Random Hoo Haasthe blog with the guff

The wobbliest sorceress in the woooorld!

Saturday, June 11, 2011 at 8:59 pm Comments (3)

Well, that was an interesting start to the day; being told there’s a pigeon in the garage. We had to cover the closed windows with rugs and other nonsense so it knew which of them was actually open, and didn’t brain itself when trying to fly out. All’s well that ends well.

So, how about that E3, eh?

I haven’t been paying attention to it, to be frank. I only got news about it when friends felt the need to share stuff with me. I find it more interesting that way, as if I actually gave a damn, I’d probably be in agony waiting news on games I’m interested in, but since I don’t, I can just ignore the entire event and then look up very convenient summaries. Life comes up peaches.
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This is paradise! (and it’s very nice!)

Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 10:04 pm Comments (6)

Watched Mad Max 2. Man, am I glad I did.

So, remember the first Mad Max, where there was some degree of civilisation and Max had some kind of goal in life? Well, whoops, civilisation has only thinned out even more and Max is even more of a sullen, wandering soul. After stumbling across a bumbling gyro captain, he’s led to an outpost where a small civilisation of people are trying to live a decent life by harvesting fuel for their appliances, but are eternally hounded by bikers with questionable fashion sense. He helps them out only to further his own means, but after his car gets blown the fuck up, he has nothing left to live for, so, hey, he’ll help them for free.
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DIE! X-CHICKEN

Sunday, June 5, 2011 at 11:54 am Comments (6)

Site progress: Kinda sorta nearly done! It’s mostly just a manner of tying everything together and fixing up the loose ends, though that’s probably going to be a bit gruelling. I’m hoping to have to done and uploaded by mid-June, but we’ll see what happens. I’m a mite concerned that after nearly a year of supposedly working on this revamp, there probably won’t be much in the way of new content besides some prettier layouts. We’ll see what happens.

I went to see X-Men: First Class a couple of days ago. I’ve come to forget a lot of the details, so excuse this horribly mangled rummage of my memory.
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“We’re like the world’s gayest ninjas!”

Friday, April 29, 2011 at 10:02 pm Comments Off on “We’re like the world’s gayest ninjas!”

Lost Planet 2 finished its rental yesterday. I was originally going to write my thoughts on it and ultimately I was finding it hard to make notes, but then I went into town and got the first instalment and two other games as part of a three-for-£20 offer in GAME. I’ll largely be talking about the sequel since it’s the one I sunk three days into and the other I’ve barely dipped my toe into it, but heck, why not talk about ’em both and make things confusing?
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Sonic Colours made me sad

Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 11:15 pm Comments (5)

Finally got around to covering Resident Bongo on Random Action Hour. It’s actually got some good bits, but the rampant repeating of sound effects and voices just gets grating real fast.

So, I rented Super Street Fighter IV about two weeks ago. It took a while to get into, if just because I’m a total scrub and was so used to Marvel vs. Capcom and its newbie-friendly Easy Mode, but after three nights of light playing I had warmed up to it quite nicely. Having no choice but to properly learn the control inputs for moves really encouraged me to learn these characters and their movesets (though I only had the time to spam Hadoukens and Shoryukens as Sakura), and even the really brief story modes had a certain charm to them – I barely know these guys, but the short glimpses of gentleman boxer Dudley talking about roses and drinking tea with boxing gloves on, it was all rather cute. I had picked up the game on a whim, but I thought it was a worthwhile rental. Heck, if the temptation ever crosses me I might even buy it! It’s not like it ever kept its original £25 price tag for long.

It left me quite optimistic after returning it, and I thought – why the hell not – let’s rent Sonic Colours!

Aheh.
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Rental night!

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 11:48 pm Comments Off on Rental night!

Paid another visit to Xtravision today, where I rented Transformers: War for Cybertron, Prince of Egypt, and Space Chimps. The last one was at my father’s choice. He’s got a thing for all things simian.

Just a head’s up – this entry’s gonna be looooong and largely about Transformers. Just a warning for the many folks who don’t give a damn about that little obsession.
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My curly moustache is in the making

Friday, February 25, 2011 at 12:28 am Comments (5)

I got vouchers for Xtravision around Christmas, and thought I’d be worthwhile actually making use of them, preferably to try other games that I’m interested in but unsure of buying, but hey, trying out movies I wouldn’t bother buying can’t hurt either. … can it?

We watched Outcast. I didn’t even read the blurb in detail, all I saw was a neat lookin’ Resident Evil style claw on the box along with a couple of beardy Irish actors on the images on the back, and I thought, “sold!” Having watched it, I can say it isn’t really my thing.

A mother and son move from their caravan to the inner city slums. The boy happens to turn into a monster at night. There’s two folks from a strange cult out to find the two and kill them. There’s a romance between the boy and a local girl. The mother is frighteningly overbearing. Misery ensues.
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This must be the Site B laboratory.

Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 10:08 am Comments (1)

Possibly due to his new-found love for OutRun 2, my brother has had arcades on the mind lately, and this morning we decided to head over to Yorkgate and check out its sorely neglected arcade and bingo hall. We weren’t expecting much at all; we were well-prepared to just mosey around it for two minutes to gaze over the wares, inevitably see nothing of interest, and then just go home. One game shoved away in the corner gave us good reason to hang around. Why?

Because it was THE LOST WORLD ARCADE GAME

YYYYEEEESSSS

In the off-chance I’ve never stated it, I have very, very fond memories of playing this game back in Spain about thirteen years ago. The arcade in Porta Ventura back then had this game (and Puzzle Bobble but dude you can buy the PC version for £1 in Toys R Us, it ain’t got obscurity value) and my brother and I would go out of our way to play it every day  we were there. We sunk so much Spanish currency into that thing. Quite justifiably, because it’s a pretty rockin’ lightgun game with some great intense sequences and a few elements that just mix things up a little. We watched a few clips of it on YouTube a few weeks ago (because that’s precisely the sort of boring things we get up to) and couldn’t help but be a little wistful. The game is nearly fifteen years old, has never had a home port and the chances of it receiving one now are very unlikely. Would we ever play the game again?

And then, holy shit, there it is in Yorkgate. That’s not far at all! Heck, it’s my usual movie-going spot. I would ask myself how on earth I could’ve missed it for so long, but given how modern arcades never exactly have much to offer, I think that speaks for itself.
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Just a collection of antiques and curios

Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 4:16 pm Comments (6)

My brother is moving away soonish (I’ll miss you!) and thus has burdened me with looking after his SNES and Dreamcast. It seems to be a trait in my family (well, probably just my father’s side) that we hate throwing out old rubbish; sometimes it is literally rubbish (why the hell do I still haven the broken-off zips from old coats?), but the SNES is a valuable piece of nostalgia for us. It was our first proper games console (if we pretend that people used the ZX Spectrum for office tools and whatnot), signalling both the start of our love for video games, but also our totally irrational bias towards Nintendo. Yeah, we can play all the games we want on the Wii or the PC, complete with a close-enough imitation of the SNES controller, but my brother still has a fondness for playing stuff on the original hardware. In theory I’m the same, but in practise… hmm.

I recently picked up an AV cable for the SNES, partly so I don’t have to muck about with the aerial cable every time I want to use it and partly on request by my brother. It’s quite a sight to see the ol’ games played off their original cartridge again and without a hilariously bad RF reception. It’s, uh, not so fun realising that all my controllers are kind of busted.
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You can take the panda out of the jungle…

Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 11:51 pm Comments (1)

It’s headlines like this that make me pay attention to the world around me. Thank you, Yahoo! News.

I wonder if I should ever bother with those “what have I been up to?” summaries when there’s a new entry after some absence, because lately it boils down to “bog all.” I’ve been playing Castlevania HD, Left 4 Dead, Pocket Bomberman, Doritos Crash Course, Panic Bomber and several other games. Yeah, but have I done anything productive? Well, er…

That reminds me, I did start work on two blog entries that didn’t go anywhere. I still have that unfinished Zebraman review sitting around (where I compare it to Jingle All The Way. It’ll all make sense when it’s published!) and I wrote a bit of a ramble on Pokémon Rumble, a strangely intriguing WiiWare game that’s probably just the way I want the series to be, if it weren’t for a number of letdowns and limitations (which I’ll probably write up as a General Writing sometime). I’m mostly spending my time redesigning and gathering resources for the Bomberman Shrine Place, which I hope will really expand the site in terms of gloriously nerdy information. I want it to be so nerdy that you start to feel embarrassed for me. If the redesigned Bomberman site doesn’t make you weep for the man who’s wasting his life researching obscure elements of the Bomberman mythos, then I’m doing it wrong.

Let me know if my attempt at hyping it up is working or not.
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