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Imagine that games were made based on their titles. By this, I mean a name is thought up, and it is then the developer’s job to make a game around this title. Stupid it may sound… but… yeah it’s just stupid. Anyway, it makes for an interesting theory. What would happen if somewhere between the name being thought up, and the game being produced, the title got accidentally changed? Like someone accidentally misses out a letter, or something. Well, if this were the case then we would be playing some amusingly different titles right now, all because of one simple letter…
*Red Car Soccer*
When thinking of a title for a new game, Midway’s ‘Name thinker-upper’ decided upon the title ‘Red Card Soccer’. He was hoping the developer at Midway would see this as a chance to create a fouling football game. As he was only allowed to pass on the title though, and not any ideas about the game, this meant that the creation of a fouling football game relied on how the developer pictured the title. Unfortunately no fouling football game was created. The strangest thing though, was the fact that this wasn’t down to the developer being on a different wavelength to the name thinker-upper. No, it was the name thinker-uppers fault. He missed the ‘d’ out of the word ‘car’, so the developer made this game instead; Red Car Soccer.
The game revolves around a good old game of football, with a twist. The players are actually cars. Starting off as non-league strugglers, you must make your way up the leagues by winning matches. With rubbish old bangers to start off with, your job is to buy brand new cars from the showrooms, hopefully making a squad of strong, fast, sports cars. Teams involve Vauxhall Motors and Car-lisle, as well as international sides. So you get TVR’s and Aston Martins teaming up for England to play the Ferraris and Lamborghini’s of Italy. As there are no rules, the sport is full contact to ensure lots of mayhem.
Red Car Soccer is out now through Midway on all formats.
*Metal Ear Solid*
For several years Mr Kojima has been stuck for a game to make. With no ‘Name thinker-upper’ employed, it was up to him to think of his own game title. However, this was proving difficult so he hired someone to think of a name for him. This person decided upon ‘Metal Gear Solid’, but unfortunately when explaining this to Mr. Kojima, wires got crossed and the resultant title in Mr. Kojima’s head was ‘Metal Ear Solid’. So with the year 2001 just about to end Mr Kojima got to work on his first ever title.
The story starts off in the West Ham Utd camp. Glenn Roeder, manager of struggling West Ham, wants to know how to be a successful manager. As Mr. Venables is the only Premiership manager Glenn can steal information off, it looks like the Leeds manager will be his target (Well at least he is doing better than Glenn is). So Glenn finds a flea in Di Canio’s hair (Well, the little bit of hair he has) and sends it on its way. The mission is to photograph Venables brain and bring back the photos so that Glenns brain can be changed, hence he can try and make West Ham win at least one match. Before the photos can be taken though, one beast stands in the way; Metal Ear Solid, a large lump of earwax with metal like properties. Armed with a micro sized Otex Ear Drop gun, Di Canio’s flea must enter Venables ear and destroy the huge orange gunk. Once this has been safely disposed off, the player must guide the flea into ‘The Big Tel’. Using both stealth and muscle, the flea must defeat off ear lice and take the photos before returning them to Glenn. On completion, the player will be awarded with the one off treat of watching West Ham actually winning a match.
Metal Ear Solid will be released in February 2003 through Konami and is a PS2 exclusive.
*Ton Hawks Pro Skater 4*
Planning a sequel to the popular Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3, Activisions ‘Name thinker-upper’ decides upon the appropriately titled ‘Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4’. Unfortunately, someone sneakily rubs out the ‘y’ in ‘Tony’ to read ‘Ton’. So the game ‘Ton Hawks Pro Skater 4’ is invented and the storyline goes as follows.
Over the Christmas period, Tony Hawks gets a bit carried away with the wonderful food on offer. Before long, slim Tony is no longer slim. No, he now weighs a ton and can no longer skate, with fear of breaking his board. So it is your job to help Tony regain his slender self. This involves carrying out a series of gruelling tasks from walking the dog to doing star jumps. Each task requires repeated taps of the controller, very much like International Track and Field. Once Tony is back to his usual self the player is rewarded with the actual Skateboarding side to the game, which incidentally is exactly the same as Tony Hawks 3 except one of the ramps in the school level has been moved, and Tony now has 3 more trick combos!!!
Ton Hawks Pro Skater 4 will be out after the Christmas period through Activision on all formats.
*ToCA Race River*
‘ToCA Race Driver’ was confirmed. Communication between ‘Name thinker-upper’ and developer was a success and the game was set to be made. Unfortunately Codemasters developer forgot what the title of the game was going to be. Luckily he had typed the name onto his computer, so he logged on and took a look. What he didn’t realise though was that the ‘d’ key on his keyboard was well and truly broke. So when he typed in ‘ToCA Race Driver’ it actually read ‘ToCA Race River’. Oh dear. This left him getting totally the wrong end of the stick, quite literally. Yes, sticks; the theme of Codies new hit.
Practically everyone has heard of Poo Sticks. You go to a bridge, you and a friend drop a twig into the water, and the winner is the person whose twig appears first at the other side of the bridge. Codemasters new game sets to capture every aspect of the ‘sport’. It features all the famous British circuits in the form of rivers. Whether it’s the trench at Donnington Park or the stream at Brands Hatch, they're all accurately recreated in stunning form. As well as this all the teams from the ToCA Touring car championships are there, each with there own unique coloured sticks. Anthony Reid has his lime green and black ‘MG twig’ while Jason Plato controls the red and white ‘Vauxhall branch’. Codemasters has also announced that their new ‘LickMyRipple’ technology will give the water that ultra realistic effect. Players must decide the ‘shape’ of the ripples in order to get the perfect flow on their stick.
Looks like plenty of fun will be had when ToCA Race River is released next summer on PS2, XBox, and PC.
Clearly one little letter can make a lot of difference to what we play. Obviously developers wouldn’t really make up a name for a game, and then build the game based on that title, but it would certainly be interesting if they did.
Thanks for reading,
Nath.
*Red Car Soccer*
When thinking of a title for a new game, Midway’s ‘Name thinker-upper’ decided upon the title ‘Red Card Soccer’. He was hoping the developer at Midway would see this as a chance to create a fouling football game. As he was only allowed to pass on the title though, and not any ideas about the game, this meant that the creation of a fouling football game relied on how the developer pictured the title. Unfortunately no fouling football game was created. The strangest thing though, was the fact that this wasn’t down to the developer being on a different wavelength to the name thinker-upper. No, it was the name thinker-uppers fault. He missed the ‘d’ out of the word ‘car’, so the developer made this game instead; Red Car Soccer.
The game revolves around a good old game of football, with a twist. The players are actually cars. Starting off as non-league strugglers, you must make your way up the leagues by winning matches. With rubbish old bangers to start off with, your job is to buy brand new cars from the showrooms, hopefully making a squad of strong, fast, sports cars. Teams involve Vauxhall Motors and Car-lisle, as well as international sides. So you get TVR’s and Aston Martins teaming up for England to play the Ferraris and Lamborghini’s of Italy. As there are no rules, the sport is full contact to ensure lots of mayhem.
Red Car Soccer is out now through Midway on all formats.
*Metal Ear Solid*
For several years Mr Kojima has been stuck for a game to make. With no ‘Name thinker-upper’ employed, it was up to him to think of his own game title. However, this was proving difficult so he hired someone to think of a name for him. This person decided upon ‘Metal Gear Solid’, but unfortunately when explaining this to Mr. Kojima, wires got crossed and the resultant title in Mr. Kojima’s head was ‘Metal Ear Solid’. So with the year 2001 just about to end Mr Kojima got to work on his first ever title.
The story starts off in the West Ham Utd camp. Glenn Roeder, manager of struggling West Ham, wants to know how to be a successful manager. As Mr. Venables is the only Premiership manager Glenn can steal information off, it looks like the Leeds manager will be his target (Well at least he is doing better than Glenn is). So Glenn finds a flea in Di Canio’s hair (Well, the little bit of hair he has) and sends it on its way. The mission is to photograph Venables brain and bring back the photos so that Glenns brain can be changed, hence he can try and make West Ham win at least one match. Before the photos can be taken though, one beast stands in the way; Metal Ear Solid, a large lump of earwax with metal like properties. Armed with a micro sized Otex Ear Drop gun, Di Canio’s flea must enter Venables ear and destroy the huge orange gunk. Once this has been safely disposed off, the player must guide the flea into ‘The Big Tel’. Using both stealth and muscle, the flea must defeat off ear lice and take the photos before returning them to Glenn. On completion, the player will be awarded with the one off treat of watching West Ham actually winning a match.
Metal Ear Solid will be released in February 2003 through Konami and is a PS2 exclusive.
*Ton Hawks Pro Skater 4*
Planning a sequel to the popular Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3, Activisions ‘Name thinker-upper’ decides upon the appropriately titled ‘Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4’. Unfortunately, someone sneakily rubs out the ‘y’ in ‘Tony’ to read ‘Ton’. So the game ‘Ton Hawks Pro Skater 4’ is invented and the storyline goes as follows.
Over the Christmas period, Tony Hawks gets a bit carried away with the wonderful food on offer. Before long, slim Tony is no longer slim. No, he now weighs a ton and can no longer skate, with fear of breaking his board. So it is your job to help Tony regain his slender self. This involves carrying out a series of gruelling tasks from walking the dog to doing star jumps. Each task requires repeated taps of the controller, very much like International Track and Field. Once Tony is back to his usual self the player is rewarded with the actual Skateboarding side to the game, which incidentally is exactly the same as Tony Hawks 3 except one of the ramps in the school level has been moved, and Tony now has 3 more trick combos!!!
Ton Hawks Pro Skater 4 will be out after the Christmas period through Activision on all formats.
*ToCA Race River*
‘ToCA Race Driver’ was confirmed. Communication between ‘Name thinker-upper’ and developer was a success and the game was set to be made. Unfortunately Codemasters developer forgot what the title of the game was going to be. Luckily he had typed the name onto his computer, so he logged on and took a look. What he didn’t realise though was that the ‘d’ key on his keyboard was well and truly broke. So when he typed in ‘ToCA Race Driver’ it actually read ‘ToCA Race River’. Oh dear. This left him getting totally the wrong end of the stick, quite literally. Yes, sticks; the theme of Codies new hit.
Practically everyone has heard of Poo Sticks. You go to a bridge, you and a friend drop a twig into the water, and the winner is the person whose twig appears first at the other side of the bridge. Codemasters new game sets to capture every aspect of the ‘sport’. It features all the famous British circuits in the form of rivers. Whether it’s the trench at Donnington Park or the stream at Brands Hatch, they're all accurately recreated in stunning form. As well as this all the teams from the ToCA Touring car championships are there, each with there own unique coloured sticks. Anthony Reid has his lime green and black ‘MG twig’ while Jason Plato controls the red and white ‘Vauxhall branch’. Codemasters has also announced that their new ‘LickMyRipple’ technology will give the water that ultra realistic effect. Players must decide the ‘shape’ of the ripples in order to get the perfect flow on their stick.
Looks like plenty of fun will be had when ToCA Race River is released next summer on PS2, XBox, and PC.
Clearly one little letter can make a lot of difference to what we play. Obviously developers wouldn’t really make up a name for a game, and then build the game based on that title, but it would certainly be interesting if they did.
Thanks for reading,
Nath.
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What?
ROFL
Buffy the Vampire layer - need i tell you anymore!
Nå†ßu© wrote:
> Po Evolution Soccer (A teletubbie version of the game)
I can see that being like Sega Soccer Slam only slower, 'nicer' and has the very annoying theme tune playing all the time!
Its a good job this theory isnt used all the time, imagine some of the games we could have had! *Shudders*
Interesting post.
> Po Evolution Soccer (A teletubbie version of the game)
I can see that being like Sega Soccer Slam only slower, 'nicer' and has the very annoying theme tune playing all the time!
Its a good job this theory isnt used all the time, imagine some of the games we could have had! *Shudders*
Interesting post.
Pure fluke I'm afraid Dave. Thing is, now I am there I know if I lose it will be down to fluke. I'm scared :D
Nat, completely off subject :- well done with your Bomberman score, my best is 1.34 remaining which gave me 9700 points, how do you do it ????
David
David
Thankyou Verbatim.
Nice suggestions aswell. (Medal Of Honour Fontline :D)
Nice suggestions aswell. (Medal Of Honour Fontline :D)
WC2:Extreme - The most realistic plumbing sim, 21 licensed plumbers, 114 toilets in 14 houses. Get ready for dirt!
Just for you Natty here are some more
1p,2p,5p,10p,20p,50p,£1 & the Turbo powered £2 Scottish coins race around a variety of rally tracks in
COIN MACRAE RALLY 3.0
Cockney Axe and Family in a wonderful adventure in
ATCHET AND CLAN
Take turns cutting off pieces of a small lad going for the all important straight down the middle shot in
TIMSPLITTERS
Trainspotter sim game (The film not the sad pastime) where you play Begbie in the pub in
BURNOUT 2 - PINT OF IMPACT
And finally
Get a variety of awards in a typing contest against opponents such as Fritz and Hanz in
MEDAL OF HONOUR - FONTLINE
1p,2p,5p,10p,20p,50p,£1 & the Turbo powered £2 Scottish coins race around a variety of rally tracks in
COIN MACRAE RALLY 3.0
Cockney Axe and Family in a wonderful adventure in
ATCHET AND CLAN
Take turns cutting off pieces of a small lad going for the all important straight down the middle shot in
TIMSPLITTERS
Trainspotter sim game (The film not the sad pastime) where you play Begbie in the pub in
BURNOUT 2 - PINT OF IMPACT
And finally
Get a variety of awards in a typing contest against opponents such as Fritz and Hanz in
MEDAL OF HONOUR - FONTLINE
Page: