the background noise

#redundant #parentaladvisory

RPG's. Role Playing Games. Fiendish little time sinks where you can and will lose days, weeks, months of your life in search of a hallowed, sacred something or other. Why? Well its a motley collection of the usual reasons. Be it fame, riches, vengeance, saving the world from the dark threat of the dreaded Whatsisface and the assembled armies of Aaargh!

There is so much win in this aggressively anti-Gameboy ad pushing the then-new Atari Lynx to the forefront of our tiny little minds, seriously divert your gaze to the words below, you can't beat blurb of this quality... Woah! Those 'high definition' SuperGraphics must have fucked up their sense of what was real big time, Matrix style. Special mention must also go to Random Man On A Surfboard , hailing all the way from California Games, California presumably, who the fuck knows/cares? Not the copywriters in that advertising department thats for sure!   There he is, dangling impossibly on a surfboard suspended in mid-air, caring not for inferior handheld gaming devices like the total god he is. I don't know about you but I totally want to buy the shit out of an Atari Lynx now. 

Well that turned out to be a little while longer than a little while longer. That'll be me alive and well then. Hello, welcome and word up to my bitches once more. 

Surprising really how little Rockstar Games reinvented the wheel with Max Payne 3 's gameplay. To its credit or otherwise its all pretty much intact from the earlier games in the series. Me I loved it, but I can see why some might take issue with it given that it's been nigh on nine years since the last one. Altogether the formula is untouched. You shoot and you dive, dodging bullets in slow motion and returning your own. Then you shoot shoot and shoot again. 

Back when books came on paper and words came in ink, we had things. Things, physical things we could fondle with our minds. Books, CD's, cassettes, videotapes and DVD's. In short, things . If you could smack your own face with it, chances were you could read it, watch it, listen to it or play it. Allegedly such things are rapidly falling out of fashion, these material objects. Yes ownership is not what it used to be, but whilst it has always come with a list of terms and conditions a half-mile long at least having some solid copy of something right there in your hands helped to distract you from the waking coma that was your life.

Walking through a mausoleum of tat (or shopping centre) the other day I recoiled in horror as I came face to face with a life-sized, life-like cardboard cut-out of a standard issue Hollywood celebrity. You know the type, it looks almost human, with a face and everything. I'd say it almost looked like the real thing but it seemed far more authentic, more true to life than any so-called human seen on-screen. You see them all the time, in their blockbusters and their rom-coms, but they never look so full of life as when you see them in two dimensions or less.