Charlie Brooker's 2009 Gameswipe.
First broadcast 29th September 2009.
Charlie Brooker
Robert Florence
Ryan MacLeod
Graham Linehan
Dara O Briain
Rebecca Mayes
Charlie Brooker
Robert Florence
Ryan MacLeod
Graham Linehan
Dara O Briain
Rebecca Mayes
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Hello, I'm Charlie Brooke and you're watching GamesWiper, a programme all about video games.
00:30Video games, bleeping, blooping, masturbatory aids for emotionally crippled social outcasts,
00:35probably male outcasts, probably physically repugnant and sexually inexperienced, probably
00:40frightened of the real world, probably standing here on this very spot saying these very words
00:45to camera right now, probably me. Basically, video games are for losers like me, apparently.
00:53Yeah, games have a bit of an image problem. It doesn't help that you rarely see games on TV
00:58and when you do, they're often being discussed in searingly negative terms.
01:02In Grand Theft Auto, your son or your husband or your boyfriend or whoever
01:07can hire a prostitute, have sex with her and then beat her to death with a baseball bat.
01:14Ever since the primitive early days of video gaming, TV has never really known how to convey
01:19the white hot electronic thrill of the pixelated realm. Here's a brand new idea from the United
01:24States which can turn your television set into a game that two can play. All you have to do is
01:31first of all just switch it off, unplug the aerial, plug in the electronic game simulator,
01:38switch on the set again and now who's for tennis? Play.
01:46Fifteen love.
01:47Christmas looks fun around your house. That was my point, 30 love again.
01:58Games steadily grew in complexity, first with eerie spectral shooters like Space Invaders,
02:03then with colourful characters like Pac-Man, but they were rarely seen on TV except in cheery 80s
02:07sitcom style commercials for exciting looking games starring familiar albeit incongruous faces.
02:12It's my Atari and it's my turn to play, just because I'm winning,
02:16killer's luck. I suppose it was luck I beat you at Space Invaders, Defender, Yar's Revenge.
02:21Some of us are just a little bit quicker, sharper. When it wasn't accepting the mucky
02:26advertising dollar however, TV was treating games with disapproving paternal disdain.
02:32Most games are developed from just a few classic themes. There's monster games like this one where
02:37you run around bumping off critters or swallowing giant cherries, and there's the Space Invader
02:44theme where you shoot at moving fleets of hostile aliens. Fairly boring. And then there's the more
02:50recent sports games. Well, sports games to me are perhaps the most appalling use of computers.
02:56Christ, if you think that's an appalling use of computers you don't want to look at my hard drive.
03:00British TV's disinterest in games throughout the 80s was particularly unfair considering
03:04there was a renaissance of homebrew programming going on. Thanks to the availability of cheap,
03:09easy-to-use computers like the ZX Spectrum here, a generation of youngsters started
03:14programming quirky games with a distinctively British sense of humour. Titles like the grange
03:19hill-em-up School Days, in which you played a naughty boy, or the Python-esque platform game
03:23Manic Minor, or the groundbreaking 3D Explorathon Knight Lore. By the 90s games had become so
03:29popular TV couldn't ignore them, and shows like Games Master thrilled millions with its heady
03:33blend of gladiatorial gaming combat and celebrity cameos. And charming sequences in which nervous
03:38kiddywinks begged Sir Patrick Moore's Games Master for assistance in the manner of Oliver Twist
03:43anxiously requesting additional gruel. Next. Hello Games Master. Just get on with your question
03:50please young man. On European Club Soccer on the Mega Drive I can't get enough power into my kicks,
03:55what should I be doing? The success of Games Master led to similar programs like
04:00Games World on Sky, a sort of cheap spin-off in which people had to take on these ridiculously
04:05titled vidiators. Here we see Dave the Game's Animal Perry taking on Big Boy Barry in a game
04:10of Street Fighter 2, very much my generation's equivalent of John Lennon and Bob Dylan jamming
04:14together in Abbey Road Studios. Let's play. Once again Barry over on the right playing Chun-Li
04:21and Dave is over on the left with Garth. Yeah my generation was a bit stupid really. Big Boy Barry!
04:27Still, if TV shows featuring commercially available games weren't brilliant,
04:33shows featuring completely made-up games were even worse. Take the scarcely remembered Cyber Zone in
04:39which Craig Charles looked on as various contestants battled in unconvincing, clunky, tedious and
04:43baffling virtual reality games controlled by walking on the spot like you really needed a piss.
04:48It wasn't a hit. Now in 2009 even as Pixel Land grows bigger, more exciting and more inventive
04:54with each passing nanosecond, games are rarely covered on mainstream TV at all and when they
04:58are there's still that same degree of snooty disapproval. I hate computers, I've never played
05:02computer games before and hopefully will never play them again. Well I think games don't get
05:05their due at their best. They're immersive, amusing, entertaining and downright joyful.
05:10In a relatively short space of time they've evolved to become incredibly sophisticated.
05:14Arguably the first video game was this surprisingly smooth tennis sim created
05:18on an oscilloscope in an American laboratory in 1958. Take a look at the equivalent contemporary
05:23tennis game something like Virtua Tennis 2009 here and you can see just how far video games
05:29have come. Today there's a bewildering variety of different genres too. There are as many types
05:34of video game as there are pebbles on the beach. In fact there's even a game where you count pebbles
05:38on the beach or there would be if I wasn't lying. What a liar I am. Anyway to the uninitiated the
05:43different category titles can seem baffling whereas dweebs like me just like hearing them
05:47being discussed. That's why we're going to run through them starting with this one.
05:51Platformer a game in which a player-controlled character jumps between suspended platforms in
05:56order to reach a goal. Okay easy start everyone knows what a platform game is apart from maybe
06:01dead people. Arguably the first platform game was Nintendo's Donkey Kong in 1982 in which Mario
06:07known then only as Jumpman had to jump over barrels and prance between girders in order to
06:11impress a lady. At their best trad platform games were essentially little living cartoons sometimes
06:17explicitly so as in Tiny Toon Adventures here or Ken-chan and Kato-chan a weirdly scatological
06:23title for the PC engine with an odd emphasis on blowing off and turds and toilets and farts.
06:28Platformers have also been a good launch pad for characters such as Sonic the Hedgehog seen here
06:32rolling at high speed through a jolly cartoon world just like real hedgehogs don't. But it's
06:38Mario who's the undisputed king bitch in platform prison appearing in addictive brilliantly designed
06:42games like Super Mario Brothers 1 and 3 the groundbreaking Super Mario 64 which brought
06:47the third dimension to platform games with stunning confidence and most recently the
06:51downright psychedelic Super Mario Galaxy titles. Shoot-'em-up a game in which the player avoids
06:57attacks while shooting enemies usually in two dimensions. Shoot-'em-ups or shmups for short
07:02range from the famous spartan killing grounds of space invaders to the cartoonish idiocy
07:07of parodius. Shoot-'em-ups aren't as big as they used to be although they still have a hardcore
07:11following amongst masochistic maniacs who actively enjoy dipping into titles like Perfect Cherry
07:17Blossom which sort of resembles a firework display being sick but at any rate shoot-'em-ups are not
07:23to be confused with the following. First person shooter a 3d weapon based combat game viewed from
07:29the protagonist's vantage point. Yes shooting people in the face is something that never truly
07:34loses its magic. The earliest first person games for the home were basic flick screen affairs such
07:39as 3d monster maze on the zx81 the first 3d game for any home computer and it was surprisingly
07:44frightening despite its spartan visuals and complete lack of sound and it was scary partly
07:49because at the time seeing through the eyes of your character was a total novelty. Consequently
07:54this man really believes he is in the maze that the dinosaur really is after him don't you
08:01i'm a dinosaur you wuss. Of course the other thing that made 3d monster maze scary is that unlike me
08:06pussy boy here doesn't have a gun to defend himself with no he'd have to wait at least 10
08:10years for that until the nazis invaded. Suck it. No don't. Yeah skip forward a decade and Wolfenstein 3d
08:20turns up on the pc it was groundbreaking in its day for its fast-paced dark humor and extreme
08:24violence including a bit where you got to kill hitler of course now it's so flippin basic you
08:28can get it on the iphone where ironically it's so engrossing you won't notice people sneaking up
08:32behind you and shooting you in the head but if wolfenstein was the pioneer the following year
08:36doom became the popularizer it placed the action in a unique gothic sci-fi environment and it was
08:41gorier and most importantly of all it had atmosphere. It may look like a simple bang bang shooty affair
08:46but in fact above all doom was terrifying like a horror movie. From there on in a torrent of
08:52first-person shooters erupted including stone-cold classics like golden eye and the sprawling sci-fi
08:57loveliness of the halo series. Today's gamer has hundreds of first-person shooters to choose from
09:03including a recent remake of the very first one yes welcome to wolfenstein 2009 or willkommen aus dem
09:10wolfenstein 2009 as the nazis would say i'm a tid. It's set in 1943 and you play an american hero
09:20called bj blazkowicz although you might as well be a bit of rag on a stick for all the difference it
09:24makes. The setup is pretty standard stuff for a first-person shooter you've got some vaguely
09:29authentic world war ii weapons and you set about unrelentingly slaughtering members of the third
09:34right without a care for their families although i like to spice things up by imagining their
09:38backstories. This is Kurt he's a dad of three that's christmas for your kids. This is Henning
09:47he's got a sweetheart back home who's gonna be missing him
09:57it's all right he's a nazi. As we all learned in documentaries like raiders of the lost ark the
10:02nazis weren't just uniformed retro anti-semites no they were also well into the occult and the
10:08nazis in wolfenstein aren't any different. Anyway it's not just the nazis who go all magic it's
10:13also you or rather bj blazkowicz the dick you're having to be. Early on bj finds a magic amulet
10:19thing that gives him special abilities like the ability to access a sort of alternate reality
10:24called the veil which looks like a sort of 1940s version of tron. He's also got the power to slow
10:29down time so he can shoot nazis in the neck in slow motion like this. It all looks pretty enough
10:42in as much as an occult rerun of world war ii can look pretty and the game isn't bad it's just not
10:47hugely exciting or innovative. The mix of realistic weapons and mystical silliness is a bit weird
10:53and the world war ii shooter is an oversubscribed genre that's been done better before. The nazis
10:58are a bit of a pain in the ass as well to be honest they spend most of their time just spouting
11:02stupid nazi catchphrases which makes it feel a bit like you've just gone berserk on the set of
11:06alohalo which would have made for a more interesting game. Because the game is set up with a
11:12vague nod to open world scenarios you have to spend a lot of time wandering around in between
11:17missions endlessly retracing your steps in a depressing little town looking for jobs to do
11:22it's like living in stoke and you have to have loads of conversations with all these really
11:26boring humorless members of the resistance which means you end up sympathizing with the nazis.
11:32Agent Blazkowicz the device you discovered in the hospital basement is the tool portal.
11:37I always find myself doing the same thing when i'm faced with a boring conversation in games like
11:41this i just sort of wander pointlessly around the room and look from side to side while they're
11:46talking or sometimes just jump up and down pointlessly and what are you going to do talk the
11:51nazis to death? Anyway call me a fusty old man but i think the original wolfenstein had some humor to
11:57it and some charm whereas this is just a game in which you find yourself fighting off the nazis
12:02and deja vu sometimes with an axe.
12:09You know what's coming next it's tv funny man Dara O'Brien talking about something that annoys
12:14him when he plays games. Games will deny you content if you're not good enough if you have
12:21an artist you don't get to see the latter part of the game that doesn't happen in any other medium
12:26Rarely will a book stop you and go are you understanding the book? Talk to me about the
12:32character's development in the initial three chapters what themes have emerged and if you
12:36incorrectly answer it'll go read the chapters again. That doesn't happen in other media if you
12:43buy a klaxons album it doesn't go your dancing isn't good enough dance again only then can you
12:49hear the rest of the album. If you're playing say Gears of War right this would be one of my favorite
12:53boss levels the end of the second chapter of it there's a character called the berserker which is
12:57this monster who comes out literally bursts out of a door going and you have to lure the berserker
13:04to smash through a door so you stand there and the berserker sees you and then he runs at you
13:09and that gives you time to step away and the berserker runs and smashes the door then you run
13:13behind a pillar and the berserker gets confused and runs off and then you run to the next bit
13:17but the next bit's another door and you have to do it again but the door is narrower this time
13:21and then you get to door number two you think great I got through it do you know what's behind
13:25door number two there's another fucking door there is no need for there to be a third door
13:30it makes no sense that this building would have three hallways and so you go in and you
13:35smash the third apparently apparently you've got to shoot from there I have no idea I've never got
13:38to that because I'm so freaked out by having gone through the first two doors that I have no idea
13:43what my fingers are doing I'm offering him food that's what I'm doing like I'm pressing the wrong
13:48button and I'm toggling through my inventory menu while this guy is running towards me I'm
13:52scrolling through I'm picking different weapons I'm supposed to be ducking and rolling away from
13:56him and the berserker just races straight through me and kills me I've never finished it that's 11
14:04percent of the way through the game which means you know there's 89 of Gears of War I never saw
14:10because of that fucker and the door and that is just the story of my gaming life
14:16GTA 4 I will admit this publicly I have never seen Manhattan you have to get the initial island
14:23and there's various tasks one of which was to assassinate a guy in a like an underground train
14:27station but to get there you have to go out of a Russian nightclub and steal a car and then drive
14:34across the city and you're sitting in your own home going I've got a day off work and I'm in a
14:39commute I cannot believe that I've taken the time of my own to sit in fake traffic when I could be
14:45out in London driving somewhere nice in actual traffic and there's a toll bridge when you get
14:49across the bridge and if you don't if you drive through the toll bridge the police will start
14:52chasing you and so your game is it's always a hassle so you've got to pause at the toll bridge
14:57he throws money in and then you drive slowly in traffic to get to and if you don't kill the guy
15:02you go all the way back to the Russian nightclub there's no save point in the middle of it I've
15:06never seen Manhattan right I'm sure Manhattan is a dream I'm sure Manhattan in GTA 4 is a Manhattan
15:13of the 1920s where it's all and that's where where Nico Bellich's dreams all come true and
15:20you'll get a nice job in an office I'm sure that's what happens and you can have you can
15:24meet a nice girl and settle down just as long as you can just get to Manhattan and I've never got
15:28him there but sometimes it genuinely is illogical right I mean rock band for example rock band
15:34where you will you know is the whole point of rock band is you get to pretend to be your favorite
15:38band right and you get to it's all wielding an accent matters right but to get to the ones they
15:43promise in the back of the pack which is like Sabotage by the Beastie Boys or stuff by The Who
15:48right you have to you have to unlock them as it goes along so every time you play one admittedly
15:52you have to play at an easy level but you still have to play it like you still have to play
15:56maps by the yeah yeah yeahs or a song made famous by Mountain and the Mississippi what no one that
16:04wasn't made famous no one's ever heard of Mountain it never made them famous or the song famous but
16:09you still gotta play red red green green red red red I'm not sure maybe that's the musician's life
16:16maybe that correctly mirrors that a musician has to do a lot of things before he can play the songs
16:20he wants to play but in which case just put in a mode where you have to suck a promoter's cock
16:25in order to unlock the later levels you could use the guitar and you can go ah and they'll be
16:30clicking on the working the shaft and then you can just earn the rock ah well done you have got
16:35the promoter off you may now play the songs you want to play it but and that's fine funny funny
16:40funny ha ha ha right but the point remains I bought that content I bought that game because
16:46I wanted to play Sabotage by the Beastie Boys and you the game designer are making me play songs
16:52I've never heard of that I have no interest in playing and you're buying three minutes of my
16:57life that I didn't want to spend with Weezer I wanted to spend it pretending to be the who
17:01right that's my content I want it simulation computerized recreation of a real world activity
17:10one of the very first sims was Atari's eerie impersonal battle zone a tank simulator in which
17:15you hovered through a wireframe environment murdering blameless tanks flight sims have
17:20always been popular albeit bewilderingly complex and they're another good example of how graphics
17:24have evolved the term simulation or sim covers everything from obvious applications like a flight
17:29sim or a racing game to more esoteric examples like the grisly surgical slice-em-up trauma
17:35center second opinion on the way other sims include the thrilling domestic drudgery of these sims or
17:44the tranquil rural boredom of this farming simulator which brings the excitement of being
17:47a f***ing wurzel kicking and screaming into your computer strategy a game which tests the player's
17:54tactical decision-making skills popular strategy games include cerebral titles like civilization
18:00in which you conquer the planet either militarily or culturally and more action-oriented fare like
18:05the microscopic killing fields of command and conquer strategy games are brilliant if you love
18:10plans and planning if you're basically a little armchair hitler I don't like them
18:15a puzzle game a game involving a puzzle the inherently satisfying slot-em-up tetris is the
18:23best known puzzler but there's also an intriguing new breed that experiments with other gaming
18:28forms to mind expanding effect games like the challenging portal in which you have to play with
18:32physics and spatial awareness or even platform puzzles courtesy of the insanely clever time
18:36meddling indie game braid rpg or role-playing game an interactive narrative with the emphasis
18:44on exploration in which the player's character develops over the course of time role-playing
18:49games like final fantasy are massive time sponges basically in which you spend hours building up
18:54characters and going on epic epic quests mmorpg massively multiplayer online role-playing game
19:02a virtual environment in which large numbers of players may interact with each other
19:07this is your world of warcraft online fantasy world type thing which soaks up hours of your
19:12time as you run around pretending you're an archmage or a bloody lion monster or some such
19:17shit i've never really understood the appeal of these mmorpgs myself but then i hate people enough
19:22in the real world let alone bothering to enter a second made-up universe to learn to despise them
19:27all over again adventure game an interactive narrative in which the player assumes the role
19:33of the protagonist early adventures may not have been much to look at but they were incredibly
19:38entertaining the infocom hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy written by douglas adams is still
19:41possibly the funniest game ever made honestly the point-and-click adventure such as the excellent
19:46monkey island here is another great lost gaming genre traditional computer adventure games which
19:51are basically a series of puzzles linked by a plot have fallen out of favor in recent years
19:55which is a terrible pity if you ask me yes story is often a game's weak spot here's sitcom scribe
20:01graham linehan with his view what's really fascinating about games is the way that
20:05everything is getting better apart from the storytelling often when you when you played
20:09one of those coin-op um shoot-'em-ups the game would begin with a scrolling star wars type
20:16roller that would say it is the year 3005 the snoogsians have invaded planxta your job as a
20:27rookie blah blah blah and you go come on you know and it would finish and then you go right i can
20:33play boom boom boom boom and you play that's what all games that's what games are still like
20:37you know except the the the scrolling roller has been replaced by um uh you know a lot of uh
20:45cinematic cut scenes i have a theory about what's happening which is i think i think a lot of writers
20:52not only in games but also in film films have stopped reading books they're just watching films
20:58vice city to me is a really good example of a game written by someone whose only experience
21:03of what they're writing about is through films the only thing that will give a give a give a game
21:10world uh and a story a bit of texture and depth and and a bit of bite a bit of traction is uh
21:19research and by research i don't mean watching scarface 20 times in a row in the original um
21:26driver game which i really loved uh it had this wonderful thing that grand theft auto just didn't
21:33bother having but it was whenever you you saw a pedestrian and you were heading towards them no
21:38matter how fast you were driving the pedestrian jumped out of the way and so you not only had
21:43this kind of realistic and uh you know non-psychopathic um gameplay but you also had
21:51something that really reminded you of of um of things like the french connection and uh uh great
21:58kind of cop movies of the 70s that feeling of people jumping out of the way suddenly made you
22:03feel like you're actually in a good film and whereas grand theft auto makes you feel like
22:08you're in a game i meant um gabe who wrote left for dead and uh he told me that before he he wrote
22:16left for dead uh you know he he read up on the spanish influenza and you can really really see
22:22that in in the game you know there's nothing about the spanish influenza in the game but the
22:27feeling of a society that's broken down and and the feeling of of there being a world beyond the
22:33world that we're seeing is really strong the great thing about about modern warfare is your relationship
22:39with this guy with really cool the coolest mustache you've ever seen you know i mean that in a totally
22:45platonic way but you know you care about this this mustache you know all through the game that's just
22:51a light a light touch you know you do it's just you know you like this guy this guy is is always
22:57around the voice acting is well done his dialogue is is quite believable it's just the the tiniest of
23:04things to make you care about a character and then when he when he when when he dies at the end it's
23:10just it's uh it's really powerful call of juarez is a really good example of a game where uh you
23:17just have no sympathy for the characters my favorite bit in the game is uh and the the
23:23laughter allowed when it happened was um one of the characters comes into a room and there's a
23:29there's a there's a a woman like a farmer she's wearing one of those bonnets you know which you've
23:35seen in a million westerns so you know the type she is she's one of these women's gonna be like
23:40goodness you know and the thing the guy says when he comes in is don't move bitch don't you move
23:48bitch so what why are you talking like that to her i don't want to play you
23:54you're an idiot the main reason games have never achieved mass public acceptance is that the general
23:59public continues to believe that most games are aimed at adolescent toss rags so it doesn't help
24:03that some games most definitely are the most startling recent example being this astonishing
24:09cultural artifact 50 cent blood on the sand in which the knuckleheaded rapper 50 cent or
24:1450 as idiots call him is the hero it opens with mr 50 entertaining the natives of an unnamed
24:20middle eastern country with a glittering concert where him and his muscly buddies played some
24:25records and said some rude words but oh dear it turns out the promoter hasn't got the money he
24:30owes 50 for the gigs and a subtle battle of wits soon ensues i don't have the money it was stolen
24:38what by who men working for a gangster named saeed kaman
24:42waste this fucker fortunately the promoter does have a damien hirst inspired blinging
24:47crusted skull which he gives 50 by way of payment damn look at that ice man the skull is priceless
24:58you lucky motherfucker okay let's roll you know surprisingly this was scripted by alan bennett
25:04before long 50 and his friends do indeed roll but soon they run into a terrifying
25:08ambush during which 50's skull is stolen by a hot arabic lara croft type
25:14and thus the stage is set and we the viewer become the participant as we take on the role
25:19of mr 50 cent
25:25where'd she go that bitch took my skull yeah where'd she go that bitch that took my skull
25:29that's the entire storyline that bitch took my skull let's find it oh shit ambush bring it on
25:35motherfuckers anyway it turns out 50 won't be able to find the bitch that took the skull without
25:40shooting 50 million people in the face the game itself has a third person viewpoint which means
25:44you're constantly trailing just behind 50 cent which means you'd be constantly breathing in his
25:49farts if you squeeze the left trigger the camera zooms in closer so you can shoot people more
25:54accurately of course in real life the only time you'd find yourself staring at the back of 50
25:57cents head this long as if you were sodomizing him in a prison cell which he'd enjoy yeah that's
26:02right 50 you'd enjoy it what you're gonna do come and get me you pussy just to liven things up each
26:09time you shoot someone a little kill timer appears at the top of the screen it starts
26:13counting down so if you kill someone else before it runs out you get some bonus points
26:19it's a stark comment on the disposable nature of human life in our commodity obsessed culture
26:23refreshing stuff maybe yes but uh politically this game is rather more naive than noam chomsky
26:29blood on the sand which came out last year in my imagination along the way there are plenty of
26:34atrocious cut scenes detailing a story that's impossible to care about during which 50 cents
26:39scowls a lot and generally behaves like a prick where's your boss bitch oh what a massive arsehole
26:47the game's so desperate to appear grown up it ends up looking downright ridiculous like an
26:52straining to grow a whispery little moustache and bragging about how many girls he's fingered
26:58when 50 is such an unsympathetic character such an almighty dick i don't actually want him to
27:02survive any of the firefights in fact i keep making him deliberately running to the scenery
27:07in the hope he'll snag his balls on the edge of a table or something go on your tit it's
27:12charmless that's the main problem and games never used to be short of charm here's rabban ryan of
27:16consulvania with a look back at some warmer times retro is not what you think retro is right i bet
27:23you elsewhere on this show right other parts of the show people are going to embarrass themselves
27:27by mentioning game as well i'm attacking everybody right people are going to embarrass themselves by
27:31mentioning mario and zelda that's nowhere past that's nowhere past we had a mario the great
27:36guiana sisters that was our mario a ripoff of mario that was better than mario the real british
27:42retro was all about innocence it was all about guys who didn't do it for money you've got to
27:48remember that these in america it was big corporations in japan big corporations chumming
27:53out these games and in britain just hobbyists just guys up in their bedroom the real british retro
28:01is about games like hover bother and hover bother you were a middle-aged man right no middle-aged
28:07who just happened to be a spy or a superhero just a middle-aged just a middle-aged man who had to
28:14mow his garden right so you would go and get a lawnmower and mow your garden that's what the
28:19game was moving back and forth just trying to mow strips of lawn but you'd borrowed somebody's
28:24lawnmower so your neighbor was coming to get his lawnmower back right so you had to avoid him and
28:29you had to avoid an annoying dog as well telling my heart's racing for some reason they they had
28:35the thing about eggs in the 80s i'm in a spectrum games i've played that had eggs or about eggs or
28:41you were collecting eggs why did we bother with these games jet set willy is the kind of game
28:45that would only be made in britain it was about a guy who was cutting about inside his inside his
28:51house trying to avoid his wife and the great thing about jet set willy was you couldn't complete it
28:58it was broke you couldn't complete it you couldn't finish it and that's what i love that's what's
29:02more british than somebody making a game and getting to a point and going nobody's going to
29:07get this far anyway fuck it or you would have a game like penetrator which was a shoot-em-up
29:14and you completed it you mastered that art of mapping the trajectory of the bomb so that you
29:20became a master of bombing things which was crucial to finish the game you'd get to the
29:24end level you'd bomb that big supply explosives you go magic eat a fireworks display at the end
29:30of the game go done it finally done it completed it and then it goes right now play the levels
29:36backwards that's brilliant and you go aye alright then right fine aye right i'll do it backwards
29:43and then you play it backwards and it goes now play it forwards again and then it never ends
29:49it never the edge backwards forwards backwards forwards forever that was the beauty of retro
29:54the charm of retro was that sound the surreal element of it a game i loved was marble madness
30:00that had this beautiful kind of plinky plonky kind of crystal sound it sounded kind of like
30:06a chandelier slowly falling down the stairs you would roll a wee ball about this map beautiful
30:13beautiful kind of wee worlds that you would step into and they're all they're all in your memory
30:17they're all in their own wee spaces in your memory all these beautiful places and now games like
30:22gears of war and all these kind of things they all look as if they're set in the same place this
30:27browny greeny muddy real looking place there's nowhere special for them to go there's no specialness
30:35about that games are shite casual games video games aimed at novice players often scarcely
30:42considered traditional games at all right now casual games are probably the most rapidly expanding
30:48sector of the gaming market and it's largely thanks to little magic sticks like these
30:54i'm not a huge fan of the wii largely because sitting around isn't my idea of entertainment
30:58although it does make some games such as the brightly colored cooking mama here accessible
31:04to newcomers because you're performing actions rather than jabbing a complex array of buttons
31:10of course the next step is to remove the buttons and controllers completely witness project natal
31:15from microsoft in which the controller is you here we see the outright creepy promotional video
31:21for project natal in which it seems you have to sort of groom a boy called milo hi milo how you
31:26doing hi claire you okay actually i'm a bit nervous you nervous i don't believe it presumably instead
31:34of a high score table there's some sort of offender's register you've got to put these
31:38goggles on goggles as computers and consoles grow ever more powerful and the games market
31:45grows ever more diverse so there's an increasing number of games that fit about 10 categories at
31:49once or none for instance how do you define the bizarre windom up flower in which you control a
31:54breeze blowing petals around or the serene safari photography game africa there are countless
31:59pacifist titles out there but the broadcast media tends to ignore them in favor of highlighting more
32:04violent fare whenever any new technology comes along it inevitably causes controversy once upon
32:11a time tv was the bogeyman as adults fretted over its negative influence on the kiddie wink
32:16generation we teachers feel that television is bad for children despite being a less sedentary
32:22and arguably more challenging pastime than television video games have been demonized
32:27more than the gobble box ever was of course even some early games were asking for it such
32:32as the ghoulish arcade game death race in which you had to squish people to survive
32:35it caused an outcry in america although the visuals were so basic the actual cabinet was
32:40more grisly than the game itself here's a rare example of an early commercial controversial game
32:46beat em and eat them on the atari 2600 in which you control two naked women there at the bottom
32:52of the screen you have to move them left and right to swallow semen being ejaculated by a man
32:58on the roof it's basically just simulating an average saturday night in clever explicitly
33:02adult games tended to be flogged in small ads in the back of computer mags or illicitly swapped
33:06around on pirated tapes but they did exist take this charming portuguese game sex crime on the
33:12zx spectrum in which you play a man who has to run around a hospital having sex with women in
33:17comas without getting caught it's all right it's not as good as the real thing obviously these
33:22early nasty games tended to look so basic they were more like tasteless scribbles than anything
33:26else the equivalent of a knob scrawled on an exercise book they were largely ignored partly
33:31because they were dreadful and partly because it was just widely accepted that adults were using
33:35home computers and playing games not just kids but by the 90s something had changed the graphics
33:40had improved for one thing and the success of mario and sonic meant that games were largely
33:44perceived by the rest of the media as being children's toys consequently if anything even
33:49vaguely grown up reared its head in video game form it could only be processed as a terrible
33:54threat to our youth mps have criticized the makers of a new video computer game after a port said it
33:59featured the mutilation of women one mp said it shouldn't be sold in this country because it would
34:04have a bad effect on children one sequence in night trap in particular in which a girl is
34:09stalked and seized by ghoulish figures then put in a metal clamp around her neck and dragged off
34:14screaming has provoked a hostile reaction despite the hostile reaction night trap was actually a
34:20fairly daft and broad horror movie spoof in which you played a cctv operator trying to spring traps
34:24and save women from some stupid alien intruders in masks what it undoubtedly wasn't was an
34:30educational tool aimed at teaching children to maim and to murder and to mutilate only an idiot
34:35could possibly think that it was it's absolutely outrageous to teach children to maim and to murder
34:43and to mutilate in the way that this video undoubtedly does video games are turning many
34:50young people into addicts and making them aggressive according to a new report i think
34:54it does change your behavior a lot because like if your mom said to you you've got to do homework
34:59i'd say no i'm playing my gameboy wait till i finish my game or something yeah of course in
35:03the old days when everyone played with i don't know wooden pegs kids couldn't wait to do their
35:08homework still at least video games weren't i don't know sending out subliminal messages that
35:13you could condemn as manipulative and sinister a computer game that sends out subliminal messages
35:18has been condemned as manipulative and sinister this is the game that's causing alarm among
35:25parents really really is it what they're trying to do is to affect the child's mind beneath the
35:31level of consciousness and that seems to me an immoral thing to do the computer game showing
35:36children at school being shot at has been on sale in britain oh no what sick horror is this
35:43violent computer games are nothing new but this one's more shocking than most
35:47really it's obviously a deliberately jokey and tasteless shareware game the sort of thing that
35:52i don't know might be flogged out the back of a computer magazine for 50p but don't ask me
35:57ask someone who'll be horrified by these reports i'm horrified by these reports it's amazing you
36:02can stand still while his knees jerking like that throughout this period games couldn't do anything
36:07right although to be fair when journalists do interview games players themselves they don't
36:11do the past time any favors that's the whole point of games is to be realistic but not be
36:17slight realistic at the same time so you can kill people but not think about in the morning horrified
36:24on comprehending adults claim that this obsessional solitary vice is producing a generation of teenage
36:30mutants suffering from a form of cultural autism children get so hooked that beating their last
36:36high score is all that matters and my cousin my little cousin boy every every time i go in his
36:41house he's playing the game he must he thinks he's um the man on um streets of range every
36:46minute he's beating me up boy and he's saying yeah and then all this um another inarticulate
36:52gamer why can't they ask someone i don't know a bit more middle class as well as playing about
36:57two hours a day matthew has also managed to pass grade three piano and he claims to enjoy a bit of
37:03dickens he seems the perfect well-rounded ambassador for the games he plays he's only
37:08about two but who knows maybe he'll say something cute a beat-em-up is a game when um where you beat
37:13people up um you um punch them or kick them and jump on them um break their necks and smash them
37:21over the head with bottles beat-em-up simulated combat game in which the player leathers the
37:27stuffing out of people now beat-em-ups may look like a simple exercise in just knocking
37:32the shit out of someone but actually they're at least four percent more complicated than that
37:37physically harming your fellow man has been a staple feature of video games since before
37:41they could adequately portray the brutal reality of unarmed combat to an onlooker and over-the-top
37:46bloodthirsty beat-em-up such as mortal combat here might seem unnecessarily violent that's
37:51because it is wind anyway after being picked on for years it was only a matter of time before
37:58the games industry started living down to expectations and released a slew of titles
38:03that were gleefully offensive grand theft auto is a game in which contestants can rise through
38:09the underworld by performing jobs for gangster godfathers points are awarded for murder arson
38:14and drug running yes the granddaddy of all controversial games is a british creation
38:19directly inspired by the pioneering spectrum game turbo a spree the release of the first gta game
38:24at the height of media hand-wringing over joyriding ensured plenty of coverage and even
38:28caught the attention of the home office under proposals being considered by the home office
38:32a health warning would be flashed up on the screen at the start reminding players not to
38:37drive like this on the roads the freedom to do what thou wilt in gta's virtual environment sent
38:43the popularity of a fledgling genre into overdrive sandbox or open world game a game in which the
38:50player is left free to explore a virtual world in non-linear fashion sandbox games are massive
38:55modern play sets basically huge environments in which you can do what you like they started back
39:01in the day with the epic space exploration and trading simulation elite elite gave the impression
39:07of containing an entire functioning universe but actually that was an illusion computers weren't
39:11that powerful back then instead the thousands of planets and solar systems the player could explore
39:16were generated by a clever series of algorithms modern computers really are powerful enough to
39:21contain complete worlds as in the nihilistic almost overpoweringly detailed grand theft auto
39:26series gta's liberty city is a living city filled with working roads and buildings and bridges and
39:32rivers it has its own transport system and police force it's got radio and tv stations it plays host
39:39to thousands of independent citizens driving thousands of vehicles or strutting the pavements
39:44or getting run over or innocently driving their taxes into the gun sights of a maniac who shoots
39:48them rather unfairly in the head then sits waiting in case there's a passenger who panics and get out
39:52yeah hang on wait a minute yeah there she is and then he picks her off as well as you can see it's
39:59a morally blank world in which i'm free to do what i like and it turns out that what i like to do is
40:03be anti-social why'd you call me you want my now i don't think i'm likely to confuse this with
40:14the actual world because it doesn't stink of foul human flesh but as far as the rest of the media
40:20is concerned what infuses games with their special satanic menace is the notion that they could be
40:25conditioning the player to perform these actions for real you could argue that by that logic someone
40:30who spent the morning playing cheerful cartoon leap em up super mario world would spend the
40:34afternoon jumping on mushrooms and banging their head against bricks in search of magic coins
40:39but then cheerful cartoon games like the mario titles rarely get much coverage especially when
40:43there's so much more disturbing stuff out there just waiting to upset news reporters and make
40:47horrifying reports like this manhunt 2 is a new video game where the player gets physically
40:52involved in the violence so your emotions are recreated in the game this is correct you can
40:56slaughter them and increasing in brutal manner as you can see he's curled up in the fetal position
41:05and we're still acting the way i mean that's pretty violent that's correct thanks to technological
41:09progress the nasty stuff now looks nastier than ever it's a long way from beat em and eat em to
41:14modern sex games such as the seriously creepy japanese molestation title ray play for instance
41:20it's a similar case with violence that's evolved too oh so much for tennis but now if you're a bad
41:25loser and feel like shooting your opponent you can always take to rifle practice of course
41:31shooting at dots wouldn't offend or disturb anyone except maybe a particularly sensitive dot
41:37whereas modern video game gunplay is routinely portrayed with a frequency and bloodthirsty
41:42relish you simply wouldn't get away with in a film or tv show something like call of duty world
41:46at war here is a brilliantly constructed game but it's also psychotically ferocious and astronomically
41:52tasteless but even though my brain tells me this is horrible i can't deny that i enjoy it i just
42:01wouldn't really want someone to walk in and catch me enjoying it which makes it just like loose women
42:06basically
42:26oh
42:36still even to a psychopath like me some modern releases are so deliberately unpleasant i find
42:40them too depressing to play through take the grisly atmospheric condemned two for instance
42:46in which you play an alcoholic ex-cop who has to stagger around this horrifying environment
42:50swigging from bottles and fighting tramps with your bare hands
42:57if you're playing this for escapism you're probably scottish but if i find it hard to
43:02stomach millions of others don't here we see grisly action-packed footage from the game fear
43:062 uploaded to youtube by a fan who's provided his own unsettling commentary over the top
43:11today i'm going to dedicate a video to my favorite weapon and this is sniper
43:17you can see how the head rips off and the blood everywhere this is amazing die die die
43:31can you smell the burning flesh i can now i'm not saying he's mental but he should probably
43:40be forced to cleanse his palate afterwards by playing something like this pleasant neighborhood
43:46simulator on the way hello hello hello good morning hello oh see isn't that lovely doesn't
43:58exist mind anyway not everyone likes violent games this is the downright revolting mad world
44:03on the wii and here's singer songwriter and video games reviewer rebecca maize with a musical review
44:09here at last a hardcore game on the wii that's nasty stylized violence that we call comedy like
44:18itchy and scratchy like tom and jerry i just stabbed a guy through the eye with a rubber
44:27sign pull out his heart with my bare hands do i feel all right no i feel dirty there's really
44:37something quite unnerving about all the dates and pubbing and the disturbing commentary
44:46get shy way too hard like a disillusioned nerd who thinks chainsaws and swear words will make you
44:56the coolest kid in school it's far too short and the weapons are far too few and i have to redo
45:06the whole level so i give you a head but with a non-joke i feel giddy visually it gets crazy
45:16busy and my heart feels dizzy in this sadistic comic book you're trying way too hard like a
45:27disillusioned nerd who thinks chainsaws and swear words will make you the coolest kid in school
45:37a rhythm action game loose musical simulation in which the player must perform actions in time to
45:43music in order to succeed musical games were first popularized in the late 90s by the hallucinatory
45:49parappa the rapper for the playstation there's been a huge explosion in rhythm action games
45:54recently thanks to the success of guitar hero and rock band with the fab four joining the ride with
45:58the release of the beatles rock band spin-off the release of the beatles rock band game is a true
46:04watershed moment for video games because it's probably got the biggest crossover appeal of any
46:09game ever apart from that one where you push my name class in a canal which unfortunately i've
46:15just made up the idea is that you yes you seize control of the beatles and strum bash or wobble
46:22your way through their entire musical career from their stompy stompy origins in the cabin club
46:26through to their rooftop swan song
46:31to take part as well as the game itself you'll need one of the guitar controllers or
46:36the drum kit or a microphone or preferably all of the above it's really designed to be played
46:42by four people at once and if you are playing on your own for god's sake don't let anyone walk in
46:45and catch you because there's no way you can strum a plastic guitar and maintain your dignity anyway
46:51the game mechanics will be familiar to anyone who's played rock band or guitar hero you have
46:55to hit the notes at the right time as they flow down the center of the screen there i think that's
47:00basically what proper musicians see in their heads as they play do it right and it all sounds good
47:05mess it up and it all starts to sound pretty bad it's essentially formalized air guitar it's
47:10actually a really compelling illusion because within seconds of picking this up you really do
47:14feel as though you're playing with a modicum of ability i could have been in the beatles it's a
47:19piece of piss those girls like me yeah i'm a grown man 38 you can also sing if you plug
47:32in a microphone although it's difficult to do all of them at once we all live in a yellow red blue
47:42green visually it's all very striking with stylized thunderbird-like fab four avatars
47:47performing in a series of live venues to start with later they retreat to the studio which is
47:52the point where they took lots of drugs although they don't show them doing that instead that
47:56period's represented by showing them starting off in abbey road before apparently coming up on
47:59something or other at which point everything gets heavily heavily trippy before slowly returning
48:04back to earth although when you're actually playing you're so focused on the unrelenting
48:08corridor of notes in the center of the screen they could replace all the stuff around the edges with
48:13footage of simon mayo defrosting a veggie burger and you'd be none the wiser as a game it's hardly
48:18challenging if you do particularly badly the song just stopped but the game isn't really the point
48:25in fact it isn't really a game at all it's a fun experience it's a different way of enjoying the
48:30music and a great illustration of just how broad games have become it's as close as any of us are
48:35going to get to being in the beatles in fact the only thing missing is the option to have a japanese
48:40concept artist turn up two-thirds of the way through and sit in a corner ruining everything
48:45well viewer that's about all we've got time for in this video game wipe type thing and now here's
48:49fred harris from an old episode of micro live summing up our entire show in a flipping sentence
48:54as well he might here's the conclusion so if you've never played a computer game don't dismiss
48:59them there are games for all mentalities it's just that the good games are hidden behind a
49:03mess of crude shoot-em-ups