Let's Drown Out

A short discovery of certain years in my horrible childhood, a playthrough of Fantasy World Dizzy for the Commodore 64, with commentary by me and my horrible friend Gabriel. The company founded by the Oliver Twins is Blitz Games, not Blaze Games as I say in this video. OOPSY DAISY

The second part of the epic (50 minute) adventure. Both episodes were completed at the same time but I sat on this one for a couple of days in accordance with the principle of 'treat them mean, keep them keen'.

Gabriel takes me through an old Master System game he used to play. Apologies for the artefacting on the videos. Also apologies for Gabriel, generally.

The concluding portion of Gabriel's playthrough of Alex Kidd in High Tech World, in which we tackle the most wilfully obnoxious puzzle design in the history of adventure games and Gabe fucks up the video editing.

Your bestest pals (well, somewhat fond acquaintances at least) Yahtzee and Gabriel step into the individually categorised shoes of the world's worst murderer in Creative Reality's Dreamweb from 1992. (Watch this one in full screen. Seriously. It's one titchy-ass game)

Ryan finally gets around to actually murdering someone at the expense of any hope we had for a PG rating. View in large size for full appreciation of pixelly tits and bums. Maybe don't watch this one at work. Part 3 tomorrow!

Neil 'Ryan' Gaiman continues bumbling his way through improving his murder portfolio in inverse proportion to the quality of the game design. Stay tuned for the final tortuous episode tomorrow!

Ryan 'Neil Gaiman' Whateverhisnameis blunders his way to a conclusion that turns out as well for him as could be expected and Creative Reality struggles to think of people to credit. Thanks for watching.

Gabriel and I "enjoy" the second in the original and "best" independent adventure game "trilogy". There's a spoiler for Game of Thrones series/book 1 hidden in here somewhere so don't say you weren't warned. It's just one 45 minute video so make yourself a nice cup of milky tea or something.

Coming to you in one-big-massive-video-o-vision, Gabriel and I slog our way through the early days of one of the most notable game developers to come out of France. On the way we discuss the butt of the space monkey, how close is 'close enough' to stick a lance up a tree, and how inspiring it is to see a video game developer cast pivotal roles with the mentally abnormal.

Gabriel takes the helm to take us through a lesser-known Sierra adventure game from 1988 with a slightly homoerotic title.

Sierra as an adventure game developer made six Space Quests, seven Leisure Suit Larrys and enough King's Quests to choke a dog, so it seems odd that they only made two Manhunters. Perhaps the answer behind this perplexing riddle will unfold within this video.

Another retro adventure game pick, one of the first ones I owned for my Amiga 600 in my misspent youth. We present this video in memorial of Gabriel's head, which tragically broke about twenty minutes in. I was going to split this video into half-hour or twenty-minute episodes, but once it got a really good stream of consciousness going I couldn't pick out any good logical cut points. That, and also I couldn't be arsed.

To celebrate the holiday season, we slog through Gabriel's playthrough of Young Merlin for the SNES, a game greatly let down by its lack of association with Nicol Williamson in Excalibur. In this opening episode, Merlin forgets to rescue his drowning girlfriend to the utter contempt of her dad, while a prevalence of rainbow imagery leads to a frank and mature conversation about the alternative sexualities.

In the second of our three-part Christmas adventure into the Arthurian canon, Merlin continues his quest for any kind of motivation whatsoever, Gabriel tells us more about his personal life than anyone could be comfortable with, and I need another drink.

Merlin combs his way towards a happy ending while Gabriel continues telling us charming things about himself and the various liquids he emits. A merry Merlin Christmas to everyone else who has nothing better to do today.

Gabriel and I brave the minigame-fueled adventures of the world's most adequate secret agent in Operation Stealth (aka James Bond: The Stealth Affair in the US), Delphine Software's 1990 follow-up to Future Wars. I put it all up in one big video because that approach seems to hold greater appeal. Feel free to watch half now and half in a few days if you prefer an episodic experience.

It's been a while but we're back and in it for the long haul, because Gabriel showed up at my house with a 3 and a half hour video of Normality, a first-person adventure game from 1996. What took place on that fateful afternoon I have come to accept in part as our penance for having been teenagers in the 90's. Played around with stereo commentary on this one, so if you like you could watch this with headphones on and imagine that the two of us are sitting either side of you, breathing down your ears. Our open-quotes-the-size-of-hot-air-balloons "hero", Kent Knutson, joins an extermist group and begins a spiral of destruction and terrorism that in a sane society would end with him hiding in a cave in Pakistan for ten years before getting shot by Navy Seals. Because he thinks everyone should have stupid haircuts.

Meanwhile, Gabriel and I argue about Star Trek and occasionally remember to talk about the game.

Kent Knutson continues his grisly character arc, transitioning from mild mannered tosspot to fugitive murderer, somehow managing to still look poorly dressed even when entirely disguised as someone else. Meanwhile, Gabriel and I begin to show signs of stress as we pass over the hump period of the three-hour original video, tagging out for alternating piss breaks and becoming fixated on the word 'monster'.

Kent Knutson - or to give him the name by which he will be known by history, The Monster Kent Knutson - concludes his campaign to bring down the government and replace authority with an anarchic maelstrom where those who seek order and sensible clothing are hunted through the streets like dogs and all of human history is destroyed in a spiral of chaos and horror. Meanwhile, Gabriel says the word 'bum'. And I laugh.

In our very first experimental dabble with commenting while playing, Gabriel and I take a look at this year's Flashback, the 1993 classic Delphine Software step platformer remade and reimagined in glorious HD. 'HD' in this case stands for 'Huge Douche'.

We're getting back to our roots and, in many ways, embracing aspects of our own psyches by doing a playthrough of a classic adventure game about a pathetic man utterly humiliating himself in a quest to get his ugly little bone on. Maybe don't watch this one at work if your boss is on the lookout for vibrantly-coloured pixel poon.

Don't miss the retarded conclusion of this exciting game about a loser ceasing to be a loser and ironically losing any sense of identity he had. Better watch right to the end if you want some real genuine no fooling proper closure from all this wank.

Gabriel's latest attempt to try my patience is making me watch yet another three hour video, this one of various people with heads too small for their bodies pretending to be very serious police officers.

The epic career path of Sonny Bonds continues as he gets promoted to the Narcotics division and successfully rids the world of all the bad drugs for the kids.

Our story concludes with Sonny Bonds demonstrating his strange ideas about the criminal life. And Gabriel being the crapout that he is, the video switches to the long play of the game by NintendoComplete.

As something of a follow-up to my shitty indie adventures from the 90's, Gabriel takes us through someone else's indie RPG from around the same period, in which a young hero struggles to overcome the implication that he is poorly endowed.

We conclude the process of turning a small-penised youth into an equally small-penised hero, and I teach Gabriel about stream-of-consciousness talking, which he utterly fails to take on board, the big spoilsport bellend.

We decide to take a week off from Resident Evil 4 to do some more retro adventure gaming, and spend a leisurely hour searching for a purpose in life in the classic point-and-click wander-around-em-up.

Gabriel is as good as his word and starts us off on the dystopian adventures of Robert Foster, the wasteland dweller with astonishingly good personal grooming.

We finish the game in an extra special double length episode because why the fuck not, and take it in turns to remember the titles of all the James Bond films.