Monday 4 January 2010

The Eleventh Day of Christmas – a museum piece who needs a soldering iron



We have pipers piping. Now when I think of pipes, I don't think of plumbing but that little game of pipes I used to play; but now I can't remember if it was on the PC or a gameboy or what. I do like games, as you may have guessed by now; not the shoot 'em up kind, but strategy games of the kind where you have to test ideas. My current predilection is a little game called launchball from the Science Museum for the iphone. What is scary is that I might not be hooked if it wasn't for some early influences. Number 1 was my parents insisting I had typing lessons when I was eleven – this is back in the day when a typewriter had inky ribbon and if you hit the keys too quickly or hard they jammed and if you didn't hit them hard enough nothing happened. Number 2 was doing 'computer' classes at school. For younger viewers, this meant punching cards that were sent to Bristol University and 10 days later came back telling you the square root of 12 (but only if you had punched the right bits of the card). If that doesn't leave me feeling like a museum piece then my visit to the Wilkins Jam Factory at Tiptree earlier in the week with its museum certainly has done. We were provided with those slide rules they have in their museum cases as standard issue, along with log books. I guess I was just born too early but lucky enough to have people equip me not to be frightened of technology and a natural addiction to games. So, whilst I get my soldering iron out to try and fix the pipes I give you this present if you have never met it before a little game called Samorost2, sadly you only get the first bit free but I found it has entertained many a visiting child and foreign exchange student as no language is required, just a willingness to keep trying.


My quest from you though is what is your favourite game on whatever platform you choose?


As to the legs quest we are now up to 726 legs delivered.

The Spotify Playlist for today's post is here and the list in words is in the first comment.

7 comments:

  1. The playlist is words
    Augustus Pablo – Pipers Of Zion
    David Snell – Strike Up Pipers
    The Gordon Highlanders – Glasgow City Police Pipers
    London Philharmonic – Fairy Pipers (Wand Of Youth Suite No 1 Op 1a No 5)
    Altan – Johnny Boyle's/King Of The Pipers (Medley)
    Various Artists – Tom- Tom The Pipers Son
    Christy Moore – The Pipers Path
    Sileas – The Pipers
    Various Artists – Jigs Medley Lanigans Jig 0 Pipers
    Andrew Skeoch & Sarah Koschak – Piping Crows
    Graham Johnson & Ann Murray – 5 Irish Songs - I heard a Piper Piping
    Kevin Burke – Never Was Piping So Gay, The Culfodda Reel, The Graf Spee
    Téada – The Ace and Deuce of Piping (set dance)
    Margareta Haverinen (soprano) and Jyväskylä Symphony Orchestra and Jorma Panula (conductor) – Soittajapaimen - The piping herdsman
    Songs For Children – Ten Pipers Piping
    Paul Bradley – The Piping Jig
    Richard Rodney Bennett – Partridge Pie: XI. Ten Pipers Piping
    The Irish Symphonia – Piping Hot
    Howard Emerson – The Piping Plover Waltz
    US Navy Band – Piping The Side

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  2. I love games.

    On the computer I remember very fondly playing Lords of Midnight - the 1st and possibly best, text only for the Sinclair Spectrum. We had the entire area mapped on pieces of A1 graph paper taped to a board. There are some good screen shots of it here:
    http://homepages.ge.ucl.ac.uk/~kmitchel/home/lom.html

    At the moment, it is a disgrace but I am totally addicted to Bejewelled Blitz on Facebook. Ridiculous tapping of buttons to achieve nothing but a higher number than I got before.

    But it only lasts one minute so I can tuck it in between work and tweeting...

    Board games I have loved are legion though:

    Risk
    Diplomacy
    Colditz (you can never have too much rope...)
    Labyrinth
    Games Workshop D&D games
    Trivial Pursuit & Scrabble (of course!)

    Love my games :)

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  3. Now there's an oxymoron if ever there was one in my world 'favourite games'. I've never been much of a fan of games of any kind so instead of a favourites I'm going to list some of the ones that are my least favourite :0

    Top of the list is Jenga, followed closely by Sudoku, Risk was pretty grim, Scrabble is annoyingly dull and that tennis brick bat thing on early computers was simply pointless. PacMan was okay for about five minutes and erm well I'm sure there are legions of other games out there I could dislike but since I avoid all game-like things (except ones that have been roasted or are in pies) I've no idea what they are.

    I'd rather have a good book any day! and I love my computer (its a Mac of course!!) but games on it....no way!

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  4. I can't work out how to stop that animal drinking all the water. Maybe it's because my broadband is so slow. I think that I am at a disadvantage here, not only do I not go to the pub, I don't really know what I am supposed to be doing with these games.
    I play a lot of Scrabble via Facebook. Otherwise it's the Telegraph Crossword

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  5. ohhh jaydubblah, the Telegraph Crossword is hard hard hard.

    harder than the Times, no matter what Morse thought...

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  6. I'm such a party pooper - sorry! The only game I've ever played with any conviction was Jawbreaker on my iPaq! I used to spend hours playing, but haven't played for ages!

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  7. That took quite a bit of thinking actually, and I'm not really a massive fan of games. But, after consideration I have to say it was Space Invaders on the Atari. Spent many hours round a friends house reaching ridiculous scores.

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