Since 2008 we’ve gone through many games at the UCHG — and inevitably we’ve cov­ered many that are included in the ‘1001 Games to Play Before You Die’. Rather than revisit the games them­selves, it’s much more enter­tain­ing to get a bit nos­tal­gic and see which ones we’ve already enjoyed in the last few years…

1001 No. 25: ‘Combat’ (1977)

Brad explored the joys of head-to-head com­pe­ti­tion with his much loved Atari 2600

1001 No. 26: ‘Super Mario Kart’ (1992)

A face­off in Mario Kart form, on the Super Nintendo — where Ross and Fen com­peted for a kart­ing victory

1001 No. 27: ‘Doom’ (1993)

Featured by the UCHG in an all-Doom roundup, a trib­ute to illus­tra­tor Don Ivan Punchatz and some excel­lent art­work, the orig­i­nal Doom also inspired a com­plete playthrough by Steve — cos noone loves Doom more than him

1001 No. 28: ‘Micro Machines 2′ (1994)

Micro Machines inspired a Super Battle Bonanza Blowout, an incred­i­ble show­down between Ross and Steve

1001 No. 29: ‘Super Mario 64′ (1996, N64)

Our first con­sole chal­lenge back in 2008, with every­body look­ing fright­en­ingly young… where we blasted through one of the great­est and most rev­o­lu­tion­ary video games of all time

1001 No. 30: ‘Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2′ (2000)

The incred­i­ble skate­board­ing / falling over sim­u­la­tor, which we sped through to 100% in a cou­ple of hours — fea­tur­ing some hilar­i­ous fail­ings from Ross

1001 No. 31: ‘Hitman 2: Silent Assassin’ (2002) and No. 32: ‘Hitman: Blood Money’ (2006)

The UCHG lov­ingly looked back at the entire assas­si­na­tion sim series (so far) over two in depth talks

1001 No. 33: ‘Medal of Honor: Allied Assault’ (2002)

The UCHG took on the entire game from start to fin­ish in an epic chal­lenge. MOHAA!

1001 No. 34: ‘CS Source’ (2004)

The long run­ning ter­ror­ist vs. counter-terrorist mul­ti­player game has inspired both a fan­tas­tic Xmas spe­cial and the birth of the Hostage Assassination Squad

1001 No. 35: ‘Need for Speed: Most Wanted’ (2005)

In a 2009 Need for Speed roundup we dis­cussed how damn awe­some Most Wanted is

1001 No. 36: ‘Left 4 Dead’ (2008)

Thousands of zom­bies were harmed in mak­ing of these many vis­its to L4D by UCHG — cus­tom art­work, a 5 hour time­lapse, and an unbe­liev­able chal­lenge attempt by Ross

1001 No. 37: ‘Left 4 Dead 2′ (2009)

The UCHG saw 2009 become 2010 over a New Year’s eve marathon of Left 4 Dead 2

1001 No. 38: ‘Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising’ (2009)

An excel­lent (if very dif­fer­ent) fol­lowup to the ground­break­ing Operation Flashpoint, Dragon Rising became Brad’s Game of the Year

So that all brings us to 38 down… many more to go!

As we all know, Christmas is a time for both giv­ing and receiv­ing. The UCHG have a habit of exchang­ing par­tic­u­larly mar­vel­lous bits of retro gam­ing periph­ery; gift results have in the past included mul­ti­ple Alex Kidd games and light­guns in all shapes and sizes.

Xmas 2011 came bring­ing gifts of retro gam­ing — although this time from the unex­pected quar­ter of Fen’s girl­friend, who appar­ently knows him rather well.

He was pre­sented with:

A Nintendo Game and Watch (1982).

The Game and Watch solved a major prob­lem young gamers always face: how can I play awe­some arcade games on the move, and always be aware of what time it is? The Game and Watch is the answer. I admit I have always assumed that because of the dual-screen setup, you gamed and…watched. But no, there is a clock but­ton, with fully func­tional alarm. Amazing!

In class­rooms it would have pro­vided the per­fect cover: “Is that a game?”; “No sir, it’s a watch”. Because it looks like a watch! Doesn’t it?

No, it doesn’t look like a watch.

But what it does look like is a Nintendo DS. The design of the thing is obvi­ously now rather iconic, and Nintendo rather won­der­fully applied this clas­sic their new series of hand­helds. I find it rather awe­some that some peo­ple are wan­der­ing around with a brand new 3DS, unaware that it looks just like some­thing from 1982.

My par­tic­u­lar Game and Watch comes in clas­sic orange, and plays a basic ver­sion of Donkey Kong. It has two dif­fi­cul­ties, Game A and… Game B. You jump over bar­rels and beat that mon­key — it’s clas­sic Kong. My best score so far is 203. Is that good? I don’t know — but what I do know is that it only goes up to 999.

I also never knew that there were loads of these things released — Donkey Kong is just one of many Game and Watch ver­sions, with around 60 vari­a­tions pro­duced. But this one is excel­lent, and in great nick; i was even pro­vided with spare bat­ter­ies, so I can keep on gam­ing (and check­ing the time).

Have you ever checked the time on a Game and Watch? For some more retro fun, check out the 80’s TV ad:

Fen

Here’s an excel­lent game you can go and grab right now, and for free.

There have been a num­ber of indie games released in recent years that explic­itly appeal to our love of retro, hark­ing back to those won­der­ful days when games weren’t just about graph­ics — but were about that pure essence of great game­play.

1001 No.24: ‘Cave Story’ (2004, PC)

Cave Story is one of these games. There is cur­rently a remake being sold on Steam — but the orig­i­nal Japanese release has been fully trans­lated and amaz­ingly released for free. It’s got a bril­liant lit­tle sto­ry­line with mul­ti­ple end­ings, and a great sense of humour too. The game­play is pure class, with a range of chal­leng­ing ene­mies and lev­els, some really putting your plat­form­ing skills to the test. Some of the bosses are damn dif­fi­cult — but if you can mas­ter it, it’s so sat­is­fy­ing. Think a kind of mashup of Mario and Metroid. It’s ace.

And the best thing about it? For me, it’s because it looks and feels like a NES game. The sound, graph­ics and plat­form­ing are pure retro, and I love it. Did I men­tion that it’s free? Get it right now!

Download Cave Story

Another ran­dom game encounter for me this one — a small list­ing in the 1001 book, with the phrase “pos­si­bly one of the best games never played”. Needless to say I was intrigued. Then I spot­ted the name Jordan Mechner — the man behind Prince of Persia (both the grunty park­our sim, and the ground­break­ing orig­i­nal); and one of the most orig­i­nal and influ­en­tial game devel­op­ers ever.

1001 No.23: ‘The Last Express’ (1997, PC)

And the Last Express turned out to be no dif­fer­ent — it’s cer­tainly unique, and I’m hugely grate­ful to the 1001 for intro­duc­ing it to me. Costing some­thing ludi­crous like mil­lions of dol­lars to cre­ate, and sell­ing badly despite crit­i­cal acclaim, it sank with­out a trace — prac­ti­cally bank­rupt­ing the pro­duc­tion com­pany in the process. Thanks to the incred­i­ble Good Old Games xmas sale though, they have revived this masterpiece.

It’s cer­tainly an acquired taste. At its most basic it’s a stereo­typ­i­cal point & click adven­ture with a WW1 plot, a kind of mur­der mys­tery — it’s even set on the Orient Express. The visual style is on first look off-putting: for a game that came out the same year as Tekken 3 it some­times appears extremely basic. But screen­shots can­not do it jus­tice — using the tech­nique of roto­scop­ing each frame has actu­ally been cap­tured by real actors on film, then drawn in and coloured by hand. Extremely painstak­ing, but it results in a great visual style that can have super real­is­tic movement.

There’s a great exam­ple on Wikipedia on how this process hap­pens, check it out.

The sto­ry­line goes along at a quick enough pace, and kept me guess­ing; and it won’t take you long either. However, the most amaz­ing thing about the game is that it plays out in almost real-time.

That’s right, things hap­pen regard­less of where you are or what you’re doing. Somehow you never miss the really vital stuff, but you must eaves­drop on con­ver­sa­tions, lis­ten in to what might be impor­tant con­ver­sa­tions, or react to what hap­pens around you all while on a clock. Despite the aging graph­ics and game­play, I’ve never really felt so involved in a game: I felt like this was a real envi­ron­ment, where pas­sen­gers go about their busi­ness, and you have to uncover the mys­tery for your­self amidst them.

Usually it’s easy to want to resort to walk­throughs for adven­tures when stuck, but here I didn’t want to: I wanted to see it play out. And you should too, it’s only a few $$.

January marked the start of some­thing beau­ti­ful for the UCHG. It was not only the start of the year but also the start of the heroic 1001 Games to Play Before You Die chal­lenge. It also marked the arrival of the dis­tin­guished gen­tle­man of gam­ing to the col­lec­tion. I am of course refer­ring to none other than the BBC Micro. The Atari 2600 was crowned the UCHG’s top Console and blood was shed dur­ing an intense SB3 show­down on Super Mario Kart.

February was offi­cially Brad’s favourite month ever as not only is it the month that marks his assem­bly back in 1986, but he also finally got to blast some 80’s bad men in Lethal Enforcers. The UCHG also returned to Miracle Wold where Steve’s hatred for Alex Kidd was bought back to life.

The month that is March was filled with the release of the Nintendo 3DS, the truth about what really hap­pens on fer­ries and Brad com­pared Out Run on the Game Gear to a tin opener.

During April the UCHC was besieged by a tiny Moustachio’d Menace whose tyran­ni­cal rule dic­tated what was to be played. Ross became Infamous and Fen put an end to Abe’s Exoddus all in the name of the 1001.

As the Americans took the Bins out on a Bank Holiday Ross opened up May with his epic L4D art­work inspired by the UCHG’s “Fuck you Francis” style of play. Brad devel­oped a slight God com­plex whilst play­ing Darwinia and Fen went back to Black. No no, not like that! It’s a game.

June now. And as the Year hit the half way point Fen was rushed to Hospital with a bad case of Bloaty Head (noth­ing to do with going back to Black, and no not that head). Brad dis­cov­ered that Ayrton Senna’s great­ness on track did not extend to games and that Nigel Mansell is also called N.Jones.

As the world waved good­bye to its favourite Hamster cage liner — The News of the World — Brad and Ross used July to tell the tale of their trip into Hell and back as they recounted their visit to Chernobyl. Fen, not to be out­done, went head to head with Hitler in Wolfenstine 3D and won! Rupert Murdoch and his pick­led scro­tum of a head would have killed for a month of sto­ries like that!

In the August sun Fen failed to get a PC case from a PC shop and Brad revealed the secret to his shot­gun suc­cess to be Duck Hunt on the NES.

September saw the cam­pa­gin to play 1001 games before we die step it up a gear. Fen played Red Dead Revolver & Red Dead Redemption, Psi-Ops Mindgate Conspiracy and Another World all whilst hold­ing down a full time job!

In keep­ing with cur­rent affairs Fen went back to the Battlefield in October in prepa­ra­tion for the mighty Battlefield 3. In other news Colonel Gaddafi was killed in Libya, which caused the stock price for Just for Men to plummet.

As the dark cold nights of November drew in, Brad had the inde­cency to relo­cate and was forced into a life with no Internet access. There was how­ever a sil­ver lin­ing to this Internetless cloud as he was forced to play Tekken.

As the year came to an end in December, like it does every year, the UCHG dis­cov­ered that there are games you can play with your cock and Fen took down The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker — which does sound like Link is capa­ble of wak­ing peo­ple up with his ass!

So there you have it! Another 12 months of games, games and more games. We would like to thank all of the peo­ple that have vis­ited the site, donated games and left com­ments, apart from the guys who keep try­ing to push the penis enlarg­ing pills! You know who you are. We wish you all a happy and pros­per­ous New Year. See you in 2012!

After Twilight Princess on the Wii, I was itch­ing for another Zelda game. Twilight Princess was just so much fun, and so epic, that even though it had taken many hours I wanted more.

One GameCube pur­chase later and I was ready to go — with the pre­vi­ous Zelda title “Wind Waker”.

1001 No.22: ‘The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker’ (2003, Gamecube)

While it is sim­i­lar in many ways, as all Zelda games are, it is also so very dif­fer­ent. What first takes you by sur­prise is the graph­i­cal style — it’s all cell shaded, with a real car­toon look to it. The sounds, com­bat, sto­ry­line and adven­tur­ing are pure Zelda, but it looks noth­ing like the games that have come before it. I quite liked it, but it was a bit weird see­ing Link with his MASSIVE eyes and WIDE FACE.

I say ‘Link’, but as always the Zelda sto­ry­line / time­line is silly, so just go with it. You’re not the same ‘Hero of Time’ as before, but you’re still essen­tially the same per­son — with the Triforce sym­bol on your hand. I dunno, who cares.

The main dif­fer­ence is the way you nav­i­gate the world — for­get horses, this time it’s sail­ing. That’s right, this game is essen­tially 60% Extreme Boat Simulator. With power over the winds with your ‘magic baton’ (which you con­trol with some very camp pos­tur­ing) you sail around on a boat that talks to you. Being a Zelda game you com­pletely accept this.

The size of the world (or sea) that you nav­i­gate does make the game feel epic in size, as Twilight Princess did — but unfor­tu­nately for me it did become rather tedious in parts. When I needed to get some­where i tended to point the boat in the right direc­tion then go make a cup of tea. You get a warp spell thing later on which helps — but every time you have whip out your wand, and wave it around, and I couldn’t be deal­ing with that.

The end­ing sec­tion made up for a lot though — it’s a chal­leng­ing fight through every boss in the game, and the tough even­tual fight with Ganon (of course) who takes many forms. It may be a weird one, but Wind Waker should be cred­ited for try­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent — but no more boat sim­u­la­tors please, if I wanted that I’d have bought this.

It has long been rumored that the way we play games is chang­ing. The days of sit­ting in a dark­ened room bash­ing out high scores and tak­ing down end bosses are sup­pos­edly num­bered. It is also said that the launch of the Nintendo Wii, Playstation Move and Xbollox Connect, as well as count­less tablet, phone and social media games add proof to the argu­ment that gam­ing as we know it is dead.

Now it is hard to deny that the acces­si­ble drop in and out style of play that these games offer, mixed with the social aspect of look­ing ridicu­lous with your mates is pop­u­lar and in some cases great fun (see our WarioWare vid). However, it was bought to my atten­tion the other day that this style of game may have gone too far.

I am of course refer­ring to the games cre­ated by Captive Media. They are described as “The world’s first retro­fit, net­worked, wash­room gam­ing sys­tem… with hands-free con­trol.” That’s right! A wash­room gam­ing sys­tem with hands-free con­trol! Is this bog based enter­tain­ment voice con­trolled? Is it motion con­trolled? Oh no.

Its Cock Controlled!

Oh Yeah! You read that right. These are games that you play with your knob. They are designed to be played in toi­lets, with a screen at eye level above the uri­nal and sen­sor pads in the uri­nal itself. The idea is that you play the game by piss­ing on the sen­sors to move a char­ac­ter or select and option. Now I have to say that never in my life have I been tak­ing a waz and thought “I wish I could play games using my lun­cheon meat trun­cheon.” And what would you play? I feel the con­trol method is quite lim­it­ing both in time and actions its able to exe­cute. Unless they make some seri­ous improve­ment I fear we are some way off those short but messy Battlefield 3 ses­sions you are now pic­tur­ing in your head.

The games avail­able at the moment are basic and piss easy. They fea­ture such titles as On The Piste, Cleaver Dick and even a rip of one of my all time favorites — Breakout. Now this to me seems like a step too far for gam­ing, although I wouldn’t mind com­bin­ing play­ing with two of my favorite things and giv­ing Breakout a crack. As amus­ing as this piece of toi­let tech really is. If you take it as a sign of things to come then it won’t be long until games really are dick!

The Legend of Zelda series is one which, for one rea­son or another, I have never got around to explor­ing. Most likely the cause is that the con­soles I owned as a child were made by Sega, with many hours ded­i­cated to Streets of Rage and Sonic rather than Mario and his companions.

The loss is mine though, as I’m well aware it’s a hugely reward­ing col­lec­tion of games: indeed, the con­sis­tent qual­ity is sur­pris­ing, with around a huge 12 Zelda titles in the 1001 Games book.

You have to start some­where I guess, so where else but the Nintendo Wii.

1001 No.21: ‘The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess’ (2006, Wii / Gamecube)

From a lit­tle back­ground read­ing on this game I was sur­prised to learn that it was a hasty port from an orig­i­nal release on the Gamecube - a con­sole I like to think of as the Nintendo’s very own Sega Saturn. Even more inter­est­ing is that it is iden­ti­cal to the Gamecube release, with the excep­tion of the oblig­a­tory Wii motion con­trols, and — get this — it is com­pletely mir­rored left to right. Why? Because whereas the hero, Link, usu­ally holds his sword in his left hand, the nature of the Wii means most nor­mal peo­ple (not weirdo left­ies) would swing with their right. Rather than tweak­ing that part of the game, I pre­sume it was just eas­ier to… well… flip it.

So, my first real foray into Zelda — and I loved it. You play as Link, though appar­ently not the same Link as in the other Zelda games — the Zelda time­line is pretty sketchy, as pointed out here). As I expected the story was great fun, with you dis­cov­er­ing your true des­tiny to save the land from this weird ‘Twilight’ influ­ence. Fortunately rather than turn­ing every­one into poncy teenage vam­pire types, it makes every­thing go a bit Tron.

A real sense of adven­ture is what really drew me in to this ver­sion of Zelda: you start off with noth­ing, not even your iconic green out­fit; you amble around your own tiny vil­lage, explor­ing only the nearby woods. Then, slowly but surely, the game opens out fur­ther and fur­ther, even­tu­ally cov­er­ing huge expanses. You run into all sorts of weird races and crea­tures, and your adven­ture takes you all over what feels like a huge land­scape made up of plains, forests, moun­tains, deserts — it feels epic. About 40 hours later, you look back and think — did I really come from some tiny mud hut in a dead-end town?

Apparently many of the char­ac­ters and races that you meet are long-term inhab­i­tants of Zelda games — so the die-hard fans prob­a­bly got more out of meet­ing them than I did. One thing this game has done is make me want to return to the Zelda series: I need to get back and check out Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, the Wind Waker, A Link to the Past, and more… not to men­tion the brand new Zelda game just released on Wii, Skyward Sword. It’ll prob­a­bly take up hun­dreds of hours of my life… but I know I’m gonna love it.