Penny-less Lane

Long time readers of the 'Yard may recall my disasterous Dreamcast paraphernalia scouting mission to our fair Capital city - London (left). Of course, the excursion wasn't solely about looking for shit with a blue swirl on it, but it would have been nice to see at least one games shop. Saying that though, most of the day was spent in Westminster admiring the real-life MSR circuits and beating off Big Issue selling cockneys with a large stick, so it's hardly suprising. A Gamestation next to the Houses of Parliament? Not likely.

Anyhow, I touch on said subject simply because yesterday saw me take yet another such trip as part of the continuous hunt fo' new shit. Yes, I left the yuppy and student (same thing, right?!) infested citadel of Manchester and headed west - toward another bastion of great northern industrialism - Liverpool.

Liverpool is a vast smogopolis of urban decay, dog shit ridden boulevards, and - of course - the most hideous inhabtants one could ever hope to encounter - Scousers. Yes, my Dreamcasting friends, Scousers.

This is what Scousers look like:

An undead army of Chavs.

Moving back to the city itself, I have to say I was quite impressed with the amount of stuff to see and do:

The Maritime Museum

The Tate Gallery (which, incidentally is full of Modern Art - ie SHITE)

The Liverpool Museum

A street full of bars that arse-rape the Beatles' good name to within an inch of its life (oh, and a bronze statue of some guy called 'John Lennon' or something. Scouser I presume. Which equates to Chav.)

The Docks (where, I shit you not, I saw a fucking massive Seagul virtually destroy a litter bin in order to eat a newspaper.)

But what am I saying here? Have I just been elected Senator for Tourism? No - I'd rather be in charge of tourism for Mega City 1- it'd probably be easier. No, the reason - as you'd probably guessed - is that I found something better than all that shit up there: GAMESTATION!!!

Liverpool: 1 - City of Westminster: 0

And inside, I found the smallest of Dreamcast sections, but one that offered two rather interesting and unspoken of (as yet) titles:

Snocross Championship!
Yep - a game built around the well documented world of high speed sledges. I think I played this on the N64 at some point, so I sort of knew what to expect. The graphics are a bit poo - it looks like a PS1 game in places, and the sound is equally poo - the engines sound like they never click out of first gear, even though the speedo says that is has. The thing about Snocross is that if you click into first person view mode, it becomes one of the most fun racing games on the Dreamcast. Wierd, because when you play it in 3rd person - it's actually pretty shit. The snow speeder things just will not turn, but in 1st person: they do! WHY?!?! . It's the same as Polaris Snocross - they just dropped Polaris from the title for the PAL version. Again WHY?!?!
There are some interesting features, like a track editor and such like, which adds to the longevity, but overall it's never better than passable. Anyway, not the best game ever but quite rare I suppose.




Aqua GT!
I didn't even know this had been released - I saw it in some non-descript gaming mag in a 'coming soon' feature and never saw it again. I presumed it had gone the way of Picasso and Colin McRae: to the great development graveyard in the alley behind the publishers' building...in a dirty great wheely bin with apple cores and shitty nappies overflowing from within. But no, it obviously was released. Can't see why they bothered though - it pretty much sucks. It's meant to be a contender to Hydro Thunder's crown as the only powerboat game in the history of the world that is actually any good - but fails quite spectacularly. Why? because it's slow, boring, has wank graphics (the water effects aren't even as good as Wave Race 64) and, well, has the production values of series one of Red Dwarf. The loading screens look like they were drawn by a five year old with finger paints; and you have to endure them for quite some time due to the outrageous 'accessing' of the disk.


Overall, not a great haul - but two quite obscure titles are welcomed into the Dreamcast Junkyard none the less.

On the other hand, I did manage to get Pro Evo 5 on the Xbox for a mere SIX pounds - so it's not all bad. As for Liverpool - decent enough place, shame about the people.

***LEGAL DISCLAIMER: FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DO NOT HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOUR, ALL OF THE ABOVE NEGATIVE COMMENTS ABOUT LIVERPOOL WERE MEANT AS A JOKE. THE DREAMCAST JUNKYARD DOES NOT CONDONE THE WANTON DEFAMATION OF CITIES, COUNTIES, COUNTRIES OR ANY PEOPLE THAT MAY LIVE WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES OF SAID CITIES, COUNTIES OR COUNTRIES. EXCEPT PEOPLE FROM WAKEFIELD WITH ONION PITS. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.***

Oh, and lest I forget: it's the World Cup final today. Who'll win? WHO FUCKING CARES? But the Italians have got the bigger incentive: win the World Cup and escape jail!

The Italian Justice System: Legendary.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

smogopolis, classic mate! LOL

gnome said...

A brilliant read, and quite an insightful comment on the World Cup final ;)

Tom Charnock said...

It seems I've offended some liverpudlians...to whom I say: Lighten up...IT'S A JOKE. Liverpool's a great place. Cretins.