Category: Charming Pastimes

Avatar Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite!

I had two ideas for another post this month albeit they both stemmed from the same prospect of enraging Kevin and there is no way that I am going to post them within a few days of each other. I do like to space these things out so that Kevin’s wrath does not come down on my like a ton of spiky, explosive bricks. Also, you may as well milk this for all it’s worth because everyone loves winding Kev up as much as I do. With this in mind, let me present you with a little review of the Gameboy Colour game ‘Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite!”

Hamtaro is a hugely popular Japanese series of anime, manga and video games. It follows the adventures of a group of SD (super-deformed and very cutesy) hamsters and it’s utterly insane. I want to pretend that this is completely normal but it’s not. I have played through the entire game and I am convinced it was designed by the deranged. Even I, with my bat shit crazy view of the world, found myself exclaiming out loud, not in my head, actual audible sounds, of “Eh?” and “You what?” whilst playing it. It is everything that I was hoping for and an extra box of chocolate carpets to boot.

In it you play the titular Hamtaro, a lovable hamster with a heart as huge as his eyes. The boss of your hamster clubhouse has tasked you with locating all the other twelve hamsters and bringing them back for a special surprise. As a small rodent, the human world is big and full of items that would appear normal to you and me. How are you to convince your peers to abandon whatever they’re doing and head back to he clubhouse? You do this using Ham-Chat. Ham-Chat is the secret language of the Ham-Hams whereby instead of using sensible words to describe and communicate they use slight variations or muddied portmanteaus of colloquialisms. It does seem rather odd that this fully-grown hamster does not understand basic words for ‘happy’, ‘tired’ and ‘hungry’; how has he been getting by all this time? Has he been writing down words on a pad and showing them to friends and family? Where did he buy this pad of paper, from a tiny WH Smiths? Who designed and built a WH Smiths so small only small animals can get in? There are so many questions.

So you get given a few to begin with and set off into the world to learn more words. The more words you learn the more puzzles you can solve. When I say “puzzles” what I mean is… what do I mean? You meet other Ham-Hams and they tell you things such as stories or other Ham-Chat words. You pass these on to other Ham-Hams to help them with whatever problem they’re dealing with. Occasionally you won’t be able to proceed in the area you’re in until you find the right word and backtrack to that point. Occasionally you’ll go through every word you have until you do the right thing. Occasionally you’ll have to play a mini-game where you position Hamtaro in the right place so he can head a strawberry like a football. Fruit sports.

The game is relatively open so you can wander around until you find the right thing for the right place. It’s a series of fetch quests hidden behind a brightly-coloured world of absurdity. There are eighty-five words to find in total. As this is a kid’s game, you are also given the choice of purchasing clothes and items for Hamtaro from specialist shops hidden in the game. Fancy yourself a bit of a dance guru? The words from the back of the box say it all:

“You can create dances with Ham-Chat. Every word gives you a dance step – string words together to make your own original Ham-Jam dances then link up and share with your friends.”

I didn’t get this. I mean I understand hamsters dancing but I didn’t see the point of it meaning I ignored this aspect of the game completely and went back to picking up acorns and rocks.

Though I am a little ashamed to admit it, I am still to complete my Ham-Ham Notebook having only found seventy-six of the eighty-five words in total. I appear to have hit a bit of a block where it seems as if I need to do the tiniest of little things before carrying on with the rest of the game and my poor eyes, all sets of them, don’t have the energy to go scouring through the same levels again and again trying to find whatever it is I need to do.

That said, it is a very engaging and silly game, and I enjoyed the majority of it. I first learned of it at the turn of the century and it took me until this year to play it. Twenty years of anticipation. Twenty years of sometimes looking for it on Ebay and then getting distracted by a box of hammers. As it is quite rare I could only find the game and instruction booklet so I bought a reproduction box from Etsy to house it in. Now it looks all complete and shiny the way it should. Look at it, Kev, bask in how great it looks. That repro box was well worth the money. I only wish everyone could experience the comic mischief of ‘Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite!” although the chances of an HD remake or remaster are practically slim to none.

It’s a good job then that there are three (count ’em!) three other Hamtaro games on the Gameboy Colour for me to source and play. Life is good.

Avatar Literary Gold

I know what you’re both thinking and, no, it’s not another one of my much-loved, imitated and lauded best-selling novels. Calm down my precious fans, you haven’t missed a pre-order for another first edition that you can keep your families warm with over those long winter months. This is something completely different.

Prior to being hoisted back into clothes and into the general population by work, I was having yet another sort out in order to try and fit a large amount of THINGS into the same space they’ve been living in for six months now. This requires a meticulous amount of opening boxes, sighing loudly and then trying to squish something else into it in the hope that the top will still stay on once I’ve pushed a large rectangle into a tiny triangular slot. Most of the time it works. Soon I may have to invest in some more shelves and possibly some hammocks for the corners.

I unearthed yet another pile of gibberish, which is what I refer to anything I was scribbling in prior to this post. I have a lot of it, notebooks and notebooks of word guff hastily wangled around early attempts by post-modern hedonistic oober artist, Reuben. Sandwiched in-between my original lyrics for ’10 out of 10 out of 10 (out of 10 out of 10)’ and Reuben’s sketches for something called ‘Pirate Chicken and Son’ (spoiler: you don’t need pants to be cool), there was a couple of pages you may recognise:

It’s important for a number of reasons:

  • It features Chris’s disgusting scrodsack of change (or was it Kev’s?);
  • There are a number of facts including Marshall can sense mums with his crotch, that mushrooms come last and that I am an eager-maniac;
  • The original appearance of cult favourite Wexford and his cheese-polishing adventures;
  • The height chart to explain how tall Kevin is.

I would donate the entire thing to Chris’ archives but there some boring old Christmas lists and some other questionable songs I wrote that take up the majority of the book so it would be a fool’s errand. I may carefully rip the pages out and send them via special courier so that they reach you in one piece now that Steve “Steady on, now” Steveingtons has finally given up on his restraining order and let you back in your flat.

Avatar One of those things

Childhood, ah, such a bewildering time to be alive. For one, you have no responsibility and so much potential. You have no money but everything you actually need is provided to you for free. If you want to spend the entire weekend sat with your face in the television with a mouth full of marshmallows then you can, or at least until one or more of your parents objects to this. The point is that, as everyone is aware, life is so very different as a child.

I could bore you to tears with stories of my time as a tiny Ian. You may or may not have heard them already and the ones you haven’t heard are just as tedious. Believe me, I am doing you a favour by keeping my mouth shut. I haven’t quite reached the age of telling every single person I meet in the street (not that they would given how bovona has given everyone carte blanche to ignore you even if you have a leg hanging off or knife at your throat) of the time I found £1.10 in the front garden in the snow and became so excited you would have thought I had discovered the Turin Shroud hanging off the bin.

Do you remember those… things that you used to make? I want to remember the name and I don’t want to have to Google it like everything else. The power of words (Words!) don’t fail me now. You folded it up and asked someone to say a number. Then you would use your hands to move it the appropriate number of times and ask for another number, repeat, and then open one of the panels to reveal some mystifying piece of knowledge. It looked a little like this:

No, I haven’t lost my mind and made one I did something much more reasonable; I found one on the floor and brought it home. A scruff I may be and nothing more because there is no other way of finishing that sentence. I wanted to remember a time that was much more innocent, of whistle pops and candy whistles, running around the park until your lungs bled with Tizer (you know, before they changed the formula and made it taste like a shark’s coldsore). I am not clever enough to make a fully functioning version of this, nor an interactive snazzy one on a computer. I do want you to know this though:

If you pick 0 or 1: You are a banana
If you pick 2 or 3: I am in love with you
If you pick 4 or 5: You are in love with me
If you pick 6 or 7:

?????

Avatar Letter to the RSPB

Way back, many moons ago, there was a suggestion from myself that Chis and I had written to the RSPB to complain about the lack of dinosaurs. The conversation can be found in the comments below the post An Admission of Sorts, a summary is included here:

“It is a letter that needs to be sent. I imagine that much like the one me and Chris wrote to the RSPB about the lack of dinosaurs at Fairburn Inngs, it will be ignored, but it must be sent nonetheless….”

Kev

“Two things are needed here… The second is more information about the letter to Fairburn Ings, which I have no memory of.”

Chris

“Is the letter mentioned on here, Kev?”

Ian

“I’ll have a chumble[sic], it feels like it should be.”

Kev

It wasnt. There was no mention of it which led to comments such as…

“Maybe the right thing to do now is ask whether it happened at all, or whether it’s some sort of weird dream.”

Chris

Well today, I have BIG NEWS. I found it. Just the letter mind, sadly the enclosed drawing must have been a one off and is lost to the mists of time. It’s a doozy let me tell you.

Sadly Mr. Steven James never received a reply to the RSPB, it’s almost as if they didn’t take us seriously.

Clicken for Big.
RSPB.docDownload

In a side note, the little bit in the comments below the throw away bit about a letter that might not exist, is an excellent little ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ riff from Chris and Ian. Well done chaps, it made me lols all over again.

Avatar Isolation – North-East Edition

You will never believe what just happened to me! The short version is that I am currently being paid to not work. I am at home right now not working. If I try to work I will be shouted at profusely so I am sat not working on a beanbag listening to the radio.

The year 2020 has been a strange one so far and it continues to get weirder the more we slide through it. The outside world is still there, I can see it, through the big windows in the living room, and it looks fantastic. I reckon that for the moment I am going to stay here and admire it from afar. Besides, it looks a little chilly and I’ve got this patch of dry skin on my hands that the low temperature will not do any favours for.

I have decided to try and do one drawing, sketch or doodle a day for something to look forward to and possibly upload on Twitter (the Book of Faces does not deserve my “talents”) for the world to admire. I hope to have a wall of my efforts with which I can look back on and laugh slobbily, possibly sell to some passing rich aristocrat (they’re always using the footpaths round here) and then retire to the country, doing the same thing I’m doing now, but with a little more style, panache and some hot ladies in a hot tub serving hot drinks.

Look at me and be inspired.

Avatar Fraternity of Zingers

It was inevitable. You know how funny we are, right? How right on the fashions we are when it comes to news, pop culture and, indeed, fashion itself. It was only a matter of time before our amusing jokes about Kevin stretched into the cosmos and all and sundry (sundry, indeed) were swallowed up in the process. Take no prisoners because the Fraternity of Zingers is officially open.

I could stand in the corner, cracking off zingers like they were toffees, but it’s not going to change anything. I need a brotherhood who have got my back to help me spread the good word, the good humour and the good times involved with zingers. Who doesn’t love a good zinger? They’re fast, funny and fruity like the best kind of sandwich. woman. Bring me a big fat plate of fruity zingers so I can chow down like the rest. I want to take my fill of the choicest cuts and you can too.

There’s no paperwork involved. You don’t need to officially sign up like you would for a Direct Debit. All I need to know is if you’re in for the wild ride. All I need from you is confirmation that you want to be part of a family, the closest damn family you’ll ever have. When you crack off a zinger about the news I’ll be right beside you, cracking one back about haircuts or gardening.

A bell in the bush is worth two in the hand, after all.

Even if you’re not particularly hilarious you can still join, we want you! You will learn from the best and under our sweaty wings you will rise the ranks of the Zinger Elite.

Are you with me? Hyper Gamma Meta Zing Zing.

Avatar Pointless Purchase of the Month

You know what? It’s been far too long since I’ve annoyed everyone with my huge stack of tat and as it is overdue, and I still have a quota to make up, let’s take a look at what I have been throwing my money away on. Take a gander at this juicy goosey:

In the top left-hand corner we have the original gameboy classic ‘The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening’. I didn’t buy purchase this recently, this is merely to amplify the ridiculousness of it all. I bought this in 1994/5, I opened it, played it and loved it like one man can love some plastic on a tiny grey and green screen.

The one next to it with the nifty black cover is the deluxe edition released some years later. I acquired one of these because I needed it to help finish my collection. It’s pretty much the same game but with some extra bits thrown in and parts of it in (very limited) colour. I haven’t played this one yet. I should also mention that I have a digital copy of the game downloaded to one of my 3DS consoles, which I have played through.

In the same month I bought the deluxe edition I also bought the two below it, which are the remastered, re-imagined, re-done whatever you will for the Nintendo Switch. It is exactly the same game albeit with fancy graphics and souped up music. I finished it in under five hours because I have the game committed to memory. So you can really feel the punch I bought the standard edition and the limited edition version, the latter of which I haven’t opened yet and probably won’t do. You know, because that’s me through and through. I bought them on the date they were released at full price.

So now I own (including the digital one) five copies of the same game, one of which may stay in its house forever and one which I won’t bother using because I have it downloaded ready to play whenever I want.

Oh and look, I got a free cleaning cloth for buying the limited edition boxed copy. That was well worth the money. I’m also keeping the cleaning cloth sealed.

Avatar Easter is murder.

I’m not quite sure what the marketing team at Mars had in mind for this one….

I can only assume from this packet of m&m’s eggs that Yellow m&m and Pink m&m Egg were love rivals for the affections of Green m&m Egg, and that for some reason Yellow has seen fit to slaughter Pink splattering himself and Green in the blood of his rival.

Do you think they picked up on the start of the Easter story, the bit where Jesus gets killed, and not bothered reading on to get to the more traditional ‘re-birth’ bit?