Writing a British history of popular video games one UK sales chart #1 at a time. Now in 1987. Also into pop music and writing on The Singles Jukebox. He/him. http://www.superchartisland.com
Iain Mew
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My BOY swimsuit is raising an awful lot of questions already answered by my swimsuit.
I've just pushed a new article live to my site on a lovely game and technical feat called EXILE.
Slip into your space-boots and strap on your jetpack as we explore the depths of an alien world modelled with realistic physics, mass, gravity, and momentum. All squeezed into just 32 KB.
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 14
Britney Spears - Everytime
(2004, 🇺🇸)
"Toxic" is great but this moved me more; extraordinary just how stark its music-box fragility is
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yza...
This week I wrote about BMX Simulator.
Read about the Darling brothers' path from Galactic to Mastertronic to Code Masters, featuring: contact lenses, an Alan Sugar type, 'Software from America' (Canada), hedgehog crisps, and skipping school to make games
www.superchartisland.com/bmx-simulator
Realistic physics engines and a planetary ecosystem could be found in an 8-bit computer game set in SPACE!
scanlineartifacts.co.uk
When I was writing about the rarity of strong melodies in US pop music atm, this is the kind of strong melodic pop I was talking about. Perfectly constructed, sounds ABBA-esque, but isn't leaning on a specific ABBA song. (In fact sounds more like a Marit Larsen song.)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoTb...
My Cantopop Nights: a Memoir in Songs is out now! www.penguin.co.uk/books/456270...
Good news
I was hoping it would be about "Your Favourite Game", but I like where it ends up
barleybap
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 13
Jem - They
(2004, 🇬🇧)
The coolest sounding one-off in this branch of retro-pop
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k53N...
i made you a video about hope. bc sometimes its hard to remember how
Iain Mew
Iain Mew
Brothers have been a recurring theme in the story of the popular games of the 1980s. As games slowly moved from being a thing mostly made by individual people to a thing mostly made by teams, havin…
Katie, little lady in the streets/old sardine tin for sleeps
ICYMI, my post this week was on Feud.
Featuring: computer-hogging brothers, Max Headroom, a Ghosts'n Goblins all-nighter, darts, feuding wizards, the Crash Readers' Award for Easiest Game, and "the original Deathmatch"
www.superchartisland.com/feud
'Captures that era of Hong Kong music with such warmth and clarity... Transcendent and transportive' Angela Hui
‘A wondrous thing: fresh, evocative, self-aware, fantastically light of touch and wholl...
BabyMINT and pals with a homage to the Cardigans!
youtu.be/1jxoIincAKw?...
j-e-l
www.superchartisland.com
In 1983, Virgin Games paid £500 for a ZX Spectrum game called Ghost Town, a text adventure with some limited graphics and a gold rush setting. It was one of its programmer’s earliest published game…
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 12
Belle & Sebastian - I'm a Cuckoo
(2004, 🇬🇧)
I had heard them a fair bit but didn't get them until this song, and then after this sprawling, wistful, joyful thing they suddenly made sense more generally too
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuKu...
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 11
Dido - White Flag
(2003, 🇬🇧)
Heartbreak presented through iron certainty clad in softness. So good it stood up to a summer job listening to commercial radio
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-fW...
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 10
Mew - Comforting Sounfs
(2003, 🇩🇰)
11 POINTS
Speaking of monumental... I had to include something from my namesakes, and it kind of had to be this very sweet song with an all-timer instrumental coda drop
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCnl...
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 9
Hope of the States - Black Dollar Bills
(2003, 🇬🇧)
Post-rock gone pop, tapping into something that felt unusually emotionally monumental. I miss the band they should have got to be
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf2M...
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 8
The Knife - Heartbeats
(2002, 🇸🇪)
The song quickly became a standard for a reason. The intensity they bring to it is something else
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPD8...
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 7
Dntel - This is the Dream of Evan and Chan
(2002, 🇺🇸)
I love several Postal Service songs, but none of them quite match up to the crystal glitch dream sequence they launched from
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myis...
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 6
Hikaru Utada - Hikari
(2002, 🇯🇵)
This is not here thanks to Kingdom Hearts, since I've never played it. Just a strong song (quite "White Flag", a year before it) and a really great performance from Utada
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlMd...
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 5
Linkin Park - In the End
(2001, 🇺🇸)
As an indie kid I was very anti nu-metal, but even then couldn't deny the hooks and dynamic sweep here
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTX...
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 4
Manic Street Preachers - So Why So Sad
(2001, 🏴)
A swaying wall of emotion with stylophone solo as divine epiphany, my favourite Manic Street Preachers single
www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3i1...
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 3
JJ72 - Oxygen
(2000, 🇮🇪)
Starts off at "short sleeves and warm skin", ends up at "WE don't need OXYGEN", perfect indie rock expression of teenage love. And yeah, I was a teenager in summer 2000
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3O...
#TheN0ughtie5 Day 2
Whiteberry - 夏祭り [Natsu Matsuri]
(2000, 🇯🇵)
This is in my list thanks to Taiko no Tatsujin. But I only have so many years of fond memories of whacking drums along to it in arcades because it rocks
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZRR...
#TheN0ughtie5 (favourite songs of the 00s) Day 1
Oxide & Neutrino - Bound 4 da Reload (Casualty)
(2000, 🇬🇧)
A song from when I first started listening to the charts every week, and it was the most unusual and thrilling thing on there, at #1
www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5T1...
