"I Am The Highwind" - Song Lyrics, Background & Soundcloud

As part of my Anarchy Advent countdown, I decided to record a song. As you know, in Final Fantasy VII, you spend a lot of time flying around in the airship known as the Highwind - especially if you're breeding gold Chocobo. Listening to the music over and over, I ended up making up my own words to it.

The first verse I wrote was actually the 2nd one, about where the Highwind can't land - because I was getting annoyed with having to find grass to land on and walk across other terrain.

Here's the song: 



Lyrics:

I am the Highwind
I am an aeroplane you fly
Through the sky
Get me part-way through disc 2
Yes you do
Part-way through disc 2

Can't land on deserts
Can't land on snow or in the sea
Or on mountains
On forests or on the beach

Look at my features
I have a stable for your Chocobos over here
I have a place to save your game over here
Heal your party members and PHS

You can all fit inside me
Cait Sith and Red XII
You can all fit inside me
Cloud, Cid and Yuffie
You can all fit inside me
Vincent, Barret and Tifa
You can all fit inside me
Bring all your friends along
You can all fit inside me
All of the crew on board
You can all fit inside me
Even space for Cloud’s sword

You can all fit inside me
You can all fit inside me

(Repeat)

Want to download this song? Go ahead - here's a link to download it through SoundCloud. Bear in mind, I didn't compose the music and I don't own Final Fantasy VII or anything - it's just a silly novelty song I made to make you lot laugh.

Gungey Gaming Anagrams!

Yep, I've gotten myself into something gungey again...

Ash and Shelly set up a game of sorts for me in the back garden - a vat of 36 litres of gloopy, black gunge - in which they buried foamy letters that spelled out names of video games.

How was I to retrieve these letters? With my FACE, of course! More specifically, my mouth, lips and nose - I had to plunge my head right into all the goop and suck, slurp, push and nudge the letters out of the mess and onto the table - where I could rearrange them into game titles.

(Simply click on the photos below to enlarge 'em!)

Round 1 - DRAGON QUEST

I could have dunked Ash in the gunge for this! Could she possibly have buried the letters any deeper? I practically had gunge up to my ears while searching through the slop to find these letters - and she chose such a damn long name! But, I did manage to scoop them all out and work out the game - and right off the bat I was totally gunked up - my fringe, especially.

Round 2 - ROCK BAND
Thankfully, Shelly is a bit less sadistic than Ash and didn't bury the letters so deeply in the gunge. Both of them however did hold the letters under the gunge and give em a good squeezing. Being foam - they absorbed a bunch of goop, which naturally ended up in my mouth when I took hold of them with my teeth...


Round 3 - BRAID
Not only is Ash super sadistic - she's also a cheater! Before we set the game up, all three of us came up with a long list of games we could physically spell out with the foamy letters (we only had one of each letter and one of each number) - we came up with about 30 different ones - it would still be somewhat of a guess for me to work out. Braid wasn't on the list! Ash just realised she could spell that at the last minute! So not only was I covered in gunge, dizzy and disorientated from all the head dunks, I had to unscramble a word I didn't even know was on the list!

Round 4 - HOTEL DUSK
Wearing goggles unfortunately was a double-edged sword. I needed to keep gunge out of my eyes - despite gunge being safe for skin and it being made of food-grade ingredients, you don't really want it in your eyes - it stings a little bit. Every time I dunked my head, I had to scrape the slime off of the goggles so I could bloody see! I wanted to be able to see, but gunge is super sticky, and clings to everything in sight! (No pun intended!)

Round 5 - SONIC R
At this point, all of the gunge I'd ingested was getting to me. Yes, gunge is made of food-safe ingredients - but it feels like glue! Imagine getting a gob full of glue over and over! Uncoloured gunge doesn't taste of anything, but adding paint as a colour - ergh. A few dry heaves later - I fished out the final set of letters - game over, I win!


It's not fair! I retrieved ALL of the letters and figured out ALL of the anagrams - but they still plonked me down in the green patio chair and dumped all 36 leftover litres of the oozing, black slime ALL OVER ME! I didn't take long to end up completely covered - my whole face, head and torso - some even dripping down my arms, running down my legs and slopping into my shoes... Yuck!

As always, all of this lovely gunge was supplied by GungeSupplies.com - it's HEC powder you simply mix up with warm water and add your own colour to - easy to make, and despite the mess it makes, it cleans up easily too.

 

Review: Cosmic Spacehead

Cosmic Spacehead is a game released in 1993 by Codemasters for the Sega Mega Drive. It's actually a re-release of a NES game called Linus Spacehead's Cosmic Crusade released in 1991 with shiny, new 16-bit graphics, fixed glitches and a 2-player mode. It's quite a unique concept, sections of open-ended world exploration with point-and-click adventure style puzzles with each world screen broken up by 2D side-scrolling platforming.

Set in around the year 4000, Cosmic Spacehead is a young alien boy who has just returned from visiting planet Earth, and has come back to his home planet of Linoleum only to find out that nobody believes him because he has no proof. So Cosmic sets out to re-visit Earth, this time armed with a camera so that he can take snapshots of New York city and rub them in everyone's faces.

The point-and-click puzzle sections are pretty basic, but after a while, can require backtracking half way around the planet in order to find the right items and the right places to use them. Using the C button, your puzzle approaches are limited to 5 different actions: "TALK TO," "USE," "GIVE," "PICK UP" and "LOOK AT." The vast majority of the puzzles are a bit roundabout, such as using icing sugar to freeze a stream to create a new pathway and building a tactical missile to clear away debris. But when interacting with objects, Cosmic will give you his own opinions on rude post office clerks and vending machines that sell gunpowder.

The side-scrolling platform sections are encountered the first time you leave a screen and attempt to enter the next area. These start out basic, simply avoiding walking eggs and hopping across floating platforms, but gradually get more and more complex, resulting in the player having to time their jumps to avoid being electrocuted or to adjust to changing gravity levels. During the side-scrolling levels, Cosmic can collect cosmic candy bars - 10 of which will award you with an extra life. 

One of the awkward gameplay mechanics of Cosmic Spacehead is that it uses the archaic password system. These passwords are marked by big colourful Ps found in the main city and town areas. However, if you feel that you are doing well for lives, items and money, they can be ignored and returned to at a later stage to be used when you really need them. Using a password point will record all of your cleared levels, solved puzzles and you will retain all of your items and money.

The Mega Drive's 16-bit graphics aren't exactly pushed to their limit, but all of the characters and enemies are unique, colourful and full of personality. The pre-rendered backgrounds range from the jazzy, multi-coloured patterns of the planet Linoleum to the bleak, abandoned areas of the planet Detroitica, which has been overrun by its robot workers. The overly colourful and psychadelic graphics have often been likened to 60s cartoons such as The Jetsons.

For some reason, Cosmic Spacehead also has a 2-player mode. I'll admit that I was disappointed with this. What I wanted was a 2-player co-op style adventure like Sonic The Hedgehog 2. What I got was a regurgitated version of a car driving mini game from the main single player game. Each player drives a bumper car around a maze and tries to throw custard pies at each other.

If you have a Mega Drive, I really reccomend investing in a copy of Cosmic Spacehead. Being over 20 years old now, it's virtually impossible to find new, but I managed to grab a copy of it, with a box, booklet and a poster for only £3. I had it as a child and had been itching to play it again for around 12 years. Being a cartridge game, it's stood the test of time very well. From start to finish, if you know what you're doing. you can look for about 2 hours of gameplay - but if you get stuck looking for the plug for the bathtub or keep losing all of your lives in the Space Station, possibly longer.

Unboxing: Arcade Block August 2016

It's time for my tenth monthly Arcade Block!

As I've previously explained; for a fee of $20 CANADIAN per month, Arcade Block will send you a lovely box of gaming merchandise, including a T-shirt. Shipping costs vary, depending on where you live, and larger T-shirt sizes cost a few $ extra - overall, my boxes including shipping, work out at about £24.

This one was shipped on the 25th of July and arrived on the 5th of September - neither Shelly or I was in, so I had it redelivered on the 10th. Ugh.



And let's take a closer look at the contents:

Tetris colour-changing mug (cold design)

Tetris colour-changing mug (hot design)

Five Nights At Freddy's vinyl figure

Super Mario Bros K'nex

USB SNES controller

Eye of Truth T-shirt

The 5 Worst Final Fantasy VII Enemy Skills

Now I love using enemy skills - some of them are invaluable earlier on in the game before you learn higher level spells or summons - and I thoroughly enjoy the scavenger-hunt of collecting all 24 of them. HOWEVER; not all enemy skills are created equally. Some are awesome yes, but the following 5 in this list are the worst ones - they’re either useless, learnt too late in the game to be of any use, or require some roundabout route to even get them to work. Let’s begin the countdown!

5 - ????

This enemy skill, which you can learn in the Shinra Mansion at first may seem useful - but bear in mind, the amount of damage you can do is based solely on the amount of damage you’ve taken. It essentially only has the potential to do 9998 damage, providing you can maintain having only 1HP, or even get hit with the correct amount of attacks to absorb 9998 HP of damage in the first place. If you have full health, regardless of your total number of HP, whether you have 900 or 9000, you will do 0 damage. In order for this enemy skill to even work, you have to let yourself sit with damage, potentially increasing the risk you’ll be killed.

4 - L4 Suicide

Although you learn this enemy skill very early in the game - it can be potentially your first, or one of the first ones you learn - its usefulness is incredibly limited. L4 Suicide inflicts critical damage and small status on all enemies whose levels are multiples of 4 - such as 12, 16, 20, 24 etc. So already there’s only a handful of enemies this will even effect. Now out of the enemies whose levels ARE a multiple of 4, many of them are immune to the small status effect - which again reduces the usefulness of this attack. Yes, it will do critical damage - but it will never kill anything - it will always leave enemies with at least some health.

3 - L5 Death

L5 Death is likely going to be one of the last enemy skills you learn - it’s in the collection of rare enemy skills that you can only find in the Northern Cave - right at the end of the game when there’s little to no opportunity left to use it. As the name suggests, only enemies whose levels are multiples of 5 will be affected by the enemy skill - level 50, 55, 60, 65 etc - which is even less of a range of enemies that are potentially affected by L4 Suicide - and far more creatures are immune to instant death than the small status. I don’t think I’ve ever used L5 Death in any of my playthroughs - to me, it just seemed like a massive waste of time that had the potential to rarely ever succeed, either by enemies not being the right level, or being immune to instant death in the first place.

2 - Chocobuckle

Considering how much of a puzzle it is to even learn the Chocobuckle enemy skill, you’d think it would be more useful than it is. In order to learn Chocobuckle, you have to find a Chocobo whose level is a multiple of 4, feed it some Memitt Greens and then cast L4 Suicide on it - this in itself can be a pain in the arse if you’re not sure what you’re looking for - and if it wasn’t for the strategy guide, I’d have never thought of doing this in the late 90s when I didn’t have the means to just Google these things. Anyway, Chocobuckle’s damage is based on how many times you’ve escaped from battle. That’s right - escaped once? 1 damage. Escaped 9999 times? 9999 damage. If you wanted to build Chocobuckle up, you’d have to run from battle 9999 times. It would be quicker to fight the 9999 battles and level up your characters so they did 9999 damage with their normal weapon!

1 - Roulette

And finally we have Roulette, the worst and most useless enemy skill in the whole game. First off, let’s talk about WHEN you acquire this skill. You can only learn it from one enemy in one place, the Death Dealer in the Northern Cave - A.K.A. THE END OF THE GAME - so even if you wanted to use this enemy skill in battle, you have very little opportunity to do so. Now let’s talk about what it does. Roulette, as the name suggests is a luck-based attack which makes your cursor flick rapidly between all three of your party members and all enemies you’re facing. The person or enemy the cursor stops on will be hit with instant death. Firstly, you’re potentially risking the lives of your party members, unless they’re wearing an accessory that protects against death, such as the Safety Bit - or you’ve already gone ahead and cast a protective spell like the Death Force enemy skill. And what if it does land on an enemy and that enemy is immune to death spells? Lots of enemies are, and certainly the majority of bosses and sub-boss creatures are. Learn the skill to complete your collection, then never touch it again. It’s ultimately useless and risks the lives of your party members to MAYBE cast instant death on an enemy - just use x4 cut or a powerful spell and get it over with!

How To Download & Play Escape From Sally’s Room

As part of the awesome Anarchy Advent festivities; I made a video talking about a point-and-click browser game I made in my 1st year of university, Escape From Sally's Room.



Do you want to play it yourself? Well you can!

Firstly, click the link below to download the zip folder - you'll need a program to unzip it, of course.

[Dropbox Download Link]

Once it's downloaded, unzip the folder:

Open the folder:

Click on the file marked [Title Page]:

And you're ready to help Sally escape from her room!

Bandicoots Don't Exist?

Allow me to tell you a story from my childhood...

Now I'm a big fan of the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy on the PS1. I even enjoyed the spin off titles: Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash. However, I do feel after the series migrated to the PS2 and Naughty Dog handed over development to Traveller’s Tales, the series began to go downhill. Crash 4: The Wrath of Cortex was OK, but the rest of them? Ugh.

Anyway, I was 5 years old when the original was released in 1996 and 7 years old when Crash Bandicoot 2 was released. I was in year 2 of primary school, and quite frankly obsessed with all sorts of video games, not just Crash. My teacher hated this; as nearly every creative project we were given, everything I did had an air of video games about it - I started writing fan fiction from a very young age, as soon as I got my own computer, I was unstoppable!

Anyway, one day at school, we had to write a story about what we would do if we were an animal for a day. Naturally, I chose a bandicoot. I was quickly shot down however, when the teacher humiliated me in front of the whole class, berating me for what felt like hours about “how bandicoots didn't exist.”

I ended up writing about a bear instead, but I was upset for the rest of the day. When I got home that night, I told my mam what happened. She was furious - and took me upstairs to her room where she dug out an encyclopedia of animals. After flipping through a few pages, she found a double - page spread on bandicoots. 

Bandicoots are small creatures that live on a mixture of insects, spiders and fungus. They’re native to Australia and Papua New Guinea - indeed, they are real. but of course, I already knew this. After playing Crash Bandicoot initially, I asked my parents if they were a real animal, and they assured me they were. My parents were always big into zoos, safari parks and animal conservation, and still are to this day - and like any parent, refuse to stand by when they know their child has been wrongfully punished.

The encyclopedia was essentially a big ringbinder folder, thus the pages could be removed. Mam sent me to school the next day, armed with the evidence that bandicoots DID actually exist. I got an apology from the teacher - and elevated my status amongst the other mini video game nerds in my class.