Modern Visual Culture in Video Gaming - Apache: Air Assault

Hello everybody (the few of you who actually follow this).

I've been rather busy lately with a couple of games I've found. One of them is called Apache: Air Assault.

The game is sort of a helicopter semi-simulation. You get to fly with the American Apache in different missions and blow things up, simple yet so elegant. The game can be played with just mouse and keyboard, but I'd recommend using joystick, keyboard AND mouse. Joystick for flying, keyboard and mouse for different cameramodes and for aiming the undernose cannon. The game will not satisfy hardcore SIM-fans because of it's arcade feel, but people such as me who do not demand 100% authenticity when it comes to flying and maneuvering a craft such as an assault helicopter. I'm glad that they took the arcadey approach for I know that helicopter are way trickier to fly in real life than airplanes, and it's no different in videogames. I can barely fly a Messerschmit in IL-2 in realistic settings so flying a chopper with realistic settings would be suicide for me. The game looks just awesome, and I get giggly inside when I autohover my Apache just outside a village, pop in to the gunners place, start up the heatvision camera which is also wired to the undernose cannon, and look how little white dots run around in the village.. before firing upon them, and their little white bodies disappear in a cloud of dust and smoke, only to be emerged once more as a hole ridden corpse. I like this game, I like this game quite a lot.. even if it's nothing more than a glorified turn-your-brains-off-and-shoot-everything-that-moves kinda game. I was also kind enough to record some gameplay footage for you all, so here you go.

Modern Visual Culture Through Japanese Television

I was watching something rather interesting the other day.. after the failure review of Mitsudomoe I dropped anime as a whole for a while and ended up watching japanese television shows.. one in particular that I had watched before. Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende! mainly their batsugame parts. To be entirely honest I can't tell you much about this show. I haven't watched the Downtown tv-show itself at all unless you count couple 2 minute youtube clips here and there, I've mainly watched their batsugames. The Downtown crew consists of two men, Matsumoto Hitoshi and Hamada Masatoshi. There is also 3 other members who frequently appear in both the regular Downtown tv-show, and their batsugames. COCORICO comedy-duo, Endo Shozo and Tanaka Naoki, as well as Japanese internetradio DJ Yamasaki Housei.
The plot of batsugames is that this group of 5 people have either a competition or something similar to that every year to determine which ones from the 5 (or all of them) are going to have to participate in the penaltygame (batsugame). After this, the penaltygames this far have varied from going to United States to film a remake of the Titanic movie, going to Russia, having 24-hour tag game, and spending 24h as a policeofficer, nurse and student without being allowed to laugh during the whole time, these batsugames are called "no-laughing 24h batsugame", where, upon breaking the rules (laughing), you will be punished, usually by big men dressed weirdly slapping your butt with a stick. I'm not entirely sure what they use for the punishments, but they bend.. a lot. And they get slapped.. hard. You can see the pain is real. This makes it even funnier because the point of 24h no-laughing batsugame is to watch these people laugh and get punished for it. It's very hard for me to explain it in detail with my rather broken english, but let me just say that these are awesome bits of Japanese television and anyone interested in Japanese culture and their VISUAL culture as well, should watch them. They are rather well known in Europe and probably Unites States, so most, if not all batsugames have been more or less subtitled.

Yamasaki making a face and causing his comrades to laugh, thus getting their asses slapped.

The said comrades getting their asses slapped.

Yamasaki getting a serious bitchslap for no apparent reason except for good TV.

Aftermath of the slap we saw before...

These screencaps are from the latest No-Laughing 24h batsugame where they are Hotelmen. It's the longest of the series, and quite funny, even though not my favourite. Yamasaki getting slapped by the big guy wearing shades (Chono) has become a sort of a tradition in batsugames. Yamasaki has had the living shit slapped out of him for.. 3.. or was it 4 times. This explains his panic-like reaction everytime he faces the big guy in sunglasses.
You must be wondering "Where can I find this fantastic piece of art and superior japanese television culture?" Have no fear, for I am here. Just sign up at www.gaki-no-tsukai.com, no worries, it's just a forum, and after that you are able to download almost anything Gaki no Tsukai related, with or without subtitles. As far as I know, batsugames are the only ones that have been fully and entirely subbed, but that's all you need.

I guess that would be all for now. And yeah, don't wait up on the Mitsudomoe review.. not feeling like it.