The best game of all time!

I hate the 80s. There, I said it. Maybe now we can all end this nauseating facade of girls adorning sparkly outfits, singing strangely and dreaming that they're Kate Bush (who wasn't all THAT good you know.) and the bizarre ritual of men forcing themselves into ridiculous, testicle-suffocatingly tight trousers. You know why there wasn't a huge baby boom after the 80s? Because no-one's nadgers worked.

HOWEVER! I will say this for the 80s. It did bring us one good thing (aside from myself of course). It was responsible for one of nature's finest pleasures. Of which man has been tasting the delights of in far more quantities than can be considered anything other than a hindrance to productivity ever since. The 80s was, of course, the advent of the home video game. And the epitome of these glorious first steps was that most angular of beauties; the Nintendo Entertainment System. Yeah, that's right. No gimmicky, strange, neo-modern vowel manipulation and bizarre sexual based console names of today. Just the facts. Nintendo Entertainment System. 

It was quite frankly spell-binding to me, at the tender young age of something very small. A single box with its massive flapping front panel lid hiding one can only be described as a desk drawer which was where all the magic happened. You just slid in one of the vast cartridges, pushed it home and pressed the on button. Then pressed the on button again, took the cartridge back out again, blew on the end for several minutes before putting it back and starting again. Despite these dusty problems, it still seemed so unbelievable that this single block of plastic could bring forth these fantastic visions upon your television. If someone had told me then that in the future you would be able to talk to anyone directly across the whole world whilst buying something from somebody else whilst playing 3D games all on a single device about a third of the size of these cartridges... well I probably would have asked for one then and there. But to more mature eyes and ears I'm sure that information would have been frankly sectionable. 

But, to be brutally honest. It was so much better then. Oh sure, people may argue that the realism of shooting down terrorists in the recent Modern Warfare games is unsurpassed by anything. Or that the unbelievable social abilities within gaming online is the only way to play games. But to this I say: why? Why is going around recreating war skirmishes 'good gaming'? Why is the constant repetition of killing beasts and mining gold to gain progress in a game 'fun'? And in further response I will say this. The greatest game that there has ever been and possibly ever will be is Duck Hunt on the NES. Call it favouritism through childish eyes, call it activism because of disillusionment. Call it whatever you want. In the end there can be no denial that what I say is the truth. And secretly, you all know it.

I think therefore it is wise to say why it is SO good. Firstly, I feel it is important to bring up the intended controller. The Zapper. The bright orange, stupidly angular, stupidly 80s futurism attempt at a ray gun that you were told you would be shooting ducks with. It was amazing. It was (at the time) like holding the future in your hands. you were aiming at a pane of glass, pressing a button, and influencing the area of the glass that you were pointing at. I still am not entirely sure how it works, mainly because I never bothered looking it up as I preferred to just leave it as being magic. But I defy anyone to say it's not the coolest controller any console has ever had. I would happily buy one now for no reason other than to take it out and say "LOOK WHAT I GOT!!!" as I beamed with joy. However, I have no money.

But OK. This is not the game. It is nothing really to do with the game. It is fairly far removed from the standards contained within the game. So lets move on. If we were to assume that the reasoning behind playing a game is to enjoy ourselves. To distract ourselves from everyday life. Then I find it very hard to see how many of the games available today allow for that. Most games have taken on far too serious a struggle in its search for something to progress the game on. Duck Hunt, however, is the pinnacle of unreality. Perhaps it was the ridiculously flat graphics, the strange willingness of the ducks to make drastic 180 degree turns to remain within shot until deciding upon flying vertically upwards, indicating he had been a chance missed. Perhaps it was the laughing dog that probably drew more gunfire than all the ducks put together. But the overall feeling when playing the game was essentially just joy. It made you feel good (apart from the bloody arrogant dog... but even then you couldn't help enjoying blasting away at his stupid smug face). It was stress relief, not stress addition which is what I find myself feeling with some games these days. And maybe that's OK. Maybe it's part of human nature to bring stress upon ourselves. But surely more so we enjoy just daft, fun breaks from reality. Duck Hunt provides this in spades. The way the ducks would totally ham up getting shot. The excited way your dog would leap behind a single line of really high grass. The fantastic sound that the game developers decided was like a gunshot. It all came together so that, when you finally told to stop playing so that the grown ups could watch some actual telly, you had a grin on your face. You hadn't achieved anything, you hadn't finished a story. You'd just had fun. And there aren't any other games that did it so well.

To Duck Hunt. The best game of all time!

If I could be serious for just a moment...

Today Britain is quite drastically different. For a start there is a quite staggering amount of volcanic ash floating above us. But more importantly, politicians are now willing to argue with each other on telly. Kaloo-kalay(!)

Well. I say different. But in actual fact is this really anything new? PMQs; though not necessarily as highly watched as the apparent 9.4 million average viewers that witnessed Britain's first televised debate, still provides anyone with a television to watch the leaders of the three main political parties (yes there are three, as last night proved to everyone quite successfully) bicker and shout at each other on a near enough weekly basis. Surely then, a debate where they stand in a studio saying the same things direct to cameras is no large progress?

What we saw, however, was actually fairly refreshing, if still a little underwhelming. With the ridiculously English, lecture hall design of the studio being as it was, we were observing three men alone on stage. There was to be no audience response which, I can only imagine, was quite disruptive to those who typically expect anything they say to be met with a large, staged and employed "rousing cheer". And so there seemed to be more reason to engage the other contenders, helped along by Alastair Stewart's admittedly frustrating interruptions encouraging a response, as if the only personal reassurance these men could gather was from the feeling of pride they felt as they presumed a successful put down. No more evident was this so at the creepy smirks that would emerge for all too long after a "clever and witty jibe" aimed at David Cameron's airbrushed and tax-exile supported campaign. Needless to say, I don't think many votes were won that way. However, despite the isolated nature and the more direct oratary combat, there was still that feel of same old, same old about what was actually being said. Cameron spouted on and on about his feelings on certain things without actually saying what he was actually going to do about it, Brown gibbered confusedly about numbers and statistics without really seeming to understand about how they actually ended up in the real world and Nick Clegg...

"Wait. There's a third person up there. Who the hell is he?" Yes, that's right, Britain's third party were, as I have said already, deemed worthy to be included alongside the "Big Two" in this series of debates. And seemingly people were pleasantly surprised. Any poll you care to read on the debate puts Clegg as winning it, in most cases hands down. And a lot of feedback suggested that Clegg was being seen and heard for pretty much the first time. It was always said this was Clegg's big opportunity to put a cat amongst the very settled and indelible pigeons, but boy did he grab it with both hands. It is unlikely that this debate has changed opinion so much that Clegg could find himself as the nation's favourite, but he certainly made it be known that he wants to be considered on an equal footing, and it would seem a number of viewers at least are doing just that. He seemed just as steady and comfortable on stage as his fellow competators, if not more so, and he spoke frankly about what needs to be done and where his party will affect changes. And the people responded favourably.

In real terms though, Clegg has not done much more than raise his profile and prove that he could well be a very major thorn in the sides of Cameron and Brown. He was always going to be the winner in this debate purely because he'd actually get to jump and wave about, shouting "I'm here too, you know." His progress in actually stealing a march on at least gaining the largest minority will be made in a larger scale of time than just one debate and, most possibly, more than just one election. But it is certainly a start. The positives to be taken are that first and foremost, they have broken into the limelight, even if it is just to the side at the moment. Secondly, Clegg has shown that he is a strong politician, or at least as competant as the other two (which, in a cynical aside, I shall mention is maybe not all that positive) and that he should not be so easily overlooked. And finally, and perhaps most importantly for this election, that they could quite easily snatch a few battlefront constituancies from the other two, scuppering the already doubtful race for an overall majority. Quite what will happen then is anyone's guess, but there won't be anyone ignoring the Liberal Democrats then.

... That wasn't as dull to write about as I had feared...