Hello and welcome to Dominik’s Little Old Purple Column, the 16th of its kind coming to you from Atlantic Canada where this week I overcooked rice and undercooked rice and I really, really cannot wait until my wife get here in a week and a half because say what you like about that woman but MAN, she can cook rice perfectly! And lots of other things. More than I can. But does she have a podcast with a theme tune?
No.
Because she doesn’t want one. That’s OK. I’d rather be able to cook rice well. But in the absence of that? Roll theme tune!
(OK folks who just read and don’t listen, you can just hum any theme tune in your head here, or click on the play bit above)
Let’s start with some
GAMES NEWS
Take me to your Paradise
Out now on PC and all the main consoles… Arcade Paradise. Now many of you will remember me waxing lyrical about this when I got early access to the BETA a few columns back, but I think that may have been in the paid subscriber section, you know that one that is five times more content than the free version every week for just about one pound. That’s all. Holy bargain Batman. Anyway. A brief recap: It’s a laundromat sim. Probably the best laundromat sim ever because it has you running a laundromat for your Dad while secretly building a deluxe arcade in the back. That’s where the REAL money is. Featuring about a billion homages to classic arcade games, you make the game more popular by beating challenges on them yourself. It has tons of humour, it’s cool as fuck and it’s a real labour of love from Nosebleed Interactive and Wired Productions and once again thanks to Si Pittman who first alerted me to this beautiful game’s existence.
(PIC: JOY)
More details and buying options here
And if people are looking at these words going “you’ve changed Dominik Diamond, calling it a laundromat instead of a launderette, you’ve been on the other side of the Atlantic for too long.” TO you I say.
“It’s a nicer word. Laundromat. Than launderette. Laundromat screams functionality and technology, launderette doesn’t make sense to me, nor does it sound good in my mouth.”
OI DOMINIK WHAT YOU PLAYING AT?
This is that bit of the column podcast thing where I tell you what game I have been playing this week.
The good news is that my stuff got picked up from the other side of Canada by the movers on Friday! Yay! Including my lovely big flat screen tellies that I use to play the Xbox One and PS4 on! Yay! They’ll be here in… 2 weeks. What? Two weeks. Two more weeks of not having a screen to plug my consoles into. And it is so frustrating paying money for a two games subscription services and not being able to use them. So, I thought. Let’s go back to good old steam. Let’s try and find the cheapest game on Steam to give me my gaming fix.
Ladies and Gentlemen let me tell you all about QuickerFlak. It is a frantically fast old school black and white retro top down arcade shooter that you are supposed to be able to complete in… 80 seconds. Yup. One minute and twenty. Now this may make you think it does not represent value for money. But here are two things:
(PIC: QUICKERFLAK. JOY. FOR 40P!)
1. It is bastard hard. You move your craft with your left hand on the keys and shoot with a mouse-controlled target against more and more aliens between you and the exit and they never miss. One life. And that’s it. I got 35% through it on my best attempt.
2. It only costs 59 cents. AKA 40p.
3. It would have to be utter shite on toast if it was a waste of 40p – and it’s not shite. It’s far from shite. It is so far from shite it needs the Hubble telescope to see the steam rising off it. In terms of nice short gameplay, it is basically what every mobile game should be, only you don’t get mobile games that move this fast. Thoroughly recommended. If you have a spare 40p.
More details and buying options here
Talking of money? That is it for the FREE version of this week’s thing. The PAID version is five times the size and includes a testament to one of the greatest arcade games of all time. And by testament, I mean a hilarious recap of how I started playing this particular game, me thinking way too hard about the game and getting very random about it in ways that you haven’t thought of before and then me writing a wee poem about that random aspect of the game. It really is fun. And poetic. Literally.
PLUS, some random stuff about two of the most random ancient football games that are so retro they make retro look positively 2023. And news on one of the great unsung programming heroes of the 80s and 90s.
You also get access to all the previous podcasts and the comments section, which is like its own wee community and screams fun. If you can’t pay, then please at least spread the word about this thing to people. That would be ace.
Until next week Freebie Folk, keep it little, keep it old, keep in purple.
DOMINIK'S LITTLE OLD PURPLE COLUMN #16 FREE