Not to be confused with the increasingly popular tech blog Crenk (a sister site)… Krank is a very simple little game, sort of a cross between asteroids and Blanka’s electro-shock move. Hang around an enemy, looking menacing but keeping your distance until your shock is charged up, then BAM! Gibs abound…
If you had been born in Japan, this would be your national sport. Standing in front of an arcade machine rhythmically slapping buttons faster and faster until you look like Neo on speed.
Of course your parents wouldn’t understand it, and would wonder why you couldn’t just put electric eels down your pants and see who could hang from their nostrils the longest, like they used to in the good old days. Theirs is a country where waterboarding is considered an amusing pastime and televised for the amusement of the masses. Bless their little silken kimonos.
I am dissappointed in you. I am severely disheartened.
I’ve just looked at our stats, and the most played game this month so far has been…. Aquarium Scoop Hotshot.
Aquarium Scoop Hotshot.
Really? Is that what you want? I gave you Gamma Bros. and this is how you repay me? Did you hear the soundtrack? Did you see the glorious 8 bit graphics and the parralax scrolling – that game is a masterpiece of the flash developers art and you’re playing aquarium f***ing scoop hotshot? This is about the Majesty Of Colours again, isn’t it!!!1!11! I was going to post a game for you, but I’m not sure you deserve it now…
Well – OK. Gosh darn it, I just can’t stay mad at you. Just know that before you start whining about it, in 1993 I actually went down to the corner shop and spent actual money on this game. You guys honestly don’t know how good you have it. Zool is a pixelly platformer with annyoing music that someone lovingly coded, line by painful line, probably in basic or something. There were no modules, no physics engines to plug into your game production back then, it was men with beards in Leamington Spa, coding basic by day and drinking real ale by night. They were the pioneers of gaming. They were the Elite.
Z!Click here for 90′s home computer action!Z
And if you don’t like that stuff try this for some classic arcade style jollity: Portal Defender I can’t tell you what I’d have paid for a game like this back when I was playing Dizzy on my Amstrad…
Nostalgia anyone? Having watched this I must now go and play Tie Fighter, Civ 2 and Gran Turismo 4 all the way through.
Apple has seen fit to grace us with an new version of it’s iPod Shuffle. This is the tiddly version of their insanely successful music player, that eschews such unnecessary luxuries as a screen, or an on body control, in favour of being so minuscule that you could fit it in your ear [do not try and fit it into your ear].
This is both the genius and the downfall of the shuffle for me. It is so incredibly small that you can’t fail to be impressed that they’ve got a little battery, amp, computer and 4 gig drive into this chewing gum sized package, but I have a nano that I usually lose once a week, falling out of my bag, down between the seats in the car, or dissappearing through a penny sized hole in my trouser pocket (yes, I know I need new jeans). How much worse then if my expensive and fiddly new iPod is smaller than the lid of my pen? A friend of mine bought a MacBook Air, saying that he wanted to save the weight in his travelling case, a point I could almost concede if the weight saving was any more than a pair of socks. Here we’re talking grams of difference between this and a nice big, screen-having, control faced iPod classic, with a battery that’s going to give you much more time between charges.
Probably good if you’re a hardcore jogger, or being launched into space and trying to save weight, otherwise just keep wheeling that phonogram in a pram.
I am secure. I am content, happy, and even smug. Here is a flash game of such startling excellence that no-one will be able to deny it. If you can’t finish it now, you will come back, if you can’t come back you will weep hot, salty tears at the thought that you have missed out on the glorious satisfaction of shooting the last, laser toting, brain-in-a-jar-in-a-spaceship boss out into the unforgiving vacuum.
Pick either the ginger one or the black one of the presumably adopted Gamma Brothers, let the little worm guys launch your personalised flying saucer from the mothership (why they can’t use the mothership to fight the horde I don’t know), and battle with a swarm of tricky, varied, rewarding enemies. This game has seriously got it all, powerups, boss fights, a great soundtrack, acid-vivid 16 bit colours, and a happy ending: you can even bring your mates back from the dead.
This is a bit of an unfair fight, but it’s quite a fun comparison. A British girl group called the Mentalists have pulled off a little stunt by playing a live cover of an MGMT song on their iPhones, in what looks to be one of the sloppiest most uninspiring live concert of the year. On the other hand, they are doing it on their phones, which does argue a certain impressive versatility in Mr. Jobs little tablet.
Then we have the Tenorion, in both of these videos employed by another Brit, Little Boots, to much greater effect. It’s a custom designed tablet synthesiser made by Yamaha, that combines a spangly visual interface with a remarkable number of voices and effects to make what amounts to a backing band in a box. She also seems to have spent more time practising in her bedroom than the Mentalists, who appear to have been spending their time frock shopping in Oxfam instead of rehearsing. Here she is doing a very impressive Hot Chip cover.
And here doing an original in more public circumstances…
If you needed any confirmation that your knowledge of global geography is embarrasingly inadequate, here it is in a fun point and click style. Expose your ignorance of the location of world cities and countries where hundreds of millions of people live, realise that you never payed attention in Geography at school, and that people are essentially selfish and unaware of anything that doesn’t directly affect their daily life! Have a cry! Get a sense of perspective and change your life forever – all thanks to Globetrotter XL.
Some brilliant work from the talented minds who have nothing better to do than make youtube videos, some NSFW content, but a whole wheelbarrowload of lulz…
We’ll start gently, with Kutiman’s ‘I’m New’ – a mashup composed of snippets from other YouTube user’s music videos. If you like this kind of thing check out his album 
, andThe Dap Kings too…
Next up is something a little special. If you, like me think that Roald Dahl is the master of children’s fiction, and that JK Rowling’s life would have been better spent as a columnist for ‘Heat’ magazine, there is a special pleasure in CassetteBoy’s take on Harry Potter. It’s also a huge pleasure to hear Stephen Fry talk dirty, the little minx. I strongly reccomend putting your headphones on if you’re at work, and looking over the rest of his channel.
Last but very certainly not least, a new offering from Swede Mason – one of my particular favourites. This video had me yipping for days. See also Jungle All The Way, the Flamin’ montage, and Get In The Back Of The Van!
If anyone can suggest any more, then I’ll add them to the post!
I was reading this post over at Boston.com, and thinking about robots I have known and loved. There was Ed209, Robocop’s Nemesis, foiled by his creator’s Dalek-like lack of foresight, there was that one with the spinning disc on the front of it that kicked everyone else’s robo-butt on Robot Wars that one time, and everybody loved the Terminator before he got old (did you know that the role of the terminator was almost given to Lance Henriksen, who played Bishop in Aliens?).
So I have a proposal for you: put a comment reminding me of the coolest or most kitsch film or real life robot you can think of, and when I’ve got 20, I’ll make a Top Trumps card game out of them, and post it here for you to print out and take to school. Just don’t start fighting about whether the T1000 should have a better weapon score than Johnny 5, or you’ll get them confiscated.
