Sonic the Hedgehog. For many of us retro games an icon. A trailblazer and true competitor to that ever-present and overly-competent plumber.
To many of the younger generations, well, I don’t know. The subject of many random game outings and IP tie-ins, of which very few are done well. An object of ridicule.
When Sonic first got a few column inches in gaming mags, the news fresh from America (way before we had internet) made the excitement palpable. The screen shots looked cool. He had bags of attitude, and because all the shots were stills, word on the street was the guy was rapid. Faster than any scrolling platformer you’d ever seen before. Eat that, plumber! Read more…
This comes up in my mind time and time again, as I try and peg my favourite games of all time. In fact, I guess most gamers play this game when not holding a joypad…
Anyway, this needs some formalised rules!
You can pick any eight games to be stuck on a desert island with for the rest of your mortal life (no continues). They can be from any year, any system, any format, any region.
If it’s an old system, assume users, networks or technology is still in place to allow enjoyable gaming.
This island has plentiful plug socket points. So if you need to take your Mega Drive, Mega-CD and 32X, no problem.
You can have whatever the best display is to play these games, from a Sony KV-M1421U through to Hanitrex arcade cab monitors… but I don’t really need to know what you choose, just helps your choices.
This mythical island also has ethernet sockets and wifi in the, err, palm trees, so multi-player online games are in the running.
You can also nominate some poor sod to be stranded on this island for those co-op games that simply must be played with a 2UP, like Bubble Bobble.
I love Scott Pilgrim, and was delighted to see this video in February, earlier on in it’s production, as Joe sent me a version he’d been working on for months. Frontman Joe put a *lot* of effort into learning After Effects, completely starting from scratch when he’d found a better way to achieve a few effects. That’s my kind of learning, in at the deep end! Plus the video rocks!
I know, part IV is missing, partly because I had a break from blogging, but partly because it blew my mind.
So… another coincidental connection. This time involving someone in London and Japan.
A few weeks ago, as part of JP74‘s work with D&AD, we were introduced to Alasdair Scott of The Bright Place. I’ve known of Al and his work for many, many years, as far back as 1995 when AMX Digital did the multimedia section for a CD single of a band called Smaller, from Liverpool. Smaller were mates of a mate, and me and this mate had just started with Director, Lingo and Premiere. Naturally, we thought we could do all that was on the CD single and more… Read more…
Chris Mills put the call out months ago, asking if I’d like to take part, and could I herd up anyone else to speak. I recommended my fellow skating (albeit inline-blader!) and Fudge front-ender Mike Byrne as he’s a lively character, and certainly knows his shit, and that made four. Chris kicked off, followed, by myself and Typography Online. Read more…
As part of my on-going relationship with D&AD and my commitment to the D&AD North Committee, I was asked to take part in a Student portfolio surgery session at the Leeds College of Art & Design.
Up and at ‘em at silly o’clock, as a few of my Leeds based twitter friends had warned that traffic could be terrible, but I did manage to get there in good time. Yes, Leeds morning traffic is crap.
Slightly nervous as to how the session was going to go, it was great to see James and Stuart from Thoughful, who’d done a session in Newcastle the day before. I admire the amount of get up and go these guys have, and a quick chat with them put me at ease. Read more…
I’d been invited, as last year I was the Foreman on two Student Award Briefs, Interactive Design and Microsite Design, which was a fantastic experience. D&AD invited judges from both Professional and Student awards to the evening to help students understand what we are looking for when we score and assess all the work in front of us, in such a short time.
There was some great insight from Steve and Clem about what makes a great piece of award winning work, and I found Paul West from Form to be a great speaker, who shared his gut feeling belief about a good design and advocated being challenging, to give the judges something to think about.
During this time, about eight students had been selected to disappear into a private area and run through a mock judging session on the Nokia Interactive Design brief… Read more…
I’m very pleased to say that my friends Steven, Mark and Alan have unveiled a new track (download), that’s a great indicator of where they’re heading with their sound as a band.
Since Colly is possible the nicest guy on the internet and well respected, finding quality speakers wasn’t going to be a tough job, and for the conferences first show, the list was impressive. There were gripes from some quarters that all these speakers have been seen before, it’s the usual industry pundits, but I think that’s just sour grapes and being picky for the sake of it. Out of the ten speakers, I’d only seen five before.
In an effort to make conferences affordable and accessible, the venue was Colly’s hometown of Nottingham, which is in a great location, allowing access to people travelling from all points of the UK, the likes of Cole travelling from near Edinburgh, or Remy from Brighton, plus of course the foreigners who always make it over. Read more…
30something front ender and director at JP74 and a guy who likes anything with a plug, including — in no particular order — Apple Macs, wifi war-driving and video games, particularly the Sega Mega Drive.
Last Thursday, I was down in that London to speak at a 
