I had high hopes for Game On as we caught the train down to London village early on Saturday morning. The travelling exhibition was coming to the end of its run at the Science Museum and I had finally managed to clear a weekend in order to nip down to the capital to see the show that claimed to delve behind the scenes of gaming culture and show it off to the masses.

The exhibition had toured around Britain for the last couple of years and boasted over a 120 games from the last thirty-plus years of gaming, as well as early versions of all three next-gen consoles throughout its time. Everything was playable and it was a veritable playground for boys and girls (although primarily the former) or all ages.

Unsurprisingly they started at the beginning. As you walked through the entrance you were met with a batch of arcade cabinets and a DEC PDP-1, a hulking piece of metal and circuitry that was the “platform” of choice the very first game, Space War!, way back in 1962.

As you snaked through the displays time slowly caught up as you first passed pong machines and tape driven machines, edged your way into the early 80’s via the grey slab NES and fell into the present with preproduction boards on Tomb Raider and a running demo of the PS3’s Motor Storm.

I wandered around aimlessly at first, trying to catch a handle on what was there and what I needed to play before being kicked out. Pretty much everything had a people circling around it but the queues were never too long and for the majority of the time I hung around the arcade machines waiting for a go on some true, old school classics: Centipede, Asteroids, Galaxian, et al. A lot of these games everyone has played but usually via some port onto a new system or using a horrendous ROM that was freely available; I took this as my chance to actually play these game they were intended and in their original form.

Pretty much every original, old game I played whilst there felt so much better than any update or rip-off version I have played of it and I put it solely down to the controls that each of those cabinets had. I never had the experience of an arcade when I was younger and so frantically moving the now over-sized joystick or spinning the ridiculously large tracker-ball cannot be compared to a keyboard or a joystick you get in modern conversions – each one gave the game in front of me a whole new dimension to the fun and the feel.

For me best in show came down to the vector graphics of the classic Asteroids and the tracker-ball spinning joy of Missile Command. Whilst I sucked at both I really enjoyed the sense of panic that Missile Command could produce in you as you saw projectiles rain down upon your poor cities and knowing that you could just not move that ball fast enough to save them. With Asteroids it was the vector graphics that got me, a style I love, especially the way they almost burn into the screen to produce such vivid colours. Asteroids shaded it, though.

I have to admit I hardly touched any games that were created from the mid-80s onwards as I either have dabbled in many or still have access to them now. I preferred the really historic ones, those you couldn’t hook up to the television.

What did disappoint me about the whole things was the lack of history and information on offer to those who did not have a grasp on video gaming history. One wall was adorned with a colourful timeline that documented the main points in my hobby’s history but there was no information on a per-game basis; young kids were playing Ms Pacman and Galaxian but I’m pretty sure that the majority of people had no idea how those titles fitted into the evolution of computer games, what inspired them and what came after them. To most it was just a room full of blinking, interactive pictures, which I felt was a great chance missed by the organisers.

Once again the frequency of my blogging is taking a hammering. This time there are no deadlines to blame or even laziness to fault, instead I’m doing my bit for the VP community by touring the various Viva Pinata forums that are out there and showing my face as a caring member of the dev team. Think of it as after-sales service but surrounded by a bit more trolling and flaming.

There are two main ones which I frequent, the first being our own little corner of the Official Xbox Forums and the other being the largest unofficial forum, vivapinataforums.com.

Now whilst the official one is of course backed by our owners and publishers I have to say that I still prefer the unofficial site as it tends to bring in people who solely are looking to be a part of a piñata loving community or who are there for the odd nugget of information. Compare this to the more general forum that is the official one and you generally find you have a friendlier environment as Gears of War fans don’t tend to stumble on it too easily and then flame the colourful critters.

That’s not the only reason I love them, though, it’s because they’ve been with us from the start. Not too long after the announcement for the game was broadcast than the forums popped up thanks to CandyMan (and Jimmcq with the wiki, heads up to you too) and soon it had quite a little following whilst all us devs looked in from outside to see how things were going and how people were reacting to us. In a 360 world where guns and cars ruled it seems that this enclave of forum-goers actually believed in what we were doing.

I really enjoy engaging with both sets of fans. It’s nice to be able to respond to their queries and gripes about how and why things were made the way they were and even taking notes of the glitches that they’ve discovered so I can squirrel them away in our “to fix” log.

And so it may take an hour or two out of my own time each day but I’m going to continue on doing this, trying to put a friendly face to the team behind VP and attempting to reach out and say hi to those who have taken the trouble to play our disc of bits. I thank them all for that.

As requested here is an update on my hair thanks to the brand-spanking-new camera that Ali got me for my birthday. Apologies for the close-ups but for some reason whenever we tried to get a full head shot it either turned blue or black.

I have to, though, that since I last spoke to you I’ve become less than impressed with the sturdiness of the purple.

Tuesday nights are football nights for us here at Rare; off we pop down to Measham for a friendly six-a-side and usually during the winter the rain tends to follows us. It can be dry every other day of the week but it seems that we can bring out the clouds like no others.

There I was, standing in goal, bellowing at my defence with the rain lashing down around me when I wiped my glove across my forehead and glasses to get rid of the excess spray. The other team then start attacking down the left and as I point in their general direction I realise that my gloves are now stained a lovely, shocking pink. This had never happened with my blue but my hair dye was running down my face and making me look like that unfortunately girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Those on the ball had a laugh about it but those who weren’t quite with it just thought I’d fallen face first in some mud. Ok, I’ll give them that as it was hard to tell the colour under the floodlights but considering we were playing on Astroturf and not grass I’m not quite sure where they thought I could have fallen.

I am going to make a shocking statement: the gaming industry is dominated by large franchises and annual updates. Each year in the run-up to Christmas you can pretty much guess what the new releases are even if you haven’t been keeping tabs on the surge of previews and reviews that flood the gaming websites from August onwards.

Need for Speed, Splinter Cell and his Tom Clancy stable mates, FIFA, Pro Evo, the Sims, Madden, Call of Duty, Medal of Honour, the latest Disney film, all of them roll out of their development houses year on year for the festive role call and tend to sell off the back of their name first and the quality second. People know exactly what they are getting with these products and are happy with that.

There can only be so much you can do in a year and I think a lot of people understand that a year isn’t that long in terms of game development. Sure EA can pump out a FIFA a year but it only tends to be every three-years that it gets an overhaul and the feel of the game changes, in between times you get tweaks, the odd new trick and updates squads. And for the fans it is the latter that is the most important: no matter what the sports game may be they want updates and they want to make sure they are not missing out.

Now imagine if these games, not just the sports games, came out every 18 months or two years. How would their situation change?

Significantly, I doubt they would be handed as much slack as they are in the reviews or by the buying public. On annual updates people expect minor upgrades and fixes, not a complete rewrite, but when you start to fall into the second year of development people expect a lot more. At this point simply throwing in a couple new tracks or stadium is not going to cut it.

The fact is with annual updates you keep your brand in the public eye and you tend to get away with doing less as long as people know that eventually you will give them a full sequel at some point.

Taking this in mind, Ubisoft handled both Rainbox Six and Ghost Recon on the original Xbox in a very similar and intelligent way when it came to their sequels and expansion. To try and cash in on the success of the original games both series created mission packs to keep fans going during the lull in between full games. These packs used the exact same engine as the main games, incorporated a few minor fixes, the upgraded Live functionality and more importantly cost far less than the price of a full game because of the comparative ease at which they were made.

The question is how do you like your sequels? Thick and fast but you know there is a revamp around the corner, ala Need for Speed, or do you love a series that steps off the shelves for a couple of years but comes back with something that attempts to live up to the expectation that has build in the meantime, step forward Halo.

I know which I prefer.

I had a slight accident: my hair is purple. I can, however, be damn sure that it wasn’t my fault.

I’ve had some hair dye on order since the end of November but due to various stock issues and the post’s shortcomings I have been my natural brown colour for about six weeks now. Coming into the New Year I thought “sod it”, lets see where else can I get some dye from and so off I went to Fudge’s homepage to place an order.

It is at this point I present article A., the website in question. As you can see the colours displayed in A. are all quite clear and have blues to the left and purples over to the far right. I chose the leftmost shade, Blueberry Hill as it was the darkest blue. Or so I thought.

At the time I had my doubts, but then again at the time I was bleach-blonde and didn’t really have too many options unless I wanted to look like a scarecrow. I stared at the purple tube in my hands and thought that it would either dry to a nice dark shade of my preferred colour, somewhat hopeful I know, or at worse I could dabble with being that same colour that you see when you hold a glass of red wine up to light. You know, the bit by the surface where the light catches it best.

And so I am purple, much to the enjoyment of my fellow workmates, but I am solely blaming whoever setup that website because they must be colour blind: how anyone could anyone mistake my head for blue?

I do have some actual blue on order to right this situation but for the moment I look like a Merlot and have no chance of getting into White Hart Lane without being mistaken for a Hammers fan. Here’s hoping the post arrives before I trek down to London for the FA Cup.

And so the great Halo 3 Beta sign-up continues in all its various guises with the announcement that Beta keys will ship with copies of Crackdown, the super-powered GTA-a-like from the creator of the original GTA Dave Jones.

Now whilst I am quietly looking forward to this title, the prospect of tearing up a city by not only conventional means but using an over-powered cop who can leap tall buildings with a single bound appeals to me, I do know many people who are simply not impressed by what they have seen or are underwhelmed by the demos they have managed to get their hands on.

Extrapolating slightly, I think it is quite safe to say that this sentiment reaches out further than the gaming circles I move in and Crackdown is not going to be the nailed-on success that Gear of War was, something which you could have predicted for the latter months before its actual release. Gears was Microsoft’s big mature-rated game for the festive period and it hardly left the gaming public’s conscience in the run up to Christmas as Cliffy B and co kept ramming it down our throats. By comparison Dave Jones et al have had their moments in the spotlight but there nothing like the media coverage we saw for Epic’s show piece.

So, what do you do when you have a product that you think will under-perform in the market place? That’s right, slap a demo of your next highly anticipated release in with it.

Call me cynical but I believe this is exactly what has happened here; someone at the top of Microsoft thought of a great way to increase the sales of Crackdown and it was to bundle in with it the ability to get your hands on an early version of Halo 3. There were rumours that they may charge for the privilege of beta-testing and this is probably their way of doing so.

Of course they are not the first to play such tricks; back in the late 90s Konami released Zone of the Enders complete with a demo of their highly anticipated Metal Gear Solid 2. ZoE went on to shift well over a million copies and whilst it wasn’t a bad game it was definitely the demo that helped shift it in such large quantities.

Will Crackdown hit six-figures if the Master Chief comes as a pack-in? I doubt it, but then again I do believe this game can stand on its own merits and not just as the opening salvo of what is sure to be year of Halo 3.

There is, of course, a second way to get a Halo 3 Beta key but to get it means facing a three-hour session of online Halo 2 play where your patience will constantly be tested by whiny American twelve-year olds as they complain bitterly that someone took “their” sniper rifle whilst at the same time proclaiming your “n00b” status to anyone unfortunate enough to have their headsets turned on. Me, personally, I’m going to spend the £40 on Crackdown.

There are times when I hate to admit it, but Jack Thompson is right: computer games do influence my behaviour. I am so ashamed of this fact that I have made a Mii of the American attorney and often just grab him with my giant cursor-hand and shake him vigorously to make myself feel better.

Those of you who know me will remember how I took up skateboarding after becoming thoroughly engrossed in the Tony Hawk’s series and how I almost crossed the line into paper RPGs after dabbling in World of Warcraft. Slightly less extreme is how, thanks to Wii Sports, I now hold a belief that not only can I bowl but I can bowl well.

Currently I could quite happily forsake Gears of War, Rainbow Six and possibly even Zelda for an hour of pure Wii Sporting action such is its draw, and over Christmas Ali and I have become absorbed in its bowling game, often stopping up to the wee small hours just for “one more game”. We both have a top score of 200+ and regularly bowl games in the high 180s – the game even ranks us both as professionals so we must be good. So with this and being that the game is such a true digital simulation of the sport we decided over Christmas to detach ourselves from our Wii-motes and take our natural bowling talent into the real world, heading off into Nuneaton in search of some pins.

On the Wii I have a bowling action that causes the ball to start out wide and then curve into the centre by the time it hits the pins, this is brought about by a twist of the wrist and a follow-through that whips across my body. After a couple of practise swings trying to recreate that movement I stepped up to the alley with visions of glory in my head but, so it turns out, in real life when I do this I am left with a slightly sprained wrist and a ball that flops into the gutter mere inches from where I released it.

Ali didn’t fair too better either and after a series of false starts and gutter balls we set about the next ten frames reconstructing our actions for real-life bowling. By the end of the first game I ended up with a mere 75 and Ali topped me with an 88.

Ultimately my action had be reduced from an exuberant, wide swing and slide down to something that went as straight as possible with hope that a little pace would help me on my way (although I did manage to get a little slide in towards the end). When time was called on our hour’s reality check we did manage a high score of 128 but this was still a far cry from our “professional” status.

Luckily I am no good at the boxing and as soon as the weather clears up we’ll have to see about the tennis.