MDub

Holy shit, what? So, so, sorry. I've been reading/watching Ryan's reviews since the late 90s and his TANG and WUTANG series for GB were brilliant. What a loss.

I'll be honest, the only rules I applied when writing this were A) the lyrics had to be gaming related and B) the rhymes had to be as close to the original song as possible (SNES cartridge, a partridge; Turok gloves - turtle doves; etc).   My rewrite of  Ave Maria will be better  ( >,< )

On the first day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

A SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the second day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the third day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Three Fallout games,

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Four calling nerds,

Three Fallout games,

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Five Halo rings,

Four calling nerds,

Three Fallout games,

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Six Guitar Heroes,

Five Halo rings,

Four calling nerds,

Three Fallout games,

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the seventh day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Seven Sims a-swimming,

Six Guitar Heroes,

Five Halo rings,

Four calling nerds,

Three Fallout games,

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the eighth day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Eight Marios a-milking,

Seven Sims a-swimming,

Six Guitar Heroes,

Five Halo rings,

Four calling nerds,

Three Fallout games,

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the ninth day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Nine Night Elves dancing,

Eight Marios a-milking,

Seven Sims a-swimming,

Six Guitar Heroes,

Five Halo rings,

Four calling nerds,

Three Fallout games,

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the tenth day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Ten LeChucks a-laughing,

Nine Night Elves dancing,

Eight Marios a-milking,

Seven Sims a-swimming,

Six Guitar Heroes,

Five Halo rings,

Four calling nerds,

Three Fallout games,

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the eleventh day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Eleven Prince of Persias,

Ten LeChucks a-laughing,

Nine Night Elves dancing,

Eight Marios a-milking,

Seven Sims a-swimming,

Six Guitar Heroes,

Five Halo rings,

Four calling nerds,

Three Fallout games,

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree.

On the twelfth day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Twelve Dukes delaying,

Eleven Prince of Persias,

Ten LeChucks a-laughing,

Nine Night Elves dancing,

Eight Marios a-milking,

Seven Sims a-swimming,

Six Guitar Heroes,

Five Halo rings,

Four calling nerds,

Three Fallout games,

Two Turok gloves,

And a SNES cartridge in a pear tree!

Happy holidays, everyone.

 I've just watched BBC Four's Micro Men, a vaguely comic dramatisation of the British computer boom during the early 1980s.  It centres around the exploits of Clive "Spectrum" Sinclair and Chris "Acorn" Curry, as their companies battled for the contract to produce the BBC Microcomputer.

As someone who grew up in that era, loved computers, but was too young to care about the actual people whom made them, it was an interesting retrospective.  It's easy to forget Britain was once at the forefront of the industry and created one of the most popular microchips in the world, the ARM.  However, it shouldn't surprise anyone to know that Micro Men was biased towards Acorn Computers, given they won the BBC contract.  In fact, it goes so far as to paint Sir Clive as some kind of sinister Gordon Gekko character.  How much of all that is true, I don't know, although rumour has it Sinclair himself was much more flexible about the screenplay than Curry. 

What was true and what was fabrication is neither here nor there.  Micro Men is very enjoyable look back at how all this home computer malarky first took root.  It evoked fond memories of my own Acorn Electron and waiting for Ghouls, Frak! or Boffin to load from tape.

Oh and here's the real version of Sinclair's awful QL advert, made before the computer was even built.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc3kGyYyqgQ
 
If you missed it, you should be able to catch Micro Men on the BBC iPlayer.

 
Just noticed cutting and pasting a bullet list didn't work, serves me right for writing the post in Word.  Anyway, the list of unis is fixed now.

The other way to get into the industry is by getting a job in one of the studio's support departments, you know, IT support, facilities, HR, all that sort of stuff. 

I was crap at school.  I didn't understand the correlation between education and a career, but even if I did all the men around me had manual jobs they hated and actively discouraged me from pursuing.  The only exception was my [much] older brother, who had a job in computers.  I liked computers, they played games.  So I followed in his footsteps, although I was only ever really interested in the games.  I tried and failed a BSc in Computer Science and I’ve stumbled through a career in IT ever since.

These days, there are loads of unis offering degrees in games design and games programming.  There was nothing like that for me back in 1994 and I still find it incredible that the industry has got to this point.  Degrees in gaming are tough though.  Games programmers need to understand all things normal apps and database programmers understand, plus a load of very specialist stuff like particle physics, AI, global illumination, all the different console architectures and of course, fun gameplay.  

GamesTM recently ran an article on the best unis in the and for gaming qualifications.  They picked out:

As an East Midlands boy, it’s great to see on the list, but it’s also a bit galling; the degree I dropped out of in ’95 was at Nottingham Trent Uni.

If you’re not a programmer or designer, there’s plenty of 3D graphics degrees out there too.  I believe Bournemouth Uni is particularly good for that stuff.  Not that it’ll make things any easier.  Not only are 3D apps like Autodesk’s Maya utter beasts, with 18” thick user manuals (no joke), but as graphics advance games artists need to be more technical too.

Still, if you’re a sad old gamer like me, a job in games is a dream come true.