Who doesn’t love a good achievement? No-one, that’s who!

We at the UCHG love a good stat, so much so check out this 90’s inspired info-graph of our glorious 10 years of existence.

Behold! The Stats!

 

Happy New Year! Here it is, 2018. A significant year for us at the UCHG as it marks 10 years since our inception. Let me say that again. 10 years. A Decade!

From our humble beginnings as nothing more than a list of games jotted down in the back of a satirical “Hit List”* to the present day – a lot has changed. Not only do we now look and feel older, the games we play and how we play them has evolved. Our spare time may have reduced but our love of the classics most certainly has not. It is true that in this new world of adult living we get together less for the purpose of completing a retro game on its original hardware. We no longer sit around drinking cider and talking about the old favourites with a mic and video recorder in hand. Life has moved on.

It is the natural way of things like this. The UCHG was never intended to be anything more than 4 good friends taking a seat on a sofa and enjoying all that the rich history of gaming has to offer – And enjoy it we most certainly did. The UCHG is not a job or a task to be completed on a schedule. The content is born out of actual play time, be it as a group or as individuals. That said the absence of content over the last year should not be interpreted as a lack of gaming. The gaming has continued, we have just not had occasion to share it with the world, choosing to make the best of our now scarce time levelling up and getting high scores.

It is undeniable that we are entering into a period of our collective lives where this trend of having less and less spare time will likely increase rather than improve. Arcade machines have been consigned to a spell in storage as living space becomes more of a premium. Consoles are gathering dust on the shelves and facing competition from the hordes of mini consoles that are now all the rage. But this is not the end. Fear not as we enter this period of retro gaming hibernation, we will resurface and we will continue to game. New spaces to host LANs will be found, the arcade machines will be dusted down and when the SNES mini inevitably breaks, its predecessor will be on hand to show the young upstart how it is done.

So please, as the fog of war from our 8-bit recession closes in, come and join us as we bask in the warmth of our CRT monitors. Let us reminisce, explore and celebrate a Decade of the UCHG!

*It is not satirical, he still has it and woe betide anyone unlucky enough to feature on it.

Controversy! That’s the way to get people to read stuff, right? Clickbait. But I do have a point to make.

The latest episodes of Star Wars are well on the way to being the most successful films of all time. Yes, it seems that the franchise has survived the serious physical and mental abuse inflicted upon it by its own father – a bit like Luke Skywalker.

Not including the five seconds of beard-in-a-hood footage at the end of The Force Awakens **BELATED SPOILER ALERT**, there’s been a big gap since we last saw Luke Skywalker himself, aka Mark Hamill, on our screens. Or has there? He’s been on my screen quite a lot through my life, and I’m not talking about a weird Google images search either.

As you may be aware, Mr Skywalker is also one of the most talented actors in videogames. He’s been the obese villain of beloved motorbike adventure Full Throttle, but he’s chiefly recognised for being everyone’s favourite Joker – in the recent Batman videogame revivals of Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and Arkham Knight. His laugh, his mannerisms, his delight in others’ despair – yes, Heath Ledger got nothin’ on Mark.

But still, all of this is but a shadow to what Mark means to me in games. For he is the saviour of the galaxy in yet another of the greatest sci-fi space opera stories of all time: Wing Commander.

The Future of Entertainment

So what is a Wing Commander anyway? Back in 1990, a man named Chris Roberts had a glimpse of the future. He’s a bit like a gaming Yoda, but less old and less green.

He saw a way of telling a story like a film, but a film in which you played a part. Your decisions and actions would shape the course of history, would decide the fate of your friends, your enemies, and the whole galaxy.

Wing Commander is the story of a future human race fighting to defend the known universe against aggression. Over the course of many games (over ten now, including spinoffs) you fight intense dogfights in the vacuum of space to fight the good fight.

The first two games were very basic indeed – but 1994’s Wing Commander III was a breakthrough. Finally, Chris Roberts’ vision had been realised: it featured live-action cutscenes with actual movie stars, including Biff from Back to the Future (Tom Wilson), Gimli off Lord of the Rings (John Rhys-Davies), and the legendary Malcolm McDowell (a ‘British person’ off South Park). Roberts was director, and basic set designs were supplemented by green screen CGI – impressive for the time.

The story was shaped both through dialogue choices in these cutscenes, and in the in-game action: whether you decided to disagree with someone and pick a fight, or whether you failed objectives or destroyed your targets. The actors were bemused by Roberts’ ideas – the way they had film scenes multiple times, with different reactions, responses and emotions depending on what the player chose. It was hard work, and it was complicated at the time – but it works. It basically beat Mass Effect to the punch by years.

The main part of the game is space combat – and damn good that is too. The first two games are hard as nails, but as the series found its feet both commercially and artistically, so too the game improved. Wing Commander IV, in 1996, is almost perfection (and marks no.102 in the 1001 games to play before you die).

However, the most ambitious part of the whole franchise is the concept of a branching mission tree. It rarely works in practice, because if you fail you simply try again – but in theory, it’s an incredible idea. Should you fail a mission, or a objective doesn’t go your way – like when the giant space cats called the ‘Kilrathi’ fuck up your plans – the story takes a different route. You can sometimes correct your course with success in later missions, but sometimes you end up fighting to the bitter Game Over. The idea was to step up that feeling of immersion to the max, the idea that your efforts really were part of a greater whole.

So what about Mark Hamill?

The hero of the original Wing Commander never end had a name. I guess the idea was that had he been given one, the immersion breaks – they are no longer you. However, the developers had to call him something, and because of his slightly unusual colouration of Blue Hair, he became known as.. Blair.

The name stuck. By the time of Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, technology had moved on from sprite-based graphics, and Colonel Christopher “Maverick” Blair had now the face of Mark Hamill. Live action cutscenes may seem archaic in these times, but back then it was still revolutionary.

The game was a huge hit – and rightly so. The intricate plot draws you in, with twists and turns and betrayals – backed up by blitzing dogfights with intelligent AI. Two years later came Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom and, with a then-unheard-of budget of $12M, took it further. With the galaxy in turmoil in the aftermath of the war, some former allies turn renegade – the question of ‘do the ends justify the means?’ becomes a pivotal one.

Throughout these games, Mark Hamill’s presence grounds you with a believable character: a regular hero, whose struggles (despite being mostly against giant space cats) can relate to your own. Because you inhibit his story, and because your choices become his choices, it becomes a much more personal tale than sitting in a cinema – and this, really, is the joy of games. But it also makes Mark Hamill’s Wing Commander that much more relatable than the superhuman Skywalker.

And to the future…

What’s most exciting is that Chris Roberts continues to push gaming forward – with his long-awaited Star Citizen. With a crowdfunded budget of now well over $50 million, it’s certainly ambitious – and the single campaign, known as Squadron 42, stars a certain familiar face…

PC gaming’s come a long way in 20 years…

So here we go. Sit down, strap in and watch the beast come to life. (Oh yeah, that’s not a typo in the title)

Now isn’t she a real beauty? All the planning, failing, cutting and screwing paid off. My very own Raspberry Pi power Cocktail Arcade Cab lives! There were certainly moments where it looked like the whole thing would fail harder than a new Formula 1 Qualifying format, but somehow we pulled it off.

Now I concede that it is not original hardware. That said there is still something oh so satisfying about sitting opposite your mates, with a beer on the top and your joystick in hand – Perfection.

I have to be honest here and admit that the costs did spiral a tad over budget. The materials came to a little more than expected and I had the expense of all the fuck-ups during its early life. Overall though it came in well under the cost of buying a pre built one online and was way more rewarding.

I have to thank all who contributed to making yet another one of my childish ideas a reality. Thanks to the men of the UCHG for all the assistance leading up and including the build. To everyone who listened, acted interested, provided tools, space and inspiration – Thank you. I wont list you all here, you know who you are.

All that is left for me to do now is a find a way of knocking Steve and Fen off the Juno First leader board and take my rightful place at the top. It’s my God damn machine!