7 Reasons

Tag: gaming

  • 7 Reasons That Google Shouldn’t Have Revived Pacman

    7 Reasons That Google Shouldn’t Have Revived Pacman

    A screen capture of Google Pacman (pac man)

    Last week, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of PacMan, Google put a version of the game on their main page.  The game proved so popular that they’ve now made it permanently available.  Here are 7 reasons that they shouldn’t have.

    1.  Age. Pacman is slow, old looking and not as much fun as it once was: This is typical of everything and everyone over thirty.  Why not encourage contemporary game developers by putting a new game there?

    2.  1980. By reviving Pacman, Google is taking us back to 1980.  But there are far better years that Google could celebrate.  Why look back to a year that gave us the Olympic boycott, the election of Robert Mugabe, the death of John Bonham and the interminable and tedious saga of who shot JR Ewing?  Why not commemorate 2009?   Computer games were better; clothes were better; hair was better;  England won The Ashes.  It’s a much better year.

    3.  Prominence. Why not use the widely viewed search engine to promote something good?  Instead of putting Pacman there, why not celebrate the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII with an appeal for world peace or commemorate 1986 with an appeal for the Duchess of York to shut up and go away?  Who wouldn’t prefer that?

    4.  Time. According to people that could be bothered to work it out, 4.82 million (Pac)man-hours (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) were spent playing Pacman last Friday.  That can’t all have been me, there must have been several other people playing it too.  Perhaps you’re one of them.  That’s a lot of time spent playing something so obsolete.

    5.  Ubiquity. Once you’ve been playing Pacman for nine hours or so, your mind begins to unravel a bit and you start to see him all over the place.  I’ve produced a pie chart to illustrate this phenomena.  Seriously, he’s everywhere.

    A pie chart demonstrating the effects of playing Pacman for nine hours

    6.  Music. Michael Winner dressed in a purple shell-suit scraping his fingernails down Simon Cowell’s blackboard would be less irritating than the relentlessly jaunty music from Pacman.  That it has been seldom heard in the last few years should be a cause for general rejoicing.   Offices can already be hellish enough places to work; imagine being able to hear someone at the next desk playing Pacman.  Actually, try not to imagine it.  Take deep breaths and think cleansing thoughts.  Close your eyes and say “Ommmm”.

    7.  Rubbish. The single worst thing about the revival of Pacman is that I’m bloody rubbish at it.  Useless.  Cataclysmically useless.  Useless to an extent that in years to come, my name will probably be used to redefine humanity’s very concept of uselessness.  Nothing in my childhood prepared me for being chased by monsters – not even all of the Scooby Doo viewing – I was too busy playing Space Inavders.  Now that’s a real game.

  • 7 Reasons Not to Revisit Old Football Management Games

    7 Reasons Not to Revisit Old Football Management Games

    Computer monitor with the Championship Manager and Football Manager computer game logos

    1.  It’s unproductive.  When you’re playing a current Football management game, you can at least try to justify spending all of the time engaged in a trivial activity by reassuring yourself that you’re gaining invaluable insights into the modern game.  All you’re learning by re-visiting an old one is how good everyone used to think Gary O’Neill would become.

    2.  Guilt.  You’ll feel guilty about re-visiting an old game.  And so you should.  You now know who most of the promising players in the game are – this is much like insider dealing on the stock markets – and you’ll feel so guilty about this that you’ll set yourself ridiculous challenges within the game.  Trying to build a Premier League winning team entirely from Belgian players; trying to win the FA Cup with an entirely left-footed team; winning the Champions League with a team of players with silly names (Raphael Wicky, Chung Yoo-Suk, Bernt Haas and Olivier De Cock are always the first names on the team-sheet); trying to qualify for the World Cup with an all-Scottish team – the guilt-induced-absurdity is endless.

    3.  Wayne Routledge.  Your Premier League team’s bête noire will be Wayne Routledge.  He’ll be awesome whenever you play against him.  Yes, the same Wayne Routledge that wouldn’t even get into a Premier League team picked by his own mother.  “Wayne Routledge.  Wayne Routledge!” will be the tortured and incredulous cry that accompanies your heaviest defeat of the season.

    4.  Management.  The managers do weird things in old games.  Arsene Wenger spends money on players, Fergie retires, Steve McLaren is English (I couldn’t resist this video), Rafa Benitez picks a squad using logic and Steve Bruce doesn’t frighten small children.

    5.  Imagination.  Because the old game develops very differently to current real-life football, you have to keep track of them both in your mind.  So you now have two Peter Crouches, both a real Peter Crouch and an imaginary one.  Do you really need an imaginary Peter Crouch?

    6.  Match Of The Day.  Settling down to watch Match Of The Day becomes a confusing experience after you’ve been playing an old game for some time – it’s like watching The Twilight Zone.  All of the wrong players are playing for all of the wrong teams, all of the wrong teams are in all of the wrong leagues, all of the wrong scorers are scoring at all of the wrong ends yet Alan Shearer still can’t find a decent shirt.  Where the hell is he shopping?

    7.  Internationals.  I wasn’t managing them, but England won the 2010 World Cup.  Wayne scored a hat-trick in the final against Italy.  Wayne Routledge.  Wayne Routledge!