Dante's Eggscape Released on GooglePlay

I'm pleased to announce that I have completed and released my first Android app Dante's Eggscape.

 

Whilst the world went all flapping crazy, I thought I'd have a shot at a flappy hybrid game, that added a little more punch than the simplistic yet infuriating flapping through pillars. I've always been interested in Game Development and design, but this is the first stepping stone to a big set of stairs to climb.

It's available for FREE through Google Play: Download now (for Android Tablets & Phones)
 

 

Hope you enjoy, happy gaming!

Adventuring with Text

Back in a time when glam-rock was all the rage and everybody had long hair, William Crowther developed a program called 'Adventure'. He developed it on a PDP-10 which was a mainframe for companies worldwide. It allowed him to access a whooping 300kb, which today isn't very much at all even our mobile phones have between 256MB to 8GB but back then it was massive.

Adventure was a cave crawling text adventure, created by William Crowther back in the mid 70's. He designed it due to personal reasons and his exploring Mammoth Cave in Kentucky had come to an end. So if you didn't know: William Crowther is the godfather of text adventures, what followed him was over a decade of text adventure otherwise known as IF (Interactive Fiction). Adventure is also known as Colossal Cave.

Mountains of Ket - ZX Spectrum 1983 Tape

Unfortunately I was born a bit late to experience the birth of text adventures but my first experience came after my dad bought a ZX Spectrum and one of the first games he had was a little gem called 'Mountains of Ket" the other was 'The Hobbit'. I must have been about 4-5 but I remember him playing it, whilst I attempted to help with the mapping, well I'm convinced he was mentally mapping out the game rather than depending on my cavechild scribbles which at some point probably included something which should have been a dog instead of boxes of locations and other important information.

Well after that experience I have always had a great fondness for text adventures, growing up I always looked out for text adventures but sadly they began to die out as the years moved on and I evolved on to point 'n' click games like Monkey Island, King's Quest etc which sadly also seem to have followed the same destiny. Even though there is still an active community within the IF world, it sadly isn't popular as it once was.

Get Lamp Documentary by Jason Scott 2010

Recently I watched a very interesting documentary called 'Get Lamp' which was created by Jason Scott in 2010 as a follow up to his BBS documentary which ironically enough was called BBS: The Documentary. It gives a full insight into history of text adventures and includes interviews with my personal favourite Steve Meretzky and other at the legendary company Infocom. They had some great games and gave me the joys of the Zork trilogy, Planetfall, Infidel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur. If you find IF enjoyable its definitely worth checking, its an excellent watch.

The way gaming has evolved over the decades it really makes me miss those simple gaming days, they where as hard as they are today but you had to use your imagination and intelligence rather than button bashing your way to glory.. and as Jason Scott quotes "Before the first person shooter, there was the first person thinker." Nicely put.

Additional links:

GET LAMP - Watch the documentary via Youtube
BUY GET LAMP DVD - 2 disc edition, worth it
IF ARCHIVE - Games, Tools, articles and everything for your IF needs

Special Effect Gaming Charity

All gamers love gaming, it is a passion that we dedicate most of our time too, but what if an illness or disability prevents you from doing the thing you love most. Maybe you've never tried gaming because its physically impossible to do so? Well the people Special Effect are making that a reality.

Special Effect is a UK based charity that provides advice and support using specialist technology to enable gaming to those who can't. Established in 2007 they continue to work with people from all backgrounds including accident victims, armed forces with injuries and other lifelong disabilities which reduce the chances of gaming. They help turn that possibility from a dream into a reality.

I think this is a great charity, not only does it provide a great community support for people unable to game but also serves as a stepping stone for improving quality and enjoyment of life, confidence and its use in rehabilitation not forgeting leveling the playing field for what we all love - gaming. Just reading through some of the case studies the science and engineering used nothing short of genius and really does prove that anything is possible.

For more information check out the following:

http://www.specialeffect.org.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/SpecialEffectCharity

Fuckface Unstoppable! @ Camden Underworld 23/07/13

Me and my brother got two tickets from my better half as a surprise just before I went to buy my own, and it was money well spent. I've read mixed reports about FFU gigs, and had mixed emotions about what I was going to expect on the night. After being a big fan of CKY, Jackass and Bam all these years, I didn't want anything to tarnish the entertainment and joy those have given me over the years.

So the night started by meeting one of my idols in The World End, none other than Dani Filth from Cradle of Filth and that was just as the night began, which meant it would need to escalate to unthinkable levels of greatness after that. So after the great Dani discovery, we went next door and got ready to rock with FFU and decided to grabbed myself a copy of Minghags DVD and a FFU shirt, which to my surprise both were personally sold to me by another great Matt "Matty J" Janaitis (CKY/FFU bassist), who actually makes the shirts at Castle Bam. The night just stepped up another massive notch. They we're supported by Generation Graveyard and Evarane. I missed Evarane but was quite impress but Generation Graveyard's stint.

Lights dimmed, a dark figure appears... It was only Novak aka "Pil Collins" in a rubber dingy crowd surfing whilst singing "In the Air Tonight", that has to be the most crazy, funniest, surreal entrances I have ever witnessed. Now the stakes were really high. The atmosphere was explosive, I never seen such a small venue filled with an electric atmosphere and it felt quite personal being so close to the band, was gutted that Chad Ginsberg dropped out a few months ago, but that didn't make much difference because FFU were really unstoppable that night. I particular like Bam's cover of "All My Friends Are Dead" by Turbonegro, he has added a heavier sound to it and works brilliantly. Even though it was a relatively short set compared to most bands, they blew the night away. After all its just a group of friends getting together making some music and having a shed load of fun in the process, which is just like the good old days of music and not about making a multi-platnium album but just plain and simple hard "Rock and Ral!!"

Everything I read before the gig was completely blown to smithereens! I really enjoyed the gig and am stoked that I got to see them, although the day after I felt like I was hit by a truck and my liver packed its bags and buggered off on holiday. I like to think of it as a Rob Zombie day.

If you get a chance to catch them, do, its worth it and don't listen to the whiners or the boring ones its for entertainment and fully worth the entry fee. I do wonder if Novak ever did meet Pete Doherty though.

Thanks guys great night! Come back soon!!

FFU Facebook
Bam's Facebook Page with Dates

The Real Bale Saga

Bale is an amazing talent, and one that is going in the right direction of paving his way into the footballing world of greats. He has everything from pace, guile and agility to his powerhouse of a left boot.

As it stands at the moment he is still a Tottenham player and will remain playing for the club come August 18th according to AVB, Levy and the club - he is going nowhere. But across the channel there is a little comic book called Marca that seem to be doing their bit to help Bale off to Madrid, and if you are silly enough to believe the reports, he has already signed which makes reading this post pointless.

Deep down I know Bale will end up in Spain at sometime in his career, he is exceptionally talent and who wouldn't want to end up a Madrid or Barcelona. There are just so many conflicting stories and ridiculous amounts of toot coming out of Spain, its impossible not to laugh at their audacity to publish such dribble, but I do believe Madrid are behind it, even though they would deny any involvement, UEFA/FIFA haven't got the balls to do anything about it either.

I'm not going to jump on the band wagon and say Bale owes us at Spurs anything, and if that was the case he owes a lot more to Southampton who discovered him. All clubs win and lose players its part and parcel of a footballers career but what I can't stand is clubs unsettling players and making them turn against their current clubs. Bale unlike rat-face Moodyric behaves and acts like a true professional and that I salute him for.

There is an official petition about reporting Madrid, please sign it not just for Spurs but other clubs who fall victim to Madrid or any other club that think they are a superpower above the rest and claim DNA is theirs.

Stop Real Madrid illegally tapping up players - Petition

Steam Surprise - Final Fantasy VII

So after a long day of work and not particularly in a Warcraft sort of mood last night, I found myself going through the steam deals and latest games. To my surprise Final Fantasy 7 was sitting there, staring at me like some kind of homeless puppy crying "give me a home, mister..".
I instantly flew back to 1997, in a pub with my best mate playing pool. I looked up at the Sports screen, and there was a TV spot for FF7 - Spurs were playing Derby later that night, both me and my dad had season tickets, we lost 2-1 and went crashing out of the league cup (Super Spurs eh..), but with knowledge that FF7 was coming out made that bitter pill easier to swallow. Well shortly after that dreadful night at the lane, I received FF7 for my birthday and still to this very day ranks in my all time top 10 games, infact its nestled in top 3 of that list. So needless to say I bit the bullet and bought it off of steam last night.

Log in to play FF7 from Steam..

After about 25mins it fully downloaded (1.2Gb) and installed only to find I have to have a Square Enix account as being logged into steam wasn't enough, you now need to log in twice to play a game. Luckily enough I had one already due to being part of the FF14 (PS3) Beta testing that is currently going on - more to follow on that. I'm guessing that this is to allow the new cloud save system via FF7, which I think is a godsend, I do remember way back then my memory card had a sissy fit and killed itself taking out all my saves including 40hrs+ on FF7. Nerd rage followed by a long "nooooooooo" but getting those 40hr+ back wasn't too bad, I loved this game more than any.

PS Version vs PC Steam Version

Right we're in, if you get this - "do not" use the keyboard, it feels very unnatural and I tried for 10mins and its was just plain awful so I had to pull out and dust off the game pad. Now we're talking, first instincts was that the character models have been improved from the PSone, I'm guessing that this is just a re-port of the original PC version that came out June 98.

For those who like achievements this now comes shipped with them 33+ and even ones for defeating Ruby and Ultimate weapon - for those who need 100% completion in RPG's. I could never take Ruby down, no time like the present to revenge all that sweet, tears and lost hours. I'm hoping that this does become popular on steam and may entice Square Enix to release 8 and 9 on Steam, especially with FF10 & FF10-2 HD coming to the PS3  in the near future.. 

Overall the game is brilliant and exactly how I remember it, and if you have never played FF7 this is the time to do it, but maybe wait until its on sale as £9.99 isn't a cheap gamble. Personally it was money well spend. I am almost certain that I will finish this completely again, its just one of those games that if you was around at its launch it altered the way you view games and was head and shoulders above the rest whilst it sat on it throne leaving its thumb print on you forever.

SNES Complete!

Success! I managed to succeed in restoring the SNES. It took me the best part of an entire evening and most of the morning on Saturday to sand down, dismantle, spray with multiple coats and replace the power LED, and guess what? No small explosions and it actually works!

Replacing the LED was a right pain, I've never got on well with a soldering wick so that was a major headache trying to remove the solder from the board to swap out the bulb, but it eventually worked out and I managed to replace the power LED with a multi-coloured rainbow bulb.

Most people would have tested the broken SNES first to see if it was in full working order and worthwhile doing, but that thought never entered my mind (duh..), but luckily enough for me when I put it all back together.. It was in working order.

This post would have been up sooner if it wasn't for Star Wars: Forces Unleashed 2 or Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning which have caught my attention, luckily I picked them up Saturday otherwise this entire idea would never have been complete.

And here it is:

SNES Powered Off

Well there you have it, I've managed to save a destroyed SNES from the scrapheap. I've uploaded a video to Youtube that shows it in full working order. Enjoy.