Once I get my router working again (it’s really unreliable at the moment which makes partying up on XBL almost impossible on busy nights) we’re going to start having movie nights. This means I’ll set a date and time and film and everyone who turns up can join a party with me and Tony (two parties if we get a big crowd) and synch up their DVD players to start watching a movie at the same time. It’s complicated but really fun once it works.

You guys should feel free to suggest films we can all watch together. The more popular the film, the more likely it is that a lot of people will have it. So Shawshank Redemption should be in everyone’s collection, but Braindead (while awesome) will most likely be only owned by a few. Comedies are also probably the most condusive to audience participation. Maybe even musicals.

Some things to remember.

• PAL (UK) and NTSC (USA) DVD’s run at different speeds so whoever has a version at odds with the rest may have a job keeping up with the crowd.
• Blu-Ray all run at the same speed.
• Unless you have a wireless headset you’ll have to make sure your batteries are charged in the controller and (here’s the annoying part) nudge the d-pad at least once every 15 minutes or it will turn off and you’ll be kicked from the party. If you DO have a wireless headset, make sure that one is charged. Why haven’t Microsoft patched this yet? We should at least get an option to just leave the damn pad running. They might sort it out when the whole party watching thing happens with Netflix in the states, but that might also not apply in the UK.
• Folks in the USA are going to have to turn up at odd times like three in the afternoon so I’m thinking Sundays would be best.

So the ideal is one film everybody loves in a format everybody has on an evening everybody can make with fully charged batteries, popcorn, drinks and patience for when it doesn’t quite work as planned. We did this last year with Back to the Future and it worked pretty well dispite Paul’s version being PAL vs our two NTSC.

So now it’s up to you guys. Who’s up for this and name five films you’d like to do for it, we’ll see if we get some consolidation somewhere.

Here are my five…

1. The Goonies
2. Ghostbusters
3. Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn
4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
5. This is Spinal Tap

This has no bearing on the Film Club, but we may talk about the experience on the podcast anyway. Over to you, dear listeners.

Marian is an indie singer-songwriter from Alaska. She tours the USA doing gigs and has a particularly beautiful voice and style.  Her album; Got To Fly is a commissioned piece inspired by Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. She has two other albums available on iTunes called Vanilla and Songs of the Month. We’re going to be playing a lot of her music in the coming months and I want everyone who likes the sound of her to spread the word and buy the songs. Once again, we’d like to thank her for her kindness in letting us use her music on Digital Cowboys.

Here’s her website.

And her Twitter page.

For those of you who like the twangy guitar piece at the beginning of pretty much every podcast we’ve done you might like to look at this album. It’s Blue Dog by Mark Tschanz. The song we use most often is track 02 – Love Song. If you live in the UK, we urge every fan to snap up the 20 or so second-hand albums on Amazon.co.uk They range from 34p to£9.99 so buy fast. If you live in the states it’s a little different. The one single copy on Amazon.com is $99.95

I want you guys to get this thing played. Play it to your friends and neighbors, hum it on the bus, get people asking you “Who is that man?” I think his voice is amazing, up there with Eddie Vedder and it’s a damn crime that he’s not more famous.

Mr Tschanz enjoyed some success in the 90′s and has since worked on some films and commercials. He lives and works out of L.A. and he’s on both Facebook and Myspace. Tell him, Alex of the Digital Cowboys sent you. We’ve exchanged a few mails over the years since I asked him politely if we could use his music on our show. He was very gracious and helpful (even sent me an alternate version of Love Song I used on episode 100) This is his portfolio site.

I’ll be featuring more of the songs from Blue Dog in the next few months, alternating with tracks from  our other musician friend Marian Call. I’d like to thank both of these fantastic and talented individuals for the kindness they have shown us.

As promised, here, essentially is the thread to make requests on for future shows. We have a sizable list of films we already want to talk about, but we’d like to know what you guys want to hear about. Bear in mind that Star Wars is off the menu (at least for now) as it’s been done to death and brand new films need to be seen several times before we can really get our teeth into them.

Think about what films are ripe for deconstruction and debate. We might not even like them, but as long as they’re worth discussing, we have a show. We’ll jump in with notes from time to time.

Mike Oldman from Eidos (who was our guest on episode #113) has very kindly given us a Battlestations Carrier Battles Map Pack code to give away to one lucky listener.

Just email us now at mailbag@thedigitalcowboys.com with the subject title “Battlestations Code” and we’ll pick at random and announce the winner on this Saturday’s show.

Digital Cowboys Film Club is a new project we’re starting with next week’s first episode. We were a Movie and Video Gaming podcast for nearly 90 episodes and since we switched to just games there have been many times we’ve wanted to talk about movies but couldn’t because we want to stay focused on games. We at Digital Cowboys have a commitment to excellence, so we couldn’t just talk about any old movies.

So we decided to go back and take a look at some films that made us love cinema in the first place. We’re holding off Star Wars, The Matrix and the other big franchises (at least for now) in favor of slightly more esoteric, unusual and challenging films. It also allows us to share some of the great pictures that may have passed by our audience over the years. We’re treating it like a club. We’ll give you all a heads up as to what film we’re doing next and you’ll have three weeks to get hold of and see it. Borrow it, rent it, buy it, but SEE it, because we’re going deep on these films and each show will be a spoiler-filled discussion. Sometime in the future we may do a film that absolutely sucks, but is such a train-wreck that it’s worth seeing, and sometimes we may have totally polarized viewpoints on a film.

Here are the eight rules of Film Club.

1. You do talk about Film Club
2. You DO talk about film Club
3. Everyone on the show has to see the film just beforehand
4. One show every three weeks
5. One film per show, gentlemen
   
6. No going “Er… I don’t remember that bit”
   
7. Shows go on as long as they have to
   
8. If you have an opinion on Film Club… you have to voice it

This is going to be great. Our first film is Fight Club and you should see it before Tuesday August 4th

One of our regular listeners and consistent message-writers is Steven Jones. We’ve recruited him to occasionally post articles and musings on our site and as an introduction I’m putting up this entry he made at the beginning of June on his blog Stex Toys. It’s about moving back to consoles after PC-only gaming for many years. We get a kick out of reading his work and we’re fairly certain our audience will too. You can expect more from him in the future.

-Alex

—————————————————————–

It’s been fast. It been packed. And perhaps most importantly of all it’s changed me forever. Bold words but a little over six months ago, when XBOX ownership fell upon me by pure chance really, I didn’t expect to find myself where I am today.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve always been a PC gamer. That platform of a never ending release cycle, that would laugh at the idea of ten years and consider ten months a ‘constraint’, constantly straining at the edges of what can be done, pushing the limits that actually make console gaming possible. Now that said I’ve owned a Nintendo device since the N64, but I could justify that for the top notch first party releases that were never going to come to a PC.. at least not without the dubious world of emulation.

My view was that anything the XBOX could do could surely be done just as well on a PC. After all the XBOX was just a PC in a box, sure it was cutting edge when released, but by this time the technology has seriously moved on. PCs do exist that can actually run Crysis, just. Anything else would be easy. I was even put off more by the games which found their way from the console to the PC, I found them poor relations and badly implemented. Hindsight now shows me that this was lacklustre ports, even the acclaimed Bioshock turns me off in it’s PC incarnation.

What I hadn’t been prepared for, what you can’t actually get a feel for until you are actually in there is how joined up the whole experience is. Sure I use X-Fire and Steam on the PC which can link me up to other players who are playing the same games as me, but it’s an option addition, a nice to have that a large number of PC gamers just don’t bother with. On XBOX this is a part of the whole thing. Linking up with other players is about more than just the odd bit of multiplayer. It’s a competitive, cooperative, social, true community, bring people together not just to play, but to interact. It’s something you can really feel a part of, and which makes you better for it. Or rather it can, whether this environment turns you into a more complete gamer or just some arsehole who gets a kick off beating up, virtually as it might be, other gamers is down to your own mental makeup.

And so it is I find myself six months later with a game collection two thirds of my Wii game collection, which has had years to establish that lead, with plans to expand it further well bedded in. The system which I planned purely to play a couple of multiplayer games on with the couple of friends and family members has become just that only several times over. It’s opened my gaming world to new friends and communities that have come as a very welcome addition, no doubt helped on by the explosion in use of Twitter during the same period. The XBOX has become my go to system for gaming, and for creating some new shared experiences with my fiancée and friends which really is what life is all about. The PC has become far more of the versatile communication tool that it always has been, and will be for a long time to come. Sure I still play my RTS games there, for the mouse has yet to be bested for the intricacies of those game mechanics and I have a large enough PC game collection to keep me going back from time to time. However even some of these games, the likes of Bioshock and Mass Effect I’m contemplating selling and re-buying for that games console I avoided for so long.

I’ll still always be a PC gamer of course, it’s the platform that still delivers some of the most interesting and diverse gameplay styles anywhere, although I will admit some of the iPhone/Touch games coming along are a challenge to this. However even with the opportunities offered by XBLA, PSN and WiiWare there is no easier way than making something for PC, and just placing it out there on the internet. You can control your own distribution, maximise your return. Of course what you don’t get is the visibility to the market, there are just too many ways for people to find new things on the internet which is where the power of the consoles enclosed marketplaces can be a boon.

I realise that this whole post reeks of the evangelical spiel of the newly converted, however for me, right now, it’s how I feel. It’s why I’ve left it six months before I made a real stand about it, assuming any honeymoon period will have passed, my excitement and interest in this years E3 pretty much confirmed that I had moved into a new era though. Who knows where I’ll be in another six months, maybe by then there will be a BluRay based system joining the fold, that’s when I’ll know things will never be the same again!

Welcome to our new site, which has been constructed by Commander Tim of GameHounds on Platform Nation.

If you’re reading this then you might notice a few kinks that need ironing out. There are no replies to the posts as these are not transferable from the old site, some words are corrupted and need to be altered to make them readable. Most of the post artwork is missing and there are a few site features yet to be implemented.

These things will be dealt with shortly, but what we have here gives you a good idea as to the finished site and the direction we’re heading.

Look out over the coming weeks for some exciting additions and potentially fantastic shows.

Alex and Tony

Written By: Alex Shaw

This is an update of the 2006 Xbox release of Outrun 2,
(which was itself based on two Outrun Arcade cabinets by Sega). The graphics
have been polished up and all the cars are available immediately making it game
very accessible.

Taking control of one of a selection of Ferrari’s the player
races through various branching zones trying to make checkpoints within the
time limit and ending up in one of five finish lines. All the while, the hot
babe on your arm rewards you with adoration when you perform well and derision
when you fail. You can also do time trials and heart attack mode, in which
you"re asked to drive in specific ways (hitting no traffic or staying within
colored lines for example). Thereâs also a basic online mode in which up to six
people can head for the finish, either with collision on or off.

The best part of this shallow but shiny  racer is the drifting mechanics. Take a corner at speed and itâs
fairly easy to swing your car into a long and gratifying drift which not only
looks and feels the business, but shaves valuable seconds off your time and
saves you having to slow down. With collision off in multplayer and six
gorgeous looking Ferrariâs all arcing in unison round a hairpin bend itâs hard
to remember a time when racing felt as fun or stylish. The graphics are crisp
and colorful taking you through a variety of different backdrops, from Niagra
Falls to a Shuttle launch-pad, all
beautiful and exhilarating to cruise past.

The original Xbox version, rated as one of Edgeâs top 100
games of all time, was released with additional modes, some of which have been
trimmed for this XBLA (and PSN in Europe only) version. The most obvious
omission is the originalâs extensive series of challenges. This increased the
longevity allowing you to daisy-chain unlocks (Cars, tunes and more challenges)
in a series of achievements. Thereâs also, like the original, no local
multiplayer mode, which is a shame. However itâs worth remembering that for 800
points rather than the 1200 most classic Xbox games command youâre still
getting most of the game for two thirds the cost. I personally enjoyed Outrun
Online Arcade so much I picked up Outrun 2 on Xbox for Â1.99 ($2.91) in a
bargain bin, so if this loss of extra modes has you fuming, you can find it on
eBay or elsewhere for a very reasonable price. The XBLA version wins over the
old, for me at least, due to the polished graphics, immediate accessibility of
all cars and most importantly the chance to play with friends or strangers in a
360 online race. There are general leader-boards available, but Sumo have not
yet gathered that most of us only care about our friends fastest times.

In summation for 800 points you get a flashy, slick,
hellishly addictive arcade racer. Itâs not going to win any awards for depth,
complexity or originality, but as someone who rarely gets much out of racers
other than the Burnout series itâs got me back into feeling the need for speed,
and the drifting is absolutely second to none. Itâs closer to Ridge Racer and
Daytona than Gran Turismo and GRiD, but if thatâs what you like then at this
price youâd be crazy not to bag this classic.

Rating: 8/10

Written By: Alex Shaw

After
playing and reviewing GoldenEye again recently for the first time in years (Check out the video
podcast here) and with Riddick about to be re-released I started wondering
about the distinction between the good and bad (and terrible) games based on
movies.

For the
longest time, they were just sideways-scrolling platform shooters or brawlers,
with tenuous links to the narrative of their movie counterparts, often
featuring hero models
who bore no resemblance to the actors. For every step forward (True Lies) there
were five drunken staggers backward (Robocop 3, Lethal Weapon, Jurassic Park on the Genesis). This was back when
a simplistic adventure could be swiftly knocked together and released around
the same time as the movie with relatively little prep time. Even considering
this fact, the trend led to some of gamings most wretched abortions as
thousands of buried E.T. tapes will attest. Later on as technology improved,
shallow 2D adventures gave way to shallow 3D ones and despite the lack of quality
increase, development times extended due to volume of programming for this new
dimension and burgeoning opportunities for FMV and realism. The choice was
either bring it out way after the theatrical release (GoldenEye) or rush it out
for with the movie for marketing reasons (Batman Begins). In pure financial terms, obviously
the latter seems most likely to elicit profit; people buy in droves because of
multimedia hype, this will dry out in the months and years it takes to craft a
substantial game so why bother? But that only makes sense if you know nothing
about games. GoldenEye sold gangbusters and was one of the best reasons to buy
an N64. It had a tight, innovative single-player mode, groundbreaking
four-player death-matches and stands as the first brilliant console FPS. The
fact that it was a movie tie-in and you were playing James Bond was just the
icing on the cake but almost seemed incidental to it’s success. It was a
fantastic game, decorated to feel like Bond"s world. Look to the thoroughly
shitty Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough to see what happens when
you donât pay attention to that crucial first part. 

The central
problem lies at the top. Film producers list the video game along with the
MacDonaldâs promotion and the action figures in terms of a small part of the
mass-media event that a big cinema release tends to be. So time and budget are
rarely a luxury and quality is often not an issue. Look at Pixarâs releases. Nearly
every one of their films is a masterpiece, but their best game tie-in, Cars, is
only pretty good. The fact that an alarmingly high percentage of movie tie-ins
are aimed at children, frequently seen as having no taste or understanding of
quality by producers also means that most of the games are going to be bad. You
can picture some cigar chomping Hollywood savage tanned nutmeg-brown with a $300 haircut and a
phone taped to their ear, sat by his triangular pool, jerking off idly into a
pile of money, saying "What else can we do? We got the Mountain Dew promotion,
the cartoonâs coming out this summer, the Pussycat Dolls are doing a music
video and oh yeah, letâs do a video game. I know a guy.â Twisted exaggeration,
yes, but the truth nonetheless.

Itâs a
costly process to channel developers into making a movie tie-in. They fight
against an unmoving deadline, glaring dissimilarities from the source material,
unwilling actors, (Sierra found that out the hard way with their Damon-less
Bourne game) and more often than not, a narrative that does not lend itself to
an eight hour, action-packed video game adventure. Nobody sets out to make a bad game, but
itâs very easy to make a bad one anyway if you arenât given time, research or resources
and the money-men are breathing down your neck with release dates. The results
range from Jack Sparrow dying when he touches water to the epic grandeur of the
Lord of the Rings trilogy reduced to hack, hack, hack, uh-oh Gimli died!

Think of
the best movie tie-ins. GoldenEye, Riddick, The Warriors, Die Hard Trilogy. All
aimed at adults, all released significantly after the films in question. (Butcher Bay had much more to do with Pitch
Black than the horrendous Riddick follow-up). They were all made by experienced
developers with their hearts set on carving out excellent games and the
producers were wise enough to step back and trust in the strength of the source
material to fuel sales, long after the DVD had come out.  But think of the worst, and youâre probably
envisioning games released a week before the movie, terrible review scores,
jerky, unpolished gameplay and very little added to the central story. At best you
sit and watch a crude interpretation of the action from the film on a loop,
hammering the A or X button or flailing your Wii mote. Itâs not a trend likely
to end any time soon either, with these games being massive hits, because in
terms of sales, the money-men are absolutely right. Most kids donât have any
taste. God bless the ones that do, because theyâre the ones begging their
mommyâs to let them play Psychonauts or Super Mario Galaxy, but too many are swayed by advertising
and the dreamy pursuit of more Ratatouille fun (as if a crummy 3D platformer
could distil the subtle, gourmet genius of that film). If they enjoyed the
film, surely theyâll enjoy the game, and itâs that promise of potential that keeps
this cycle of derivative crap circulating forever.

But take heart, because the opposite end is even
worse. Movies based on games are so bad, that they hardly even count as films. Michael
DeLuca allegedly wanted Kurt Wimmer, writer and director of Ultraviolet and
Equilibrium, to write the movie version of Metal Gear Solid. This was after David
Hayterâs script was passed on. For producers to disregard the individual whoâs been
inside Snakeâs head and embodying his voice for a decade yet seek instead, the
man who adapted Sphere for the screen suggests to me a level of blind ignorance
of the medium of games that borders on comical. If you want someone to blame,
look at the richest bastards in Hollywood. I used to love movies, but itâs stories like this
treatment of arguably the greatest game ever made that make
me look at what EA did to Godfather II and think to myself: it could be worse.