HeadWillCollapse

I’m a bit of an “Alias” fan. I’m currently working my way through the last series, waiting patiently for them to bring out the final boxed set so that I might be allowed sweet, sweet closure. The mention of Jennifer Garner in yesterday’s post got me thinking about the doll of Jennifer (as Syndey Bristow) I have in my room. As creepy as that sounds it’s not what you’re all thinking. The figurine is about six inches tall, was a Christmas present from a friend and is special in that it bears no resemblance to Ms. Garner whatsoever. Read the rest of this entry »

Fat Conan, being the skinflint barbarian he is, went on a shopping spree for sub £10 X-Box games at Virgin to see what “bargains” he could get his mighty, calloused mits around. Rather pleased with himself, he managed to pick up “Metal Gear Solid 2″, “Project Gotham Racing 2″, “The Sonic Mega Collectionâ„¢ Plus” and an offering from Capcom entitled “Capcom Fighting Jam” which promised to combine all the best bits from its catalogue of 2-d beat ‘em ups into a single phantasmagorical package.

As soon as he arrived back at his “pad” he hurriedly connected an arcade stick, stuck in the CFJ disc, started the VCR-sized cosole up and reclined on his stone throne to enjoy the proceedings. Read the rest of this entry »

The “info” inbox of headwillcollapse has become somewhat of a sacrificial lamb battered endlessly by the arrival of spam through the magic interweb pipe. The majority of it these days consists of messages from WordPress informing that someone wants to leave a comment like “Now I dont have to feel so intimated by science! “ while insisting I should “check outâ€? their awesome viagra/dodgy investment/porn site. Read the rest of this entry »

Your host, Fat Conan, has just been lucky enough to witness some of “Britain’s Sexual Fantasies” on the UK’s premier television channel. For those of you who missed it, it was a deep and wholly “scientific” exploration of the minds of UK perverts as they shared their deepest erotic fantasies with a small bald man.

Inspired by this and in a moment of unparalleled openness, FC thought he’d follow the example of the “actors” (portraying the “real people” from whom the stories were harvested) by sharing one of his own. Read the rest of this entry »

Although the weekend consisted mainly of hangover and head-butts, Fat Conan was able to rescue a little time from the gaping jaws of apathy to revisit some classics that had remained untouched in his cavern of gaming for far too long.

First up was Dreamweb, which is mainly remembered for the “sex” and “violence” that landed it with a 15 certificate when it was originally released. It’s an unfortunate stigma as the game itself is reasonably good fun and its use of sound for atmosphere still impresses to this day. On the down side though, the voice acting is mainly awful and the storyline doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense despite the snipets gravelly narrative provided to guide you through it.

Providing the miracle that allowed a game designed to run on a 386 to play on (fairly) modern hardware was DOSBox, which is perfect for playing all those games you loved “back in the day” at slightly slower speeds than you remember. That’s a little unfair, it ran Dreamweb flawlessly, and F.C.’s sure that it runs a fairly large percentage of its compatible games at a perfectly reasonable pace. Just don’t expect to be enjoying greats like “Syndicate Wars” or “Tie Fighter” at full speed any time soon.

In fact F.C. dabbled with the latter shortly afterward but couldn’t quite squeeze enough out of the machine to make it properly playable. He also had a pop with “Subwar 2050“, a game he’d always liked as a concept but never really got into on account of some incredibly difficult to calibrate joysticks in the past (the veer, the dreaded veer). Sadly Subwar could not quite run at playable speed either, a fact that was made worse by the perfect calibration the X-Box joypad was able to achieve.

Lastly, he turned to a favourite that could have been made entirely for lazy Sundays: “Day of the tentacle” running on the once great, now ace, ScummVM which seems to have undergone a facelift since the last time he’d seen it. What more could you want? The old point’n'click classics, on modern versions of Windows and now with an interface that doesn’t look ass. Bliss.

This post might seem nonsensical to those not in the clique. Tough! You want to be in on the action you need to be better.

DeadlyNinjaBees.com

In which Team Ninja exploits the power of the Xbox 360 to model the physics of the female form in a dimension where breasts have been replaced with latex coated ferrets.

Too. Much. Twitching.

In 1996, the films, the merchandising, the nationwide hunt for a look-alike must have seemed a long way off for Lara. At that time she was still scrabbling around the large brown vaults of some long forgotten crypt sporting a melon on her tiny neck that resembled a dented bucket with a face crudely painted on it. It’s amazing what ten years can do, not that anyone would be suggesting surgery despite the ever expanding breasts and ever more curvaceous skull. Lara simply blossomed, grew into herself and other such cliches, to the point where she became pretty in an obvious way, as opposed to the way that could only really be appreciated with the use of a protractor and set square. She became an icon, and in her latest escapade she’s looking better than ever, but at what price?

Clearly the party girl lifestyle she’s been enjoying over the past decade has started to take its toll, as this recent shot reveals:

The dark circles under her eyes tell another side of the great adventurer’s story. The lifeless stare; the ever shrinking waist; the increasingly heavy use of make-up, possibly obscuring that now orange-peel skin; the desperate need to grab the public’s attention on every outing; all the warning signs are there.

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If you could level one complaint at classic medical simulation “Life and Death 2″ other than the general headaches caused when aging games meet modern hardware, it would be at the lack of multi-player support. It’s a grand oversight considering the number of people you’d normally find lending a helping hand in the theatre of operations that is the operating theatre. LD2 lays all the tasks of the O.R. soundly at a single player’s feet and beyond that forces the single player to run the tests, examine the patient and trudge through the histories.

Clearly this is more responsibility than should be placed on the head of a single sixty-hour-week-working individual. It’s time to put an end to it. In a recent revisit to the game and with the sort of knowledge that can only be gained from episodes of St. Elsewhere, Casualty and their ilk; I have devised a multi-player version of LD2 that’ll have the entire family botching operations, exceeding budgets and spreading methicillin resistant infection for hours on end.
Read the rest of this entry »

The third incarnation of HWC sees your host trying a different approach to the whole thing.  Though he probably would have liked to have powered this site with some grandiose web architecture he’d cobbled together in his spare time, he realised that it’s easier, and therefore better (pay attention children) to let someone else do it.  Thanks WordPress.

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