Echoes of the Past

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Adam Randall
As the years go by, we often find that we’ve let our friends slip through our fingers. Sadly, this was the case with my old friend Mike Wing. Anybody who’s been reading this blog may have realised that he makes less ‘appearances’ in my anecdotes these days. One minute he was drunkenly unbuttoning my shirt in the bathroom of a nightclub, the next he was off having his own adventures at university. But of course, as with all my friends, I kept him in mind, and I even wrote a blog entry about him popping into my head at an odd moment.
    Anyway, just the other day, I was out having my daily walk with my brothers, when somebody screamed something at me as they sped past in their car.
    “What an idiot,” said one of my brothers.
    “Yeah, I hate it when people do that,” said the other.
    “Well, we don’t know they were an idiot. It reminded me of my old friend Mike Wing actually, he would always scream things as he drove past me and he wasn’t an idiot. Of course, I’ve not seen him in years now,” I said, and we continued with our walk.
    The next day, I found I had a message on Facebook and, very unexpectedly, it was a message from Mike.
    “Did you realise it was me screaming at you from a car yesterday? That reaction was priceless,” was the message.
    I couldn’t remember how I’d reacted, so I asked him to specify and he said “it was just like a very slow, taken by surprise reaction” but the point is, that I was quite pleased I hadn’t been wrong in thinking of him at that moment, because, indeed, it was him.
    He explained that he “simply wanted to scream ‘Randall’ one last time.”
    Beautiful.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)
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Girlfriend

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Adam Randall
The summer of 2011 was just as lovely as the summer we’re currently enjoying. I remember that on one day I was out in Corsham and enjoying a delicious lunch of a Co-Op Low Fat Cheese & Onion Sandwich and Co-Op Brownie with my good friend Dalfino Madrigal Keyte. During that lunch, I spotted my Gran doing some shopping so she came over and the pair of us had a little chat. Dalfino doesn’t know her, so, he just kind of kept to himself and said nothing during the whole conversation. Once she’d gone, he and I resumed our lunch together.
    A few days later, I was at my Gran’s house having lunch.
    “So, was that your girlfriend you were with the other day?” she asked.
    “That was Dalfino, and he certainly isn’t my girlfriend,” I said, wondering whether I might be stepping into some kind of joke.
    “That wasn’t a boy!” she said, as if it were a really ridiculous lie.
    “Yes it was!” I said. “I’m one hundred percent sure that Dalfino is male.”
    “She even has a girl’s name. Don’t try to lie to me.”
    “But he really is male.”
    “Heh heh, okay then, he’s a ‘male’,” she said, sarcastically.
    I’m afraid I never could quite convince her. Which is odd, because Dalfino’s not even very feminine looking.
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Back to the Future: The Game

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Adam Randall

PictureYou might be hesitant when you hear about Back to the Future: The Game because a lot of video games which tie into movie franchises are not of a very high quality and just seem to be quickly made in order to cash in on their popularity. However, I’m very happy to say that this is certainly not the case here. I’m a huge fan of the three films and this game provides an excellent continuation of them.

Taking place one year after the film trilogy ends, Doc Brown’s estate is being auctioned off because he’s been missing for after the events of the films and it’s assumed that he’s died. Marty, of course, knows that he’s just off travelling around in time, so he goes there to try and stop it from happening. While there, the Delorean, minus Doc, materialises outside and Marty realises that something’s gone wrong during a trip Doc made to the 1930s and so he has to go back to sort it out. This sets up a chain of events including gangsters, alternative realities, brainwashing and lots of other interesting things too. The story is a very interesting one.

Of course, everything is animated, but the voice acting for Dr. Emmett Brown is provided the original actor to have that role, Christopher Lloyd. Marty McFly is not voiced by Michael J. Fox, however, but worry not, there’s no problem here. Either because of Michael J. Fox’s health, or the fact that he might not sound like a teenage boy anymore, Marty McFly is voiced by somebody named A. J. Locascio who does such a good job. I’d probably go as far as to say that A. J. Locascio sounds more like Michael J. Fox did when he played Marty McFly, than Michael J. Fox does now. Furthermore, Michael J. Fox does provide some voice acting material which appears later in the game, so he was still involved in some sense, which is nice. Marty’s girlfriend Jennifer (who does much more in this game than in any of the films) is also voiced by Claudia Wells (who played her in the first film.) Other than that, every other role has been recast, which is a bit of a shame.

Gameplay-wise, this is a point and click adventure. As Marty you get to collect various items and talk to different people in Hill Valley throughout its history. There are a lot of references and Easter Eggs for the fans, so it’s clear that the writers really cared about the franchise’s history. However, without meaning to sound too critical, the game side of it isn’t that fun. The appeal of this game is it’s wonderful story, excellent cut scenes and the fact that it continues the Back to the Future story, not that it’s really fun to play. In fact, there were one or two bits where it was awfully hard to figure out what to do next (never too hard though.) I also found that it could be rather slow with loading times and things like that (at least on the Wii version) which was a downside. But for fans of the series it should be easy to overlook the few issues.

I’m really pleased that this game was made. Short of a remake, I don’t think there’d be any way we’d get another Back to the Future film, but Back to the Future: The Game gives us the next best thing. It has all the humour, intrigue and intelligence of the original film and with the original actors coupled with a story adapted from scripts left over from an unmade fourth film, this, to me, is the official continuation of the series. Telltale have done a really fantastic job with this and I heavily recommend it to any fans of Back to the Future.

Rating: 8.9/10

Buy it here.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

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Accent

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Adam Randall

As I recently mentioned, I started working as an MDSA again. This time I work at a primary school rather than a secondary one, so it is rather different in a few ways. Anyway, today I was out in the playground when one of the children came up to me, he had a question.

“Mr. Randall, where do you come from? I mean, like, what country?” he asked, because, you see, he’d assumed I wasn’t native to the England because of how my accent sounds.

It reminded me of my first day at this new MDSA job. The nice person I was shadowing said, “That’s an interesting accent you have. What is it, South African?”

Which is funny, because when I last spoke to a charity person and told them I came from Corsham, they said “Are you enjoying your time in the UK?” which must mean they were thinking of the Corsham in Africa.

Which reminded me of my visit to Bristol Hospital. “That’s a nice Scottish accent you’ve got,” said the nurse or doctor who performed the echo on me.

Which brought me back to my lovely Creative Writing lecturer, Anthony Nanson, who, after conducting a mock interview with me, said “I’ve been meaning to ask, are you Norwegian? I’ve always thought you had a Norwegian accent.”

And then there was that time when a doctor at Bath Hospital said “Are you American, or Canadian? Or are you just doing that voice to sound cool?”

Yet when I had a video call with an American internet friend of mine, they said “You sound so British!”

Which all seems very strange to me. I speak in the same voice all the time, yet it can sound like all of these different accents to different people! This isn’t all of the times this has happened either, there are several times I remember but left out to keep this short (and there are probably even more times that I don’t remember!). I’ve lived in England my whole life and never left, yet my accent seems to be an amalgamation of every kind of English accent. How odd.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

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Motorway

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Adam Randall
I passed my driving exam about a year and a half ago. I don’t drive that often because I don’t really need to, but I think I drive often enough and on Saturday I drove on the motorway for the first time. Before doing so, I’d had a lot of people talk to me about it and about how worrying it was, how I’d probably be really nervous and so on and so forth.
    It turns out that that I actually really loved driving on the motorway, which I thought might be the case. You see, I’m the kind of person who likes to drive rather slowly. Or, perhaps, I should rephrase that; I’m the kind of person whose standard of what is ‘fast’ is much lower than most other people. I much prefer the laws in, say, Jersey where the maximum speed limit is 40mph, because I don’t really see why you ever need to go any faster unless you’re an emergency vehicle (though I have to admit to occasionally going as fast as 50mph, though that’s mainly so as not to slow others down too much).
    But anyway, the motorway has a marvellous place for people like me and it’s commonly referred to as ‘The Slow Lane’. On any other road, I’ll be driving along at my comfortable pace when somebody who places more value on speed than safety comes up behind me and drives only a few inches away from the back of the car. I certainly don’t like that kind of behaviour. But on the motorway, that never happens because I can just stick to my lane, and other drives can go into the other lanes if they need to. Lovely.
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Holes by Louis Sachar

Posted on July 11, 2014 by Adam Randall

PictureThis is one of those children’s novels which I imagine will appeal to all ages, even if you’re not the kind of person who’ll usually be interested in things with a younger target audience. Holes contains a large cast of memorable characters who you’ll find yourself caring very much for. Something I’ve heard people complain about, is the way that everything seems to fit together perfectly (I shan’t go into details in case I spoil it), but this was one feature that I was actually especially fond of, as it gives you such a lovely feeling of closure as you get to the end.

Anyway, on to the specifics; Holes follows the story of a boy named Stanley Yelnats who, after being arrested for theft, has to serve a sentence at Camp Green Lake, which is actually a huge desert where he has to dig a massive hole every day in the blistering heat. He slowly befriends the other boys at the camp, including one named Zero, who’s very interesting and we get flashbacks to the days when there actually was a lake and some green in the area over a hundred years before.

I suppose that a big appeal of Holes is the aspect of mystery. There’s a lot that we don’t know: if Stanley is innocent, what really happened for him to get put in Camp Green Lake? Why is Camp Green Lake now a barren desert? And who is Zero? I found all of these things rather intriguing, and finding the answers to these questions was very satisfying.

The heat of the desert is so perfectly captured that even if you’re reading this in the middle of December, it’ll feel like it’s an abnormally hot summer day. But the setting of this book does mean that it makes for a rather good summer read, so that might be something to bear in mind whenever you do get around to reading it.

So, be sure to check out Holes because it’s a real classic. I don’t know quite how to describe it, but there are few novels that conclude themselves quite as well as Sachar concludes this book. Getting from the start to the end is a beautiful journey with the characters and it’s wonderful to watch them grow. I realise that could probably be said of any novel, but I find it especially applicable here.

Rating: 8.7/10

Buy it here.

(Do not miss today’s special two year anniversary Finger Puppet Show!)

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Try Everything

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Adam Randall
I started writing regular prose in 2004, though I had been creating little picture and comic books since at least 1997. Sadly, at least 90% of my pre-2004 work is lost, which is a shame, but from around 2004 onward, what I produced was mainly only prose fiction. When it comes to art, for a long time I had an attitude of just sticking to my comfort zones because I didn’t think I’d be able to make anything worthwhile by dabbling in mediums I didn’t really know anything about. But, now, I think that I was quite wrong and that experimenting with your work can indeed be very worthwhile. I’m going to use today’s blog entry to explain how I changed my perspective.
    In May 2011, my friend Dalfino offhandedly said that he’d like me to start a blog, and so I did right away. This was a step out of my comfort zone. I was used to writing non-fiction and I didn’t know what kind of thing to write on a blog, yet three years later I’ve been happily and regularly updating this to an audience of a few hundred. Also, at around that time, my Mum kindly gave me her old camera. In the past, I’d never really had an interest in photography, yet now I enjoy taking pictures so much that I rarely go out without my camera. In July 2012, a friend of mine was feeling sad, so, I decided that a little comic strip might be the best way to cheer her up. It worked well, and I enjoyed making it so much that I’ve now been doing that regularly for the last two years. Indeed, the first story I had published was actually written as a result of me experimenting with present tense first person.
    So, if you do like to create art, stepping outside of your normal boundaries could be very helpful, even if it may feel counterproductive. In virtually every instance so far, it has been greatly beneficial to me. In future I’d love to develop my script writing, musical and visual art abilities and I’d really love to get the opportunity to work on a video game in one way or another.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)
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Frisking

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Adam Randall
Last summer I found myself visiting a nightclub in London with my friend Dalfino Madrigal Keyte, his sister and some of her friends. I’d been to one or two night clubs in the past, so I thought I knew the kind of thing that I could expect from there. Indeed, I had a fairly nice time there and I even wrote about it once before, but there was one thing I didn’t expect about London nightclubs: increased security. On my way into Mother (that was the name of the club) I was frisked for the first (and so far only) time in my life.
    I was asked to stand with my arms spread open, and the man at the door began feeling around for anything that shouldn’t be brought into a nightclub. I’m sure this takes about five seconds for most of the people who walk in wearing t-shirts with no pockets, but I came in with my jacket and had lots of items on me so it took several minutes.
    Through the material, he had a little feel of every item I had on me.
    As he got to one thing, he frowned at me, suspecting something bad.
    “That’s just my ocarina,” I said, offering a reassuring smile.
    He carried on looking. Then he found something else which didn’t feel quite right.
    “My yoyo,” I said in answer to the unspoken question.
    The search continued. He found something else.
    “It’s just a tape measure,” I said.
    “Alright, you can go in then,” he said finally.
    “Oh good,” I said happily.
    “But you can’t take in this.” He pulled my Trusty Water Bottle from my pocket and my heart dropped.
    “Don’t worry, Adam,” said Dalfino’s sister behind me. “I’ll make sure it’s looked after.”
    And I never saw that water bottle again.
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Metroid

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Adam Randall

PictureThis game, the one that started off the popular Metroid series, is very hard indeed. In my opinion, it lessens the experience of a game if I use a game guide to get through it, however, for this game I did use some additional materials on the internet to aid me and I find the experience was actually improved. I’ll explain why as I go on.

Samus Aran is a bounty hunter who has been sent to the planet Zebeth (called Zebes in later games) in order to eradicate the Space Pirates and the Metroids they have been using. At the start of the game, Samus arrives in a huge underground labyrinth/base and you basically have to just make it up from there. There are no limitations on where you go. You can explore the whole place as you please. I find it quite impressive that all of that was achieved with an early 2D side-scrolling game like this. On the one hand, it’s nice to have this level of freedom because it means that you could play through it several times and do it differently each go. On the other hand, the world’s so big it’s easy to get lost and sometimes it can almost feel like you’re wandering aimlessly. I tried a three times to play through the game without any aid, and I got lost and bored every time, on the fourth attempt I found a map of Zebeth on the internet which made it so much more fun. I found that it gave me much more direction when playing and stopped me from getting lost, but at the same time using a map didn’t guide me too much, so I still felt proud of myself when I did something hard.

Another slight downside, which was likely due to limitations at the time of creation, is the fact that if you save using the game’s password system, whenever you next play your health gauge is almost entirely empty and so you’ll have to spend ages going in and out of a room and killing the same enemies in it over and over again in the hope that they will drop some health. This makes the save states available in the 3DS and Wii U versions of the game extremely handy, because you can stop playing with full health and then resume with that full health next time you start (I can’t imagine how frustrating the final boss must be without that).

Having said all of that, I certainly don’t mean to leave a negative impression of Metroid because I had a lot of fun while playing. With or without a map, it can be quite satisfying to uncover a well hidden secret and the whole game has such a wonderful atmosphere to it. Perhaps it’s because of the soundtrack, or because nobody but Samus seems to be an intelligent life from, but you really get the feeling of being isolated on a distant planet. Plus, while it may be taken for granted today, I love the ending twist that Samus is female. It’s a lovely way of subverting gender roles/expectations.

Rating: 8.2/10

Buy it here for NES.

Buy it here for GBA.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show.)

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Emergency Lollipop

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Adam Randall
A couple of years ago, I was in Bath for the day visiting my friend David Tubb. At the start of the day, I was looking for something in particular from my pockets, I can’t remember what it was, but I often keep a lot of things in my pockets so it took me a while to find whatever it was I was looking for. One of the things I took out of my pockets while rummaging was an ‘Emergency Lollipop’.
    “When would you need a lollipop in an emergency?” asked David.
    “Well, I can’t think of anything right now,” I said, “but it’s best to be prepared for all possibilities!”
    Then we went about our day as we often did at the time. A lovely lunch at Pizza Express, a luxurious browse in a book shop or two, a sniff of the air in a tea shop and visits to various other places until we finally popped into Sainsbury’s. David was going to have dinner once I’d left, so we were going in there so that he could get his shopping before I left. I believe he bought himself a lasagne and one or two other essential foods (milk and bread, for example) and while he was looking around getting all of these things, I spotted something which would be a nice snack for me too.
    I’m quite a big fan of dark chocolate, I certainly prefer it to milk chocolate (and I don’t even like white chocolate), and while we were looking around Sainsbury’s I spotted a nice, big bar of dark chocolate. It was 95% pure, so that meant that it was made almost entirely of cocoa beans and very little else. This was going to be very dark chocolate indeed! I could remember having bought the 95% one before, and I loved it, so it seemed reasonable to get it again as I was a little hungry. However, it seems I’d remembered wrong.
    Once we got back to the station and were waiting for our respective buses, I quickly ate all of the chocolate. Delicious. But hang on a moment, what was that extremely bitter taste in my mouth? While it had seemed nice during the process of eating it, once it was gone there was such a horrible bitter taste left behind. I might even be sick! I reached for my Trusty Water Bottle and took several huge gulps, hoping it would get things back to normal. Sadly, all that happened was that it made the water taste bad as well. I couldn’t handle the taste at all. It was a real emergency. That’s when the Emergency Lollipop came in handy; sucking on that very sweet snack perfectly cancelled out the bitter taste left from the chocolate.
    David was very impressed that it had proved to be useful so soon after his enquiry and then we both headed home. Me with the happiness of a non-bitter mouth and him with the happiness of the upcoming dinner and both with the happiness at having spent a nice day together.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

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