Console wars Iframe

Console Wars – A trip through game history

As briefs go, this one was a peach. Create a game for GAME about games. Where do you start! No matter how hard you try it’s impossible to make a game that everyone likes, especially with a wide age range in the target audience.
4T2 therefore concentrated on what generic computer game topics we talked about the most and looked to build a campaign around those. We hoped to find something that people would want to discuss, even if they disliked (shock!) the campaign itself. For me this came down to two things:

At school, half of my friends had Amigas and half had Atari STs – which was the best? The rivalry was intense. I think I may even have had a fight (schoolboy arm waving style) on the subject when I was young. This argument may have moved on a couple of generations (Xbox versus PS3 etc) but will carry on forever. As GAME don’t sell Spectrums we had to turn this around a little bit, but that was the original concept.

An image of the original concept from the sales pitch
Secondly, I don’t mind getting my head cut off by a cocky ten-year-old American when playing Gears Of War, but it does annoy me that I don’t even understand what they are saying whilst being booted out of “their” game. I find myself a N00b and hate it. Urban Dictionary describes me as “A person who, regardless of experience, lacks the skill or competence to be competitive in a certain game”. It all comes down to that part about “regardless of experience”. I’ve completed Street Fighter on the hardest skill level, taken ages to master Kick Off and spent many hours battling through Doom. Pay me some respect! I’ve simply not got the time any more to practice all evening. But I can also see this from their point of view. Who’d want me on their team till I’ve mastered the game?

I’ve a really bad feeling this is just called getting old. When I play six-a-side soccer it's getting harder to chase down a young player. This I can understand though – I’m not twenty any more. What I had not realised (and is harder to accept) is that the same would happen to me in a virtual world.

So that’s how we came up with a campaign based around Retro versus Next Gen. It may well be an entire generation of gamers last chance of victory before the skills we have mastered become obsolete. It also gives Next Gen players the opportunity to bury us for good. We pay tribute to the machines and games that have that have gone before and give credit to the new technology that makes today’s consoles so awesome.

You can play Console Wars here. I hope you like it.

Thanks to the team at 4T2 (Rob, Robin, Nick, Edd, Justin) and at GAME (SWM and Brian) for making this all happen.

PS. Can you find an ST in the campaign anywhere? Long live the Amiga!

It's the little things that make the difference

I imagine that the BBC have spent a fair few bob on their website. No end of fancy technology and clever content. The personalised news i've got set up is itching to tell me all about Manchester Uniteds victory over Celtic, or the delights of what tonights Last Man Standing has in store. So why then do I find all of my attention being drawn away from this to watch the damn clock in the top right corner? I love it. Just the way the second hand clicks into place giving it an old school clockwork feel. So to whomever made that clock, and just in case no one has ever said this - brilliant work.

Fantastic Contraption - The best game of 2008?

With hundreds of new games being launched everyday on sites like Kongregate and Newgrounds it is getting very hard to find something new that really blows your socks off. Today I found one – Fantastic Contraption.



Like all great games it sounds really simple - by joining wheels together you must build a contraption to take an object from one point to another over various obstacles. Very quickly you’ll be creating simple vehicles and being rewarded with your first taste of success. So why is it so good? Take a look at other people’s creations and you’ll soon find out. Whilst your simple car may have proved functional, another users catapult device will leave you in awe. At this point you realise that it’s not just completing the challenge that matters – It’s all about style.

User generated content, endless solutions, simple game play that’s open to all ages and skill levels... Everything about this game says success.

Congratulations to Colin Northway and his team for creating such a fun and addictive concept. Expect to be seeing hundreds of different versions of this game across many platforms in the near future.