Back in the dark days of ElectricSpectre we used to do a weekly thing called ‘Horros Ov Nature’ which were, umm,horrible nature type things.

Even though the new improved ES is more of a video game blog than a place where we drop links to picture of Cthulhu, we think we need to bring it back.

So – stare upon a disembodied snake head still trying to kill all those around it. Sleep well.

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Alright troops – listen up! Today we’re going to discuss how to turn time-travel, a scientific and explorative activity, into a set of deadly weapons designed to maim, murder and mutilate. Why you ask? Well, just for asking that I’m going to time-bomb you into a leper colony. That’s right douchebag, enjoy your leprosy.

As soon as new technology is developed, crazy people will start figuring out how it might be used in a combat situation. This is a natural and organic process, and we shouldn’t interfere. We can however speculate as to the wartime applications of time-travel technology.

As I explained in previous weeks, time-travel devices won’t just take you through time if you happen to be touching them, but will in fact suck everything within a certain radius through to a different point in time. Now, let’s say you take that device, strap it to a hunk of metal and set it on a timer so that when the clock hits zero, it warps everything in a three-metre radius into the past. (or future)

Stick that hunk of metal into an RPG, set up some kind of mechanism whereby launching it triggers the countdown, and blammo! You’ve got yourself a ticking time-bomb. Of time.

Radical, yes? Yes.

Now – a regular time-travel device will need to be carefully and precisely calibrated to protect whatever it’s transporting. Time-travel devices will also need to take into account the fact that the Earth is spinning through space, and travelling one hundred years into the past without adjusting your exit co-ordinates to stay in roughly the same point on the planet will leave you floating through space at the point where Earth will be in exactly 100 years.

Time-bombs will not need to take these delicate matters into consideration. After all, the aim is to deal some damage, not to safely transport something through time. What the hell do you care if you zap your enemies into space, right? They’re unlikely to be giving you any more trouble after that. Similarly, if, say only your opponents legs and torso get transported, what’s left behind probably won’t be much of a tactical threat. Time-bombs are destructive, unpredictable and, as you can probably tell from the fairly graphic mental image I just left in your mind, pretty devastating.

Ramp up the radius of material to be time-travelled and you’ve got yourself a time-nuke. Or, as I will call it, a chrononuke. (that is one sweet name) Suddenly you’re flinging entire cities into prehistoric orbit. It’s devastation on a massive scale, with zero debris/radiation left behind.

Potential problems (besides the obvious ethical ones) with time-bomb technology:

1. If you don’t set the timesplosion to take your target far enough back in time, they might reappear in the place the Earth was a few hours ago, and hurtle down from 30,000 feet, possibly landing on you in the past.

2. Once time-bombing technology is widespread, combatants will wear protective space-suits and carry time-travel devices pre-set to a specific place and time, so that if they were zapped into the past they could quickly nip back to where they came from, reload and come gunning for you. Once they’re safely back at headquarters they could even do a little research on the person that time-bombed them, then go back a century or so and punch your grandpa so hard in the kidneys, he’s too unwell to attend to masquerade  ball where he met your grandma. Existence is doomed, paradox-city, end of everything. Does that make you happy? Cos I gotta say, it sounds kind of entertaining to me.

The End.

Dammit I should have used the pun ‘killing time’ in there someplace.

Oh, oh! Also, time-bomb launchers should have badass scopes so you can time-snipe people from far away.

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Some people will drone on and on about time machines, and how we might build them, what they would look like and whether they would travel through time and space or merely through time. That is not what we will be discussing today. Today we’re talking about time-travel’s effect on history. It’s going to be fascinating, you’re all going to thank me, so let’s just get started.

Now, this is all very complicated and it’s possible to get waaaay too deep into this stuff, so we’re going to breeze lightly over the three main competing theories like a dandelion seed caught in an updraft. We’ll highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each theory, with examples from movies and TV all the way to help you out. By the end of this instructive series of tutorials you’ll be able to watch a film about time-travel and exclaim, “Hogwash and Poppycock! This film appears to subscribe to a flexible-history theory of time-travel and yet this paradox is one typically seen in a fixed-timeline scenario! I shall write to Ofcom, and they will understand and subscribe to my e-newsletter.”

Not yet, though, because today we’re only covering the flexible-history theory.**

Right! Strap in kids, I’m taking you on a journey through knowledge!

Flexible-history theory:

This theory is very popular, and allows for time-travellers to alter the course of history by their actions. History is flexible, and if I go back in time and kill Hitler, well then Hitler is just bally-well going to stay dead and we’re just going to have to bally-well deal with the consequences. Dr Who and Back to the Future (for the most part) subscribe to this popular theory, because it allows for all sorts of fun in terms of avoiding one’s distant relatives and being very careful not to disturb anything in the past. Normally this translates into costume changes, which is always a laugh. It also raises the stakes — one error and you’ll forever alter history, dooming humanity or preventing the invention of time-travel and thereby trapping yourself in the horrible, icky past.

The downside of this theory is that when you think about it, it’s a bit weird. For instance, Marty McFly experiences the dangers of messing with the past first-hand when he screws up his parents’ falling in love. When it looks like his parents will never hook up, he is physically pained and starts to visibly disappear. We know why — if his parents never meet up, then he’ll never be born, let alone travel through time. He shouldn’t be there, in this new timeline he’s not supposed to exist, hence he is erased from history.

The problem is, why does that happen? This whole theory presupposes some intelligent, all-present nanny-force in the universe that’s forever going around tidying up after messy time-travelling tykes. Presumably time-travellers are just as constrained to the laws of physics as anything else — they can’t just vanish just because they’ve ruined their parents’ falling in love! If I were Marty McFly (and by God, I wish that were the case) I’d want to find the mystical force that says the continuum must be preserved and that I have to fade into non-existence, and ask him why he’s being such a douche.

Similarly, consider the memory-shifts of those for whom the past is altered. When Marty gets back home at the end of the first film, his parents of course have no memory of living in poverty, under the thumb of mean ol’ Biff — for them it never happened, because George stood up to Biff way back when and became a confident, wealthy sci-fi writer. I think most of us would agree that our experiences, memories and personality shape who we are, in which case congratulations Marty, you killed your parents. These aren’t the same people you grew up with. Those two were erased by the mystic forces of timeline-housekeeping.

Which means, of course, that when anyone travels back in time, everything that ever occurred past the point in time that you arrive at ceases to exist. All those objects, people, hell — the whole universe, gone! That’s some serious destructive power. I would like to know who destroyed it, and what happened to all the energy that was expended in its destruction.

Sometimes we’re asked to believe that major events in history are unchangeable. This is a theme popular in The Twilight Zone — for example, I go back in time with a sniper rifle to kill Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but hilariously slip on a banana peel and fall into the big torch thing at the top of the stadium. Or my gun jams. Or Hitler is wearing his ‘lucky kevlar’ that day and is unharmed by the bullet. The idea is that some events in history are more important than others, and cannot be changed.

These kinds of stories really grind my gears. Who the hell gets to decide which historical events are the important ones?! It’s that all-powerful cosmic nanny again, always thwarting my efforts and keeping the course of human history nice and neat. Well, I for one don’t like the idea of a cosmic nanny, or the continuum regulating itself, or anything else that implies that time is some kind of conscious, careful entity.

Unfortunately flexible-history theory inevitably calls for such weird measures, and that’s it’s major downfall. Next week we’ll look at fixed-timelines, and see if they make a bit more sense.* (SPOILER: They don’t.)

*Unless I get distracted by something awesome and less clever, like: ‘who would win in a fight between me and myself travelling back from the future to kill me and take my place.’

**Consider this a prime example of the timeline being altered, as I started out intending to write out all three major theories, then realised I’d expended about a billion words on just one, and retrospectively changed the article to only promise one theory. As proof of this time-squirreling madness, notice that this footnote features two asterisks, despite appearing earlier in the text!

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This video more or less speaks for itself.

Speaking of pre-order bonuses, when was the last time you turned up to grab a game on release day and found it was sold out? It’s not exactly a massive problem, right? The videogame industry is growing year on year, and retail chains are smart enough to order exactly one metric fucktonne (MFt) of every new release to ensure every braying customer desperate to fork over their hard earned cashola gets a chance to do so.

Really, there’s no need to pre-order games, apart from the awesome pre-order bonuses. Statues, art books, the little accessories that give you a warm shiver — they’re worth the extra effort, and it’s why people still pre-order. For awesome stuff.

Not bits of linen with faces printed on.

EDIT: Also, those guys should clean up their apartment. Popcorn and old takeaway flyin’ all over the shop. Also also, why aren’t they playing Street Fighter? They just got the game right?!

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Allow me to pose you a question as old as time itself:

“If you could time travel, where would you go, and what would you do?”

Earnest and imaginative folk such as team Epic Win ask these questions hoping for an answer along the lines of, “I’d hunt a T-Rex in the prehistoric jungle, then bring back its head as proof of my victory over nature” or “I’d go back to the middle ages and teach them about electricity, thereby advancing the human civilisation from whence I journeyed a thousand years.”

Sadly the typical boring answer spat back in your hopeful, earnest face is something like, “I’d go back to the eighties and buy up Microsoft stock.”

Brilliant. Well, I’m glad I bestowed the gift of inter-dimensional travel on you. Can’t wait to see how many thousands of pounds you make. Probably enough to buy a porsche you can sleep in once your sexy young wife leaves you for the pool-boy and takes the house, you joy-stifling buffoon.

Frustrating as they are, these ‘travel back a small distance, buy up stock, get moderately rich’ plans seem to be at the front of everyone’s mind. It got me thinking, a smart plan might, for example, be to travel back to 1990, buy up lots of AOL stock and sell it all off a week or so before the first dot-com crash. (I like calling it the ‘first’ dot-com crash just to keep everyone on their toes) That would be a good idea, right?

Well, now let’s imagine you’re one of those bold investment-frontier men, stood on the trading floor with your head held high, and your keen young eyes trained on the stock ticker. Y’know, that big numbery display like in Wall Street. Suddenly you’re informed that a chunk of AOL stock has been sold. Not a big chunk by any means, but it strikes you as odd because everyone in their right mind is buying AOL stock. “Why would you sell now, when stock prices are still rising?” You ask yourself. Perhaps you stroke your stubble pensively. Perhaps you remember your father back on the farm, rake in hand, stooping to pick up a grain of wheat and then holding it up to the dawn sunrise. You recall his wisdom, his words of prudence and hear them ring clearly in your mind. You remember his firm hand on your shoulder, and his broad smile when you told him you’d made it onto your big-city accounting course, and his parting words to you, not to forget who you are, and not to get caught up in the big-city pursuit of quick money and easy living.

You know that it’s best to err on the side of caution.

You sell your own AOL stock — the investors won’t like it, but dammit you always knew this Internet thing was a flash in the pan, you’re not going to be one of the yuppies who ruins themselves on a temporary fad. The other traders see your bold movements and start selling their own AOL stock. Within hours the market is in chaos. It is the end of the dot-com dream. Switching now back to you, it’s clear that you’re responsible, you time-travelling sneak, you sold your stock when everyone else was buying, causing a chain reaction that crashed the whole damn system.

So is it not possible that:

Every economic crash in history has been caused by time-travellers popping into the past to make a quick buck?!

Clearly the answer is yes.

I hope I have demonstrated that a) this kind of madness is possible, even probable, b) that I overthink time-travel and that c) I have an incredibly poor understanding of how the economy works.

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Since 1999, we’ve all been living in the future, and as such have all experienced that common problem: giant automatons crashing down the street, crushing hapless commuters under their atomic feet. Luckily, once we reach the tritanium office bunker, we’re safe…until now that is. Seems Willow Garage, a ‘non-military’ robotics company is intent on inviting tiny robots into the office –meaning hapless loafers like us can stay in bed! The Texas Alpha robot can dock itself, comes with obstacle-avoiding sensors, and has the added bonus of making your previously intimidating boss look like the bastard child of Max Headroom and a Segway.

Telepresence – all the benefit of being in the office with the extra sweetener of not needing to wear pants!

Check up on the frankly disturbing progress here!

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I picked up a local paper the other day where there was an advert for a course to teach you to be a games designer. The ad made the following claim – the games industry is recession proof. Really? Tell that to the masses of developers losing their jobs.

Last week information was leaking out that Sony Studio Liverpool aka Psygnosis, who have been around for years and produced the WipEout series would be losing half of their team due to cuts.

This week Namco have announced it will be reducing it’s workforce by 10% and Take2, publishers of Grand Theft Auto and BioShock are set to announce today that it is looking to cut 20% of staff. All this after it is claimed that we are coming out of the recession!

It seems that only a minority of titles are enjoying massive sales while the others fail to recoup costs. We can only hope that this doesn’t stifle creativity and we aren’t left with awful family friendly mini game collections till the end of time.

That was all a bit serious and depressing. Something more fun in my next post. Promise!

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It might look like fun, but these kids are seconds away from a grisly demise

Good news for rickets-fans, as you can now pick up the bone-deforming illness with minimal effort. In fact, all you have to do is play videogames regularly, and you’ll soon find yourself struck down with the disease. The actual report from the Mirror is so earth-shatteringly stupid and unsubstantiated that I’m reluctant to link to it. But here you go anyway – and as a bonus I’ll reproduce the entire article here for your brain-shrinking pleasure:

Cases of rickets in children are rising because they stay indoors playing computer games, experts warned yesterday.

Sunlight helps the body produce vitamin D which prevents the bone-softening condition. Researchers at Newcastle University also blamed changes in diet.

Prof Simon Pearce said: “Kids are staying indoors playing on computers rather than going outside to kick a ball around.”

He said vitamin D should be put in milk.

Changes in diet also blamed, eh? Still, by changes in diet that scientist probably meant Modern Warfare 2.

I also really like the ‘He said vitamin D should be put in milk’ at the end – makes him sound like a mad scientist. And yes, that was the entire article.

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FUN FACT: Did you know that in Phantom Menace most of the shots of Yoda were a puppet? Don’t worry though, those shots were re-done in CG for the new trilogy re-release. Yup.

On an unrelated note, Star Wars fans must once again brace for impact, as according to an interview with Access Hollywood (and received by ‘leccyspectre via Pocket Lint) Lucas has been inspired by Avatar to give Star Wars a three dimensional make-over.

“We’ve been looking for years and years and years of trying to take ‘Star Wars’ and put it in 3-D,” George explained to Access. “But, [the] technology hasn’t been there. We’ve been struggling with it, but I think this will be a new impetus to make that happen.”

Star Wars in 3D would be pretty sweet. However, many fans will be concerned that Lucas decides to do a little bit of extra tampering “whilst we’re here, y’know” and gives Boba Fett a supersoaker or something.

Thoughts?

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That being said, they could have gone for Oscar glory by following the heartwarming story of my favourite character: King. King works for an orphanage and takes part in the Tekken tournament to raise money for the kids in care. Check out King’s ending to Tekken 2 below and try not to shed a tear.

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