Game of death

A 4-month-old girl suffocated alone at home while her parents were away at a Korean Cyber Caf? playing World of Warcraft, according to the Digital Chosunilbo.

The online paper is reporting that the 29-year-old dad and his wife left their daughter in their bedroom about 4 p.m. on May 24 to go play WOW at a caf?. When the couple returned five hours later their daughter was lying on her stomach, dead. Police believe she suffocated.

Great. Can’t wait until The Mirror gets hold of THAT one.

As a fairly dedicated gamer, although one with no real interest in MMORPGs, I have to respect Blizzard and their product. It’s certainly done well for them (a little too well by the sounds of some irate gamers who can’t get on the game’s servers) and it’s clearly a compelling game to play.

I’ve never been so involved in a game that I’ve entirely forgotten the world around me. If there’s something in the oven the I’ll remember it’s there. If the front door to the flat is left open, I’ll know about it. I always used to think I understood the mentality of gamers to some degree. What the hell kind of people LEAVE their home to go to an internet cafe for five hours and forget about the child they’ve only had for four months? I just can’t understand that one.
Please explain it to me.

Likewise, anyone who puts more blame on the game than the parents are free to be sent my way also.

Dirk would know..

Holistically speaking, what would you assume from these events:

• Last week I was in tug of war as the anchorman
• After a small operation on Friday I now have a hole in the flesh under my tongue
• Instead of fixing my glasses, the optician made them worse. I’m without them for a week and wearing my perscription shades in the office all week as a result.
• I’ll be getting a ?300 bonus in this month’s pay-packet
• The fire-alarm test that runs every Monday at 10:30am at my place of work has now been mysteriously scheduled to run at 10:45am from now on.
• My primary hard disk died on me on my home PC.

These events must all add up to SOMETHING.. ..but what?

Mario None-two-eight

I’ve just been pointed to an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto by Wired, an excerpt of which reads:

WN: This is the first traditional side-scrolling Mario game Nintendo has made since 1991. Why wait this long to do a new Mario game in the original style?

Miyamoto: Because we’d spent all this time working on 3-D Mario games. And of course, when we had Rare developing the side-scrolling Donkey Kong Country games, we were able to rely on them, which kept us from coming back to side-scrollers for a long time.

WN: But there’s still no sign of the long-rumored Mario 128 for GameCube.

Miyamoto: It’s still floating around. We’re searching for that fundamental idea that’s going to drive the next 3-D Mario game. But we’re not sure when that’s going to jump out at us. We’re doing lots of tests with small groups.

WN: If that’s the case — if the design process is still at the point where you’re doing experiments and tests — is it even possible that Mario 128 could come out on GameCube at this point? Or is it definitely a Revolution title?

Miyamoto: We think we want it on Revolution.

WN: So, there will be no new GameCube Mario platform game.

Miyamoto: Right. The Mario team can’t create too many games at the same time, so they’re concentrating on the Revolution.

A summary of which was provided on a game forum thus:

Kohler: So, Mario 128. Where the fuck is he?

Miyamoto: We’re, uh, still running tests.

Kohler: So you’re telling me nothing actually exists and you’re just jerking us around.

Miyamoto: Basically.

Hate to say I told you so…

[Full interview]

Naval fluff

I’m with stupid

A New Hope

Are you pondering what I’m pondering?

I doubt it. You probably think of far more practical things like if you’ve got enough milk in the fridge to see you through till shopping day.

There’s been a number of things flitting through my mind. All game-related of course. The whole PSP vs DS thing. GTA: San Andreas. Will my fiancee beat Ico before the weekend ends (update – yes! She did!)?

Weighty stuff, I think you’ll agree.

More recently, I’ve been looking at my game collection and wondering what’s wrong with me. I love games. And I really enjoy playing them. But I have many games that, although purchased with the intent of playing to the end, I’ve barely started.

I’m easily distracted by the next shiny object – and at this time of year there’s a whole load of highly polished shiny things all vying for my attention.

It’s not that I don’t have the finances or discipline to save for the games. I’m not particularly worried about getting a game on launch day or anything like that. I begin to worry when I hear everyone talking about San Andreas when I know I’ve barely even started my tour of duty in Vice City.

I think, what with my financial restraints loosened and my playing time at a premium I’m far more a game collector than a game player these days. I can live with that. I do want to see every corner of each and every game I own but when I look at the wealth of them I somehow think I never will..

..Oh well. The boxes look pretty. Especially the shiny ones.

I Heart Usenet

I’m a download whore.

I always knew that me and broadband would be good friends as I’ve never been short of finding something that I’ll happily download and play, watch or listen to.

I consider myself a graduate of the School of Internet. I have the browser I prefer. I have the IM client I prefer. I blog for chrissakes!

When it comes to downloading, I’ve tried most methods available to your average, informed user. Vanilla web downloads. FTP hunting, IRC file servers, eMule, BitTorrent, KaZaa, Direct Connect.

Nothing. Nothing touches usenet. Nothing comes close.

The wonderful thing is that although it looks complex, it’s not. But that hint of complexity deters utter spackers from messing about with it. It also helps that most ISPs (certainly the ones in the UK) don’t provide decent usenet support as standard.

I have four other things to say on the subject:

• Slyck
• Astraweb
• NewsLeecher
• Blank Disk Shop
  

Now – go out there and get the good stuff.

I’ve had a bit of a rethink..

Now, I like my games. In fact, I like them a LOT. And it’s fair to say that I much prefer games to games consoles. I’m far more interested in what’s going on with the latest installment of Half Life or Metal Gear Solid than the new specs of some graphics card or the screen resolution of some handheld console.

I base my hardware purchasing decision similarly – I don’t give a stuff what it might be able to do. All I care about is will it play the game I’m interested in.

As such, I knew what I wanted and my PS2 delivered it perfectly. Plenty of funky innovative RPGs, a decent array of action titles, good support from my preferred developers. Obvious choice.

I’d been waiting for some ‘must have’ titles to persuade me to part with cash for an Xbox. I can take or leave Halo as I don’t think FPS games work too well outside of mouse control. Sure, Ninja Gaiden looks very tempting. As do Fable and some others. But I still wasn’t convinced.

Then, along comes a very nice young lady and offers me a mint Xbox for 50 quid.

Job done.

So, I go and order myself some Xbox exclusives – Jet Set Radio Future, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Splinter Cell and, yes, Halo amongst others.

Having played all the games mentioned above (not anywhere near to completion mind you) I have to say that I regret my reluctance to dip my toe in the greeny-black waters of Xbox.

I’ll be playing my PS2 for ages yet – especially with certain titles (as you’ll read in future blogs) hitting my pleasure zone with the force of Hurrican Ivan. But for non-exclusive games I’ll almost certainly be plumping for the Xbox version.

And, so far, I’m only quantifying my future purchasing decisions on the box itself. I’ve neither bothered with making custom soundtracks or getting Xbox Live for online play.

You still won’t hear me saying one particular box of circuits is better than another but I’m thrilled to have all three of this generation’s consoles to hand and enjoy them all thoroughly..

..although some more interesting games for non-wrestling or kart-racing fans on GameCube would be nice.

DAMN YOU KONAMI!

I’m still enjoying parts of MGS2. I still LOVE all your Castlevania games. I even managed to get back the much sought after Dracula X for PC-Engine CD. Now you’ve gone and done it! I’ve just spent some time playing the new Castlevania: White Night Concerto for Japanese Gameboy Advance.

In essence this game plays very similarly to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on PlayStation 1. But this is on GBA! The map appears to be just as big. Of course, the animation’s not going to be quite so smooth as it’s bigger, PlayStation brother – but then we don’t have 600mb cartridges do we?

It’s all in Jap but this game is GOOD. I adore the GBA – it means that developers and publisher can stop makeing EVERYTHING in 3D and return to getting the FUN back into games.

Well, a good weekend for English sport. We managed to squeeze a penalty past ’em and Lennox Lewis pretty much finished Tyson’s reputation for good. No room for argument with either of those really! Although, I have to say, the fact that Argentina commented that they were playing in ‘the wrong colours’ as a reason for their loss to the English team seems a bit weak. Still, it’s only a game. Right?