Monster Mash!



BASTARD! (and now it seems to be underlining my text and changing font sizes without me wanting it to...

Take a look at this!
It's my new super-duper-fan-fucking-tastic 'Microsoft Wireless Desktop Elite' keyboard! (Wahey!) Everytime I run my fingers over it's bouncey, responsive keys it makes my 'third leg' stand to attention!
Each time I check out it's 'space age' contours, with different tactile materials...("Grunt! Gasp!"...
Hard plastic keys, spongey, foamy exterior...) my swollen testacles start to tingle. Check out the fucking buttons and gizmos! AWLRIGHT!

Excuse me while I crack one off...Ah! thats better...



Keyboards... originally found on the humble typewriter, then later ascribed to fledgling computers, they've made life easier for us all.
In Dreamcast terms the keyboard was originally intended to enhance it's users experience of accessing the internet. (I did that a few weeks back and it was frankly wanktastic...56K modem? Dial up? Fuck me sideways...) For some gamers it allowed them to remain in a PC comfort zone...playing games like 'Quake 3 Arena' and 'Outtrigger' using Keyboard and Mouse to point and shoot.
But which fucking genius decided to use the keyboard as a peripheral to experience the established 'light gun classic' House of TheDead?
Someone at developer
'Smilebit' apparently... and if I ever meet that guy, I'll gladly suck him off...
Sorry! I meant to say "Shake him warmly by the hand"....
'House Of The Dead' Father? That tired old title has oft been discussed within the 'Yard... why drag it's sorry ass back up for another probing?


Well it needs to be re-inspected and compared to it's lesser known cousin
'Typing Of The Dead'...
'Cos like many a great DC title release, we Europeans were passed over! I've never understood why corporations like Sony (bawk!), Sega and Nintendo (feeling of warm acceptance...) feel the need to selectively deny Europeans, Japanese or Americans access to the same gaming experience, at the same time....
This inevitably ends up with commited gamers like myself, having to trawl
eBay years later to find hidden gems... Our American cousins were denied Shenmue 2, and that's just wrong.


We on this side of the pond were denied the
'Sega Smash Pack' and 'Caution Seaman'.




Why? answers on a postcard please...
Anyway, back to the games... lets compare them...

House Of the Dead 2
A classic franchise, first experienced outside arcades by
Sega Saturn owners as 'House of The Dead'. (Still retailing in Gamestation for a pricey £24.99 due to it's cult clasic status and rarity) A light gun classic, but in retrospect grainy, pixellated and rushed. It was poorly presented, had an unimaginative storyline and was badly voice-acted. Certain features that Sega were apparently keen to keep apparently...


So lo and behold, along comes
House Of The Dead 2, one of the flagship titles for the Dreamcast. Back in the day, the game+ lightgun would have cost you a harsh £75.... Current 2006 price for game and peripheral? £8.50... OK so we've already got a reason to check it out... but the Dreamcast release had addressed the failings of the original Saturn game... Here we had sumptuous graphics, great frame rates, little pixellation, and a near perfect arcade port.

The voice acting was still terrible and the storyline equally weak, but to your average gamer, light gun at the ready, it was just an excuse to waste animated corpses, spilling green,
YES GREEN blood..
O.K. Weak story line? What is it?
You play as
James Taylor (no not the easy listening hippy ex-husband of Carly Simon- ignore that if you're under 40) but the AMS agent assisted by colleagues Gary Stewart, Amy Stewart and Harry Harris... (I kid you not....) Harry fucking Harris? Pur-lease...
You're fighting aginst the evil machinations of the mysterious
Goldman... which have resulted in.... axe wielding, chainsaw toting, barrel tossing zombies!
Overthrowing the un-named city and presumably the world. And if you're not quick enough on the draw they're gonna bite you.
Oh yes.



As if that wasn't enough there's zombie monkies, fish, frogs, owls and bats want to bite your
sorry ass as well.



Depending on your
zombie ass kicking skills you will be shown a variety of routes through the city. Play poorly and you'll arrive at something of a dead end. Save civillians and you'll be rewarded with extra lives... Kill 'em and you'll have lives taken away- fair enough!
There are four modes in the game...
Arcade, Original , Boss and Training. Play on Original and you get to save items like coins, gems, gold frogs, (no I have not been ingesting psychedelic mushrooms...recently...) air guns and unlimited continues that help you complete the game.

Complete the game? I wish! Never have and probably never will...

'Cos apart from items that you store in your car boot/trunk, you can't save
shit on this mother fucker! (Why am I posting like an extra from 'Shaft'?)



'One bullet away from killing the last boss, and completing the game... and
YOU DIE!
Then start all over again.
And incidentally, that's why I named it my most frustrating DC game on Tom's most magnificent recent post...
I love it/hate it!
Ok I'm rambling...And you might have guessed already that I'm more in favour of the
later release....

Typing Of The Dead...

OK no need to go through any of the features of the original 'cos it's exactly the same as this one.
Except that the graphics and even the voice acting seem a bit more polished.
And ( now heres the rub) Instead of a
gun you use a keyboard!!!
As do your charcters...


Instead of '
poppin' caps' you have to type like a bitch ass secretary on speed to repel the zombie hoarde. The basic scenario is this... The game is exactly the same but instead of shooting zombies you have to read set phrases and then type them.



Easy? NO! If your a good typist, no problem... If you've got poor keyboard skills (like me) then watch out. You just have to copy familiar (or increasingly non-familiar) words and phrases thrown at you by the game. "Hospitalised brick"? "Rasta"? "Uncle Slam"?
They're the easy ones... try "I lay my hand on yours my sweet, and then let out the nastiest fart you'll know".




Try that whilst zombies are threatening to chomp a chunk out of your face...
Having said that, compared to the light gun version, they actually wait around a little bit...
patiently(!)... Whilst you complete your typing.
Unlike the original, they kind of
lay off, lurking not too menacingly whilst you fumble over your typing errors.

To make things
less horrific, they carry sink plungers, rubber mallets and sausages to throw at you instead of knives and axes. Plug two keyboards in and play against a friend. I did and it was some of the most gaming fun I've had in ages... You can pick up keyboards for peanuts these days...



Now back in
2001 two keyboards would have cost you £40.
In 2006? Two quid each for two keyboards if you look around...
(I was given one keyboard free by the wonderful
Summit Games, Bangor, N.Wales because I bought a couple of rare import games from them-Heads Up! Respect!)

The two
biggest gingers played them solid at the Lighthouse last weekend... in favour
of Tekken 5 Dark resuurection on the PSP..
Even the younger ginger generation are into
the gameplay...and BONUS! they're improving their typing skills!
IGN 2006 gave 'Typing' a 9/10 in the face of reviews of games on the 360, PS3 and Wii...
Planet Dreamcast in 2001 gave 'Typing...' an 8/10.
The original light gun HOTD version got a paltry
7/10.
And I endorse their conclusions... ergo
Typing Of The Dead.... A clear winner!!!

So check this.... score a
DC (£20 max) Score HOTD2 (£2.50 max) Score TOTD (maybe a bit more but probably under a tenner) (Score a couple of keyboards for the DC (Guess...£20 max) add it up... maybe (max) £55 and you get yourself a shit hot console, two games and the necessary peripherals for less than a next gen game.
I rest my luddite case m'lud!
Good night children... wherever you are...here's a little gift to make you sleep easier after looking at all those zombies....

Excuse me while I crack another one off...

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW another fatherly MEGApost. Brilliant!

Anonymous said...

I love The Typing of the Dead. I was pretty pissed to find that MSN recently listed it as a runner-up for the 10 worst games of all time:

http://tech.msn.com/products/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1225829

fatherkrishna said...

Thanks Gnome your too kind... Where have you been??? I've missed you in a way that borders on the unhealthy...(LOL) I prsume the demands of your esteemed learning establishment have necessitated your absence... Good to have you back... Will swing by your place after this...
(Listen Gnome... Don't tell anyone but I think i've broke the 'Yard... SHIT! TLC will kill me! Ever since I posted this all the links have been shunted down to the bottom of the page! If he asks you, you dont know anything..right? in Shaggy voice... It wasn't me...

Anonymous...WTF!? The WORST games???? How dare they?!
Don't remain anonymous log in and make yourself known!

Ross said...

Dont listen to that list - it's pure bullshit.

Anyway, I always wanted to buy a copy of Typing of the Dead along with a DC keyboard through the internet but shipping for the keyboard always drives up the price... maybe I'll find the PC version one day, as its on my "games to play before I die" list.

fatherkrishna said...

Hey Ross, I can honestly tell you it's worth any price to own the original Dreamcast version! Thanks for stopping by...

My heartfelt thanks to The (Quite Frankly Fabulous) Elderly Gamer for helping me sort out the sorry mess I had made of this post... please check out his most wonderful site in the links section at the side panel of the 'Yard! Cheers FK!

Anonymous said...

I cant wait to see what the new version of House of the Dead will be like..? Its coming to the 360 this year maybe...
I played the others on Dreamcast, but they never held much replay value for me after beating them..
I hope the new one will be alot better..??
Nice puter by the way!! Will you be going to pc gaming now????

Anonymous said...

hey that's not Gnome is it.... (puts on glasses) jeez it's gnome... frozen in time.....(puts his hands through the apparition) ah though so..holographic projection....

Fatherkrishna i don't get it.....i altered the post and it's still showing up with a hyperlink to blogger id...this is too weird

fatherkrishna said...

Thankyou for checking in my blogging brothers! Whilst its fucking great to see deitrix wrench himself out of Gears Of War to visit his old mates, and frankly the Elderly has just been fucking fantastically supportive in helping the good father in his plight to spout retro shite about the Dreamcast..I do feel genuinely honoured to have a mention from the 'Scarlet Pimpernel-like' Gnome... can't you feel the love?
Whatever demands your real thesis/college/masters obligations are placing on you right now, don't forget we are all in need of your non-prOn presence!!
jeez buddy just let us know everythings cool in your garden Gnome...Geddit?

fatherkrishna said...

Well would ya look at that! After tears, tantrums and tiaras...
my post has just appeared as intended! Whilst I've been harassing The Elderly to sort my shit out, a simple break whilst shaving my head has caused Blogger to reveal my post in it's truest form!
There's some cosmic shit afoot bretheren...
And Gnome's wise words ring true...
Blogger knows all..
Just go with the flow people...just go with the flow.., It's now stupid o'clock but I can sleep easy seeing my frankly poor post presented as intended...
When i awake bleary eyed for work, I will do so in the sound knowledge that the three people that read this shit have seen it as it was meant to be seen...
there is a God after all...

Animated AF said...

Great post! Sorry I've been quite absent recently, busy with coursework and other stuff. Just so you know, however, I recently bought Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and just now bought Fighting Vipers 2. I'll have to write up about them when I get time, me thinks!

fatherkrishna said...

Gagaman(n)! Splendid to hear from you! Hope youare enjoying Uni life. JoJo's Bizarre adventure? Sidescroling 2D Capcom crazy magic! Just purchased Street Fighter Alpha 1 & 2 for my Saturn! Was playing the original Fighting Vipers on said console last night... But Fighting Vipers 2?! Have never seen that game 'in the flesh' It is dfinitely high on mypriority purchase list along with Daytona USA 2001 and Death Crimson OX... I await your review of FV2 with much anticipation!

Caleb said...

I just wanted to post that it's Thanksgiving here in America to all the European people that post and comment in the Junkyard.

As we all know, European people do not have Thanksgiving because they have nothing to be thankfull for.

Not like Americans like me. As shown in this Youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iqAI07vvH8

I can only say that playing House of the dead 2 on a 30 inch TV that I got from the trash (dustbin) of some lazy jerk who didn't see how easy it was to fix is all the better after having eating half of a 15 pound turkey by myself. (INCLUDING BOTH OF THE DRUMSTICKS)

It was slightly marred by the fact that I saw this post and was reminded that I still do not have a copy of typing of the dead but still. But I did learn that the game has two player mode if you have dual keyboards. (which I now do.) So I am all ready for multiplayer typing mayhem when i get my grubby paws on a copy.

And I am telling you. Playing dreamcast games is SO much better after eating a ton of turkery. You should really try it.


C.

fatherkrishna said...

Caleb great to hear from you! Excellent comments as usual!
Having viewed your Halloween festivities I'm sure your Thanksgiving was a lot of fun too.
TOTD is a must, and the two player mode is hysterical. You seem to be charmed in your accquisition of cool stuff, (TV, Dreamcast games, peripherals etc...)that I'm sure you'll come across a copy soon...
As for the Turkey side of things, I can't really comment as I have been vegetarian for 22 years! (although it is a meat I still crave at Christmas...)
Thanks for dropping in come back soon...