I am a huge fan of Javascript. In fact, I’m such a big fan of it, I used to write everything I did at work in it pretty much. I also have knocking about somewhere an old Doom like game I started writing in Javascript. However, having just come across this wonderful gem, using the Yahoo! User Interface Library, I have to say I’m not only impressed but found myself playing for a good half an hour before I get bored. Go and try it for yourself!

Image Courtesy of Joystiq

Here’s a story that might make Mr. Geekboy feel a little bit better.Skyllus vBi, member of the professional gaming group Team vBi, has had his Xbox Live account stolen. After being recognized by Bungie for making a very popular Halo 3 video, Skyllus was awarded the incredibly rare in-game “Recon Armor“, which only Bungie employees and a select few Halo community members have. Skyllus has reportedly had his Xbox Live account hacked three times since late October.

In the latest hack into his account, he has been told by the ever unhelpful Xbox Live Customer Support team that there was nothing he could do about it. However, he has at least managed to settle for an investigation into the account.

Okay, So It’s Not Quite This Bad…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m an MS fanboy at heart (when it comes to consoles, anyway), and I appreciate that it’s the busiest time of the year for Live, so I should be quite forgiving. Not in this case, though, as it seems Microsoft have been slacking off, and, surprise surprise, thanks to the popularity of the 360 this Christmas, account signup (as well as a few other things) is well-and-truly broken.

How do I know that Microsoft are slacking off? Well, this Bungie weekly update gives us a hint:

“…there won’t be a Holiday playlist in the vein of our fun Halloween list – the reason being that nobody is around here or at Xbox Live to make sure it doesn’t assplode.”

Excuse me? There’s nobody around at Xbox Live to make sure it doesn’t die a horrible death? At the time of year when it’s going to be inundated with new account signups, and people just wanting to chill and play some games over the festive season?

This, Microsoft, is very poor form indeed.

But how does this rant come about? I’ve been an Xbox Live member for donkey’s, after all, and I don’t generally play online a lot anyway. Well, you see, I got a new memory unit for Christmas, and promptly managed to leave it (with my profile on) round a friend’s house, meaning that I couldn’t access Xbox Live. No problem, the account recovery tool is here to save me, so I decide to recover my account onto my HDD.

But oh noes! Error message! Account Singup is temporarily unavailable!

No matter. I manage to retrieve the memory unit, plug it in, and…

Oh.

The profile on there is out-of-date, as the “new” nonexistent copy I downloaded replaces it.

This was yesterday morning, and I’ve been trying to recover my account ever since. True, MS have acknowledged the issues on the Xbox Live Support site, and when the status changed today to “up and running”, I decided to give it another go. And you know what?

It failed.

Again.

On the bright side, I immediately went back in and tried again, and it seems to be recovering - albeit incredibly slowly (slower than usual, and that’s quite a feat). Hopefully it’ll make it to the end and this will just be a distant memory that I can laugh about with my grandkids. For millions of kids all over the world who unwrapped their lovely new 360 on Christmas morning, though, and haven’t been able to sign up for an account ever since, this is going to leave a very, very sour taste in their mouths.

Microsoft, how could you be so stupid?

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[Update]

I did finally get my account to recover, but now I’ve lost all my savegames! I’m hoping for a RRoD next just to top the weekend off. Perhaps it is time I got a Wii.

Here we have the first gameplay footage of Capcom’s upcoming sequel-tastic fighter, Street Fighter IV, courtesy of 1UP and Gamevideos.com.

Do I like it?

Well, no, not really.

Ho hum. Does anyone else have an opinion on the general look and feel of this?

Jack Thompson Strikes Again!

We here at TTB have a passion, a passion for gaming. In fact, the only thing we crave more than gaming, is for that douchebag everyone loves to hate, Jack Thompson, to shut the hell up. This time he’s attacking the Gaming Industry via his own country’s Department of Defence. From this point on in this article, Jack “The Douche” Thompson, will be referred to as The Douche.

Earlier this week, The Douche issued a press release claiming he has found a correlation between the gaming industry and the US Department of Defense, who are using videogames to teach “an entire generation of kids that war is glamorous, cool, desirable, and consequence-free.”

The release also cites the gaming habits of recent youth-shooting perpetrators (Columbine, Virginia Tech, etc.), as well as “a formal working relationship between the Department of Defense and the game industry at the Institute for Creative Technologies on the campus of the University of Southern California” as evidence for his claims.

The apparent aim of the release is to notify the media of The Douche’s new goal: proving the existence of collusion between the gaming industry and the Department of Defense in an effort to train more efficient killers (and talking his usual amount of bollocks).

Now let’s just take a little look at the above, specifically “an entire generation of kids that war is glamorous, cool, desirable, and consequence-free.”. What particularly violent or mildly realistic “War” game or First Person Shooter these days has less then an ESRB T/PEGI 16+/BBFC 15, which to my knowledge, in all the countries that matter is pretty close to the minimum age required to join the armed forces anyway, but these games themeselves are NOT used to train or recruit soldiers, with the exception of one well-known recruitment tool - America’s Army and maybe Full Spectrum Warrior. Both rated T and M respectively.

Gaming is used to as a medium for training soldiers/killing machines, but not the games you’d pick up from your local supermarket. They use Game-like simulations - like they train pilots. Jim Blank, the head of the modeling and simulation division of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, says that commercial games don’t meet the demand of the military, adding, “first-person shooter games really don’t apply in this environment.”

The main point is that game-like simulations are a valuable tool for training soldiers in situations that would be too expensive to simulate in reality. Instead of wasting taxpayer money on training troops with antiquated methods that “are too costly and take too long to plan,” Blank feels that these simulations provide an adequate, and less costly, alternative, and even though he’s talking about US Forces, I have to agree.

The only real possible correlation between the gaming industry and the DoD is that the tealent required to create such simulations would come from the gaming industry and their development studios. In which case, The Douche might be partly correct, but only partly.

So no, there is no “Unholy Alliance” between the gaming industry and DoD, except in the again, deluded mind of Jack “The Douche” Thompson. Whilst writing this, I came across a very good article(rant) over at GamePolitcs.com.

Big In Japan: “Every Party” Is As Mad As A Badger - A Very, Very Mad One.

Back at the time of the Xbox 360 launch (well, shortly afterwards, actually), I decided that I just had to have one. I’d been a happy Xbox owner for a couple of years and knew that Microsoft were going to go on to bigger and better things. I also knew that I wanted the premium pack with the hard disk, but I didn’t have a great deal of money.

No matter, though, as Microsoft had failed to conquer Japan, and there were plenty of unloved brand new Japanese Xboxes floating around. I picked one up on eBay for about £50 less than a UK model - a wise decision in hindsight, as I’ve never had to pay more than £30 for a game (although I do generally have to wait 4 days for the postage from Japan), and it came with the spiffy little media remote.

It also means that I can play some Japanese games that the rest of the world can’t. Not RPGs or anything interesting, as I’m not really into them, but crazy stuff like Aquazone (an insanely detailed aquarium simulator), and one of my new favourite games, Every Party. I should probably point out at this moment that I do not speak or read any Japanese whatsoever, not that I think it would aid in my understanding of this game in any way, shape, or form anyway.

This Game Is Fairly Self-Explanatory. For A While.

So, from what I have gathered in the last 3 days playing it, the main meat of Every Party seems to be a giant board game, set on the surrealist streets of some imaginary Japanese cities. Players have spinners which decide how many turns they can take, and spinners with special characteristics (like being able to move other players around, win instantly for a steep price, or just have more chance of getting a particular number) can be collected.

Also, gold coins are picked up and traded for stuff in the game, and squares that are guarded by a cast of crazy characters can also be won, which can penalise other players for landing on them. I chuckle under my breath when I say penalise, as the squares do indeed look like a penis - albeit one with a happy face. Fortunately for you, dear reader, I can’t find a screenshot of it at this precise moment in time, but rest assured that I am still looking.

Anyway, every so often, sometimes related to another event and sometimes seemingly at random, a minigame will appear which has all of the players doing battle against each other for prizes. The minigames are really well thought-out and varied, much like the excellent WarioWare games but a little bit more complex, and a bit more insane. There’s also a multiplayer mode which allows up to four players to battle each other head-on in a succession of minigames, but you’ll want to unlock the more interesting ones in the main game first.

As a perfect example of the madness of this game and the sheer lack of understanding I have of it, I present to you the minigame pictured below. It features what appears to be a crazed paedophile in leopard-print hotpants, and some kind of bee helmet, chasing terrified children around his garden. If you survive to the end without getting caught, it’s revealed to you that his businessman neighbour was watching over the fence all along, smiling silently.

Don’t Let The Bad Man Catch You!

Along a similar theme, at certain parts of the game an old lady will appear and, depending on which option you choose, will either take you away or get arrested by the police. In fact, a lot of this game seems to feature adults doing bizarre things to children, which leaves me to ponder whether there isn’t something I’ve missed here.

Ahem.

Every Party also features Xbox Live functionality, although I’ll be buggered if I can work out how it’s supposed to work. It has lots of options and messages in Japanese and can never seem to connect to anything. Still, it looks, er, quite comprehensive, and I don’t know if I want to be playing against people who actually understand what’s going on anyway.

Digging through the game’s menus we discover a character customisation mode, and a shop where we can spend our in-game winnings. Also there are high score tables and some pictures of all the wacky characters we have met along the way - some of these can actually be used as players in the game. There’s also a single player story mode which is identical to the multiplayer mode, but with nonsensical cutscenes every so often which advance the, err, story.

In conclusion, this game is a lot of fun, even moreso as I don’t understand a single word of what’s going on. It’s easy to get into and has a lot of customisation and depth for a simple party game, and as I have proven, you don’t need to be a Japanese speaker to appreciate it. I’ll happily give it 7/10, and it would also be recipient of my personal “Game Of The Year” award if it weren’t for the existence of The Orange Box.

Every Party will have to take the “Crazy Random Japanese Game With Paedos In It Of The Year“ award, then. A very prestigious award indeed, as I’m sure you will agree.

(Screenshots via IGN.com)

I’m willing to bet that this kid is better at Guitar Hero than you. In fact, he’s better at Guitar Hero than pretty much everyone. Here we see the boy wonder only identified as “Ben” and his attempt at Dragonforce’s cheesy lame-fest Through The Fire And Flames on Expert, where he hits a whopping 95% of the notes and scores over 750,000 points. Oh, and did I mention that this kid is only 9 years old?

I’m sure he’ll still be living with his Mum when he’s 39 years old though… </bitter>

As if I hadn’t posted enough Portal-related things already, here’s another one. No idea what the story is behind this, but how could I not enjoy something that combines two of the bestest things in the whole world?

(Via)

Yep, I did it, mostly because I could and I don’t like the supposed “iPhone Killers” out there, like the LG Viewty and the Nokia N95. Also, it gives me something to blog about and it’s not like there’s enough iPhone Reviews out there on the internets at the moment.

So whilst I was out doing this years bit of Christmas shopping, I found myself standing in the O2 store, opposite Marks and Spencers in Leicester. I also found myself fondling an iPhone, and like that, shortly afterwards, I found myself talking to one of the assistants as they brought my shiny new boxed iPhone out to me and I paid via my card.

To tell the truth it all happened before my very eyes, as if I wasn’t the one purchasing it.

As an O2 customer already, setting up the iPhone and transferring my number was ridiculously easy, I just plugged the USB dock into my PC and set the iPhone in place. After my PC installing the drivers immediately, iTunes opened up with an Activation Wizard. It was again another ridiculously simple process, and I had my iPhone up and running in just a couple of minutes.

So let’s start with the basics. Switching it on. Button where you’d expect it to be (top of the phone). After holding it in for a couple of seconds, you’re greeted with a lovely silver Apple logo. I’d say it took a good 15 seconds for the phone to boot from that point. Once it had, that was it, you were in. There’s no waiting for your contacts list to become available or any of that tosh.

The touch screen is remarkably responsive, though sometimes can be a little too sensitive. For example, when writing an SMS on the phone, I’ve quite often brushed a little too close to the “Send” button and sent a half finished text message, which when you send a lot of text messages like I do, it can be a real problem. It also displays the SMS messages as a conversation with the contact, which is a nice little feature.

The browser leaves some things to be desired, a lack of Flash Player support is a bit of a downer, other than that things are generally pretty good except that EDGE is hella slow and when there’s no EDGE connection available, the web is even slower! Obviouslly when connected to Wi-Fi you get whatever speed the Access Point is connected to.

The e-mail side of things is awesome, I can’t find anything bad to say about it to be honest. It’s quick, responsive and opening e-mail attachments is easy (PDF and Word docs are supported natively).

There is however, a lack of Bluetooth, Multimedia Messaging and a couple of other things you would expect from a phone like being able to set custom message tones. It’s a bit of an annoyance but nothing I can’t live with.

The iPod element is just that, an iPod. More specifically an iPod with the funky new GUI of the iPod Touch, and that’s really about it.

All in all it’s not that bad a piece of kit, when it works. I’ve had it crash more often than my old phone (a Sony Ericsson K800i) and sometimes it hasn’t sent messages or recieved them. It is however, very fast when it opens applications which I suppose is one of the best things about it.

Other than that, there’s not much else to say about the phone other than don’t waste your money buying one. It’s good if you’re a gadget freak like I am, but other than that as a business phone it’s useless and let’s face it, what self-respecting average person would need or want one? Apple have missed the target by a long way with the iPhone. So unless you are like me and feel you need to have the latest in everything, or if you actually don’t want a phone running Symbian or Windows Mobile then save yourself the money and invest it in something like an Xbox 360 unless you have one already, in which case, just save the money.

Like A Virgin… Touched For The Very First Time…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that owning an iPhone and being hopeless with women are things that go hand-in-hand, but anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that, sadly, it’s a very real possibility. Gadget freaks, after all, don’t necessarily get out much.

Be thankful then for this, rubMyClit, a web-based app that lets iPhone owners practice their lady pleasing skills on a lovingly hand drawn virtual minge, all in the comfort of their own home. There’s also a high score board, to compare your bean-flicking prowess with the rest of the iPhone-owning populace.

Of course, rather than playing with your iPhone, you might be better off getting out and meeting some real women - women who’ll let you touch their lady parts, hopefully. Although I do suggest you don’t try the chat-up line “do you want to play with my iPhone”, as that probably wouldn’t quite cut it.

Not with the type of ladies you actually want to be with, anyway.

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Update: Welcome Reddit users - you sick little puppies! If you like this, you’ll probably like some of our other random game and gadget-related stuff. We do have an *ahem* post archive *ahem* you know…

/shameless plug