Archive

  1. Wristwatch Roulette IV of XII: Skmei Pip-Boy

    Remember when games were good? Continue Reading →

  2. Wristwatch Roulette III of XII: Synoke DS

    Truly, this watch is beyond compare in design and manufacture. Why spend 10,000 dollars to look like almost every other follicly-challenged, champagne-chugging, chum-bucket, garrulous gorilla golfer, when you can look so great with a 10 dollar, dual-screen delight; so effortlessly demoting every other species of watch down the food chain, with its bold design, and democratic pricing? Continue Reading →

  3. Wristwatch Roulette II of XII: Robocwatch

    Yield to me. By the pseudo-random selection of fate and weight, I pull another chunky length of corporeal life-slicing lassitude from the tub. Continue Reading →

  4. Wristwatch Roulette I of XII: R-Shock

    Glorious day. Glorious package. Seven colours for the seven days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday…and “Sundy”?! A whole complication for a single day. Continue Reading →

  5. Discarded. Unloved. (Happy Ending.)

    I found a TV on the street. Face down. Cord cut. Bending knees, I squatted down and embraced it in my arms. I took it home. Washed it. Carefully removed its shell, avoiding the lethal high voltage shock. Continue Reading →

  6. Shenzhen Sojourn Ⅱ

    What you lose in portability, you gain in playability. Is that a teratoma in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me? Identical twins? More like Schwarzenegger and DeVito. Continue Reading →

  7. Saber to the Heart

    Day 4 of Easter's holidays. Guts immolating in vegetable and fruit oat/soya smoothie. Arms still tight and aching from ripping felt off a garden shed yesterday, and sorer still from the strains of several Saber songs: Daft Punk's Aughtie's Techno delights, and Camellia's alien DNA beam screeching modem warble trap. Just about time to be scorched with fresh-ground, blue-mountain coffee and a superheated shower that always ends in a sadomasochistic freezing finish, with at least 30 seconds on each quarter of my body. Continue Reading →

  8. Shenzhen Sojourn Ⅰ

    Though symmetrical, the B22 silhouette is fugly. A narrow, chafed neck screams against the severity and violence of the arcing bulbous protrusion hanging below. There’s no girthsome muscle or strength upstream of the electric fire. No gravity-simulated gradient, or natural scrotal resemblance. Just a bulky collar that looks as out of place as a fat Windsor knot on a skinny man’s spread-collar. Continue Reading →

  9. Shenzhen Safari Ⅵ

    Red is the colour of hatred, anger, power, aggression, adrenaline, worry, jealousy, murder, blood; faux-love, hearts, strawberries, stress, lust; and Mario. Continue Reading →

  10. Shenzhen Safari Ⅴ

    I lift high my trusty old, cushioned Logitech G Pro X Gaming-headset, stretch wide the supple cups to straddle my massive cranium, and immerse myself in a symphonic choir of strutting saw waves, and synthetic in utero basal…warmth. Continue Reading →

  11. Shenzhen Safari Ⅳ

    Then the PlayStation 2 landed. An obsidian black boxy monolith, evoking the opposite of fun. No more gonzo journalism, bat shit crazy curves, and see-through peekaboo. This was the dawn of a new era. Of seriousness. Striving for photorealism in textures, lighting technology, and enough polygons to realise the cancelled lad mags advertised promise: A simulacrum of nature’s finest soft protrusions. Why then, did it fail to embrace my attention? Continue Reading →

  12. Zero Tolerance (Mega Drive, 1994)
  13. Bouncy Castle Ocean

    Do you dare to challenge this: short (5-10 minutes playtime); child-friendly (content and sentence length with some advanced words); text adventure. At your peril… Continue Reading →

  14. Shenzhen Safari Ⅲ

    Quentin Tarantino liked to chop up his movies in the ’90s, and shuffle the scenes so they weren’t in chronological order. We all thought it was very clever, and I’ve just done that here now. Impressed? Well, neither was I when I slipped into my dirty white Gi and tried to summon a fireball from my palms, solely with willpower and chi. Continue Reading →

  15. Peak Web

    The web’s creative symbiote was a janky behemoth called Flash. Continue Reading →

  16. Shenzhen Safari Ⅱ

    143 games. Well, forty years ago, that would be a giant collection. More than a lifetime of enjoyment. Today, with our smoother and faster brains, that’s at least an afternoon’s delight. Continue Reading →

  17. Shenzhen Safari Ⅰ

    When I became a man again, I set aside childish incremental upgrades and revelled in having a long-lasting relationship with a phone. Continue Reading →

  18. 2022 Every Day Carry (EDC)

    [M]y current “every day carry”, or EDC; an idiotic term that requires further explanation to define meaning. It’s the stuff I normally take with me when I leave home. Continue Reading →

  19. Review: Burnout 3 Takedown

    Video games are an abstract medium, with abstract layers. In military shooting games, you’re essentially playing tag. You’re not imagining the pixels and polygons represent a human being with a loving family at home, keenly awaiting their return. There’s no simulation here of people who will mourn their passing at the hands of your virtual gun, or in the case of Takedown, the missile that is your car versus other driver-less cars. Continue Reading →

  20. A CRT Story

    How deep the sadness scans and scratches. Screaming unheard, and unfired within a choked, dim, and dusty electron gun prison. That beam of potentia. Electro-life. Hulking machines one day extinguished, never to spark again. And then, this tragically abandoned display technology will be lost to the world; forevermore. Enough of that inevitable grim reality that shall come to pass. There is yet time to savour the final warming embers of this fire. To cherish, and revere! These living museum pieces. Continue Reading →

  21. Skmei Face Swap

    The Chinese company Skmei make fantastic and inexpensive watches. Some are in the style of a well-known Japanese digital watch-maker, some are bizarrely unique designs. Continue Reading →

  22. Review: Frostpunk

    Well, kids, it’s not like there’s anything else to do, so off you go to work. And we could probably use those dead bodies to fertilise our crops, harvest the good organs and transplant the lively limbs. Loads of frostbite you see. Continue Reading →

  23. Buying 2015’s flagship GPU used in 2020: the GeForce GTX 980 ti

    Scoping out eBay for them, I started thinking, well now, maybe I could find one for me too. The green-eyed monster was just too much for me. Continue Reading →

  24. My Life in Gaming (1985 to 2019)

    I still have that C64, and it still works. Occasionally, I will take it down from the loft, fire it up and play some old classics. I have so many cassettes with games that I cannot remember, or were incomprehensible to me as a child. So I try these out too; see what the designer was reaching for; how they managed to embrace and stretch the contsraints of the hardware. High concepts translated into simple games, often wonderfully executed and with timeless gameplay. IK+, here I come again. Continue Reading →

  25. Review: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

    It’s hard for me to stress just how perfect the movement feels. The connection between player, controller and character in this game is ethereal. In marching, attacking, jumping, and dashing backwards to avoid a skeleton’s swipe or the lunging thrust from a hulking armoured guard, it is an immense and tireless pleasure to glide through. Continue Reading →

  26. 2007 Mac mini (1,1), a fixer-upper journey (January 2018)

    I am convinced mouse and keyboard will be around for many more years. Blade Runner came out almost forty years ago, yet voice recognition still isn’t reliable enough to manipulate an image based on commands from a surly, mumbling voice. Continue Reading →

  27. Review: Apple Watch Series 3 (2017)

    At first, it was neat to have my watch *tapping* me on the wrist with notifications and messages, but it quickly grew tiresome. It reinforced that I do not wish for the instant, immediate and regular distractions this helpful device tap-tap-taps me with. I am happier checking my phone when I choose to, and when it is not impolite to do so. Continue Reading →

  28. Review: Streets of Rage
  29. Best of Final Fantasy Game Dialogue
  30. Review: Pitstop II (C64)
  31. Review: Dream Simulator (Playstation One)
  32. Gaming as a Leisure Activity
  33. Dr. Ivo Robotnik, I Presume?
  34. PC Gaming; an Homage
  35. #SpeakElcor
  36. Aughties Gaming
  37. Mutt for my Mum
  38. Amiga Adventures (Acceleration, RAM and HD Upgrades, WHDLoad)
  39. Why, Sony, Why?
  40. The Apple of my Eye