The Dreaded R4

November 26, 2007 · Filed Under Articles · 5 Comments 

I seem to be spending an awful amount of time lately reading things and just wanting to throw my head into my hands weeping tears of blood.

The latest in a long line of idiot things wot I read comes from, of all places, that bastion of fine British journalism The Sunday Times. Now I know I shouldn’t ever get my hopes up that mainstream media would manage to ever get a grasp on my hobby correctly (The Guardian being a very honourable exception to the rule), after all - if a massive proportion of games magazines are prepared to publish useless bullshit on a monthly basis there’s not really much one can expect from elsewhere.

With all the insight and intelligence of a headless dog thats been skewered on a railway line after staring at some headlights for too long wondering why everything was suddenly so loud, The Times recently set out to expose the horrors of the R4 to the world.

For those not in the know, the R4 is a little flashcard adaptor thingy that sits in your DS and enables you to run homebrew and emulation. Oh, and obviously, it can also be used for far more nefarious means should you choose to. Far be it from The Times to play up the piracy aspect in the most SHOCK! HORROR! way possible, you’d never catch journalists doing that would you? Oh wait…

Ok, ok, I know. It was never going to be good but how the article ever made it into print completely fucking flummoxes me because it’s filled with the dribblings of a moronic idiot from start to finish.

I’ll happily throw my hands up and confess that I have an R4 and a Supercard for use in my DS. The former enables me to have fantastic Speccy emulation in the palm of my hand - well worth a few of your Earth pounds if you ask me - and the latter comes in extra handy for using Goomba due to their being no native support for the original Gameboy or GBC built into the DS. Of course on occasion I’ve succumbed to temptation and downloaded the odd game I technically shouldn’t have, I am after all, only human. But for the most part, my DS now doubles as a portable emulation machine - cheaper than picking up a GP2X or PSP and still with the option to nip into a store and choose from a whoppingly large catalogue of games to play unlike either of the other two choices.

Most people I know are in roughly the same situation - and tangentially, most households I know tend to end up with 2,3+ of the dual screened beasts in no time. You know how it goes. You buy a DS for yourself, the wife steals it to play Zookeeper on. So you buy your wife a DS just so you can get to touch yours occasionally (and the DS). Then one kid wants one, then another and so it goes until everywhere you turn you’re swimming in the bastards. No wonder Nintendo are happy with the things. Oddly enough though - the families I know with an R4 only tend to have one of them for one of the DS, and somehow I don’t think it gets shared between every DS owner in the house… *hmmmm*

Alright, so that may sound like a bit of a justification to some folks and fair enough, to a degree it is. There’s no two ways about it, I’m a stinking pirate and so are my friends. Admittedly, we’re mostly pirating games that are no longer available to buy through proper commercial channels (unless someone has started selling 3d Deathchase at retail and not telling me…) for machines long dead (Amstrad e-mail phones don’t count because they’re shit), but still stinking pirates. Look, you can feel my beard if you really want to, I don’t mind. Here, have a tug on my eye patch too. Yarr. But I don’t want to get into a debate on the rights and wrongs of piracy as it’s one of the most futile you can have on the internet. I’m as usual, more interested in the quality of the story. Nintendo already have a plan with regards to the issue in hand anyway, which the article fails to mention.

According to The Times, the R4 is this:

” The R4’s function is simple: it is a direct conduit for illegal game downloads and other unofficial software. Built to fit into the DS’s existing game cartridge slot, the R4 will transfer on to the console anything saved on a removable flash memory chip.”

Excellent. So I just buy an R4, plug it into my DS and a load of illegal game downloads and unofficial software makes it onto my DS. Fucking amazing.

I’m being deliberately obtuse but when our slightly dozy reporter is being deliberately sensationalist, I think I’m allowed. Obviously, the idea of this is to convey that the R4 is some sort of magical device that anyone and everyone can just use, download huge amounts of pirated roms to and steal money from the mouths of little developers children all across the land with barely taking a breath, quite possibly killing everybody in the process.

I put it to the test. Would my dear, darling wife - who has a DS of her own primarily reserved for puzzle games I wouldn’t go near with someone elses bargepole - be able to fill an R4 with pirated material with no help or instruction from me?

She told me to piss off, she wouldn’t know how, wouldn’t know how to work the R4 and even if she did work that out wouldn’t have the foggiest of what to look for on the internet to download games to it anyway and that was that.

That’s the thing the reporter completely fails to take into account. Believe it or not, not everyone who goes near the internet actually knows where to get illegal downloads from, or if they do - they don’t know what to do with them even if they do find them. Just because an idiot reporter, and I quote, “obtained an R4 chip and downloaded free of charge on the internet ten new Nintendo DS games – worth about £400.” because he can - doesn’t follow that everyone else in the world can. It’s assuming a modicum of technical knowledge that for a lot of people isn’t there. It’s not like downloading an mp3 whereby everyone now knows what an mp3 is and has something that plays it - would most DS owners really know what the filename for a DS ROM is? Heck, would they even know what a ROM is?

What I’m left wondering is…why ten? Seriously for a minute - you’d know at the first game that it’ll either work or not. You might go to two “in the name of research” to check it wasn’t a fluke. Maybe 3 to be sure. Why in shitting fuck would you download such an arbitrary number as 10 if not to make things sound like a terrible evil? Why stop there?

“In an hour I had £900 worth of games down. In two hours I had £2204809385, in three hours I’d consumed the planet with my dirty filthy greed for Nintendo products and I’m now shitting DS Roms out of my arsehole via the R4 and my leg has bizarrely been replaced with a wooden peg”

The article gets worse as you progress. Anonymous people are ragged in to back up the story.

“However, the R4, said one industry analyst (not the industry analyst - Ed), takes games piracy into a new level.

Beyond the purchase of the device, the user never has to go to stores to buy pirated software. “The R4 gives ordinary users the ability to sit at home and just browse the internet for any game that takes their fancy. A few clicks of the mouse and it is theirs free. Unlike previous piracy tools, the technology is not intimidating,” he said.”

That’s not my misquote by the way, our dosile journalist did say “the user never has to go to stores to buy pirated software”. That’s lucky, because if I went the shop and got sold pirated software I’d be pretty darn pissed off. Unless it cost me 2p and a mojo. Even then I’d miss the mojo. And yes, the technology is not intimidating - whereas conversely tape to tape recording was incredibly difficult, VCR to VCR recording was an absolute nightmare, CD to tape and CD to CD and DVD to DVD copying is completely and totally intimidating…

“But hey, we’ve already got one invisible-in-all-likelihood-made-up analyst to back up my in depth reportage” thinks Mr Reporter. “What I really need to do now is invoke something my readers will be well aware of as a comparison and imply that there’s a throng of people adopting my stance”

And the result?

“Some believe the R4 may have the same disruptive effect on Nintendo’s business model as early music file-sharing sites such as Napster had on the record industry.”

Fucking christ.

Honestly, I don’t know what effect the R4 has on Nintendo’s business model but given even our local Asda, Blockbuster and Woolworths are thronging with DS titles for sale where only a few months ago they had a tiny shelf in each - I don’t think it’s quite that serious a problem. A problem? Yeah - piracy always is, especially if you’re the one being pirated from (or if you’re an industry body attempting to insinuate that everyone alive is a filthy pirate who owes you a living) but nowhere near the cataclysmic hush hush top secret underground end of the handheld gaming industry as we know it that The Times seems desperate to imply. Who are these some people? Do they actually exist or are they just made up to add weight to the story?

I know piracy is an emotive issue, I know piracy is a confusing issue for some (this should help clear a few things up) but for once can somebody not put out ill informed scaremongering propaganda bullshit on the subject please? I’m not asking for much, just a bit of thought, intelligence and considered investigation for a change.

Until then, I’m going to still be somewhere between hanging my head in embarrassment and pissing myself laughing at the stupidity of it all.

Oh, and stop playing the Napster card, people. That makes you look *really* thick.

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Montys Christmas Special Preview

November 4, 2007 · Filed Under Latest Post · 16 Comments 

After an overwhelmingly negative start to the new look with the Mutant Storm Empire review, I think it’s time to restore some balance to the world. Unfortunately for you, dear readers - unlike the aforementioned boredom fest of a game, you can’t actually lay your grubby mits upon Montys Christmas Special just yet.

I know, I’m not on my own in hating those “nyeargh, I’ve played something you haven’t” style blog posts, and this is, to some extents very much that - but it’s not often I’m compelled to blog about something I’ve played which isn’t available for public download yet. Alright, the odd NDA here and there has also seriously put paid to that in the past, but other than that…

Way back in the mists of time, long before Mario became quite the cashcow icon that he is now and blue hedgehogs only appeared in games because people only had 5 or 6 colours to play with and games suffered from serious colour clash, a different set of heroes captured the British public consciousness. Some of them did, anyway - for every Jet Set Willy, we had a Steg The Slug, a Spikey Harold (a white hedgehog, go figure), Technician Ted, Dynamite Dan, CJ The Elephant, Thing On A Spring (it’s a fucking thing, on a spring!), Sam Stoat, Grumpey Gumphrey Super Sleuth… the list goes on.

I’m sure some of our more ardent retro fan readers will recognise some, if not all of the names above, maybe even remember some of the games fondly, but that’s kinda beside the point. Most of these game characters, and rightly so, are likely in the gaming equivalent of the Fletcher Memorial Home now.

One of the more successful franchise characters of the eighties was a certain Monty Mole, not to be confused with the Nintendo character, of course. An early case of natural selection in gaming with two entirely different versions of his first appearance being created. One a scrolling platformer for the C64 by Tony Crowther that wasn’t so good, the other, superior version - Pete Harraps original for the ZX Spectrum. Luckily for us, the guts of the series continued - providing you ignore the blatant cash in of Monty Is Innocent and Core Designs contribution to the series, Impossamole - in what was to become Pete Harraps trademark style.

Screens would be packed with death defying leaps to be performed, a myriad of bizarre nasties would thwart Montys attempts to progress through the screens, all the things we take for granted in modern platform games made an appearance in Montys games. Even the irritating “what has that got to do with anything?” non-platforming parts designers like to throw in just to make sure the game doesn’t quite feel consistent reared their heads.

When the Monty series was good, it was fucking amazingly good. Just mention Monty On The Run to any Commodore 64 owner and sit back and watch as their eyes glaze over with memories of the awesome Rob Hubbard tune that accompanied the game. British 8 bit platforming goes hand in hand with Monty Mole like bangers go with mash, like Chas goes with Dave, like something that goes with something else really well.

Mind you, we all pretend the escape kit was never added to Monty On The Run, as that was total shitcake and infringes seriously on any rose tinted view you might want to hold. Yeah, randomly pick the objects at the start in the hope that you’ve got what you need to progress but you won’t find out until you get to the room you need the object for. Very clever, that. At least the remake had the decency to do away with it.

Montys Christmas Special is the spiritual successor to the finest three Monty Mole games (Wanted, …On The Run and Auf Weidershein respectively), essentially - it’s the sequel that never was but should have been and probably could have been if the developers didn’t have one eye on taking on the abominable glut of poor 16 bit platformers with yet another poor 16 bit platformer.

Spanning a whopping eighty screens set over four stages and jam packed with luscious eight bit style graphics (with a fair liberty taken on the palette it must be said) and fiendishly difficult at times - it’s a wonderful game. Along the way you’ll be taking trips through pipes, going the fairground, negotiating toxic waste, avoiding inflatable cars (I piss you not), clambering across the ceiling, jumping saws and spikes and other platforming standards and having a massive pissload of fun with it. Promise.

It’s defiantly old school in design, defiantly old school in looks and defiantly old school in playability.

I’ve a great deal of respect for my MR compadre Mr Smila’s graphical talents and even more for Scottige’s room design talents. The sections Scott contributed to Jet Set Willy Online being some of the greatest and most evil 8 bit platform rooms I’ve been fortunate enough to play - rule of thumb, if it’s in JSWO and it’s evil, it’s probably Scotts. However, as nice and as polished as their previous collaborations have been, none have really played quite so well to their respective strengths as Montys Christmas Special does.

It gives me the horn, in a good way.

It’ll be out in the wild in December, I believe. In the meantime, have some screenshots to tide you over with.

Montys Christmas Special Montys Christmas Special Montys Christmas Special

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