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A Life Of Crime |
 With GTAIV so close you can practically taste it, I thought I'd take a look back at how I've grown up with the series, my memories of it and seeing why I'm so pants-wettingly anticipating the latest game.
The year is 1998, the Playstation was placing itself solidly into the position of leading console and I was a mere bairn of 11. Having been gaming already for 6 years, mostly at the hands of a speedy hedgehog on Sega's Master System and Mega Drive, it was quick becoming apparent that videogames meant more to me than just something to fart around with for a few hours after school.
I can't quite remember how we came to know of the game Grand Theft Auto, but my brother and I had become quite affirmed in the notion that we must have it, regardless of our age.
Back in the day, of course, parents and relatives had no idea about the notion that videogames could be inappropriate for children - after all, we were still barely coming down from the era where the name was synonymous with Space Invaders, Pacman, Sonic and Mario. The irony of the piece should probably be that it was my brother - a full two years younger than me - who succeeded in obtaining the game first by means of pestering our aunt while in GAME one day.
 Of course, the original Grand Theft Auto was immensely tame by today's standards - the themes, the swearing, the implied anal rape, it was all there - but fronted with a cutsey sprite look and Rockstar's (or DMA as they still were then) British self-defacing humour, you'd be hard pressed to find the game actually causing much offense.
The appeal of the original GTA was, unquestionably, the complete open-endedness of it. A novelty back then after cutting our teeth on games where the largest amount of choice you ever got was "Do I go to the higher platform or the lower platform?", to be able to take the game at do whatever the hell you wanted was both liberating and exciting. And best of all, it made playing the game a spectator sport as much as it was a thrill to actually play it. My brother and I used to swap control of the game over whenever one of us got "Wasted" or "Busted" and then tear away to cause whatever mayhem we could (even stopping to do a few missions if the mood took us) until the cycle began again of death or capture and controller swapping. Despite being sold as a single player game, GTA arguably had one of the best multiplayer experiences you could find.
The music was simple MIDIs, yet catchy. The cars were simple sprites, yet unique, identifiable and memorable. The characters are animal-crossing like noises at the end of the phone, yet entertaining and some were even surprisingly well developed (though no doubt his return in GTAIII helped matters, El Burro was hard to forget). The missions were silly but challenging and the game world was huge - with 3 fully mapped cities to do whatever the hell you liked in and a different flavour and feel of the locales, cars and people within each.
It's very easy to dismiss the original GTA when thinking about the series now - gaining an extra dimension left the legacy behind and for many the series (and their inclusion in it) only started on the PS2 and the third game.
Personally, we never got the London Packs, but we did eventually manage to catch the second game - only to find that a coat of paint, a new location and some extra features had kind of dulled the character that made the original game so thrilling and unique. The bright paint job of GTA may have betrayed its adult themes, but in moving to the dark, night based GTA II, the still fairly cartoony look and gameplay jarred heavily against the attempted atmosphere of the game. If you had the PC version of the game, you could change to a lighter palette and the game much more closely resembled the original, but unfortunately the console versions - where the series would unquestionably find a better home than the PC - didn't have such an option.
In this game, the groundwork was laid for GTAIII, not only is the character of Claude Speed rejigged for a return in the later PS2 game, but the darker themes, grander scope and a higher emphasis on music and the radio stations. GTA II is also the first game in which racking up the wanted level racked up the challenge - introducing SWAT Teams, the FBI and the Army - a theme that would recur throughout the rest of the series and made surviving for as long as you could on a rampage enough of a greater challenge to make GTA II still an enjoyable game to play over its original.
III, was of course, III Dimensional, and with that brought a kind of game that had never been seen before - leaving even the original two GTA games behind and cutting itself a new path - many followers coming right up behind it. 
Though GTA's protagonist stands alone in the 3D GTA games as being unvoiced and rather uncharacterised (though it matched fairly well in linking the original games to the "new" series as it moved on), albiet by complete accident (Houser and his boys just one day realised that Claude didn't say anything in the game and went "... screw it."), the game still featured many endearing characters who would continue to return throughout the "universe" of the games that followed III, from the Forelli and Sindacco families to Lazlo - the Talk Radio star of Grand Theft Auto for 7 years who helped cement how important the radio feature, something that could otherwise have easily been some throwaway in-game sound-test, would be to the franchise in communicating the humour and nature of the games to make it clear that this wasn't just some "kill simulator". This was an entire world with larger than life characters in real-world (and some not-so-much) situations for you to explore and enjoy whatever way you liked.
Just a single year later Rockstar surprised the world by releasing an entirely new game in Vice City - despite the incredulously fast development time, Vice City was in no way a rushed and forced game. With art direction so slick it could cut your balls off and a music selection indescribably perfect, this game captured the 80s, stuffed it onto a disc and said "Here you are, go and play!". In every way superior to the already stand-up GTAIII, Vice City is, quite rightly, often heralded as the best in the series and one of the best games, not only on the PS2, but of this entire decade. Rockstar proved that games could be more than just your saturday-morning cartoon affair, they could be your big budget action flicks as well.
Although the "Stories" games on the PSP were an amazing triumph in what they managed on a relatively limited system, and the plots and characters every bit as developed and crafted as their bigger brothers, I'll only give them a passing mention - I still haven't had a chance to sit down with Vice City Stories and Liberty City Stories, for all its quality and impressiveness, just can't compare to what San Andreas meant.
 Retooling the game system to take fuller advantage of the systems available at the time, San Andreas gave the world of Grand Theft Auto a new slick, smoother, and even bigger feel. Spanning across an entire state this time, and returning to the original's idea of 3 full cities to attack and abuse, San Andreas didn't waste its opportunities and provided an epic level storyline to go along with the epic scale of its setting. I know I must have listened to every single soundbyte in the game's radio arsenal about 20 times over by now, but even so, when I play the game I find myself cruising along, heading along a long, rain-beaten path from one city to another just listening intently to the radio and feeling so immensely immersed in the world I'm playing that it's hard to think of any other game you could just sink so easily into.
The game's characters are, in my opinion, the best in the entire series so far. You become genuinely hurt by their betrayal, genuinely touched by their loyalty and genuinely frustrated at those giving you shit. Not to mention genuinely guilty when you wind up teaming up with a guy you once ruined the entire life of...
There are few single games I can claim I have played to ridiculous levels, Sonic 2 being one - where I can easily say I've played it hundreds of times in total and probably pretty close to a hundred from start to finish - most of the Pokemon games - and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Sure, there were the frustrating times where I just could not pass a damned storyline mission for even weeks on end, but it didn't stop me playing.
The reason for that is easily the magic of Grand Theft Auto itself. Not progressing in the story is no reason to not be playing it - you can quite easily find yourself wandering around simply killing people that pass you by for hours, or driving from one end of San Andreas to another looking for that one special car or bike you'd like to take back to your garage and keep for cruising around for fun the next time you play. Or just going on a simple rampage and seeing how long you can last. The options are seemingly endless, and in such a rich, vibrant, humorous and enjoyable world to do it in, you find yourself almost yearning to go back there after you turn the game off.
I've grown up with Grand Theft Auto - however questionably legal (or moral) that may be, the fact is, it's a massive part of my gaming life and because it can provide you with unique and endless experiences it's a massively memorable one too. In a few days time, the game I've been waiting for since I finally completed San Andreas (which was, to be completely honest, only last year after I finally got my head down and went for it as opposed to just dicking about) will be here, in my hands and providing me with even more new, unique and entertaining experiences to add to the pile of memories. Part of me mourns the in-game universe that was home to the characters of the games since III, all of whom have been incredibly enjoyable to get to know and will be missed, but when they're replaced by a phenomenal new gameplay setting in the revamped Liberty City, an even more involved storyline with even deeper characters and - probably most important of all - a completely new game engine with an even higher level of AI and random-event occurance to give each play a completely new experience, it's a very worthy trade.
I look forward, not only to what I can expect in GTAIV - but also what I can expect to follow, for if Vice City, San Andreas and the Stories games are anything to go by, things can only get better - and the idea of that already blows my mind.
Roll on April 29th (Or whenever my game gets here *crosses fingers for early delivery*).
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25 Apr 2008 - 02:17 by DoctorOak
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Videogame Reviews
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A Mystery Brawl in Europe this Summer (at last) |
 After a long, long wait, Nintendo Europe has finally announced Super Smash Brothers Brawl's European date, and it's not too terrible - hitting the shelves on the 27th June.
Out the month after will be the new Mystery Dungeon games, Time and Darkness explorers out on the 4th July. While May sees the WiiWare service launching on the 20th and Everybody's Nintendo Channel, that gives you video prevews and news on upcoming Nintendo games as well as allowing you to download DS demos through your Wii will be out on the 30th.
The full list (mostly full of crap, really) for Quarter 2 and just beyond is available here.
Now I have two things to look forward to in the last weekend of June. 
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24 Apr 2008 - 14:08 by DoctorOak
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General News
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Darkrai in the US |
So you want other people to post news, eh, Doc? Well, how about this:
On May 31st and June 1st (that's a Saturday and a Sunday for those not calendarically inclined), Toys R Us will be distributing Darkrai to people who show up at their locations in the US. With a DS, of course. It would be difficult to give it to people who don't have the game.
No word yet on how they'll give it to you, but if I'm recalling their past promotions correctly, odds are they'll just straight up give you Darkrai as opposed to giving you the Membership Pass to spark the event.
So yeah! Those of you in the US, keep an eye on that calendar, 'cause May 31st will be here before you know it.
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21 Apr 2008 - 13:34 by Hypotenuse Man
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General Pokemon News
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Third Game to D/P to be revealed next month? |
 This month's CoroCoro advertises next month's CoroCoro with a list of Pokémon games and their 'third' titles, making a show of how Red and Green were followed by Blue, Gold and Silver were followed by Crystal and Ruby and Sapphire were followed by Emerald, leaving a question mark after Diamond and Pearl to be addressed next month.
It's not exactly the subtlest of hints, but there you go.
While this means it's unlikely we'll see the long fabled G/S remakes right now - don't rule them out just yet. When FireRed and LeafGreen were announced, they were released 3 months later - and later that very same year, Pokémon Emerald was announced and released in a fairly similar fashion. It should be noted that with the amount of hints towards G/S and the plain basic fact that there is location data for Johto within Diamond and Pearl that to not utilise that fact would be starkly surprising.
But, it maybe begs the question, maybe we wont get the G/S remake in the same fashion we got FireRed and LeafGreen? What if it wasn't a remake at all, but rather a game set in Johto alone? (Though this could be countered by the fact that D/P take place at the same time as G/S as indicated through referenced storyline events, thus making a full G/S remake more likely) And what if the game wasn't on the DS at all? What if it wasn't even made by GameFreak... Afterall, there's one company we haven't heard from at all now for over a year and a half who are well overdue to start getting back into the game...
Well, regardless, it's unlikely that any G/S or Johto based game will be focused upon at this time (unless Diamond and Pearl's third game goes completely nuts and disregards the pattern of setting the game in Sinnoh and makes an entirely new game in Johto...), so it's going to have to wait a bit longer (and no doubt with further cock-teasing by GameFreak in this third game...).
What may not be waiting a bit longer is some Generation V Pokémon - as there are reports that two Pokémon set to appear in the 11th movie - though hidden and secret for now - may be completely new Pokémon. Which would be pretty amazing considering they still haven't revealed all of Generation IV's... (Though, if one of these was Arceus it'd probably make my theory of the possibility of it being the third game Mascot and star a lot more viable...).
Either way, it looks as if the next month or so is going to be a pretty big one for us, and likely a pretty bumpy one too if these two announcements rock the boat as much as they have the ability to.
On the Pokecharms front, sorry for not keeping up with updates lately - but any site work I've been doing has been completely behind the scenes to try and get stuff like the Trainer Card Maker upgrade finished and going. Maybe I should start battering the others around the head and get them to update more regularly too. 
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15 Apr 2008 - 14:06 by DoctorOak
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General Pokemon News
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Spin Dash Issue 63 |
 ZOMGZWUT?
Well... yeah. We're not doing anything for April Fools' this year - and neither are quite a few other sites it seems. Not that much of a surprise considering how little there is to prank about in the Pokemon world right now (there shouldn't be anyone in their right minds believing about any new Pokemon revealed today...). So, instead of pranking everyone, I thought I'd just update with a special issue of Spin Dash instead. :)
Incidentally, if you missed last years April Fools' on Pokecharms, I recently re-uploaded it, so feel free to check out what you missed [here].
I'm breaking my usual rules about putting the comic in the Full Story this once, too, 'cos this time it's the entire point of the update to have it here. :)
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1 Apr 2008 - 12:55 by DoctorOak
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Spin Dash Updates
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Happy Pokecharms Day |
Well, today was meant to be the launch of a massive upgrade to the Trainer Card maker on the anniversary of its launch last year - but due to some personal issues this weekend, I've had dick all time to work on finishing it off, I'm afraid - and so I really don't have anything to bring to you today.
I will see what can be done this week to try and wrap it up, but I'm pretty busy with work - so I may only get a chance to finish it up after Easter. Sorry guys.
As filler, of sorts, to try and avoid Pokecharms Day going completely un-marked, here's a Bayleef/Pikachu/Pokecharms/Pokemon thing that StellarWind invented as a possible mascot for the site. If you like the idea of it's design - let us know in the forums, and you never know - you may see it again soon...
Happy Pokecharms Day, folks.
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17 Mar 2008 - 22:51 by DoctorOak
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General News
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Japanese WiiWare launch titles and prices |
 WiiWare (Known as Wii Software here in the UK and Europe when it finally gets here) launches on the 25th next week, with the Pokemon Box-like Pokemon Ranch Channel launching at 1000 Wii Points - the same price as an N64 game. Fortunately, WiiWare prices will not all be set at that price, but the payoff is that some wind up higher. When the service launches, the games will costs between 500 and 1500 Wii Points, with the new Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles game unsurprisingly launching with the top price.
Here's the full list of Japanese launch titles and their prices - hopefully the American release titles will be annouced soon and should confirm the prices remaining as such across the waters. The service hits America on the 12th May and God knows when it's getting any attention over here.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as King - 1500
Dr Mario & Saikin Bokumetsu - 1000
Pokemon Ranch Channel - 1000
Lonpos - 1000
Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan - 1000
Saku Saku Animal Panic - 1000
Star Soldier R - 800
Okiraku Ping Pong - 500
Angels Solitaire - 500
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11 Mar 2008 - 17:35 by DoctorOak
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General Pokemon News
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The shape of things to come |
Heya guys. Sorry for not really keeping up with the updates lately - but I've been busy working away behind the scenes on the new Trainer Card Maker upgrade coming on Pokecharms day, just over a week away. I can happily report that everything is coming along very nicely and it should be completely ready for launch on the 17th.
The way we store the trainer cards will be changing along with the upgrade - you will now be given the option of saving your card to your own webspace or hosting it on Pokecharms for a month. We will only be hosting them for one month, so please make note of this fact and remember that if you wish to keep your cards for longer then you'll have to save them and upload them elsewhere.
This is something we're forced to do to cope with the load on the site, really. As you can imagine, with over 312,000 cards made, the load when those cards are used can be rather intense at times -and you've seen the results of that in the site being occasionally slow to load or error images appearing from time to time. This more efficient way of dealing with the cards will mean we should be able to eradicate all those problems and still be able to provide you with the TC Maker as well as some limited hosting abilities for those without any other option.
As is the standard for Pokecharms Day, we'll be launching another new feature (or rather, the grand return of an old one) on the 17th too, and I think it's going to be a very interesting and useful regular feature to look forward to as well.
Once Pokecharms Day has come and gone, I plan on making a start (finally) on figuring out what we want to do with the Game Information section. The reason behind its delay is simply that I just can't figure out exactly what direction I want the section to take. So, on that note, I'm opening the debate to the public and asking people to stick their opinions in this topic as to what you want out of a Game Information section on the site. It may be able to help me figure out what way to go with it, so it'd be very much appreciated.
Now, back to the grindstone to get everything ready for the 17th, see ya's soon.
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7 Mar 2008 - 15:48 by DoctorOak
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General News
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Hey guys,
