That guy's a Maniac...

In this week’s podcast, the maniacs take on the challenge of defining Retro Games. What is a retro game? Are there handy definitions that can be pinched from fashion,music or wider culture? Is it a console generation thing? Can it be defined technologically? Chronologically? They also pick the Definitive Top 3 Retro Games of All Time. May be some dog chat too.

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame rounded?) Richie: Oh man Sweet, its that time where we flame round shit again! Lets see what Cunzy has for me to shoot down this time! Cunzy1 1: This is our first entire game on Flame Rounds and it's 2005's Timesplitters: Future Perfect. As gamers of a particular vintage will tell you, Timesplitters was phenomenal and seemingly came from nowhere, an early PlayStation 2 first person shooter, against the clock game with great original characters, amazing multiplayer and silly modes/cheat characters/silly characters goofiness the likes of which hadn't been seen since Goldeneye . Timesplitters 2 built on that in almost every way. One of our favourite games of all ...

And we went to the V&A (AKA Victoria and Albert Museum). After shyly looking away when we thought some girl looked at us whilst we were trading Pokemon with ourselves on the train, we paid our &13.50 to see the British design exhibition . The exhibit is littered with some really kitschy examples of British design, from simple things like the font used on Road Signs, to Ziggy Stardust outfit. But the exceptional part was the brief Computer games section... Exceptional may be a tad over-selling it. The fact there was a Computer games section which was pretty much mind blowing in itself. There were no descriptions is was just a darkened room with the following: Elite :  This was being projected on a wall showing some of the battle scenes. Elite is an important game as, even though it's nearly 20 years old, it set a standard for CCP's space trading MMO: EVE Online.  In fact if you strip away the overzealous graphics and the recently tack...

So we love video game music. Not all of it, but when it is good we'll take it over millionaires crooning about getting their arse out or falling in love any day. It gets into our mind. So (bear with me) there's an advert on TV for the perfume Opium which has been on the idiot box quite a lot recently. I keep seeing it and it reminded me of a game. In particular this ad at 20 seconds.   Eventually, it came to me! It's from the Notre Dame theme from Timesplitters 2, composed of course by Graemem Norgate, one of the few men we'd happily marry without even meeting (we swooned when he wrote to us ). The relevant bit is in the vid DOWN HERE at 1:31:   And of course, both of these were 'inspired by' a certain Mr Mozart, this vid at 2:35.   Here's the handy URLs to skip the rest and straight to the bit I'm on about should you wish you music cretin Opium , Splitters , Mozart . That's it. Just saying. Jeez. End of the music lesson. Now. Fuck o...

Surf Time: 5 seconds.

Remember that lost post when we emailed LEGEND Graeme Norgate? Well he only friggin emailed back, which to be honest has made us gush like a mucopurulent teenage girl at a Jonas Brothers gig under a waterfall. Here's what Big G had to say: Hello, Thanks for the email, glad to hear you like my stuff...going all the way back to KI too, that is retro :) the "is that too loud" bit is just me messing around with sounds and for some reason putting them on the gameover screen of Timesplitters 2. I can't quite remember the reasoning behind it now, I think it stems back to when I would listen to vinyl as a kid, and sometimes you'd get a "hidden" message right at the end. Thanks again Regards Graeme This email gave us lots of useful information about Graeme. Like, if we want to be like Graeme we'll say KI instead of Killer Instinct. Also, we got a fricking emoticon. I'm never gonna wash my email inbox ever again. So that's the reason...

Oh dear, rumours abound that Free Radical might be in trouble . Pre-2005 us are very sad indeed. This could be the saddest news ever. But that is only because we haven't heard this news yet , which in late 2008, will make us kill ourselves. Truer words are not written anywhere else. Post-2005 us will be holding a fourteen day party to celebrate, if the rumours are confirmed. The whole world is invited and we'll be burning copies of Timesplitters: Future Perfect and Haze and getting high and then getting dead on noxious fumes. The Facebook page for this party is up so feel free to bring yourself and all the chav kids from the bloc to ruin our house and stab each other so we can be on TV in a filler spot on BBCNews 24, in between the news about how to save money on mince pies and more news about the end of the world.

Timesplitters 2, the single greatest game of all time , and arguably man's greatest acheivement, was the first FPS to do the virus mode well. I know that the sequel to Timesplitters 2, OF WHICH WE HAVE 100% IN ALL THINGS BUT DO NOT SPEAK, messed it up so bad that Bungie had to steal the idea to keep it alive. As long as we all know and we pay props where props is due we can all be friends yes? I don't even want to think about the consequences if I see another "not paying tribute to TS2" post.

It's been a good year for games with 7 consoles releasing some truly brilliant games. What is my choice of the year? Shadow of the Colossus? Gears of War? New Super Mario Bros? Or have we been bunged a load of cash to say Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter? No lady and gentlemen my choice for game of the year 2006 is Timesplitters 2, the finest FPS on any format, possibly excluding all the Residet Evils which are RTS anyway. Why is it so great? Timesplitters 2 is so great because it had everything and it was birthed during the happy phase of gaming before age of cynicism of advertising, bugged to fuck game releases and mediocre copy catting. Go ahead whack it on now remind yourself how good it is, no gangstas, no Halo health system, no EA trax and no episodic releases. The story mode (although lacking a strong plot) is still highly enjoyable now, putting the "acclaimed" story modes of Half Life 2, Gears of War and Final Fantasy XII to shame. The levels are excellently desig...