LOGOS IN DISGUISE

The gaming industry wasn't always the unwavering behemoth that it is today. During the 1980s, its future was far from certain. New companies were constantly springing up to get a slice of the action and software came thick and fast. 

However, there were a lot less people playing games some forty years ago. The market wasn't expanding as quickly as some would hope and something had to give. In 1983, it did. 

O.R.B.S – THE HEMISPHERICAL ARCADE ODDITY

Namco and SEGA were bitter arcade rivals. Both companies borrowed and evolved upon each other’s ideas (some more than others) and with every new game, boundaries were pushed and technological advancements were made, in an attempt to out-do one another. For a time, it seemed that Namco were very much the 'Yin' to SEGA's 'Yang'.

RETROSPECTIVE: PUGGSY

Not enough people played this little gem upon its release on the Mega Drive, some thirty years ago. For those of us who did, its charm, grace and downright technical prowess likely left a big impression. It certainly did for me.

You see, the game features a gorgeous art style, beautifully animated pixel art, stunning technical wizardry, lashings of colour, copious amounts of parallax scrolling, an impressive physics system and an amazing soundtrack by Matt Furniss, using custom trackers created by Shaun Hollingworth.

REMEMBER THAT TIME SONNY CHIBA BEAT UP BATMAN, SPIDER-MAN, RAMBO, A TERMINATOR, JACKIE CHAN, DEVILMAN, GODZILLA AND THE LITTLEST HOBO?

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

Gaming wasn’t quite as 'corporate' as it is today. During the 1980s, the blueprints were pretty rough and the foundations were still being laid. Studios were finding their feet and and without a boardroom full of suits to scrutinise every single decision, dev teams were very often left to their own devices. It was like the wild West, or in this case, the East.

COULD THEY BE ANY MORE NINETIES?

Some games remain timeless classics, aging like fine wine. Some, however, are very much products of their era and time can be a cruel mistress.

Platformers were by far the most popular genre during the early to mid nineties. The sheer amount of 'mascot games' was overwhelming. Very few (if any) saw the success that Sonic and Mario garnered, and there were lots of casualties.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying that any of these games are bad per se, although some of them definitely are. I'm just highlighting how very dated these five 90s relics seem by today's standards.

Normy's Beach Babe-O-Rama

Based on a comic strip, Normy has to rescue a bunch of defenceless girls from aliens, which rather belittles the strides set by Ellen Ripley. It also features time travel and toxic waste, because it was the nineties and they were in everything.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THAT MAN FROM STREETS OF RAGE 2 WHO HAS A ‘DON’T WALK’ SIGN FOR A HEAD

07:30 Sharp: 

Mister Don’t Walk Box-Head Man is calmly awoken by the bedside alarm clock's dulcet bleeps. A brand new day is just beginning and the mystery and wonder it holds is about to unfurl, like the petals of a lovely flower, probably a chrysanthemum or something.

Mr DWBHM (which is what we’ll now call him to save everyone’s time) stretches out his toned, hirsute arms, exhales with all the might of an antagonised buffalo and emerges, fully-clothed, from the mound of hay upon which he slept. A man with a 'Don’t Walk' sign for a head has little need for a morning grooming routine, eschewing even the vital toilet visit. It's breakfast time and he's as giddy as your dog when you do that funny voice that makes his little body waggle. 

Eggs: 

Five of them to be precise. Raw, in a glass, ready to be swallowed in one go, just like Rocky Balboa from those films. However, Mr DWBHM isn’t Rocky Balboa from those films and he doesn’t really like eggs all that much. Truth be told, he’d rather have cereal, but a long time ago, he decided to put himself through this torturous morning regime and one day he’ll probably see it through. That day isn’t today though, so he has a bowl of Frosties.

08:58: 

Time for the work commute. Mr DWBHM hasn’t been inundated with job offers, since he’s only ever appeared on the back-cover of the North American version of Streets of Rage 2. The royalty payments he was counting on for the European release never came to fruition after he was cropped out entirely. He doesn’t hold any grudges against anyone in particular though. It’s hard to hold personal grudges when you spend every second of every day fantasising about a much broader revenge against the entire human race.

09:30: 

After a completely normal and uneventful bus journey, Mr DWBHM enters his office and checks his emails. Sandra from HR wants to have a chat. It looks like Steve from supplies has logged another complaint. They’ve been at each other’s throats ever since Mr DWBHM accused Steve of borrowing his hole-punch and returning it in a ‘less than satisfactory’ condition.

12:30: 

Lunch time. Mr DWBHM enters the canteen. The only spare seat is opposite Steve. Eager to avoid confrontation, he saunters back to his desk and begins to eat a packed lunch that I haven’t made any mention of until now, but if you must know, he prepared it after he’d eaten his breakfast but before he left the house to go to work. He had plenty of time. It isn’t a plot hole or anything and I've meticulously thought all of this out cohesively. Mr DWBHM spends the latter part of the day pretending to look busy. Nobody in the office actually knows what his role is, including himself.

17:00: 

Home time. Mr DWBHM manages to successfully ignore the three extra emails that Sandra from HR sent him throughout the course of the day. One of which was marked as 'urgent' and had a ‘read receipt’ request. He sneaks out of the office, like a stealthy centipede, a stealthy-pede, if you will. Safe in the knowledge that today’s problem is something for future him to deal with. He hates future him. Also the past him. And the present him too.

18:15: 

The commute home is just as uneventful as the one that preceded it and is only mentioned here for the sake of pacing. To spice things up, maybe you can imagine a strange old man sitting opposite him, making rude gestures? Things like this genuinely happen on commutes, so it's not beyond the realms of possibilities. 

18:45: 

He's made it home. Mr DWBHM nervously inserts his key into the lock, twisting it the wrong way twice before realising and cautiously opens the door to his house. He’s always had a bit of a thing about people hiding behind doors and is always prepared. He famously declared “Nobody will ever jump out from behind a door and scare me” and for a time, it was one of the most famous catchphrases ever to exist. You could buy mugs and hats emblazoned with the slogan. It’s fallen out of fashion these days, but the legacy still holds true. Nobody will EVER jump out from behind a door and SCARE him and only an idiot would dare test this theory.

20:00: 

After checking behind every door in the house, including the ones on cupboards, Mr DWBHM is exhausted, so he decides to (literally) ‘hit the hay’. This is a very clever joke, because he sleeps on a actual mound of hay, like I told you earlier. You would've remembered this if you were paying attention instead of trying to get this whole thing over with as quickly as you can.

02:00: 

After a prolonged period of mentally revisiting every embarrassing moment that's ever occurred in his life, Mr DWBHM finally drifts off to sleep, safe in the knowledge that he'll be able to experience the very same excitement, all over again. Forever.

THE END.......or is it......?

Yeah. It's the end. Definitely.