jam kicked off at 7pm Friday evening and a day of good people, good games, good laughs and some pretty amazing food commenced.

For a reason that’s best left unexplained, our team was Team Disco.

Team Disco, demonstrating the scale of smileyness from Unimpressed (left) to Manic (right)

Team Disco, left to right: miscellaneous George, sound designer Owen, game designer & programmer James, film-maker Sy, programmer Dan, artist/designer Nat. Many high-fives were had and I yelled ‘TEAM!’ a lot to foster team spirit but ended up annoying myself (and probably others) instead.

The theme for the jam was ‘mirror’. We brainstormed very effectively and narrowed-down less effectively:

Dan was desperate to do a fashion/dating/Chat Roulette game but we said no, and then Dan wasn’t allowed to make suggestions any more.

Food + booze + Miscellaneous George’s green post-it’s  = inspiration

It’s worth noting at this point that miscellaneous George lived up to his name quite spectacularly, randomly producing items such as a table tennis bat, green post it notes, a small disco ball and at one point a highly questionable hip-hop DVD.

Primitive technologies

By the end of Friday evening we had decided that we’d have a mirror in the game. Great success.

Saturday morning James had come prepared with an idea and a dry-wipe marker. He sketched up his design and then we made a paper version of it to work out the logistics and see if it was actually, you know, fun.

We nailed the mechanics and settled on a Frogger-style game but with insects and mirrors and decided to call it Buggr (you’ll be shocked to hear that miscellaneous George came up with that gem of a name “Hey guys, you know how our game is like Frogger but with bugs….”). So we got down to srs bzns and the hours flew by.

SRS BZNS

So, games. We made one. Here’s some art I did for it (smack ‘em for full view):

Concept: Characters

Mockup: Starting positions

Mockup: Action

Mockup: Victory!

You are a bug trying to reach the discarded sandwich, but a kid with a magnifying glass stands between you and the gingham paradise, trying to fry you to a crisp (with an entertaining fizzling sound, thanks Owen) It’s a tactical multiplayer, each turn a player moves forward a small distance and positions their mirror anywhere in a circular radius around them, once all the players have moved you hit a button and the kid with the magnifying glass randomly spawns and sends out a ray of sunshine-death which can either hit a bug directly or bounce off another bug’s mirror and potentially hit a rival. The first to the sandwich wins.

This mechanic allowed for some interesting tactics, players could choose to make a mad dash, using the mirror to shield themselves, take rivals out by using the mirror offensively, but leave themselves more open to hits, or even team up with another player to build a mirror-wall and edge forward.

The game is as rough around the edges as you’d expect from a day’s design and build, but it works and is actually pretty fun! Once it’s online I’ll update with a link.

Sy has some pretty rad camera skills and made a short documentary of the our project on the day. I have discovered that I am not eloquent on camera, the outtakes would be 9 minutes of me going “blah blah blah *stall* *blank stare* — let’s go again”, nevertheless, it’s impressive.

BubbleMan

Remember the live-drwing I did at TEDxBristol last month? Well inventor and out-of-season mince-pie eater Tom Lawton was demonstrating a wonderful device at the event called a BubbleScope. It’s an innovative 360º smartphone-mounted camera capable of taking a picture of the scene around you in one click.

Below is the piece produced for that section of TEDxB, in the bottom left you can see what I drew while Tom was talking, and he asked me afterward if he could use it on packaging for the BubbleScope.

So I did it up all nice-like (above), can’t wait to see it on the packaging and I’m delighted to be a part of this awesome project. Read more about the BubbleScope and see some really neat example bubbles here. If you prefer to look at things on dribbble it’s there too.

I cuddled a meteorite and I liked it

I’ve always been fascinated by space, my childhood encyclopaedia has it’s spine broken at the astronomy pages (this was before Pluto was kicked out for…. being drunk and disorderly….) so I am very fortunate indeed to know someone who owns a shard of meteortite, and when I say shard I mean ‘massive fuck off wedge’. I got around to taking some photos of it today, it really is one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen, the fact it came from space blows my freaking mind.

My understanding is that it’s made from nickel iron with peridote inclusions. From a designer’s perspective I find it hugely interesting as well; it’s obviously stunningly beautiful, but I feel like it tugs at a very primitive appreciation of aesthetics. It’s no wonder humans have always adorned ourselves with metal and gems. I mean look at them. LOOK AT THEM (click for full view)

Oh my god it came from space.

It’s so beautiful I want to tear my eyes out so it’s the last thing I ever see. I won’t though because I also need them for looking at pictures of cats on the internet.

Familiar yet also very alien. They look a bit like sweets actually. A word to the wise; people get angry if you try and eat their meteorite.

30 days of gaming – Saddest game scene.

There are many, many good choices for this entry. I don’t know if I would name this the saddest necessarily, but at least I won’t add to the endless “omg FF7 Aeris’ death /crai” cooing.

Watch from 5:00 for ‘the bit’, those unfamiliar with the Soul Reaver series may want to watch from before then.

Raziel was always my favourite character of the series, his look and animation is spot-on with those big expressive, empty eyes. His thirst for the truth at any cost and his often stubborn outlook endeared him to me, so it was very sad to watch him go.

Honourable mention to the part where Dom must kill his afflicted wife in Gears of War, heartbreaking.

Happy birthday Sonic!

… Even though you broke my heart several times. As I’ve said before, Sonic is one of my favourite characters, featuring in some of my favourite games and was my childhood ‘Be Obsessed With This Thing’ of choice – Sonic bedsheets, bubble-bath, tracksuit, you name it I had it.

Have you heard of Pixelblocks? They’re like Lego but you can make pixel art with them and it’s all pretty rad. So happy birthday Sonic, you speedy spiky bastard.

Mop it up

A designer called Kyee made my day on Tuesday by drafting me on dribbble out of the blue! The fact that he is one hell of a talent only added to my elation. Too much information incoming: I was so excited I actually had to go for a pee.

My first shot was the one I posted here as my prospect shot, it hit second page of most popular and top highlight of the day in the debut shot category:

At this moment in time it has over 1k views, 28 comments and 133 likes. I couldn’t be more pleased, the comments left by my designer peers have been so brilliant, and I’ve been having a ball finally getting to comment on other people’s outstanding pieces. The calibre of work on that site is consistently phenomenal.

Anyway, you should pay Kyee a visit here or here or here and you can now slip in my various drooled puddles here.

Nat

True fact.

Click for full view niceness.

30 Days of Gaming – Best soundtrack

Day 08 – Best soundtrack: Another list. I’m not indecisive, I just like lists.

As epic as some video game music can be, I’m not really ‘in to’ music, as the kids say, so this list is more like ‘sounds that make me nostalgic’ rather than a Deep and Meaningful Appreciation of Symphony.

Sonic 3 – Ice Cap Act 1
The music fits that epic snowboarding bit at the beginning of the zone. When I eventually get to go snowboarding I’m going to listen the fuck out of this music before I plough comically into the side of a tree.

NiGHTS into Dreams – Soft Museum
As eerie as it is uplifting – a weird feeling befitting the malleable surfaces of this level.

World of Warcraft – Wrath of the Lich King (title theme)
Logging in to this music just felt epic. And then I do my cooking dailies.

Streets of Rage – Boss theme
When you hear this you know shit’s about to go DOWN.

Rise of the Robots – Loader battle
Forget the terrible game play, this game freaked me the hell out. I’d have to psyche myself up to play it and then I was fascinated and terrified in equal measure when I did. The music still creeps me out.

Pokémon Red/Blue – Trainer battle
You know why this made the list *turns baseball cap back to front*

30 Days of Gaming – Favourite game couple

Day 07 – Favourite game couple: Link and Midna – Twilight Princess.

Ooo, controversy. Not as popular as the more mindlessly-obvious Link/Zelda match up. However, apart from the odd kiss every 20 years or so, there’s not a lot of interesting dynamic between Link and Zelda beyond the whole ‘princess rescue’ thing.

Midna holds a place as one of my favourite character designs so that’s probably making me biased but the thing about that is; I don’t care. She’s a female character with a hell of a personality. Purposefully goading and incurably sarcastic, she manages to be Link’s rescuer, power and guide with an abrasive personality and deeply irritating lines. The thing is though – she never annoyed me, which in itself deserves some sort of medal.

A lot of that is probably to do with how she looks for most of the game. We’re introduced to this impy creature, small enough to ride around on wolf-Link’s back, clearly female but it managed not to matter. So when she delivers a cutting line, it’s not come from a perfect mouth somewhere behind a pair of over-inflated melons and batting eyelashes – it’s from a creature grinning at you with a fang sticking out and half her face covered by a crazy mask. That appeals to me a whole lot, and goes some way to explaining why I think the Undead in World of Warcraft are far more beautiful than Blood Elves will ever be.

lol, pwnd

Even when her human form is revealed (with pretty obviously increased femininity) she manages not to turn in to too much of a stereotype. And it might be just me, in fact I’m pretty sure it is, but when she disappears at the end of the game Link seems pretty bummed.

Oh, honourary mention for Guybrush Threepwood and Elaine Marley of the Monkey Island series. A capable and witty love-interest in a game? *gasp*

Cakes of War.

Cake or death? Both.

30 Days of Gaming: Most annoying character.

Day 06: Most annoying character – Get comfortable for the list.

Not that I’m easily enraged or anything, but I’m going to leave this as an open list for when more occur to me. It’s quite therapeutic actually *surreptitiously pushes broken things under a rug*


Gary Oak – Pokémon. This basically explains everything you need to know about Gary Oak:

The guy in the other cell – Oblivion. This was the wood elf that’s in the cell opposite you when you start the game. Anyone remember his name? Biggest. Douche. Ever. The quest where you kill him in his face never gets old.

Princess Peach – Mario. And all other similarly useless female characters. My kingdom for a strong female protagonist who isn’t a) a waste of castle space b) all boobs c) insufferably bossy

omg i totes got captured again lol <3

The Kickboxer – Streets of Rage. Seriously. Eff this guy right in his effing eff. For those who didn’t play Streets (shame on you, go find and play it) this guy would constantly block and the only time to get a shot in at him was when he went to hit you. Are your reflexes faster than a computer? Thought not.

#DrawATrex

My contribution to National Draw A T-Rex Day as trended by @ChrisVideoGamer:

TCGTE: Live photos – Where my face explains a lot.

A few snaps from the live TCGTE show on Sunday:

Tom takes to the podium

Tim takes to the podium whilst scowling

Of course

Lots ‘o peeps

More peeps

Making some final amends (scribbling)

I had to sit by him to make sure he was laughing

Why do people let me do this?

This is why I can’t have nice things

TCGTE: Live in London

So I’m now somewhat recovered from attending The Complete Guide to Everything Live in London. For the uninitiated; TCGTE is a hugely funny podcast, cast weekly by joy-buddies Tim & Tom, educate yourselves here.

Last weekend they did their first live show and I went along to the Sunday viewing to capture the magic. Or something. They did a great job and were as fantastically entertaining as ever, the chase scene was particularly epic.

Photos incoming of the event and me making faces I shouldn’t be allowed to.

30 Days of Gaming: Game character you feel you are most like

Day 05 – Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were): NiGHTS and Reala, NiGHTS into Dreams

Seriously bending the rules of this series! NiGHTS and Reala were designed with symbolism in mind, and the dynamic of their duality had a significant impact at a point in my childhood when I was especially susceptible to influence (family stuff, highly emotional and deeply boring to relay, so I’ll spare you). Just as well the influence came from these two instead of the bad crowd of kids at school eh? Who said games are bad for children?

Everybody exists with a balance of contradictory traits, the weightings giving us variations in our personalities. I feel that I’m someone in whom this is particularly pronounced in a specific instance though; I’m alternatively either extremely brave and confident or completely paralysed by fear.

NiGHTS, a metamorphing, flying jester represents freedom, justice and courage while Reala, a similar type of creature, is representative of loyalty, cruelty and fear. (As an aside, the concept of loyalty is treated in an interesting way in-game. These two characters have free-will, Reala chooses to remain loyal to an evil overlord, unlike most peons you find in games who are normally helplessly enslaved. i.e. your loyalties should not necessarily lie with your creators. This was as useful realisation.)

So, for example, one moment I’ll be confident enough to draw all day and post it all to my blog, the next I’ll convince myself I can’t draw and regret ever trying to be a designer. I’m convinced every designer/illustrator has these moments, whether they’re as frequent and violent I don’t know. Fear of failure has prevented me from making contacts and taking offered opportunities in the past but I’m pleased to report it has become less and less. Although at one point a couple of years ago I was a small step away from completely retraining in IT, which I have a strong confidence in since being good at it isn’t down to personal taste so much – it’s whether or not there’s smoke coming out the back of something.

Designers will know that strong imagery with symbolism sticks in a person’s mind and can be highly influential. This has been a useful device in terms of overcoming instances of fear – NiGHTS wears a shard of a red gem known as the Ideya of Courage on his chest, and it’s a useful image to bring to mind to remind me that I’ll get further by drawing a picture than I will by hiding under a mattress eating peanut butter from the jar.

30 Days of Gaming: Your guilty pleasure game

Day 04 – Your guilty pleasure game: Outpost Kaloki X
Format: Xbox Live Arcade
Release: 2006
Genre: Simulation/Strategy

This super-simple space station tycoon game will still occasionally reel me in for hours and hours at a time. It’s a genuinely brilliant, funny game but it gets my guilty pleasure spot because of how easy and happy-clappy it is, and sandbox mode exacerbates my micro-management OCD.

30 Days of Gaming: Another game that is underrated

Day 03 – Another game that is underrated: Ecco: The Tides of Time
Format: SEGA Mega Drive
Release: 1994

If you want to be blown away by the majesty it’s possible to get from 32-bit; play this game. Beautiful graphics and animation, the feeling of swimming and jumping is joyous, the story line compelling and there’s some unique game play for the time.

My favourite moments are flying through the air as a future dolphin (having evolved helium sacs) and using the waterways that float in the sky (Sky Tides) – they are simply divine mechanics to further Ecco’s quest to recover the future with flying dolphins and happy rainbows and avoid the dead mechanical world of the Vortex.

You do want flying dolphins that go “cheee cheeee” don’t you? Then dust off your Mega Drive (or Genesis if you like. Pff.)

30 Days of Gaming – A game that is underrated

Day 03 – A game that is underrated: Shenmue & Shenmue II
Format: Dreamcast
Genre: Open-world action adventure. And RPG. And fighter. And everything.
Release: 2000

It was more a case of underexposure than underrated but still, if you didn’t gather already I’m taking liberties with these categories. I’ll be talking about specifics so for a run-down of the game’s essence go here.

Shenmue wasn’t just a great game that was underrated, it pioneered mechanics that has never been seen before such as QTE, variable weather, NPC schedules and full NPC voice-acting. The cities and areas are huge – not for the sake of being huge as many open-world games are guilty of – but rich and engaging, battles are real-time 3D fighter style and the more you train outside of fights the better you’ll be. Cinematics, QTE (Quick Time Events) are actually done well and flow with your natural gameplay and it’s one of the few games in which I read/listened to all the NPCs because the story is so good and the dialogue engrossing. It’s a game that borrows from many genres and ends up with more than the sum of it’s parts.

For me, the little details can make a great game one of my all-time favourites. And never has this been more true than in Shenmue. In Shenmue II I took an in-game job driving a forklift so I could afford to spam the Gatcha machines in hopes of getting elusive Sonic figures and so I could spend endless yen in the arcade playing an in-game version of Hang-On. Take THAT Baudrillard.

There was also a kitten. I spent may hours and yen bringing it the best food and petting it while my real-life cat rightly gave me the stink-eye.

The Shenmue story has a terribly sad ending – it doesn’t have one. The series was cancelled after Shenmue II due to poor sales which almost made me cry. If I ever meet Yu Suzuki and could only ask him one question it would be about what happens in this story. Then I’d throw him in the back of a van and keep him in my cupboard living on jaffa cakes until he agrees to make a new one.

There’s a port of Shenmue II on the original Xbox, that’s probably as modern as you’re going to get if you want to try the game and don’t own a Dreamcast. Self-respecting gamers owe it to themselves to experience the roots of core modern game play mechanics first-hand.

30 Days of Gaming – Your favourite character.

Day 02 – Your favourite character.

I tried to pick just one. Then I decided on 5, then 5 with honourable mentions, then one per genre. I ended with a random selection of however the hell many I feel like. I could talk endlessly about any single one of these, but if you’re reading this you probably know why they made my list. If not, say so and I’ll enlighten you.

Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog (see previous creepy post)

 

NiGHTS, NiGHTS into Dreams.
I was pretty much obsessed with most flying superheroes as a kid (Ironman and Silver Surfer are up there. Couldn’t warm to Superman though) but NiGHTS takes the biscuit because he’s also a jester, and due to some sort of deep-seated psychological issues that appeals to me.

Munch, Munch’s Oddysee.
I hold all of Oddworld’s inhabitants in the highest esteem, but Munch is inspirational and wonderful to look at as well as being hugely fun to play. I found this gorgeous concept piece of out wheelchair-bound hero:

Dr Steinman, Bioshock.
Just this:

Arthas Menethil, Warcraft.
Wrath of the Lich King contained some of my favourite Warcraft art, I rate it far above Cataclysm stylistically. Shall I be super-geeky? Ok, here’s my favourite loading screen:

Drifloon, Pokémon.
I like this pokémon. In fact I don’t need to Google a picture because I drew one some time ago:

Tiger creature, Black & White.
Because I like it when something can be so cute I could explode one minute and be tearing my enemies open like bags of crisps the next.

GLaDOS, Portal.
Some of the most brilliantly sinister dialogue in a video game has come from this creepy computer. If the lack of cake on this blog upsets you, you can blame GlaDOS for it.

Blaze, Streets of Rage.
What IS she saying when you hit forward, forward, B? I could never work it out. When my cousin and I played this (endlessly) as kids we’d refer to it by making sounds that are hard to type but kind of go ‘duoh, duoh, doh’. Anyone who can tell me gets cake. But not really.

Raiden, Mortal Kombat.
You could win the entire game doing nothing but the back, back, forward move.

Rabbids, Rayman Raving Rabbids. If you don’t find them funny there’s something very wrong with you.

Holy hell

This hardcore pigeon was right in the middle of the pavement on my way to work. It just sat there sizing me up as I approached and wouldn’t move. Then when I got too close he flapped right up near my face. What a jerk pigeon.

30 Days of Gaming: Your first video game.

Let the nostalgia commence!

Day 01 – Your first video game: Sonic the Hedgehog 8-bit
Format: SEGA Master System
Release: 1991

My first contact with video games at all was through a little boy called Richard. I was 5 and he was 6, we used to go to the same child-minder as after school before  our parents picked us up, where we watched He-Man, fought over Hot Wheels cars and competed to see who could eat their dinner fastest without throwing up.

Then one day he had with him a machine. He excitedly sat me down and turned it on, a blue hedgehog popped through a golden ring and waggled his finger cheekily at me. I was in love. With Sonic, not with Richard. Richard could GTFO.

For a good couple of weeks I would only watch, not because Richard was one of those ‘watch me’ gamers but because I didn’t feel ready yet. Every day Richard would offer me the control pad and every day I’d shake my head and tell him I’d watch. Somewhere in the back of my tiny brain I knew this was the tipping point, and from now on I’d be a gamer.

Finally the day came (2 weeks is a long time for a kid) and when he offered me the control pad I was as surprised as he was that I took it. The Green Hill Zone had already loaded so Sonic was just stood there staring, and I was sat there staring back. Until he looked at me and started tapping his foot, you don’t keep an ADHD hedgehog waiting. I tapped the D-Pad gingerly, wishing I could see more of what was in front instead of having him plonked in the middle of the screen, it took about 10 seconds before I was flying along the chequered platforms giggling like an imbecile and mowing down badniks like I’d seen so many times before.

But then… I came to the loop-the-loop. For some reason this was the part that terrified me most when I was watching. I made the mistake of slowing down just before it and only made it half-way up. Disaster! My flawless run was ruined! I passed the control pad back to Richard in disgust but he wouldn’t take it and talked me through taking a big run up. Eventually I agreed to try again, and after one more false-start (nearly resulting in the Master System being tipped out the window. I have a failure problem) I made it around and whoosed off into the next stage.

By the time my birthday rolled around there was only one thing I wanted. My dad brought me home from school and led me by hand into the living room, where he’d put an armchair in the middle of the room with a big wrapped box on it. From that day it was made very clear that the way to win my love was through video games.

He had bought me the version with Sonic the Hedgehog built in and I played it relentlessly, but could never finish it. I never got past Scrap Brain Act 2, I can’t remember exactly why now. Maybe one day I’ll see if I can do it without the control pad becoming projectile.

30 Days of Gaming – Intro

A couple of friends are participating in a 30 Days of Gaming thing which is a good excuse as any to get nostalgic. Here’s the list:

Day 01 – Your first video game.
Day 02 – Your favourite character.
Day 03 – A game that is underrated.
Day 04 – Your guilty pleasure game.
Day 05 – Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were).
Day 06 – Most annoying character.
Day 07 – Favourite game couple.
Day 08 – Best soundtrack.
Day 09 – Saddest game scene.
Day 10 – Best game play.
Day 11 – Gaming system of choice.
Day 12 – A game everyone should play.
Day 13 – A game you’ve played more than five times.
Day 14 – Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper.
Day 15 – Post a screen shot from the game you’re playing right now.
Day 16 – Game with the best cut scenes.
Day 17 – Favourite antagonist.
Day 18 – Favourite protagonist.
Day 19 – Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in.
Day 20 – Favourite genre.
Day 21 – Game with the best story.
Day 22 – A game sequel which disappointed you.
Day 23 – Game you think had the best graphics or art style.
Day 24 – Favourite classic game.
Day 25 – A game you plan on playing.
Day 26 – Best voice acting.
Day 27 – Most epic scene ever.
Day 28 – Favourite game developer.
Day 29 – A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving.
Day 30 – Your favourite game of all time.

I’ll start tomorrow. Would love to hear from anyone else getting involved!