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Smoke purred from Ant's mouth, drifting into the air, and pulling the life from within him out...
"You shouldn't smoke you know. It's bad for the insides."
Ant looked down at his curry. He wouldn't be suprised if the curry did more damage.
"I can't eat any more." He said. "I'm not feeling too well today."
The man took away Ant's curry, and emptied it into a bucket.
"That'll be 90 credits..." As the man looked up, Ant was no longer at his seat.
"Put it on the slate!" Ant shouted...
Ant had recieved another message. It was from command. Apparently some of the driods had broke lose, killing a few task forces on the way.
Ant got into his hovercar, just a bog standard craft, but the seats were uncomfortable. He knew this would be his last run before he could buy another.
He pulled the craft up, and out of the giant hanger, and into the open air. It was night. You could tell it was night because there were more hovercars around, it usually gets busy at night... Ant looked up at the deep smog that had settled over the city of Pembroke many years ago... not long after Pembroke was declared the new capital of the former British Isles all those years ago... before the war.
Ant remembers it as if it were about 10 years ago, so he expected the details to be a bit foggy.
Professor Miyamoto about 11 years ago invented the next generation of machinary to compete with the Overlords Playchip 3, which was in popular demand with kids...
Under the company name Nintendo, Prof. Miyamoto released the Nintendo chip into the mass market. Hundreds of people brought them, and had them implanted. Some many happy faces... so much peace in the world...
Then something, as always it seemed, went wrong. The chips started to manufuction, taking the persons will of control with it. They produced hundreds of automated psyhcotic killing machines, and Nintendo had no control over them...
The Overlord had ordered that all Nintendo products to be taking off the market, and ordered that Nintendo was shut down.
Ant pulled out of his daydream, and realised that he was heading straight for a building... He pulled up with ease. But someone behind him, who didn't anticipate his move quickly dodged to the left to avoid Ant, and hit the building that Ant was trying to avoid. The sprialling trail of the hovercars smoke reminded Ant to light his cigarette, which was just clasped unlit between his lips. Ant thought he was going insane...
Ant managed to navigate through the rest of the car maze, and ended up at the Overlords headquarters. Sony HQ.
He landed. Finding a space was easy, just land on top of any car already there. Sometimes you would find stacks of cars miles high, with the Jenga like approuch for the man with the bottom car, attempting to remove his car... There had been several "Jenga" accidents in the last few days.
Ant had left his car, climbed down the stack of cars, and entered the building. He proceeded past reception, and walked down the dark stairs. He took the second door on the left, walked around the fountain in the middle of the room to the third door, past the small wildlife display, through the small hall, under the glass bridge, and through the red double doors.
"Who are you?" Said the man inside.
"My names Ant. I'm a Blade Runner."
"Oh... you looking for the Command office. You should have taken the fourth door near the waterfall, this is the lower hall."
"Oh. Ta."
Still, the group managed to all climb in the Tardis, after tearing Ant away from his sugar collecting task. None of them mentioned the fact that it was bigger on the inside, because frankly they'd heard it far too many times before.
"Do you know," started DanUK, "it's strange, but this tardis seems bigger on tmflfmfmf.." the voice became muffled as everyone else decided they'd heard enough.
"Where to then, folks?" asked PB as the motor hummed into life and the central column started to rise and fall in a fashion that would surely cause some sort of metaphor to be written in a more adult publication.
"What's your name again??" Ant asked pb.
"pb," pb said, while showing an old library card with his picture on it. Everyone sniggered at the photo.
"And, what's your name??" Ant asked the disguised Grix.
"errrrrr....ummmmmmmm....... urrrrrrrrr... mmmmmmmm .....errrrr.....Gobble ......de...... gook," came Grix's stuttery reply. Grix then showed a librart card with his picture, and the name, "Grix Thraves" next to it.
Everyone sniggered at the photo.
When he'd stopped sniggering, Ant closely at the card.
"Well, everything seems to be in order. Welcome to our group, pb and Gobble-de-gook."
"Yep. It's not too hard, I just make sure that all the things I do wrong, I do right."
It was an extremely easy job.
*A day later...or earlier, whichever way you want it*
Ant was again standing with 4 other men, the hovercar a mess.
"errr...Ant."
"What?" Ant said, pleased with himself.
"We're in the exact same place as we were before."
Ant looked around, realised his mistake, and went off to buy more sugar.
"Well. He's not gonna do it right,is he?" FM said to the others.
"When there's a problem, there's always a solution," Gobble-de-gook said calmly.
"That's very profound, Gobble-de-gook," FM said admiringly.
Suddenly, a sniggering noise was heard.
They found Dan_UK, sitting on the ground, sniggering and giggling at the library cards he'd stolen.
As they were scolding Dan_UK with hot water for his sins, a dark shadow was cast over them.
The Overlord had found them.
As the skies darkened and the Overlord drew closer, the group huddled together and looked for a quick escape route.
"I didn't know the Overlord could draw" said a suprised and slightly confused Dan_UK.
"Er," corrected Ant, "I don't think the narrator meant that kind of draw. Mind you, he is quite good at it, look at that shading...."
They stood their admiring the Overlord's skill with a 4B pencil while a familar noise grew in pitch behind them.
"Ah, here we are back at the beginning again, jump in fellas." shouted pb at the mesmerised group of art critics. "Watch out for the Overlord, he has a very powerful hypnotic power by drawin...ah...I see you've found out. Better pull you all inside, I think."
After they had settled down and FM had stopped Dan_UK from rambling on about the Overlord's drawing skills, they looked on the ships computer to see if they could locate Sniper's whereabouts.
"I can't use this thing!" shouted FM, banging the computer screen for the 10th time, "It's all strange."
"Ah, that would be the Linix operating system, I installed it after the ship kept getting errors with the Windows one. Here, try this."
The screen lit up and a flashing red arrow with the word 'Sniper' appeared on a map of a nearby town.
"What does that mean?" asked Dan_UK.
Everyone else gave a disaproving look and set course for the location.
"Well," replied pb. "It's complicated quantum physics, and it always makes my head hurt thinking about it. It's like asking what would happen if you went back and changed past events, then went back to the future again to see the result. Would you already be there?"
"I have a feeling this might be important later on." pondered Ant.
"I saw back to the future. And back the future 2 and..." started Dan_UK before glancing at the others glare. "Okay, but where is Sniper?"
"yes", said FM. "He is our boss and the head of Sony HQ."
"So why were we trying to escape?" queried Ant. "And why, when we have access to a tardis and therefore limitless powers over time and space, did we just travel here at the present time?"
"Have you never watched films?" FM asked. "People act stupidly, consider how many times could James Bond have been killed by now! It's film etiquette, neither side must press home any advantage, and only minor characters may die before the last scene. I mean if a good guy gets captured, he/she won't be killed straight away, it's obvious!"
"hmmm.....where IS pb?" Ant replied, scanning over the group quickly.
FM turned to check the group. Ant was still there, so was Dan2k and the new guy, Gobble De-Gook, still wearing his Hovercar chair outfit. pb was nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile, in the top floor of a factory not far away, sniper was watching them with a leery grin on his face. Behind him was pb, tied up inside a cage. It was all going according to plan, he told himself. Soon they would use their biodetector to find pb's location. Then they would enter, and he would roll barrels at them, which they would either have to jump over, or avoid by climbing the ladders conviniently positioned on various floors in a seemingly random fashion. Sniper threw his head back burst out into another maniacal fit of laughter, which in retrospect he would regret, but at the time he hadn't seen the pigeon directly above him up on the rafters.....
Who know's whether nintendo's claim of inexplicable 'malfunction' was entirely true......