The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for lying, working on my tan and hacking through big ol' Russian novels. Or so I hope. But Tuesday nights are for rushing around, desperately trying to pack, write a script and generally tie up all my business... including doing the Sunday Papers five days in advance. Let's hope no major stories break between now and Sunday, eh? So, as always, here's some interesting reading gathered from across (er) the last two days which I show to you, while trying to resist linking to a late-nineties zinekid micro-classic which re-impinged on my consciousness when panickedly running around yesterday.

• Mindless Ones are primarily a smart and funny comics blog, but they went deep down the hole marked gaming nostalgia this week with a post on the glory of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. Plenty of memories to be prompted, but great for focing on exactly how evocative those covers were. Go see.
• There's a never ending string of articles about what's wrong about the games press and how people should fix it - enough that I've been wanting for a few years to write an article giving 10 reasons why games writing now is better than ever. Leigh Alexander goes for something I think is much more fresh - as in, looking at what's wrong with Games PR and how they should all ditch the predictable script in favour of genuine transparency.
• I haven't mentioned the Escapist for a while, but a couple of features caught my eye in this week's update. Firstly, one about part of a university design course where - basically - they send the pupils outside to play in the sun and transfer the lessons there into games. Secondly, one about the educational uses of not explicitly educational games. You suspect a lot of gamers didn't even realise the Hittites existed until Age of Empires.
• Game Set Watch has given regular commenter Phill "Poisoned Sponge" Cameron a regular column about the relationship between the personal computer and gaming. YOU CAN GAME ON THE HOME COMPUTER, SEZ I. First one is about the PC as a platform for Indie games and its general splendidosity.
• Something makes me think I've linked to this before, but I can't find reference to it. Let's say I haven't. Here's Edge on the making of Elite. It's an increasingly odd one, Elite. It's worrying how many US journalists really haven't a clue about it, which says much about the duopoly of Japan/US over games recieved history.
• Lewis pointed us in the direction of this lament for the young games journalist thinking of a career. Hmm.
• Actually, here's something actually by Lewis. He reviews Deus Ex. Man, talk about slow reviewing.
• Oh, here's something about as un-games as it gets, though in this week with what happened in California, I feel fine with it. Andrew Wheeler on why homosexuals should be banned from writing songs due to it devaluing hymns.
• Music For Girls by Baxendale. Odd one, Baxendale. Entered my consciousness when a tape from them arrived on my doorstep back when I was a zinekid - and being the sort of hyper-obscure less-than-100-copies-zine I was, I was bewildered how on earth they knew who I was. But still - wafer-thin production, wafer-thin voice, literate/narrative/argumentative/awesomeness. If I said it's Ste Curran's theme tune, I suspect he'd probably attack me.

Failed.