Super Mario Clouds

Every single games magazine has run a feature on the history of the Super Mario franchise in the last couple of months, as the hubbub surrounding Mario Galaxy reaches it's fevered summit, it certainly gives us a warm musty feeling in our brains. Because at least 50% of the GameOverYeah team don't own a Wii, we'll just have to make do with slices of dull musty old nostalgia.

This endeavour reminded us of the glorious work of Cody Arcangel, something we've been a fan of for a little while, this one is a few years old now, but we could never be accused of being a cutting edge site. The young man has taken a Super Mario Bros. cartridge, busted it open and fiddled about in it's guts, Removing the majority of the sprites, the platforms, pipes and all that bumpf.





What is left is a mesmerising scrolling silent cloudscape, geared up to travel forever across your screen.

There is nothing but this backwards version of the video on youtube, but I can recommend you download the ROM of the modified cart and run it as large as you can on an emulator on your screen. The bigger the pixels the better, something to really chew up your retinas.





Of course there is absolutely no merit, and the value in such a piece is purely artistic, with the biggest draw simply being asking why anybody would bother to create something like this. We love it's utter nonsense, sheer pointlessness.



Check out Cody's site here, there are plenty of techno experiments that push the boundaries of beautifully conceited vanity projects, but like, in a really good way.

Cody's Web Log

We'll try and bring you more of this kind of thing over the coming weeks, whether you like it or not, it is cool, and you better just get used to it, you old dinosaur.

Actually, We Bought A Wii Within 2 Hours Of Looking

We don't know what the internet is going on about. We decided on Tuesday that we were going to get a Wii for the family for Xmas.

After nipping onto the internet briefly and checking our reader we were horrified to read that Nintendo were expecting MASSIVE SHORTAGES and you would need to engage in fights and schemes in order to secure our tiny console for the folks.

So "bugger it" we thought, lets give Gamestation a go. Rang them up and asked to go on their reservation list, they were happy to oblige but warned us that there was no guarentee that we'd get it before xmas. We then hopelessly went to lunch.

Upon arriving back to our desk we found that we had a missed call from the happy lads down at Gamestation. One quick ring back filled our hearts with joy as we were told we could come collect our console. The only drawback was that the greedy buggers forced us to buy 2 games with the console.

So that timeline in summary:

11:30 RANG GAMESTATION
12:30 WENT FOR LUNCH
12:50 MISSED CALL
13:00 RANG BACK AND SECURED CONSOLE

So there you have it. No fights, no trouble. Its like the shortest Jack Bauer incident ever, an hour and a half. About the length of a movie.

What's all the fuss?

Pointless Review of Predictably Great Game

Trying to review a Zelda game is like trying to review oxygen, the ground, or the power of eyesight. If you own a DS and have failed to buy a copy of Phantom Hourglass, it's a little like owning a pair of shoes without a pair of feet. Obviously it's one of, if not the best game on the system. Before this I had lost much faith in the output of the DS; Dr Kawashima has much to answer for.

It does have a few faults, but they don't really put much of a dent in a game which is a real delight to play. For example, going back to the Temple of the Ocean King time after time is a real chore, by about the third or fourth time I really couldn't stand the thought of it, but knowing it would open up a new section of sea to piss about in excited me enough to endure it. The notemaking function on the various maps is a great feature, but they didn't bank on the fact that my handwriting, compressed down to a small pixel display looks more like the spillings of an ant's slop-tray than any form of typography. It means that what starts as well meaning notemaking and annotation soon descends into simple dots and lines.

It does also seem extremely easy, I don't want to sound like some big-headed git, but it really is a breeze, none of the bosses or puzzles have caused me to pause for breath. But that seems to be a bit of a feature with the handheld Zeldas of late; since the Capcom influence of Four Swords, the portable Link has been a cakewalk.

The battle mode is also a bit piss-poor. It's a simple game of cat and mouse, which can easily descend into a meaningless nil-nil draw if both players know what they're doing. Having experienced multi-Link heaven with 4 Swords, this is a little disappointing.

I must admit that I haven't tried the online marketplace for swapping boaty items or pirate booty, but I will cast judgement on it anyway. I can't really see the point in it - if rupees were more scarce, I could see the treasure hunting being more important. If I actually cared how fast my boat went, I could see how the customisation would be worthwhile, but as it is, I'm more concerned with the main quest to be distracted by these endeavours.

I am being a little runty for mentioning these small qualms. Overall the game is incredible, the implementation of the touch screen is amazing; only Animal Crossing uses the screen in such a wonderful manner. There are so many lovely little bits, where drawing on the screen produces something great, I can't single one or two out. This is not because I cannot remember any right now.

The sailing is great, shooting the cannon at the enemies is amazingly pleasurable, I found myself drawing extremely ludicrous paths to the next island simply so I could shoot the shit out of some more of those skull bastards. It would be great if the sea was a little bit larger, so you could have some of that pointless voyaging that we loved so much in Wind Waker.

This all equates to the point that I was trying to make earlier, that it shouldn't take a review from a oik like me to make you want to go out and buy Phantom Hourglass, chances are that you've already been out to buy it. And good for you!

I haven't managed/bothered to take any photos, or even steal any screenshots from more professional sites. So here's a video I've had from Youtube, I started out looking for that video of Emily from X-Factor slapping someone happy, but when that search turned out to be a washout, this was all I could take from it.



I notice none of the people in the advert are playing the game in their house on the sofa, while their girlfriend watches Nigella Lawson, which is the only real way to play any handheld game. Who on earth would play this outside, where Joe Public can see you and then proceed to mug or mock you?

SEGA's rubbish

...belongs in here





I tried to think of some rubbish SEGA games that I could recommend they put in such a bin, but I couldn't. Except that nextgen Sonic. And I reckon that SEGA Superstars is probably bumwad.