30 Day Video Game Challenge 6 - Favourite Videogame Villain

This was probably the first of these categories that was a complete no-brainer.  Fair warning, this post is a) adapted from a previous post I wrote on Facebook, and b) deals with a series that I feel very strongly about, so expect length and enthusiasm!

Selfless post of charity (and gaming)

As contrast to the previous post that had nothing to do with gaming or nerdery, and everything to with plugging myself, here's a post that is exactly the opposite.

Gratuitous post of self-interest

Nothing to do with nerdiness or video games here I'm afraid, just a little bit of shameless self-promotion - I got a job!  After a few months of prawning about and generally being useless, I got my finger out and manned up, went to some interviews, and was offered a job with MB Interactive, a web design company based in St. Albans.  Now comes the "trying to find a place to live" part, filled with phone calls, e-mails, and visits - hooray for admin!  Needless to say, I'm going to use this as an excuse for not posting anything interesting or relevant (though I'll try to find some time tomorrow).  In the meantime, enjoy some incredible music, from a fantastic bloke, who always seems to be able to express my feelings with infinitely more poetry than I could ever muster:

"I'm sorry, baby, for the times that I hurt you,

Sorry friends, for the times I desert you;

Most days it feels like I don't deserve you,

And I wonder why you're all still around."

30 Day Video Game Challenge 5 - Favourite Videogame Hero

John Marston.  That is all.

Nah, I'm only messin' with ya...read on...

An update is available for: "Jack's life". Would you like to continue?

I returned from the Jitsu Nationals with far fewer injuries than I expected.  A bruised forearm from knife defences, a swollen foot from accidentally carrying out an Atemi on the floor instead of a downed uke, and a few small bruises and scrapes around my body.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that the most lasting injury I received is the small cut on the back of my hand from proving to John (a Light Blue from Essex) that steak knives in T.G.I. Fridays are actually sharp!

The Nationals as a whole were a fantastic experience.  I'd never been to such a large martial arts event before (the largest I'd attended had been the Regionals, which was smaller by a factor of about 20), and it was really inspiring to see so much talent on display, and so much potential being nurtured by more experienced jitsuka.  A brief run-down of highlights:

• The fact that competitions were conducted in generous spirit and with no animosity.  I didn't see a single person sulking that they hadn't progressed to the finals, or sniping at someone else's technique - everyone was there to improve their own skills and appreciate others', and everyone benefitted from that spirit of co-operation and comradeship
• The brown belt who simply ducked a punch in his gauntlet (you had to be there :) )
• Mary Bishop's gauntlet.  For non-jitsuka, a "gauntlet" is a competition aspect wherein the tori (the one doing the techniques; the one being examined) walks between two lines of jitsuka, armed with various weapons, who attack him/her in sequence.  The aim is to deal with them in as showy and flourish-filled a manner as possible (brutal efficiency and pressure work is tested in another component, the "V").  Mary Bishop, the Oxford University Sensei ("teacher"), is a black belt of diminutive stature who is famous for putting on a great spectacle.  You can see her in action here (I think that video is public - let me know if not and I'll find another)
• Catching up with the CUJJC and a small contingent from Bath, and meeting other Jitsuka from around the country (and world!)
• The night out on Saturday.  Fancy dress theme of "Intergalactic" yielded a decent attempt at BSG's Helo, several Drs. Who, a lightsaber fight between Obi-Wan and Darth Maul (though the obvious Yoda costume for an unnamed black belt was sadly missing), a Blue Glove (wo)Man, and a full-body Dalek outfit.  Oh yes, and a young chap who'd clearly done some capoeira busting out some sweet ass-moves and embarrassing the rest of us.
• Practicing the secret art of huggi-garuma

(I'll be adding a "Jitsu vocabulary" page along with the "Deciphering geek-speak" page so that future Jitsu posts won't be indecipherable!)

I'm not sure how well my readership will respond to this swerve from computer games to Jitsu...but given that I'm pretty sure my readership at the moment only consists of my close friends (most of whom, if not Jitsuka themselves, are sympathetic to my rantings), that shouldn't be a problem!

Post delay

I'm afraid those of you waiting with bated breath for my next update will be sorely disappointed, as I'll be absent from the internet for this weekend.  No, you can't blame Skyrim (oh, I wish...) - I'll be going trekking up to Sheffield to be comprehensively beaten up by a collection of burly men.  Kinky.

(Or, I'm going to the Jiu-Jitsu National Competitions).

Expect continued bloggage when I return!

In the meantime, enjoy this:

30 Day Video Game Challenge 4 - Biggest WTF Moment In A Game

What do you know?  Apparently writing questions and tidying a house didn't take that long!  Thank you coffee :)

Yo, Jack, I'mma let you tidy, but GAG Quartet had one of the best meme videos of all time...

I probably won't have time to post a proper update for the 30DVGC today,

30 Day Video Game Challenge 3 - "Favourite Videogame Track"

Now this one really was a no-brainer.  Just to be sure that I'd made the right decision, though, I did spend some time considering other possibilities.

A bit of admin

If you're reading this, you're probably aware of this, but the blog URL has changed to nftnf.blogspot.com.  The new RSS feed is at http://j.mp/vdsnYa, or you can follow twitter.com/nftnf for updates.  A plethora of internets!

30 Day Video Game Challenge 2 - Your Least Favourite Game

[For the concept, go here]


There were a few competitors for this.  I was considering going with "Dead Space" or "Amnesia", and then going off on a tangent about how frustrating I found it that my inability to deal with horror games/films has precluded me from enjoying some genuinely intriguing plots (yes, I look them up on Wikipedia because I can't experience them first-hand - what, stop looking at me like that!).  I was thinking about going for "Oblivion" for the shock factor (for non-gamers - Oblivion was billed as being "the game that would change gaming forever" for a number of reasons, and is still considered to be an excellent experience 5 years after publication), and then explaining that I was referring to its inability to live up to its hype, and the undeniably cookie-cutter nature of what was promised to be a "rich, vibrant world" once you strayed off of the quest lines (How many Ayleid ruins or cave systems can you explore before they start to feel painfully alike?  How many times can you hear several different characters utter the same lines in the same voice before it starts to grate?), but then I realised that was massively unfair to a game that was still fantastic in its own right (to say nothing of the modding community).  Hell, I was even toying with writing about "Mary Kate & Ashley's 'Get A Clue'", till I remembered that, actually, that was a fairly decent and reasonably innovative platformer!  But no, I went with this:

30 Day Video Game Challenge 1 - Your Very First Game

[For concept, click here: http://scubbo.blogspot.com/2011/11/first-post.html]

[Yes, I’ve veered from my chosen list on the first day.  Because, let’s face it, “your favorite game” is about as unimaginative as it’s possible to get - and also, there’ll be severe cross over with many other entries on the list, notably “Favourite Hero”, “Game You Played To Death”, “Your Favourite Computer Game”, etc.  So I’m reposting my first Facebook post, and will write a fresh entry for Day 2 now.]

Oooh, that’s very hard to recall - my earliest memories of gaming are of playing old school pixelly games on my uncle’s computer with my Dad.  There was “Snake” and some other game where you each controlled a gorilla on opposite sides of the screen who had to lob explosive bananas across the intervening cityscape in order to asplode the other (Dad, can you remember the name?).  Being the annoying kid that I was, I realised that it was usually easier to set a straight collision course, and use the explosions to drill through the buildings :)  I also have an unusually clear memory of Dad and Matt (my uncle) showing me how you could use * as a wildcard in Windows Search and being absolutely floored by the cleverness!

I can’t remember if that came before or after us getting a Sega Mega Drive at home, where I spent countless hours on Sonic, and convinced Mum and Dad to play some tennis game with me (where I found it HILARIOUS that the word for “40 all” was “Juice”).

As for games that I actually owned myself, depending on your definition of whether handhelds count, it would be either joint between “Wave Race” and “Metroid II” (my awesome parents got me a see-through Gameboy with these two games, and gave it to me in the corner of one of the playing fields of Holmwood House, near the Adventure Playground - funny how these things stick with you!), or joint between Super Mario 64 and 1080 Snowboarding (again, thanks to my awesome parents - I still remember sitting in Henley’s Fish & Chip shop, on the phone trying to convince them that yes, I did want “the cartridge console” and not “the CD console” - in hindsight, they were probably giving me good long-term gaming advice, but as a kid, it’s Nintendo all the way!)

[EDIT: OMG I just found the gorillas game online!  It was called - ready for this? - Gorillas! http://www.kongregate.com/games/moly/gorillas-bas ]

Next post here: http://scubbo.blogspot.com/2011/11/30-day-video-game-challenge-2-your.html

30 Day Video Game Challenge - "Ready? GO!"

So you're probably all familiar with the concept from the 30 Day Music Challenges that were going around a few months back.  Same idea.  The basic list that I'm working from is below, though if there are any particularly unimaginative or duplicating categories, I reserve the right to nick ideas from other lists.