The Golden Rule

Whenever the headline of a newspaper article or editorial asks a yes/no question, the answer is invariably 'no'. The "?" at the end is a cunning ploy that allows the writer to have a more eye-catching headline than their article deserves. Remember to just say "no" and move on.

"You ain't (or maybe have) heard it played like that before..." #2

I launched this "monthly"feature in January 2009, and we're now in April. Oops. Let's call it a quarterly feature shall we?

I also said that it would include covers by "relatively obscure bands". Tori Amos is not exactly obscure, and this cover probably isn't the world's best kept secret. So yes, you guessed right, this is little more than a lazy "filler" Youtube post, and you may claim your five pounds.

Anyway, here's Tori Amos doing Smells Like Teen Spirit:



And even though everyone's already heard it a few thousand times too many already, here's the Nirvana original for the sake of completeness:

Tetris - The 10th Best Game Ever Made

Even after the human race has gotten bored of Beethoven, sick of Shakespeare and tired of Tolstoy, Tetris will endure. As much as that’s hyperbolic (and a mediocre demonstration of GCSE-level alliteration), the simplicity and universal appeal of the Tetris concept makes it practically unimaginable that its charm will ever fade. This is a game that taps into a primordial human desire to sort, categorise and arrange; and as a result is incapable of becoming boring.

Did anyone ever need the rules of Tetris explained to them? No. The game starts, a 4-piece block (or tetromino) inches from the top toward the bottom of the screen, and in the three or four seconds it takes to get there, the game has all the time it needs to complete its tutorial. No-one needs to be told that the blocks should be stacked as tidily as possible- human instinct takes care of that.

Porn for mathematicians

Of course, human instinct also gets a kick out of the way the game forces you to balance risk against reward. As anyone who’s broken the 999,999 score barrier would surely tell you, the ideal is to always remove four lines at once using a Tetris block, as it scores 30 times more points than removing a single line. Yet this also makes you dependent on one type of block, encouraging you to build higher and higher, and putting you in serious danger should the valuable Tetris piece takes its sweet time to arrive (which inevitably it will).

Porn for videogame players

It’s the Gameboy version of Tetris that I’ve singled out for particular credit here. Not just because Nintendo astutely realised that Tetris is a perfect game to play on the move, but for the more significant reason that it spread the joy of the two-player mode to a world-wide audience. If the third pillar of “what human instinct is about” is “screwing each other over” (and let’s face it, there’s plenty of evidence that’s the case), then a two-player Tetris game seems to have been designed to satisfy all your most fundamental needs. There are few things more satisfying than hearing the “cling cling badow!” that accompanies the removal of four lines at once, followed seconds later by an “Argh!” from your opponent as they receive your lines at the bottom of their screen.

Tetris is videogame design at its purest, most restrained, and perhaps most elegant, living up to old the maxim that (almost) every great game embodies: “simple to play, impossible to master ”. It’s probably the least controversial pick on this list, because everyone’s played it, and everyone loves it; and in fact, the controversial thing is probably that it’s not higher up. I don’t care. I’ve chosen the arbitrary order in which to rank all these very different games, and I’m sticking to it.

The 10 Best Games in the World

This is, of course, an exercise in futility. By the time I’ve decided which Mario game is most deserving of a mention, I’ll be re-thinking what position to put Tetris. It’s also a little presumptuous to think that my list might be better than any of the others in the great ocean already out there on the Internet. But obviously blogging is an egomaniacal exercise even at the best of times (or at least, here it is), and truth be told, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that the Internet will be incomplete until I’ve told it my top ten videogames, aged 24 years, 8 months, and 3 days.

I’m not being precise about my age there because of some indulgent quirk of my obsessive-compulsive personality; no, there’s every chance that at 24 years, 8 months and 4 days I’ll want to re-write the whole thing. As everyone who makes a list like this really ought to acknowledge, I haven’t played every game in the world. I’ve scarcely touched a Sega Saturn, and never come anywhere near a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga . What follows is shallow and ill-researched, and little more than an excuse to talk about some great games. But be reassured reader, that I at least have the decency to admit my limitations.

Just some of the games I've never played

Despite the self-deprecation, this isn't a completely half-arsed operation. All the games on the list had to meet some strict criteria before I allowed them to become one of my "Top Ten... in the World... Ever!!!" All of the games in this series will feel “complete”. Never, or only very rarely, will their makers have left you wanting for options, game modes or play mechanics. There will be a consistency to their worlds, with no literal or metaphorical invisible walls to remind you that you’re playing a game. And very-much-relatedly, they will stand the test of time; the majority of them having done so already.

So let's get on with it:

10. Tetris
9. Metal Gear Solid
8. Shenmue
7. TBA
6. ?
5. ?
4. ?
3. ?
2. ?
1. ?

Our Galaxy

The Milky Way

A scale model of our Galaxy. I find it pretty hard not to be fascinated by this sort of thing, or at least, it's left me trying to work out how we know that the temperature on Mercury is 427°C.