Welcome to the first in an occasional series (i.e. when I can be bothered) of eye-watering retrogame moments. Kind of like 'It'll be Alright on the Night' but without the clipboard.

First up, the original arcade version of the martial-arts epic, Yie Ar Kung Fu...

Way of the Exploding Fist on the ZX Spectrum...

Also on the Spectrum, the superb Renegade...

The final (and probably most wince-making of all) moment comes from the arcade hit Kung-Fu Master, where a rather unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your point of view) Bruce Lee lookalike gets 'trained' by a gang of men in pink shirts. The one at the back is punching the air in jubilation...

I've played a lot of games. Perhaps, you might say, too many. From Space Invaders to Shadow of the Colossus, via Sonic the Hedgehog and R-Type, I've played some classic games on virtually every major computer and console ever. But what about those strange, forgotten games that lurk down the back of the sofa of time? The odd elephant-man style games that hide in the shadows, afraid of comely young women in victorian dress?

Here, for your delectation and delight, in no particular order, are five of the oddest games of all time (or at least the ones that I can think of)...

Rygar
Platform: Coin-op/home conversions

The game itself's pretty straight forward - basically a variation on the Ghosts n Goblins theme - it's the back story and graphics that put this in the category of 'weird game'.

You know you're in for a surreal time when a Reeves and Mortimer-style pre-amble appears on the screen: '4.5 billion years have passed since Earth's creation. Many dominators have ruled in all their glory, but time was their greatest enemy and it defeated their reign. And now a new dominator's reign begins...'.

And then the game starts. You play a little man in skin-tight red trousers who wields what can be only be described as a giant electric yo-yo as he scampers through a pleasant rural environment collecting odd trinkets that serve no discernible purpose whatsoever. Enemies include: headless blue men, horned dog-type things with no fur, some worm-things, and a sort of bat lizard.

At the end of every level skin-tight-red-trousers-man has to move a large cooking pot to gain access to some sort of candle-lit gym, where a man in a loin-cloth poses for your bemusement.

Very, very odd indeed.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Platform: ZX Spectrum

A game released to cash in on the brief popularity of Mike Read's favourite band. The game involves gaining access to mid-terraced houses and getting the small blue man you control to touch random objects. Touch the right object and you can play a bizarre pong-type game. Occasionally cryptic messages appear on-screen that say things like 'the killer loved smoking', or 'you're now 3% a real human' or something like that.

Reading the instructions may have helped me understand it a bit more, but even so, odd.

Ganbare Golby!
Platform: Game Gear

A rather unique puzzle game that allowed you to guide former Russian president Gorbachev around a factory feeding a starving proletariat. This game did reach western shores as 'Factory Panic', but the slightly sick premise was gone, and Gorbachev, with his bald head and wine spot, was replaced by a wholesome blonde-haired chap. Odd.

Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure
Platform: Megadrive

At heart a Mario clone, this game featured a young man in a cape and turban whose primary weapon was a small smiling egg which behaved like a sort of boomerang. Various amphetamines could be collected which turned your character into a bazooka-toting giant cyborg ape. What was even more surreal than the game's title was the way it constantly gave you more lives - it was quite possible to amass about fifty on the first level if you knew where to look (which it showed in the instruction book). Odd, odd, odd.

Sexy Parodius
Platform: Arcade, Saturn

An exceptionally weird entry into a long line of weird games, Sexy Parodius and its prequels were a cartoony send-up of the popular shoot-em-up game Gradius (Nemesis over here).

The Parodius games all featured a selection of cute animals (penguins, cats, squids) instead of Gradius's metal spaceships; Sexy Parodius, for some reason, adds scantilly-clad ladies to the already pretty surreal mix. Odd, odd, odd, odd.

Stick Monty Mole in your tape deck and crack open the bubbly - it's the 25th Anniversary of the Sinclair beermat!

To celebrate the occasion, I've dragged my old Spectrum 128 out of the cupboard to re-live some classic gaming moments. I still have boxes and boxes of games, so let's have a rummage... Bruce Lee's immediately caught my eye - I used to play that for many an hour. Right, let's load it up (cue clunk of tape player whirring into action)... type 'Load""... beeeee bidddly biddly... okay, it's loading. That'll take at least five minutes to finish so I'll go and make a sandwich and come back in a bit.

... a bit later...

Okay, it should have loaded up by now, so let's have a look.. oh. 'R-Tape Loading Error'. Oh well, try again...

an hour later...

Bruce Lee doesn't appear to work, which is annoying because I've been sitting here for nearly an hour and I haven't played anything yet. Never mind, I'll just choose another game from the box.. ooh, Manic Miner - brilliant, let's load it up...

Ten minutes later...

Great! It's worked! Let's have a bash. I have to send my little miner character around the screen collecting things and avoiding the nasties (a sort of fore-runner to Mario). Cor crikey, this is a bit more difficult than I remember.. balls, I've died.

A minute later...

It's.. it's IMPOSSIBLE!! I can't get off the first screen. The game's driving me mad but I can't be bothered to play anything else because it'll take half an hour to load! AAGGH!!

Several minutes later...

Phew, I've calmed down now. As you've probably gathered, owning a Spectrum meant spending a lot longer waiting for the games to load rather than actually playing them, which these days seems completely crazy what with hard drives and that. What's worse, cassette tapes are extremely dodgy things to store data on - it's a miracle that any of my games still work at all.

The good news is that in these futuristic days of emulation it's dead easy to play speccy games on your mac or pc - you'll find everything you need at www.worldofspectrum.org if you're interested (yes I know I've mentioned this before but it's a great site).

I think it's quite significant that, even in these days of billion-colour snazzy 3d graphics, there is still a large, devoted fanbase dedicated to the Spectrum. No matter how technology moves on, people still like to re-visit and enjoy those old games. I remember trading in my old 'obsolete' ZX for a posh new Amiga 500 when I was about 14. Within weeks I'd purchased a public-domain emulator that allowed me to play my old Speccy games at about half the speed of the originals... that's nostalgia for you!

Happy Birthday to the ZX Spectrum!

Before seeing Guilermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, I would never have thought that a film that took elements from Alice in Wonderland and set them in the time of the Spanish civil war could possibly work, but incredibly, this does.

Pan's Labyrinth is about a little girl who uses her imagination to escape from the warfare and violence around her. Rather than face reality, she retreats into a world of fauns, giant frogs, magic portals and (genuinely terrifying) eyeless monsters. Any one expecting this to be a gentle, whimsical tale will be profoundly shocked - del Toro's portrayal of war is harshly realistic, and some of the violence is particularly extreme. However, the violence, far from being gratuitous, serves a purpose - it's so shocking at times that it makes you long for the escapism of the fantasy scenes that intersperse the bloodshed.

Pan's Labyrinth is, in my opinion, virtually impossible to fault; the performances throughout are excellent and well rounded (although one could argue the sadistic, vain character of Capitan Vidal is somewhat one-dimensional), the computer generated effects are superbly realised, unintrusive and meld extremely well with the actors.

Overall, this is an unforgettable film - arguably del Toro's best, better even than Cronos - and the end had me quietly sobbing into my hat like the old softy I am.

The 23rd of April marks the 25th anniversary of everyone's (or at least, my) favourite 8-bit computer, the ZX Spectrum.

Never mind St. George's day, the 23rd of April should be the day that gets the nation all misty-eyed and proud of itself for producing such a corking bit of machinery. Pubs across the country should be decorated with rainbow coloured bunting. Drinkers in said pubs should be drunkenly mimicking the unforgettable sound of Jet Set Willy (very slowly) loading up... Beeee Beep. Beeee Biddly Diddly Diddly... etc. Magazines should, for this one day a year, print those type-in BASIC listings that I used to spend hours inputting into my little computer but hardly ever worked.

We should celebrate the 23rd of April as National Spectrum Day not only because it was probably the last truly great thing we invented, but because it was the first genuinely affordable computer for the masses. It taught an entire generation of egg-heads how to program. It may have lacked the snazzy colour and sound of its rival, the Commodore 64, but the Spectrum still had the games. Without the ZX, we probably would never have had 3D Ant Attack, Chaos, Rebelstar, Manic Miner, or any of the other great Spectrum-only games. Without the Spectrum we would never have had the fantastic Your Sinclair magazine.

Sir Clive Sinclair, we salute you.

Bit cream crackered tonight, so here's a nice lazy blog entry for you; my top-ten favourite kung-fu films of all time...

10. Ong Bak
Tony Jaa's debut. Refreshingly physical, special effect free violence that relies solely on human skill and incredible choreography.

9. Drunken Master
Jackie Chan's truly great film.

8. Police Story
It may sag in the middle, but the stunning 'hanging from a bus with an umbrella' set piece and the shopping mall finale are classic kung-fu cinema.

7. Snake in the Eagle's Shadow
One of Jackie Chan's earliest films, this is notable for the presence of the remarkable Huang Jang Lee, one of kung-fu's greatest villains.

6. The Eight Masters
Stars Carter Wong. The storyline meanders about all over the place, but the fights (featuring loads of bald monks sprayed gold) are fantastic, as is the unforgettable line 'Mother! What's happened to your eyes?!!'

5. The 36 Deadly Styles
Again featuring the brilliant Huang Jang Lee. The film's title appears to be a reference to the ridiculous wigs that everyone seems to be wearing...

4. Magnificent Butcher
Stars Samo Hung.

3. Enter the Dragon
Bruce Lee's most famous film. Classic soundtrack, stunning fights, great hammy villain. Look out for Samo Hung and Jackie Chan in cameo roles!

2. Fists of Fury
Bruce Lee again in his other great masterpiece.

1. Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind
Samo Hung at his best, and the best Kung Fu film ever bar none. More laughs, shocks and action than you could believe. No film before or after it managed to blend the genres of horror, kung-fu and comedy so successfully, not even the still great Mr. Vampire. The zombies in this have to be seen to be believed, as does Hung's incredible performance.

It's a mystery to me why films based on computer games are always, without exception, rubbish. Tomb Raider? Terrible. Resident Evil? Pants. Streetfighter? Awful. And standing proudly atop the dungheap stands D.O.A.

Based upon a so-so playstation game that valued bouncing breasts over innovation, D.O.A the movie is essentially Enter the Dragon for the Nuts generation; a group of fighters travel to a remote island to take part in a martial arts tournament run by a shady villain.

Everything about this film is jaw-droppingly ill-judged. The fight scenes are derivative and tediously choreographed (in my opinion 'wire-fu' has more than outstayed its welcome, and I think it's high time hollywood moved on), the acting mediocre and the attempts at humour bizarre and strained.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with a kung-fu film being bad - that's generally what's so fantastic about them - the bad acting, poor cinematography and cheesy villains are what make them fun. D.O.A has all the worst attributes of a kung-fu movie without any of the good ones - for the most part, the fights are between either ex-wrestlers or some ex-Loaded/FHM models using the previously mentioned wire-fu and far too much slow motion, both of which completely strip every ounce of dynamism and and impact from the scenes. One only has to watch ten minutes of the remarkable Ong Bak to see the difference - Tony Jaa's return to real, physical acrobatics is a joy to behold.

If I could be bothered I could also pick fault with the dreadful CGi (some of the worst I've seen in years - think Knightmare circa 1989), or the ludicrous wig crammed onto poor Eric Roberts' head as he has to perform another dreadfully planned fight wearing 'fight predicting' shades.

Awful, awful pap.

Anyone who read my blog yesterday (yes I mean you, three people), will possibly remember that I listed Julian Gollop's Chaos as one of my top-ten all time favourite ZX Spectrum games (it still is, even 24 hours later).

You may also possibly remember that I alleged that the snake in said game closely resembled a piece of string or an old dressing gown cord.

Well, as I'm sure you've all been waiting for, here's the photographic proof!

By the way, anyone who hasn't played this game yet should visit world of spectrum immediately, download a spectrum emulator and the game and see what you're missing. It's totally free and legal (Spectrum games are so old they now count as public domain)!

Last Tuesday I ventured to the cinema to watch Danny Boyle's new science fiction epic, Sunshine. His last film, 28 Days Later was a bit of a flawed masterpiece in my opinion (the flaw being the rather naff ending), so I was really looking forward to seeing this. Cillian Murphy leads a cast of actors I've never seen before as they hurtle towards a dying sun, hoping to revive it with a well-placed explosion and save humanity. 

It's what I would call a film of two halves. The first hour or so was fantastic; great special effects (the low budget not obvious to me in the slightest), some pretty good acting and plenty of drama, mishaps and heroic self-sacrifice. For at least sixty or seventy minutes I thought Boyle had done it again. And then - without giving too much away - it all gets a bit out of hand, with a slightly bizarre plot twist that seemed remarkably reminiscent of forgotten b-movie Event Horizon. If you've seen both films, you'll know what I mean.

It's by no means a bad film, and being derivative is certainly not a crime (Sunshine owes a debt to numerous classic SF films, including Solaris, 2001 and Alien including Laurence Fishburn's aforementioned 1997 potboiler), but for me the schlocky last half an hour spoiled what could have been a truly memorable, mature piece of SF cinema.

Sadly I can only give it 3 and a half sheep out of five.

Blimey, my first blog! Right.. this isn't going to be one of those diary type blogs where I tell you how pants my day at work was or how badly I burned my dinner. Rather, it'll be an expression of my innate nerdiness; I'll harp on whistfully about retro games, blather on about obscure kung fu films, books, comics, music, cars, booze and stuff like that.

I bought a boxed ZX Spectrum at an auction the other day (not sure why, I have two already) which got me thinking about the 8-bit gaming days of my youth, so to kick off the anorak proceedings here's a top-ten list of my favourite speccy games...

10: Chaos Absolutely brilliant fantasy strategy game - cast spells and kill wizards with dragons, bats, manticores (whatever they are) and a piece of string. Well, it was meant to be a snake but it looked like an old dressing gown cord to me...

9: R-type Top notch shooting-things game that was (and is) bloody hard. Didn't stop me wasting hours on it though.

8: Way of the Exploding Fist One of the first and best beat-em-ups. No ridiculous eight button control systems or finger bending combinations, just good, honest beatings. The 'kick in the plums' move still makes my eyes water.

7: Star Wars One of those games I seemed to keep playing even though it was far too easy to complete. 'Let's blow this thing and get out of here' indeed...

6: Skool Daze Great fun, despite the fact that I had no real clue how to complete it - I spent most of the time writing obscenities on the chalk board.

5: Rebelstar Another Julian Gollop-penned masterpiece (see Chaos). A strategy game that involved manouvring a squad of heavily armed yellow men around a warehouse...

4: Death Chase Basically riding some sort of weird bike type thing through the Forest of Dean, but bloody good fun nonetheless. Incredibly fast as well.

3: Manic Miner I played this for hours on end, despite the dreadful music and the fact that it was quite terrifyingly hard. Straying one pixel too close to some tiny hedges meant instant death. So you'd have to start again. And again. And a.. you get the idea.

2: Green Beret Along with the arcade, one of my favourite games, and I'm not even quite sure why. Perhaps one of the best games ever to revolve around killing soldiers with one of those strange kebab knives.

1: Renegade One of those games that (in my opinion) is actually better than the arcade. The 128k version had an awesome combination move that meant you could kick someone in the knackers, throw them over your shoulder onto some train tracks. Very antisocial. The icing on the cake for me though was the boss on level three - the fact that she looked exactly like my home economics teacher satisfied me no end.