Memories of Knightmare

So last night I was playing Haunting Ground on the PS2 for Twitch and I reached a certain corridor puzzle that got me very excited.  The puzzle was a room full of hexagons with a suit of armor at the end.  I had to carefully navigate my character across the right set of hexes to avoid getting a crossbow to the face.  This room reminded me VERY heavily of an old TV show I used to love when I was a kid called Knightmare.

Knightmare was a game show for kids that started in 1987 and ran until 1994 that aired on British TV.  The premise was simple, a bunch of kids met up with this dude called Treguard the dungeon master and they would pick one member of their team to don a "Helmet of Justice" and go into the dungeon.  The helmet blinded the player to everything except what was directly underneath them and it was up to the other kids on the team to guide them to the end.  The real reason for this was that the kid in the dungeon was actually just walking around a chroma key studio so only the viewers could see the dungeon.  If the kid didn't have the helmet he'd just see a lot of green(?) I guess.

Anyway the show, despite being for kids, wasn't easy on it's contestants AT ALL.  Difficult puzzles, traps that would instantly kill the player and fiendish puzzles were all put in place to hinder progress.  Not only that but each team was on a time limit to finish since the kid in the dungeon had a "life force" that was slowly ticking away.  So you could be the best dodger of traps in the world but if you got bamboozled by a talking wall then good fuckin' luck reaching the end.  Off the top of my head, I don't remember a single team winning in an episode for as long as I watched.  However it was a long time ago and I probably missed a bunch of episodes so I'm sure someone won at some point.

I was pretty obsessed with this show as a kid too.  My mother often reminds me of my younger years with stories of us going to the park and "playing Knightmare".  I assume this meant one of us closing our eyes and being commanded around by the other.  Apparently my obsession with Knightmare was so great that we even did this when waiting at bus stops and I can't imagine now how that worked at all. 

I have since learned that there is in fact a Knightmare video game on the Amiga but I've only played it for about 5 minutes on an emulator.  From what I can gather it has very little to do with the show and it's a dungeon crawler more akin to Wizardy or Dungeon Master.

I'm sure if you look hard enough to episodes have been archived somewhere so go see if you can check them out.  It's a great show even now and it might be fun to watch even now for a bit of a laugh.

British News Reporters Reach New Levels Of Stupidity

I have never seen anything so insanely stupid in my whole goddamn life.  When something like a school shooting goes down in America I know the media like to grasp at straws but THIS SHIT takes the fucking cake.

First of all, a link to the story
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/frustrated-father-who-killed-crying-3831547

In case you don't want to rot your own mind by reading something of The Mirror then I'll give you a brief synopsis.  Mark Sandland got pissed off at his 5 week year old baby who wouldn't stop crying and shook her to death.  He also happened to be playing Assassins Creed 3.

The reason this story is so fucking stupid is because all these news sites are writing the story as if the killing of the baby and Assassins Creed 3 are linked somehow.  Like the reason he shook his baby to death was because he was playing that game, and not because he's just a bad father/got mental problems/whatever else.

Let me share with you my favourite part of the above article.

"Police who attended the flat after Aimee-Rose was admitted to hospital on November 5 2012 found a PlayStation game controller on the sofa opposite the TV."

WELL SO FUCKING WHAT?!  What does the fact that he was playing a Playstation, let alone Assassins Creed have to fucking do with anything?!  The ONLY reason that was put in there is to add some fucking spin on the article so that retards who can't think for themselves start to think "OH! THOSE VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES MAKING PEOPLE MURDER AGAIN! BETTER CONSIDER BANNING EVERYTHING!"

This is an absolutely terrible story but these fucking news sites are distracting from the ACTUAL issue by making a big deal out of a fucking video game.  What really caused this poor baby to die was a stressed father with a short temper being at wits end.  We SHOULD be discussing how this kind of thing could be prevented by maybe providing support for families who feel overly stressed with their children or something like that.

BUT NO! OF COURSE NOT!

Instead we're just giving bits and bobs of information and shoving some references to Assassins Creed 3 in there to get people riled up about the non-issue of violent video games that I THOUGHT was swept away fucking years ago.

It's not just The Mirror who are at it either, pretty much every news article I can find on this story runs with that whole Assassins Creed angle and let's be brutally honest here; there isn't a fucking link between the two events at all.

For the last time, the fact that he owned/was playing a Playstation at the time had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.  I have a Playstation and I bought bread yesterday. I ate a sandwich today, so does that mean that playing violent video games makes people want to eat sandwiches?  No, of course not, don't be so fucking stupid.  Video games are one of the biggest industries around now, pretty much every mother fucker has some kind of video game in their possession so OF COURSE you're going to something game related if you go to some average shmucks house.

So fuck the Mirror, fuck the BBC and fuck any other so called "Journalist" that worked on this fucking story.  You should all be ashamed of yourselves for reaching Kotaku levels of total stupidity.

The BBC: Masters of the fucking Obvious

The whole video games and violence thing is the kind of issue that has been talked about since gaming was even a thing.  Doom, Postal, Grand Theft Auto and many more have come under the fire of retards who don't know what they are talking about for their graphic content.

For the longest time people have claimed that because these games show violent imagery the people who play them become violent and will eventually hurt someone or shoot up a school or whatever stupid bullshit.  Usually when they say this, they mean impressionable kids but if you let your kid go around hurting others just because he/she saw it on a video game, then you're just a shit parent and that's all there is to it.

But then, the BBC come along with this article

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26921743

Now I'm being unfair to the BBC because it's not really them that did the research but whatever, it wouldn't be as snappy if I put "The University of Rochester" now, would it?

Anyway, some twats in the UK apparently did some "research" and discovered that aggression is linked to bad game design rather than the content itself.....

NO FUCKING SHIT

Have you ever bought a thing like a microwave, toaster or flat packed shelf unit?  You go home and take it out of the box and you THINK it's going to be easy to set up but it's not.  The piece of shit wont work properly or fit together properly or it's too big or some other bullshit and it makes you mad.  You start cursing at everything in the house and cursing the very life of the person who came up with this monstrosity you're trying to make work, the very thing that was supposed to make your life easier.

Games are the same.

The very thing that you were supposed to be able to just sit down and chill out with doesn't fucking work properly and ends up making you frustrated in the same way.  Having a character not do what their supposed to do or having the game just crap out on you because they are a badly coded buggy mess is the EXACT same thing as the above example.  You end up squeezing the controller as hard as you can and cursing the very life of the person who developed the piece of shit that is clogging up your gaming system.

So well done BBC and everyone involved in that "research", you discovered something that anyone with half a functioning brain worked out back in 197 fucking 2.

Keeping Mentally Active with Games

Usually when video games pop up on the news, it's something bad.  Either someone has been killed or horribly injured and "these horrible violent video games are to blame", but not this time!  Check this shit out!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21116544

This was a news report I came across last month, about an 80 something year old woman who enjoys the shit out of some video games.  You'll have to forgive the BBC for talking about tablet and phone games like they matter, but it's nice to hear some good news for once.

One of the reasons she enjoys playing games so damn much is because she claims they keep her mentally active so this little news video is especially relevant to this blog since I'm trying to raise money for the Alzheimer's Society.

Finally, before anyone asks, yes, that is Disgaea she is playing in the picture.  This old woman has really good taste if you ask me, we need more old people like this.  So if you're worried about losing your marbles in your old age, grab a controller because it sure as hell works for this lady.