I’m sorry all my posts are about gaming recently (I’m not really) but I’ve just been playing Wario Ware, Inc on my Gameboy and laughing out loud. I always knew I’d like this game but I’ve rarely seen it full price and finally saw it secondhand at the weekend. I was not prepared for this amount of hilarity though. It’s basically a non-stop barrage of mni-games which are thrown at you and then immediately taken away again before you’ve had half a chance to react. It’s also done in the most ridiculous old-skool graphics ever. There’s nothing like a mobile phone emoticon shouting BOUNCE at you followed by a game in which a stick man is bouncing in the air requiring you to move a trampoline below and catch him. Then DRESS ME as clothes fall from the sky and you move Wario underneath to clothe himself. Then CHOP as you hit A when the power bar is red to get a chalk-drawn man to karate chop a tree trunk. Then GRAB as you help Wario catch his pint of beer as it slides across the bar. It’s mentalism gone mad. I’ve just completed the Nintendo level (“WOW, marcy, you rock!”, it tells me!) playing mini 5 second versions of Zelda (ENTER THE CAVE!), Super Mario (SQUASH!) Donkey Kong, Duck Hunt and other classics with hilarious results. Ah well, whatever. At least it keeps me off eBay the streets.

(Apologies for the lack of updates – there’s been something up with the diskant FTP so no blogging or anything else)

Anyway, my dad was down visiting at the weekend so we had another Sunday afternoon jaunt to The Lighthouse to see some poncey art and design.

My main reason for suggesting this was an exhibition called Field Trip which I’ve been seeing advertised around the place. Basically five groups of people making journeys in Scotland and “where they went, what they saw and what they brought back”. I thought my dad would like this, he being fond of walking and Scottish history.

Turns out I loved this exhibition myself. The five journeys were all between different places and with different aims. So one group went on the ferry to Bute to see how things have changed since the days when this was a regular holiday jaunt for Glaswegians, another group went through Falkirk along the canal routes and another up the roads to Glencoe noting the signs and notices along the way.

Laid out as five long display units you could view maps of the journeys, the photographs, drawings and notes of the travelers and 3D architectural maquettes of the main locations with their symmetrical trees and step-graded hills. Along the bottom were laid out the items that the groups brought back, from tourist souvenirs to bits of bark. And then at the end were videos showing parts of the journey and geographical and historical information panels.

The main idea of the exhibition seemed to be to remind people about all the interesting stuff right on our doorstep and try and get us all getting out and about. It certainly worked for me as the Bute display reminded me of how much fun it had been to go on the train and ferry to Rothesay with Mogwai and that there was all this stuff that we could have seen there if we hadn’t spent it breaking our ears. I’m also amazed by the Falkirk Wheel and have vowed to go see it in real life at the next opportunity.

So if you’re in Glasgow in the next few weeks then get yourself to The Lighthouse (they also do wonderful shortbread and have the ponciest, greatest, most expensive shop ever). If not, have a think about your local places of interest that you’ve never actually been to or your childhood haunts that you haven’t seen for years. And send us a postcard if you visit them!

Also, apart from the usual trip to IKEA my dad’s other plan was to buy a new GC game, he having completed his racing game. While we chortled over Pokemon Channel and its rapidly decreasing price ticket in every shop we visited, our dad found himself a likely looking new racing game. Upon getting home he then discovered he had liked his old racing game so much he had bought himself another copy! Now, if only he’d bought Mario Kart. “Oh no! I thought this was a different crazy mushroom monkey dinosaur italian plumber racing game. D’oh!”

I’ve always been a keen believer in the ‘downloading music actually helps record sales’ line and am now realising my mistake. It is true that I download stuff to hear what it sounds like and that if I really really like it then I go buy the actual record so that I don’t have to listen to it on my computer and/or can have it on lovely vinyl too. BUT I see now what I have actually been doing is going to eBay and buying the records I like secondhand! So no extra money for record label or band. I wonder when the RIAA will turn their stupid minds towards eBay, record exchanges and charity shops. You’re all killing music!!

I’m also vaguely bemused by the fact that the most oft-downloaded MP3s from my collection on Soulseek are the Washing Machine album by Sonic Youth and Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble by PJ & Duncan.

I’ve been thinking a lot about gaming recently and why, after 4 or 5 months of Gamecube ownership, I still only own three games. The reasons I put down mostly to lack of money, waiting for my sister to just buckle down and kill Ganondorf so I can borrow Wind Waker and that the two games I was playing (Majora’s Mask off the free Zelda disc and Billy Hatcher) were just TOO HARD and/or too time consuming.

My favourite games are the Zelda and Pokemon series and my favourite parts of them are just wandering around collecting stuff. You can guarantee I’ll have done all the sidequests way before I get anywhere near the final dungeon.

My least favourite gaming experiences have been bosses and impossible (to me) puzzles, usually involving jumping. I’ve lost count of how many games I’ve completed to the final boss and then got frustrated never to return and see the world saved.

(Coincidentally, there’s a similar thoughts going on at the Do You See? blog)

Thank goodness, then, for Animal Crossing. None of my friends seem to understand the appeal of this game and my best shot at describing it has been, “imagine an RPG without any bosses, or any plot”.

Basically the game runs in real time as you go about your daily life in a town populated with up to 15 animals. Every day you read your mail, buy clothes and furniture at the shop, go fishing or bug catching, chat to your neighbours, write letters, do errands, dig up fossils for the museum etc. There’s no plot whatsoever. You can work towards getting a perfect town, a completed museum and a huge house or you can just re-arrange your furniture and play NES games in your basement.

I was looking around today to see if anyone had started an Animal Crossing blog which I think could be really funny in the right hands. Instead I stumbled across a discussion on www.gamegirladvance.com which I found interesting for a number of reasons, the main one being how you only need to play Animal Crossing for 15-45 minutes at a time. I hadn’t quite realised that this what I most enjoy about AC – getting home of an evening, loading up AC and just reading my mail, checking the shop and chatting with the animals. And then I can switch it off and get on with all the other stuff I need to get done or get more involved as I try to pay off my debt and get some new trees to grow.

This is why it would be a tragedy if Nintendo stopped making games. Forever accused of making kids games, what they actually make is accessible games, games that anyone can play. In some ways, yes, that does often mean they’re easy. But in other ways, it means you’re not frustrated from enjoying huge parts of the game because of a lack of skill. Instead you get an immersive experience where your friends are encouraged to help out or join in through connectivity or multiplayer. And surely gaming should be as much about entertainment as challenge. Even with Grand Theft Auto, for all the talk of what an amazing game it is, people I know seem to just spend most of their time arsing about, kicking in prostitutes and doing ridiculous stunts in fire engines, much to the general amusement of onlookers. Zelda and Animal Crossing for two I think are really fun games just to watch someone else playing.

Surely now it’s time for all games to have realistic difficulty levels where Easy can actually be completed by your little sister or your gran and SuperHard can give those people who will happily stay up half the night trying to complete a level a real challenge.

Or even better, can we just give Nintendo a monopoly on games? Aw, go on…

I’m quite interested by the fact that no pain was caused by being in close contact with Lightning Bolt, Mogwai, Boredoms etc. but a 50 minute plane journey from London has broken my ears. Certainly I am getting old. But WOOO, best ATP ever! My top highlight was Lightning Bolt. Don’t listen to anyone who says they were crap, they’re just sulking about the playing on the floor thing. I couldn’t see them but they were still astonishingly great. So good I went next door and impulse bought the DVD. Also brilliant were Boredoms, Shellac, old skool Mogwai set and little old Chris Mack on that big stage. Tortoise, Papa M, Cat Power would have been great if I hadn’t shouted to people constantly over the former or been able to hear the latter two. I spent a lot of time being extremely un hardcore, sitting down during bands and hanging out at the chalet and thus had a 100% excellent band percentage by Saturday afternoon. My drinking antics were pathetic thanks to damaging my throat within 10 seconds of arriving in London. Most drunken person there – a tie between Chris Summerlin and Colin Kearney. Addition of the gambling area was a stroke of genius also. Yay, ATP. I’m off to have a bath now, despite spending half the weekend moaning about how our chalet had a bath instead of a shower. Go figure.

Shellac were AMAZING at my birthday party on Thursday also. I love that band. Hello to everyone I met and thanks to the kittens for my birthday pie, of which I ate 2/3rds. Mmmm, pie.

Any diskant friends/fans/wellwishers should come and say hello to us at Shellac tonight or ATP over the weekend. Look out for our diskant badges (also pictures here)! If in doubt, come to the record sale outside the pub on Sunday. You might even get a free diskant badge! Anyone who just shouts my name at me from across the street as last ATP will get my usual suspicious glare/look of confusion and NO BADGE. So, don’t.

No updates til after the weekend obviously. Hopefully Ollie will keep you entertained here while he’s blubbing into his jumper over all the fun he’s missing.

Hah, Dave is describing EVERY SINGLE GIG I HAVE EVER BEEN TO. Well, not that Hella have played every gig I’ve been to but that they could have been standing in for all the bands as I would not have seen enough to notice. The only gigs I have ever seen are those when I had permission to stand on or beside the stage so as to take photos or when no-one else bothered to come to the gig. This is why I can’t remember what people in bands look like but can recognise random people that go to the same gigs as me.

I enjoyed the Unexplained Snacks of America article on The Morning News today but…..when do we get the answers?!!

Despite being a computer tech geek, I am amazed and astounded by the listen-to thing which I consider nothing short of magic. Look, it tells you what I am listening to RIGHT NOW! I can look over there and see what Ollie’s listening to on the other side of the world. RIGHT NOW! We’ve managed to enlist the help of greg kitten and chrish to the cause where they will cancel each other out as Greg tries to lower the cool quotient and Chris tries to raise it. I’m actually finding this something of a kick up the ass as I’ve been sadly neglecting my records lately but now I feel guilty when I see that I haven’t listened to anything for hours and hours. It’s also going to be interesting to see if/how much we all start pandering to the public knowledge and start pretending we listen to Merzbow all the time. Or that we don’t listen to Girls Aloud and songs by your own band…ahem. Incidentally, thanks to NYLPM for the listen-to tip.

Also to let you know that I’ve just initiated a domain transfer request for diskant so things may go a bit screwy over the next 10-14 days. Not that any of us care – we’ll be at ATP! WOO! (except for Ollie, aww. But that’s what you get for moving to the USA).

Possibly the greatest piece of band merchandising ever, I bring you the Mogwai Music Box!

I just got mine in the post yesterday after buying it in a nice bit of OH MY GOD BEST THING EVER impulse buying on Friday. We used to play with music boxes like these in a shop called Luckpenny in Elgin when we were kids and those were exciting enough when playing stuff like The Entertainer and Greensleeves. Hearing one play a plinky-plinky Tracy by Mogwai is truly wondrous. Now I have dug out Young Team so I can listen to the orginal Tracy and get the handle turning timing correct.

Coincidentally, it’s my birthday soon! My personal birthday comedy is to find a great gig happening on my birthday and then insist it has been specially organised as MY BIRTHDAY PARTY and force all my friends to come along. Hence my birthday party a few years back in Aberdeen when Godspeed played and wee Stuart Mogwai drove all the way from Glasgow just to be there (for My Birthday Party! etc.) . This year My Birthday Party is being held in the Scala in London and will be hosted by Steve Albini and his rather good Shellac band. I hope to see you all there brandishing cake and presents. The date for your diaries is March 25th which is also Hobbit New Year, giving even more excuses for the consumption of cake.

This will then be followed by ATP Weekend One fun. There’s been some talk that Weekend Two looks to be better. But are the diskant staff going to weekend 2? NO. Therefore weekend two is FOR LOSERS, once again.

I urge you all to go see Paper Cut Out if their extensive tour happens to visit your town. It’s always a relief when your friends bands aren’t dreadful and it’s even better when they’re really fantastic. I was mightlily impressed with their complicated rock and glad I am in a simplistic lo fi electronic band.