Chaos 126p or Midget with blades

The real fun part of having a website covering something particular (in this case, digital entertainment) is that once you get recognized, you start getting tips on on the subject you specialize in. This morning my informer tipped me on the subject of a certain Half Life 2 mod, called D.I.P.R.I.P. (the abbreviation meaning Die In Pain Rest in Peace, which sounds quite cool, actually). I looked at the mod and was more or less indifferent – some Carmageddon clone, m’kay, well done, but what’s so interesting about it? Ah, said my informer, will you look at the cars, please? I looked and then a huge smile appeared on my face.

What you see on the screen above is Chaos 126p, an armoured vehicle from D.I.P.R.I.P.’s dark world. What you probably don’t know if you haven’t grown up in Poland is that it is (heavily) modified version of Fiat 126p, a small and insanely popular Polish car (meaning manufactured in Poland on FIAT’s licence):

They were small and lousy, but due to their low-cost nature and wide-spread availability one could see a lot of them around. The Polish nickname of the car, “Maluch”, loosely translates to something along the lines of “kiddie” or “midget”, which conveys how they were perceived. Looking at any of them an average person wouldn’t probably imagine its battle-hardened version, complete with spikes, guns and whatnot. So seeing this is quite funny for all of us who remember those little bugs, crawling in the grey cities of our youth.

See the mod in motion, complete with Fiat 126p introduction in the clip below:

The list of cars in the mod can be found on D.I.P.R.I.P.’s website and it’s worth noting that designs of some others are also based on some other cars from the communist era, such as Warszawa (Warsaw) or Syrena (Mermaid). Kudos for the authors for their creation – it definitely scores a couple originality points from me. Feel free to download the mod via Steam and remember that it’s completely free!

Another completely unrelated and superfluous Post Scriptum

For a long time we have planned to draw a comic with my best friend. The story would revolve around vampire hunters and one of our ideas in the graphical layer was their car, an armoured version of Fiat 126p. Now noone is going to believe us it was our original idea…

Drill down

Just when I thought the PSP homebrew scene is dead, I found another gaming gem. The game is called Mr Driller and I was expecting some crappy port of Drill Dozer from Gameboy Advance. Fortunately, I have decided to give it a try first.

The game turned out to be really cool. The idea is simple – player controls a character that has to drill down through multiple coloured layers, while paying attention to their oxygen levels. Air can be regenerated by collecting capsules of oxygen, but they are usually blocked by blocks that are very hard to drill through. When drilling down, player must be very careful not to destroy blocks that support other blocks, which in turn will cause rocky avalanche and flatten our hero down. So simple and yet so amusing.

The game is not perfect – there is no music, sounds are few and far between, animation is simplistic, there are no saves, game can be damn frustrating later on. Still, the most important factor, meaning gameplay, is there. This game is actually fun to play and quite addictive too. As an additional plus, it plays well in short bursts, for example on the bus. Highly recommended!

Post Scriptum for Old Geezers

And now lengthy post scriptum with a personal twist. When I was playing the game, I had a feeling of deja-vu – irritating impression that I have seen it somewhere, some day, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Fortunately, I work with other guys that started their adventure with computers in the eighties, and one of them just glanced at the game and shouted “Kret!”.

Kret (meaning The Mole in English) was an old shareware game (for Dos, meaning really old) where idea was somewhat similar. I started looking for the game over the net and finally have found it here. It is abandonware anyways so feel free to give it a try. Mr Driller does not actually steal the idea, it is in fact quite different, but the mechanics of blocks falling and supporting each other looks familiar, which explains my deja-vu.

On a side note in order to make matters even more twisted, there exists a port of DosBox (Dos emulator) for PSP, so I think it should be doable to run Kret on the PSP.

Drill down

Just when I thought the PSP homebrew scene is dead, I found another gaming gem. The game is called Mr Driller and I was expecting some crappy port of Drill Dozer from Gameboy Advance. Fortunately, I have decided to give it a try first.

The game turned out to be really cool. The idea is simple – player controls a character that has to drill down through multiple coloured layers, while paying attention to their oxygen levels. Air can be regenerated by collecting capsules of oxygen, but they are usually blocked by blocks that are very hard to drill through. When drilling down, player must be very careful not to destroy blocks that support other blocks, which in turn will cause rocky avalanche and flatten our hero down. So simple and yet so amusing.

The game is not perfect – there is no music, sounds are few and far between, animation is simplistic, there are no saves, game can be damn frustrating later on. Still, the most important factor, meaning gameplay, is there. This game is actually fun to play and quite addictive too. As an additional plus, it plays well in short bursts, for example on the bus. Highly recommended!

Post Scriptum for Old Geezers

And now lengthy post scriptum with a personal twist. When I was playing the game, I had a feeling of deja-vu – irritating impression that I have seen it somewhere, some day, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Fortunately, I work with other guys that started their adventure with computers in the eighties, and one of them just glanced at the game and shouted “Kret!”.

Kret (meaning The Mole in English) was an old shareware game (for Dos, meaning really old) where idea was somewhat similar. I started looking for the game over the net and finally have found it here. It is abandonware anyways so feel free to give it a try. Mr Driller does not actually steal the idea, it is in fact quite different, but the mechanics of blocks falling and supporting each other looks familiar, which explains my deja-vu.

On a side note in order to make matters even more twisted, there exists a port of DosBox (Dos emulator) for PSP, so I think it should be doable to run Kret on the PSP.

Stars in Black Returns

It all started with this movie, known as Stars in Black (SiB) :

Then we had EduRom commercial (SiB II), April Fools joke, Imladris convention fan movie (SiB III). In the meantime, Stanisław Mąderek has struggled to make a full-length comedy movie, seemingly without results. In his desperation, he even made a pre-production teaser to convince people to invest in it. Just recently I have learnt that he has finally made it – there is still all post-production work to be done, but the first official teaser (find the high-res versions here) is already there :

Visit Staszek’s webpage and find more information and movies there. Good luck, Staszek!

GTA and elections

On the occasion of parliament elections in Poland I would like to present a cool image by Śledziu that depicts Polish politicians in GTA-like fashion (you may also notice George W. Bush and Tony Blair). It actually made me chuckle when I first saw it.

“Gry polityczne” means “Political games”, which sums up nicely recent standards of Polish politics, which have reached a new low. If you like the image, you can buy T-shirt with it from Mr Herring’s shop, and if you are Polish, please go and vote.

GTA and elections

On the occasion of parliament elections in Poland I would like to present a cool image by Śledziu that depicts Polish politicians in GTA-like fashion (you may also notice George W. Bush and Tony Blair). It actually made me chuckle when I first saw it.

“Gry polityczne” means “Political games”, which sums up nicely recent standards of Polish politics, which have reached a new low. If you like the image, you can buy T-shirt with it from Mr Herring’s shop, and if you are Polish, please go and vote.

Of Metal, Poland and Computer Games

I am a huge fan of Anime Music Videos and Game Music Videos – I am thinking about writing a bigger feature on them, but I always lack time to do it. Nevertheless, I have found a great music video by Polish metal band Vader (one of few Polish bands that are known in the world) made to promote the incoming CD-Project Red production The Witcher – a game based on the fantasy world created by one of the best recent Polish writers, Andrzej Sapkowski (buy his book here).

Although I agree that the lyrics are a little cheesy, I really like the videoclip. It is professionally done, well arranged, mixes game cinematics with cool band leader takes and music is not as hardcore as in some Vader songs. All in all, two thumbs up from me.

And as a bonus, I have found promotional video for other Polish game, Painkiller. Funnily enough, it is also heavy metal and even slightly similar, but nevertheless Vader’s one beats it hands down.

Polish accent in Japanese megastore

When I was strolling through Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara in Tokyo, Japan, I accidently saw and managed to photograph this :

Now, if you’re not from Poland, you probably won’t get the joke, but the movie on the screen is Włatcy Móch, Polish equivalent of South Park (in my opinion nowhere near the level of its predecessor, but that’s just me). However crappy that TV series might be, it is very related to Polish everyday grey reality and probably not funny to anyone not living in our Potato Country. Hence, seeing it in Japan (hey, there was even a guy watching it!) was kinda absurd.

Polish accent in Japanese megastore

When I was strolling through Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara in Tokyo, Japan, I accidently saw and managed to photograph this :

Now, if you’re not from Poland, you probably won’t get the joke, but the movie on the screen is Włatcy Móch, Polish equivalent of South Park (in my opinion nowhere near the level of its predecessor, but that’s just me). However crappy that TV series might be, it is very related to Polish everyday grey reality and probably not funny to anyone not living in our Potato Country. Hence, seeing it in Japan (hey, there was even a guy watching it!) was kinda absurd.

Bears of War – animation

You might remember me writing about Bears of War – a Gears of War parody by Śledziu / Mr Herring. My little note got picked up by QJ.Net and more folks learnt about the webcomic. Yesterday, Śledziu released a short animated Bears of War movie to commemorate his birthday (Happy Birthday Śledziu!) and I thought it deserves the mention.

I expected something funny in the vein of general Bears of War humour, probably with Winnie the Pooh getting splattered again. The short animation, however, turned out to be in much more serious mood. Bitter and melancholic, it doesn’t make fun of GoW game, but instead just shows the general sadness of war. Most notably it makes the reference to the destruction of Buddhas of Bamyan – I remember hearing about this and feeling sadness that a great relic of the past got blown away by a bunch of fundamentalist troglodytes. Apparently Śledziu felt the same about it.

The author says that his creation looks like 16 bit game introductory sequence – perhaps, but I liked old-school intros and I definitely like this one. There is also version formatted for PSP available for download. Enough talking – just go and watch it!

PS. And I know I promised a list of my favourite online comics already back in March, just bear with me (pun not intended) a little longer…