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Friday, August 15, 2003
Friday, August 15, 2003
Two weeks in various parts of Scotland starting tomorrow, so no Internet access until I get back. Could be a major plus, really - generally bored with the whole online thing right now. See if a break renews my enthusiasm or kills it off completely. Remember, take care of yourselves... aaaaand each other.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 18:16
Good to see that in a year of record-breaking A Level results, amidst all the usual claims that subjects are getting easier, the offspring of our beloved inbreds could only manage a 'B' in Art and a 'D' in Geography.
No wonder he's talking about joining the Army. A 'D' in Geography...
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 01:42
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Ahh... calm.
In other news, how odd are the BBC Radio 2 schedules and playlist? I've heard Wilco and Flaming Lips tracks played recently and they've had the good sense to give Mark Lamarr his own 'A Beginner's Guide to Reggae' show. The title's a bit misleading - the eps I've heard have been more a history of specific figures in reggae - but it's still essential listening. You grow up watching The Word, it's not hard to like Lamarr (especially when faced with the choice of Lamarr or Terry Christian*). He obviously knows and loves the subject matter and his radio persona is amiable and amusing.
So, that's a fairly major feather in Radio 2's cap as far as I'm concerned. But then they go and throw it away by doing this. I mean, for crying out loud, why? All I can presume is that the guy he's standing in for is equally obnoxious, but still... WHY?
If they decide to revive his telly career I'm going round TV Centre with a baseball bat.
*Currently better known as Terry "Career? What career?" Christian.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 01:47
I think everyone knows that along with other things I'm a bit of a videogame fan. Yeah yeah yeah - I've already heard all the shit that gets thrown around by silly, snobbish people who think that there's no value in the medium. You know what? Fuck you. If you're that idiotic that you're prepared to dismiss an entire form of entertainment without having the sense to look past the lowest-common-denominator examples to those that stretch and pull it into new and exciting shapes, without bothering to look into the history of it (and be sure here - videogames are as much an important cultural phenomenon as movies, pop music, comic books, novels, etc.) then you have nothing to say to me that I'm prepared to spend any time listening to. If I were to attack any other form of popular culture in the offhand manner you do videogames, you'd burst a blood vessel with rage. I've had this rant before, but very few ever seem to bother paying me the courtesy of simply listening to it, so I'm having it again. I'm sorry, but this *really* pisses me off.
Ahem. Now that that's out of the way I can get on with more extremely random posting...
The last twelve months or so I've been following the growing trend for collecting old consoles and games. Retrogaming was, for a time, becoming a term of abuse, but finally seems to be gaining proper acceptance. There are a number of reasons for that - the perceived increase in the frequency of new generation hardware releases (where just over a year after the release of two of the latest pieces of kit in Europe we're already being bombarded with official release dates within 2005 for their successors) being the main one. Others are harder to pin down; the rediscovery of 2D games through handheld devices and the realisation amongst many that they're of just as much worth as the latest batch of polygon-based titles; the aging of the videogaming fraternity, with many who grew up with consoles or home computers in their homes reaching their mid-20s and finally having the financial freedom to buy the titles they wanted as kids; the growth of the Interent and the increase in knowledge that's brought about; the free availabilty of emulators; eBay.
Problem is, it's still a scene that's in flux - prices are all over the place on auction sites, retrogaming stores are charging top-whack for everything they sell. A boxed Commodore 64 goes for �100 on Retrogames; you can pick them up for a tenner on auction sites, and probably get one for even less at any car boot sale you go to. The other problem, the one that makes me sick to my gut, is that the hawks have moved in. The collectors are here, and it's not a pretty sight.
The worst example that I've seen of how this market is being abused is the Neo Geo Pocket Color. For those that don't know, The NGPC was a handheld console released by SNK at the end of the 90s. SNK are - unfortunately - revered by self-confessed 'hardcore' gamers (the kind of people who'll happily use the term 'otaku' to describe themselves, without realising that it means pretty much 'sad, lonely geek'), and because of this games for their machines are always sought after. While the NGPC hardware can be bought for as little as �15, some of the games demand ridiculous prices. Despite deserving to be the true successor to Nintendo's GameBoy, the Neo Geo failed - SNK wenk bankrup and the games simply stopped coming to western shores. Strangely, Europe seemed to be better served by SNK and a few games were given English translations and released here, yet never got to US consumers. The UK packaging has besome another major draw - where the US got cheap cardboard boxes, a la GameBoy titles, the UK got smart, satisfyingly solid plastic snap-lock cases.
Prices for NGPC games have plummeted in the last few montsh. Copies of Faselei! were fetching a ton in January of this year; one went on eBay this week for �47. When Edge ran a small feature on the NGPC in the first issue of their Retro offshoot mag, game prices began to shoot up and up. Their claim for the UK version of Pockect Reversi was that "far less than 50 and maybe below ten" copies made it into shops. One copy went to over $500. Pocket Reversi is better known in this country as the board game Othello. During the first month after the magazine came out, I saw at least six copies put up for auction. "Below ten" my arse.
Recently, a huge batch of NGPC titles has been released onto the market. None of them have cases or instrucytions, but they all work fine. They include English language versions of games like Faselei! and Pocket Reversi. You can get one of the PR carts for $8.99 on eBay now.
This is what really annoys me - and evidently others - about the retrogaming thing. 'Collector' has become a dirty word. A collector buys and hoards games - those who collect and play them are simply still videogamers, or maybe hobbyists. That same magazine ran an interview with an NGPC collector in which he made it pretty clear that he didn't really play the games. And I thought to myself, you prick. Games aren't made to be kept in a vacuum-sealed cupboard and only brought out to show off when your collector mates come around, they're made to be played (alright, so a lot of the time they're made for profit, but there are plenty of developers out there who make them for more altruistic reasons). There's been a backlash building against this kind of thing for a while now, but it's still not got up to full speed. When it does it's going to be interesting to see what happens; most of these games are going to decrease in value, but I don't know if that means the retrogaming market will crash out or simply become available once again to those of us who don't have bottomless wallets.
It doesn't look like it'll happen very soon, though. Edge are still running their 'Collectors' Series' articles, this month's issue apparently featuring NEC's PC Engine. The various iterations of that console have been selling on eBay recently for decent prices - it's already something of a fan favourite, an 8bit console that's popularity has stayed high in much the same way as that of the 16bit Neo Geo AES has. Like the AES, that popularity has primarily built up around the quality of software that's available. Unlike the AES it's software which is affordable and available in quantity. I dread to think of the prices that it's going to reach in the coming weeks.
There's a niggling doubt in the back of my mind about all this. Could it be that the collectors are helping videogaming to gain wider acceptance? I haven't thought this through to the point where it's properly coherent or fully formed yet, but it may be that an exclusive market of this kind, however distasteful or ridiculous it may be, could make people sit up and take notice finally. I don't know - anything that gains videogaming wider acceptance has to be a good thing, but I still wish that this particular branch of the market would wither and die as quickly as it appeard. Above all else, videogames should be inclusive, should be about bringing people together.
So I flip the bird to the collectors - right in front of me I've got copies of Radiant Silvergun (alleged current value �150 - bought on release for �50), Panzer Dragoon Saga (acv �110 - borf �35) and Terranigma (acv �110 - borf �20) - amongst others you'd love to get your nasty, sweaty, fat fingers around and lock away in a safety deposit box - and I'm going to play them, lend them out to my mates to play, finger the manuals and chuck the boxes around. I'm going to do exactly the same with the Virtual Boy - complete with broken stand, no box and no manual - that I've just bought (and can actually use, as the games - barring the odd extreme example - are dirt cheap). When the carts stop working or the discs get so scratched that they can't be read I'll stick them in an auction and let you pay me stupid amounts of cash to own them as useless artifacts. You turds.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 01:13
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Losing the fight against mediocrity for the last few years. Fire a volley |
