Not that anyone is in the slightest bit interested, but a few updates on my moribund quest to bring S.T.U.N. Runner to the iPhone…
So, all I need to do is learn how to code, sign up for the iPhone Developer Program, write a complete clone of S.T.U.N. Runner and submit it to the App Store. What a piece of piss. I’m willing to bet small amounts of someone else’s money that I could have the whole shebang done in under ten years.
Don’t worry, I don’t really have any phasers. Phasers are a made up ray gun thing from Star Trek. It’s all part of a hilarious pun you see, in as much as you can make a pun out of something by simply adding some punctuation. Oh it’s all falling apart isn’t it?
I’VE DONE IT ALL WRONG.
This whole pun fiasco was supposed to serve as a devastatingly witty introduction (where necessary) to S.T.U.N. Runner, a fantastic 1989 arcade game by Atari. For reasons still not entirely clear to myself you, the protagonist, had to hurtle down a series of tubular 3D chasms at breakneck speed in some sort of futuristic bobsled. It’s an experience probably not unlike doing the Cresta Run having been spiked with a near fatal dose of weapons-grade hallucinogens, or being shrunk to the size of an ant and flushed down the toilet into a sewer system made entirely of brightly coloured geometric shapes. In a little ant toboggan, of course. I have vivid memories of jaunts to the arcades by the seaside with my good pal Flaps as a child, straddling the brightly coloured S.T.U.N. Runner machine and pumping a startling quantity of freshly-minted 20p pieces into it. Happy days.
It was while playing my fashionable iPhone the other day that I happened to reminisce on those halcyon days of my gaming youth, when suddenly a thought rammed itself right up my brainpipes:
“Why hasn’t S.T.U.N. Runner been ported to the iPhone?”
It makes as near to perfect sense as you’re likely to get from me. The iPhone (or iPod Touch, for the paupers among us) has more than enough magical computer powaz to churn out a game from 20 years ago, and the motion sensors in the iPhone could be used to replicate the movement of the yoke-style controls from the arcade machine. Why, it’s almost too easy. All we need now are the following things (in no particular order):
You see? This should be a piece of piss. If that bearded West Country oaftrumpet Justin Lee Collins can just about but not quite get the original cast of Grange Hill together, then I can surely get an elderly computer game ported to the iPhone. Think of it as a sort of challenge which I’ll almost undoubtedly fail and then pretend never happened in the first place.
The first step is to get in touch with the original Atari team who produced S.T.U.N. Runner…
One from the archives here, but since I’ve been neglecting you all a little I thought I’d spoil you rotten by dousing you in this hot spray of sticky liquid fun. The following is an exchange betwixt myself and one scamming Nigerian bastard. I’m afraid I have since lost the images that accompanied the story, but will attempt to convey their content using words.
From: philtom [mailto:philtom@ummah.org]
Sent: Sun 29/08/2004 03:46
To: rodti macleary
Subject: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT & CONCEPT.
Ignore for a moment the intellectual property lawsuits about to be raised by the former Soviet Union and Pixar’s ‘Monsters Inc’ team, and instead revel in the visual delight that is a dancing Stalin.
I do hope a breakdancing Hitler is in the pipeline.
“I’M COMING TO YOUR HOUSE…”
Thanks to Rock Paper Shotgun
Well pin me to the ground and invade my most intimate privacy with a claw hammer if this isn’t the most exciting gaming news to hit me (albeit slightly after the fact) since earlier today. Namco have brought the Katamari franchise to the iPhone/iPod Touch so that we, their humble servants, can make utter fools of ourselves waving our electric telephones around in the air while on public transport. ‘I Love Katamari’ doesn’t bring anything new to the Katamari series (other than perhaps the novelty of accelerometer-based gameplay) but faithfully executes its trademark gyratory fun which is all it really needs to do, all things considered. Unfortunately there’s a bit of a slowdown when your Katamari increases in size and the game attempts a rather overambitious motion blur effect, but other than that it’s well worth the modest £4.99 asking price. If nothing else it’ll stop you bothering farmyard animals of an evening, you vile devil you.
December seems to have brought a clutch of excellent games for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and the first I’ve got my mitts on is the splendid Rolando. It’s a bit like LocoRoco on the PSP, but uses the iPhone’s built-in accelerometers to allow control of your character by tilting or rotating the device using your lovely hands. It’s very intuitive, great fun to play and has wonderful stylised graphics, not to mention a soundtrack including ‘Ug’ by Mr. Scruff. Considering it only costs smallpence you’d be a fool not to pick it up (assuming you’ve already parted with several hundred pounds and a kidney for an iPhone or iPod Touch).
Parkour is a sport. Parkour, also known as ‘free running’, is a particularly demanding and perilous sport. Parkour is a sport that involves climbing up very tall things, running along very tall things and skilfully descending from really tall things. People who participate in parkour tend to be very good at it, and one can only assume started by climbing on top of a house brick before gradually working their way through increasingly taller objects in increments of one millimetre.
Overweight thirty-something men are not traditionally very good at sports like parkour. They are not traditionally very good at any sports. This particular demographic of our society tends to look for other more sedentary pursuits, such as sitting on their arse playing Xbox 360 games.
Mirror’s Edge is a parkour game for the Xbox 360. This is the sort of game that overweight thirty-something men can buy in order to immerse themselves in an experience as close to the actual exhilirating sensation of parkour as they are ever likely to get. There is however one very big problem with this. Mirror’s Edge requires said immobile, amorphous gamer to play using two thumbsticks and an array of shoulder button/trigger combo moves. This is very difficult. This causes our protagonist to fall to her death all the bastard time. In fact, your intrepid correspondent has come closer to hurling a not-inexpensive 360 controller at solid, unyielding walls out of sheer frustration than he has in almost twenty years. IT IS INFURIATING. For every brief moment of adrenaline-pumping action as Faith leaps across rooftops making each parkour move flow seamlessly into the next, there is at least one hour of repeatedly trying to perform what appears to be a simple jump, each time finding yourself hurling vertiginously toward the concrete below until it ends with a sickening crunch and darkness.
In summary, then: CONSTANT, ENDLESS DEATH (3/10)
While I don’t necessarily believe that playing violent video games leads people to commit violent acts in real life, I did wonder if my epic GTA4 session last night led to my impulsive purchase of a 6-piece screwdriver set from Woolworths at lunchtime. I’m sure this is nothing to worry about.
Perhaps I could test the effects of gaming on my day to day life by immersing myself in an epic session of Viva Pinata to see if it causes me to spend thousands of pounds in the gardening section of Homebase before consuming a staggering quantity of mindbuggering hallucinogenic substances.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is science.
Incidentally, the screwdriver set was only two pounds. Two pounds!
Finished Portal last night, possibly one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in recent memory. It benefits hugely by incorporating cake and the weighted companion cube (above), both of which are gathering an obsessive following as we speak. Okay, perhaps cake has had a loyal following for a while now by those celebrating birthdays and fat bloaters. Plush companion cubes are due for Christmas, and I demand at least six for myself.
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