The fierce midday sun tears into the unwary traveller to the City of Angels, and holds no pity on you as you limp to the corner of West 12th and St Figueroa. The crowd outside the Los Angeles Convention Center buzzes like an angry wasp as it impatiently funnels through the recently opened doors. The front entrance looms like the mountain in Journey, and like that mountain, the Convention Center is an awesome and imposingly distant sight. You see only three options in front of you: You could stick it out with the other mugs and latecomers in the line, charm or bully your way to the front of the throng, or sneak around the side to see if you can find one of those classy "alternative routes" that super cool adventures have these days.

Get in line

Make a bid for the front of the line

Sneak round the side

[When last we left our heroes... Captain Tincap was still cooler than a frozen cucumber on a cold day in winter, Private Party blew up a dog as well as a couple holes in an alley wall, Private First Class Session had a face sodden with paint. With a whizz and a splash, we slip back into the mind of our hero, Private Chat.

0927 Hours – Operation Flawless Victory
Private Chat - Alpha Team Bravo Special Ops Company War Hero Salute
26km East of the Baddistan border, the town of Ra's Al Ghul.

Private Chat reloaded his M16, since he had already fired 3 rounds. Then it was time to sprint like hell down the alley since it looked empty. Thankfully, his team didn’t think this was retarded, let alone reckless, and decided to join him on his merry jaunt into the blinding light of the empty streets of Downtown Ra’s Al Ghul.

“Let’s get to work.” Private Session murmured, as he pulled a ham sandwich out of his knapsack and nibbled on the corner.

“Me balls are blistering for some hot dog good old time shooting by my good savage Lord!” Private Party whistled, as he leapt in the air and performed a signature Fred Astaire heel click.

Captain Tincap got on the radio, “Golf S-22, we’re going to need a clean sweep of the area with your shooty planes, check the sonar for mines, and get me some jalapeno relish. This is excellent barbecue weather.”

“Roger that Sierra Cosworth,” Golf S-22 chattered “sending in the hot sauce and mystery jets now. Stand by, over by that blowy newspaper.”

“Roger that Golf S-22,” Tincap bellowed. “Over And Out. Oh wait! Damn, I already said Over And Out. It’s bad form to get back on the radio.”

Private Chat bounced into the next clear alley and sprayed bullets at some distant locals. Luckily, they happened to be heavily armed terrorists, so that was alright then.

“Giddy up!” Party yelped, as he somersaulted into a spread leg crouch and blew an empty bean tin into a rusty mesh fence with a blast from his SPAS-12.

“Hooray.” Session mumbled, as he hopped on a ledge, skittered along like a wet rat chasing a cascading cheddar slice, flew through the air with the grace of a ballet dancer, pulled a hunting knife from behind his ear and opened a terrorist from sternum to throat with a sweeping upward strike, before delivering an unnecessary suplex.

Private Chat threw away his special issue, state-of-the-art assault rifle and ripped one of the terrorist’s dusty AK-47s from his twitching grasp, before somehow reloading it.

“Hold up padres,” Captain Tincap babbled “here is our contact.”

Tikelykov emerged from the shadows like an emerging shadow, smoking a lean cigarette and looking particularly Russian and dissident in his white vest, stonewashed jeans and brooding goatee. He slung his AKS-74U over his shoulder and gave Tincap’s team a careful sneer.

“Zo, you are the contacds thad thingk yoo can infitrade der researching baze?”

“Holy hell!” Party smirked. “Your accent is hilarious.”

“I do not like your tone, komrade.” Tikelykov leered. “But, you hav an honest face. You cannot lie to me with that face. Come, join me down this other alley.”

The team followed Tikelykov down the other alley.

“Nice alley.” Session whispered in appreciation.

“In our country, we call this a ‘Pause in the Action’” Tikelykov gestured. “It will give you the chance to reload.”

“You don’t need to reload a knife.” Session hissed, pulling the ham sandwich from his pocket to snatch another bite.

“You are crushing my buzz.” Captain Tincap intoned, spinning circles with his forefingers. “Are we nearly there yet, Tikelykov?”

“Yes.” Tikelykov sighed. “The door. Here. The only door here.”

Tincap looked at the only door at the end of the alley, right in front of him, and narrowed his eyes.
“Careful you don’t make a powerful enemy, Tikelykov.”

“I’ll be sure of that.” Tikelykov chimed, as he ushered the team into the apartment building. Shuffling up two floors, Tikelykov gestured at the smeared window. “Over there, is the secret research base.”

The view shocked the team into forgetting that Tikelykov’s accent had completely faded.

Lightening struck the corners of the imposing, towering factory. As the clouds loomed over in the distance, the gleaming pink neon glow of the ‘SECRET RESEARCH BASE’ sign bloomed over the rickety Baddistan tenements, shanty houses and chic coffee shops.

“Okey dokey.” Tincap slurred, as he slung round his shoulder bag, pulled out a cheap laptop, blew some sand off the lid, and pressed and held the power button on. The familiar Windows startup chime echoed through the abandoned flats.

“Right. Chat, I want you to contact Golf-22 and move around the mystery jets.” Tincap chimed. “Meantime, I’ve got a bottle of rum here that hasn’t had the cap torn off yet. Challenge accepted, Mr spread out bat on the label.”

Private Chat nodded in approval, picked up the laptop, and gawped at the graphic elderly threesome on the front screen.

“Close that.” Tincap said, as he snatched the computer from Chat’s hands. “Close that error pop-up too. No, I don’t want to update Flash right now. Ok, wait for RealPlayer to load. Hang on? Has it frozen? Give it a minute. Right, now there should be a shortcut that says ‘Mystery Jets’. There it is.”

Tincap clicked the icon, then clicked it again. Nothing happened.

“H-hold on...” Tincap stuttered. “I’ll double click it faster.”

Tincap clicked the icon, then clicked and dragged the icon to the middle of the screen.

“Come here...You sneaky bastard.” Tincap squeaked.

Tincap finally opened up Mystery Jets.exe

“Yes! By Zeus, I’ve got this fucking thing open!” Tincap blinked, lobbing the laptop over to Chat, hauling the bottle of rum out of his knapsack, spinning the cap off and drilling half the bottle in four large gulps.

‘MYSTERY JETS’ was emblazoned on the laptop screen in Spectrum ZX-like red-on-black glory.

“Give them hell, soldier.” Tincap swaggered, as he thudded into a corner of the corridor, licked his thumb and started peeling the label off the rum.

Chat started pressing the buttons and pointed the green ships to lob yellow balls at the nasty red squares.

Out the window, the pyrotechnic display was earth-shattering and awe-inspiring as chunks of the research base flew over the town of Ra’s Al Ghul aplenty.

“Blammo!” Party screamed, like a caffeine-buoyant 6-year-old birthday hero gobbling a pizza pie while following the exploits of duelling anime robots in glorious high definition in a hot dark hotel on a Friday night.

“Captain Tincap, Sir.” Session whispered. “Permission to speak freely.”

“You have permission to speak. Loose as a summer ham.” Tincap whimpered, tipping his hat over his eyes.

“This is meant to be a rescue operation.”

“Blammo!” Party chirruped, eyes agape, wiggling all jazz hands agogo.

“Aw, alright.” Tincap sighed. “Call off the Mystery Jets. Press Control Alt Delete and close all the Processes. Reboot to start and leave it on the user screen. Look! My icon is a bunny!”

“Ohhhhhhhh.” Party sulked, scuffing his heel on the floor. “Shoot.”

“Captain,” Session murmered. “Let’s rappel out this window, and go rescue this scientist.”

“Okay okay. Jesus, don’t be so uptight.” Tincap muttered, guzzling off the remainder of the bottle. “Now help me up.”

“Yes Sir.” Session whispered, shedding a single tear.

“You guys.” Tikelykov muttered. “You guys are...different.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Let's not tickle your balls here. You know the format by now, so let's get bloody started!


1. I’ve not been around lately. I’ll be back soon.

Some of you may be wondering, “Who is this young upstart, masquerading as a member of staff? Stwike him woughly, centuwion!”





I will freely admit that I have not been around the last few months. Basically, I lost all the free time I was using to contribute to Destructoid. I had some personal things to sort out with my 9-to-5 job. I won't bore you with the details, but I'm getting back on track now, and there's a good chance you'll be seeing my name popping back up on the front page more often again, and soon.


2. I've written for another publication. (TREACHERY?!)





I've submitted a handful of articles for PostDesk, a recently launched lifestyle blog. I've had some pretty positive feedback and will be hearing back soon about making money for my contributions. MONEY FROM CONTRIBUTIONS?! STWIKE HIM AGAIN CENTUWION! AND THWOW HIM TO THE FLOOR AGAIN!


3. I am award winning! (Not right now, but in the past)





As a child I won awards in sports, chess and public speaking. As an adult I won a pizza speed eating relay. No trophy for that one, but I won a share of a case of beer. A fitting tribute, I think.


4. I am a father of one, soon to be a father of two





Yep! I have one two-year-old daughter and will have another child around July-August time. Careful ladies, there is a significant chance that I am so fertile that reading this sentence may require a quick pregnancy test.


5. I wrote a sitcom and submitted it to a few production companies





Indeed! In the trammels of my youth it probably wasn't the finest spot of writing, but I had a couple of production companies affectionately write back to say my writing was bad, and I should be made to feel bad.


6. Almost every job I have had has been in marketing





I have worked at 4 different marketing agencies, mainly in Operations departments. If you wonder what the Operations department do, they are the department that actually get all the work done.


7. I once drank my pee to get out of a day at school





This pre-dates Bear Grylls by over a decade, but that's not to say he got the idea from me.

I bet he did though; the thieving, pee drinking, handsome bastard.


8. I was a child prodigy





As a kid, I solved Rubik's cubes for fun, won a scholarship to a local public school and was so good at maths that I would set tests for the other students. Now, I can't solve a Rubik's cube for shit.


9. I invented a bunch of creatures called Fuzzies and drew hundreds of them





Again, this was part of my childhood exploits. I would draw hundreds of these little guys, and they all had different powers, in a sort of rip-off of Lemmings.

Okay, total rip-off of Lemmings.


10. My love of videogames has got me in trouble with women





Another story as a child: One summer, a female friend had carefully choreographed a dance to the Grease soundtrack and set about performing it in the garden. Meanwhile, I stayed up in her room and played Revenge of the Mutant Camels on her Amiga.

When she found out that I'd been up in her room playing a surreal scrolling shooter rather than watching her routine, she came up to her room and gave me a slap. I ran home crying.

I regret nothing. Ok, I regret getting slapped. But, other than that, nothing.

0922 Hours – Operation Flawless Victory
Private Chat - Alpha Team Bravo Special Ops Company War Hero Salute
26km East of the Baddistan border, the town of Ra's Al Ghul.

The Chinnok S-class Superfly Special is equipped to carry 4 wisecracking patriotic troops, ammunition, a sweet minigun that doesn’t run out of ammo and a hot, atmospheric dubstep soundtrack with ethnic undertones to help illustrate the foreign nature of the region.

Private Chat’s M16 with sniper scope has seen him through 3 campaigns in the Baddistan region. Nonetheless, he nervously fingers its butt as the voice of Major Asspain echoes through his head, offering some helpful exposition if you happened to be a joypad-wielding observer wondering why he’ll be gunning down copper-coloured, lightly armed natives in 5 minutes:

“You bunch of low-life, cock-sucking maggots are the lowest bunch of life-sucking maggot cocks I’ve ever seen in my 5 years on Broadway and 15 years in the YOU ESS AYE SPECIAL MARINES” Major Asspain hollered, spitting out a half pound of chewing tobacco into the desert sand at Camp Christmas, “Now LISSEN UP.”

“At 0900 Alpha Team Bravo Special Ops Company War Hero Salute will be helos up and heading out DEEP into the heart of ENEMY TERRITORY. We have it on GOOD AUTHORITY that notorious German nuclear scientist Dr Kruscht Icemaschin has been kidnapped by Baddistan splinter terrorist faction Alqa-Holabuse to help develop their weapons-grade nuclear bad people attack plan.

Your mission is to rendezvous with our informant Tikelykov, infiltrate their research base and extract Dr Icemaschin AND the bad people attack plans.

Come back alive, and maybe we’ll pin a medal on the chest of one of you butt-munching turd pushers. Now let’s have gay sex I mean READY UP, you bunch of ass licking schlong shufflers!”

The Chinnok begins its descent, as Private Chat snaps out of his plot-filling stupor, he eyes up his team as they ready for the drop, nodding with approval like a cheap dashboard ornament:

Private Party – crack shot with a gun, completed over 15 campaigns throughout War Story 2 and 3, with a bad mouth and a worse taste in women, he’s one funny, cold hard son-of-a-mother.

Private First Class Session – Dark and brooding, he’s seen terrible things in war that he won’t like to talk about until halfway through the game in a ten-minute cutscene. He’s an expert at demolitions and tearing a terrorist’s head off like a shrimp.

Captain Tincap – Infantry leader of Alpha Team Bravo Special Ops Company War Hero Salute; veteran of the War Story series; favoured character in the graphic novel War Story Legends, Facebook tower defence game War Story Tower Siege and iPhone go-karting spinoff War Story Go-Kartz.

Captain Tincap’s trademark camouflage trilby, electric white sideburns and target-stamped eye patch are illuminated by the Chinnok’s sombre interior lighting. As the Chinnok approaches ground, Tincap thoughtfully tucks away his unicorn bong.

“Let’s...go to work boys.” he intones in the deep, clear enunciation of Sir Patrick Stewart (OBE for services to Awesome Voices)

The chinnok grounds and everyone hops out eagerly. Private Party throws a few frag grenades at a stray dog, forming a crater of puree. “Sorry guys,” Party shrugs “I meant to duck.”

As the helo rises, Chinnok Pilot Chinnokpilot crackles through the comms unit, “Will RV with you 1000 hours at the extraction point. Good luck, over and out.”

Private Session sprints nervously against a well-worn, rickety fence. Captain Tincap clutches his comms unit, “10-4 Chinnokpilot. Roger that. See you there. Love you.”

The team group up near a beaten up alley. The gentle sound of sitar music and the trash blowing through the discarded boxes and beaten-up cars help illustrate that you’re entering a weird hell hole with baddies inside.

Suddenly, from deep cover, a fierce, copper-coloured man somersaults into view, yelping with a mixture of savage abdominal pain, elation, and lukewarm mania, he cocks his standard-issue Kalashnikov, his scream of “WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBOURHOOD!” in thick Arabic is utterly indecipherable to the team, but the pirouette of gunfire gives the incoming team all the information they need.

“Weapons free.” barks Tincap, “Woop woop.”

“In the name of Bieber!” screams Party, pulling a 12-guage from the strap on his back; he unloads a few rounds into the wall to get a feel for it.

“Happy Easter.” murmurs Sessions, as he cracks his knuckles, and opens a tin of black paint with a pallet knife, scooping the emulsion up by the handful and massaging it into his face.

Private Chat stares down his telescopic sight and trains his reticule on the stranger. A single three-round burst and the strange man’s head pops like a cheap balloon at a 3-year-old’s birthday party after the children have had too much trifle and they get over-excited and start running around and forget at that age they lack the dexterity to keep their balance at that kind of speed on polished wood and suddenly they bundle into the carefully prepared table with all the gift bags and pop go all the cheap balloons.

“Tango down.” chirps Party.

“Good work men,” bellows Tincap as he gently tickles his chin, “let’s move out.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Ok, so I was inspired by those alphabet playmats you get for children to make a Gamer's Alphabet version, to put on a t-shirt or whatever. Here is a draft of the design:



The characters are listed below (including the series for which they are most famous, where the series is not eponymous)

Alex Kidd
Bomberman
Crash Bandicoot
Donkey Kong
Ezio Auditore da Firenze (Assassin's Creed)
Fox McCloud (Star Fox)
Gordon Freeman (Half-Life)
Heavy (Team Fortress)
Ice Climbers
Jill Valentine (Resident Evil)
Kirby
Link (The Legend of Zelda)
Mario
NiGHTS
Otacon (Metal Gear Solid)
Pac-Man
Q*Bert
Ryu (Street Fighter)
Sonic The Hedgehog
Terry Bogard (Fatal Fury)
Ulala (Space Channel 5)
Viewtiful Joe
Wario (Super Mario)
Xiao Qiao (Dynasty Warriors)
Yoshimitsu (Tekken)
Zero (Mega Man)

Naturally I was looking for iconic characters, and I set myself the impediment of characters known chiefly for videogame fame that I could get a decent image of on a white background (I had to remove two initial choices of Nathan Drake and Ico for that reason). I also tried not to lean too heavily on one particular series, genre or era, so went for a mixed bag of characters as long as I could apply the principles that they were sufficiently iconic and that I could obtain an appropriate image.

I wanted to share this draft to find out the community's thoughts. Are there any characters that people would swap out? What characters would you like to see instead? Any suggestions are welcome.

It has been over a year since the phenomenon of "online passes" has been introduced, and yet the phenomenon has only affected me recently. Having recently bought a secondhand copy of Dead Space 2 online, there was no indication from the online title description that I had to pay for an online pass to access multiplayer. It was only once I booted up the game and witnessed the online pass entry screen that I found out that I had been shafted, and the money I had spent was for only half the game.

Naturally, I have not given EA the satisfaction of more or my cash for its reportedly lackluster multiplayer offering. I am somewhat content that the single player campaign, the reason I bought the game, has remained intact.

What has irked me, however, has been the laissez-faire method by which EA has decided to make money from preowned games. Have they not considered any alternatives in their pursuit of the trade-in dollar?

It seems to me that syphoning the money off the consumer by forcing preowned purchasers to pay again for multiplayer was the only plan they had drafted. The whole affair is entirely covert; retailers are not required to educate the consumer before they sell a traded product, so let the poor buggers find out once they try to take their game online. Meanwhile, retailers are permitted to continue to make money hand over already-spectacularly-rich fist.

I've had another idea, where all publishers can make money from preowned games and it's not just left to consumers to pick up the tab. However, before I tell you about my idea I need to speak a little about the music industry.

For many years people have been able to turn on a radio or television and listen to music for free. Even more recently people can go into a number of different music and video websites and listen to music and watch music videos, all for no charge whatsoever.

Naturally, if musicians were making no money from this use of their intellectual property, they would be pretty upset. Fortunately for them, there are other organizations that have identified these problems years ago that have stepped in to help.

Around the world there are copyright collection societies such as BMI, ASCARP and SoundExchange. They represent the copyright interests of musicians if their music is performed or broadcasted. Whether you hold gigs, play DJ sets or even just play a radio in your establishment, you require a license to do so from the relevant agency. These agencies distribute the earnings from collecting licenses back to the artists, composers and record labels, ensuring that the music industry gets payment from businesses that profit from its property.

The sale of a game, traded-in or otherwise, is not entirely different from the situation that musicians faced before copyright collection societies came along. Retailers are profiting from the sale of copyrighted product, but because it is preowned then they are not beholden to treat the publishers to any of this money.



If a collection society were founded that looked out for the interest of games industry publishers and the sale of their preowned titles, a system could be established whereby all retailers of secondhand games must sign up for a license. This would all be nice and legally binding, so any refusal to comply could result in nasty litigation and fines.

With a licensing system in place, publishers can finally start making money from preowned sales. The debate reverts to trivia and publishers such as EA can be fairly called out for any tactics they might employ to garnish their already respectable profit margin through online pass systems.

Of course, a problem could arise if retailers push the cost of the license back to the consumer. They could attempt to duck the license by removing preowned titles from shelves or they could raise store prices to compensate the license fee. This is unlikely to happen though, because these retailers are still in competition in a healthy market. They can’t let a little thing like a license fee get in the way of consumer footfall.

The licensing system won't make consumer demand for traded in titles go away overnight; any retailers attempting to dodge the license by removing preowned titles will quickly see their customers switch to those retailers happy to bear the licensing costs to earn the extra custom.

The only negatively affected party, it seems, would be the retailer. They could moan and bitch initially, but when presented with the cold, hard fact that they were profiting from IP without rewarding the IP holder they'll have to swallow their pride and get on with selling games like they are supposed to.

Of course, two things would need to happen for preowned retail licensing to work: Someone would need to get up off their arse to set up such a society, and publishers would need to get up off their arses and back it up. A fairly ambitious undertaking, I know, but a task that would dramatically improve the industry wouldn't be without merit.

Online passes are a lazy alternative to giving a damn about the preowned games problem at the source. Garnishing the elephant in the room with a bedsheet just gives you an elephant with a bedsheet on its head.

Whether or not the licensing concept is feasible, I’d nevertheless like to give a little advice to any publishers out there who are scared of preowned sales: Take a look around at how other industries, who have faced exactly the same problem in the past, have dealt with it. Also, don’t automatically presume the best plan is to give the crappy end of the stick to the consumer.