Getting older, I’ve decided, is a process of everything changing so slowly that you never really notice at the time, until five years of sneaky, incremental change eventually adds up to one moment of consequence which suddenly hits you when you find yourself doing something that you never, ever, would have done once upon a time, and the horrible truth of it all sends you into a spiral of self-loathing that only a weekend’s worth of solid drinking will cure.

What the hell am I talking about? Well, I think I just realised that I now know absolutely nothing about music. The fact is, I haven’t acquired any new music for what must be at least two years now, and when I have, it’s been songs that I’ve heard while playing a video game.

Now just to clarify: I’m not talking about actual game music, like the Orange Box soundtrack, or some arty re-interpretation of the Super Mario Brothers theme music, I’m talking about real-life rock, rap, metal and dance, licensed for use in games made by big-name publishers to impress idiots.

So the other day, I found myself downloading a song that I first heard while playing Need for Speed: Underground and it hit me that I’d already got a handful of other songs from the game, as well as noting the significant number among my recent acquisitions that were featured in the Guitar Hero series.

There are two ways you could react to such a realisation, and so far I’ve been vacillating between the following two thought processes:

1) “It’s not so bad. Songs featured in Guitar Hero are chosen because they have fairly broad commercial appeal, and if you like rock music but hadn’t heard those songs before, you were always going to like them. The same goes for Need for Speed: Underground – okay, so the music’s aimed at 15 year-old boys, but that’s roughly your mental age anyway. And if you spend the number of hours required to become reasonably proficient at either game, you’ll hear the featured songs often enough to find yourself humming them on the way to work and want to own one or two of them. It’s no big deal.”

2) “This is a new low. What’s next – buying a song because you heard it on the fucking Homebase advert? You’re one step away from downloading Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader, and when that happens, it’ll be the last thing you do before you kill yourself.”

Only one of these can be right, and I’m coming to realise which one it is. And you know what, dear reader? I’m not sure I like the answer.

I love the intro to X-Wing:

I liked the game, but I got quite badly stuck early on and gave up. It seemed a lot harder than TIE Fighter, which I managed to finish without too many problems.

I thought I might go back to this one at some stage, but that probably it isn’t going to happen now. So let’s revel in the majesty of this awesome intro!

Hello everyone. The days are getting warmer, people are thinking to their summer holidays so here’s the tropical lushness of Far Cry.

Hello there.

More racing action for you tonight, if ‘action’ is quite the right word to describe Lotus: The Ultimate Challenge.

Right, now I’m off to work on something special for my next update…

I’ve played a bit of Audiosurf before, and I quite liked it, but I never really got into it in any kind of obsessive, must-get-100%-on-Message-In-A-Bottle kind of a way like I did with the earlier Guitar Hero games.

Then I got an e-mail:

“You used to have the worldwide best score for: everything counts [live] by depeche mode

Now the Audiosurf player ‘Prozak Junkie’ has beaten you. Launch Audiosurf and reclaim the top spot!”

I didn’t even know that I had (or used to have) the worldwide best score for anything, really. And, had I never found out, losing that mantle would never have bothered me.

Now, of course, I’ve got to beat that Depeche Mode loving bastard!

Last night, on ITV4 (at an hour when I should have gone to bed, but was willing to watch anything to avoid doing so) I caught a few minutes of the ridiculous Michael Winner/Charles Bronson vigilante-fest, Death Wish 3.

Which reminded me that there was an Amstrad CPC game (also on other 8-bit systems, I presume) based on the film. At the age I was at the time, I didn’t have a clue what the film was all about, but I was quite bemused by this game in which you reduced handbag-toting grannies to smouldering piles of flesh with a rocket launcher.

And this was years before GTA…

So these days it seems we’re obsessed with DRM and how it does or does not affect sales of PC games. Still, while the methods change, the principle of stopping casual piracy is nothing new.

Eurogamer has done a fun retrospective on some of the copy protection methods employed by publishers over the years.

I have to say, I reserve particular disdain for the Lenslok system. As a young lad, I couldn’t ever get past the copy proetection on any of the Lenslok games my Dad had (legitimately) purchased, so any time I wanted to play any of those games, I had to ask him to do it for me. And even then I don’t think it was easy…

A few years later, though, and I was able to get past the copy protection for Midwinter without even looking at the manual. You were shown a picture of one of the game’s 50-odd playable characters and asked to name them. And, sad bastard that I was (am?), I knew all of their faces off by heart…

I’m not normally one for milestones, but there’s one coming up fairly soon. It’s been a long time (perhaps too long) in coming, but better late than never I suppose.

So, in case you’d noticed this yourself and were lying awake at night wondering if I’ve got something special planned – well, I do. Kind of. I mean, you know, they’re reviews. Of games. Like the ones we normally do.

If all goes to plan, we’ll have #98 soon, and then a double-whammy to bring up the century, whip off the helmet and kiss the FFG badge on my shirt. (That’s a cricket reference for you there).

Hello.

With the new season starting, I’ve rediscovered my low-level interest in Formula 1. And as such, I took the opportunity to dig out one of my old games for a (sort of) topical update.

Check out our review of Formula 1 ’97, mofo!

So there’s another Prince of Persia game on the way, The Forgotten Sands. Not apparently a game adapation of the upcoming movie (if it was, it would be a game of a movie of a game which is a rather amusing concept), but certainly timed to coincide with it. It’s a return to the Sands of Time trilogy, an approach which feels rather dismissive of the 2008 game, but isn’t unwelcome.

Currently we don’t have coverage of anything PoP, which is a situation I believe needs fixing given that the franchise goes back to 1989. That said if I attempt the original it will probably just lead to falling in pits and dying a lot. Let’s put it in the “get around to it… sometime” pile of revered oldies.

I definitely do wish to cover the Sands of Time itself, though, as that one’s still a greatly enjoyable classic. Apart from the slick acrobatics I loved the enchanting Arabian-Nights feel, so much more atmospheric than the angst and nu-metal of the sequel.

Later games are too new to fall on our radar for now, but there was also a lesser-known first attempt at 3D in between the original platformers and Sands of Time. That wasn’t particularly well-received but might be fun to take a look at.