SnackSurprise - the September Box: Sweden

After a couple of month away, we return, gentle reader, to the world of snack boxes and the numerous delights they may (or may not) contain. In case you were wondering, July's box was from Greece though the package looked like it had travelled via Sparta and most of the contents were damaged, hence no review. As for August's box, it was from France but we simply ran out of time in August to try it. Don't worry, though, you didn't miss much. As an aside, you may notice from the picture of the pamphlet below, that they now do a mini box for those wishing to just sample the service. This can be purchased for £6.99 a month.

This month's box is from Sweden and what a selection we have. So, without further ado, join my good lady and myself on this culinary journey of snack delight.

We begin with Cheez doodles, the CHEEZIER snack. If these look somewhat familiar, that is because they are - they're basically Swedish Wotsits.

Herdy Gurdy Wotsits!

There is not much else to say about them - if you like Wotsits, then you'll like these. They have enough of a taste to make them enjoyable without becoming overpowering and overall are quite pleasant.

Keeping with the crisps theme, we have Olw Dill and Graslok, which translates as Dill and Chive crisps. 

GREEN!!!

These are subtle but leave a bit of a dodgy aftertaste. Mostly inoffensive, I would say that if you could ever taste a colour, these would be green. Also, ever so slightly funky. 

The Wasa Sandwich is a pair of hard crispbreads sandwiching a creamy filling of tomato, cheese and basil. Well, I will say this, they got the crispbread part right...

Kind of looks like brains in crispbread form...

...almost to the point of being inedible. And you'll need a plate to catch the crumbs as it practically explodes when you bite into it. The actual taste is a disappointment, with somehow not having much flavour but then also having the ability to leave a bloody awful aftertaste. This is a strange one and not something I'd try it again.

Ahlgrens Bilar are hard marshmallow car shaped sweets that claim to be fruity,

Cars or submarines, your call.

Well, they kind of are and I'd go as far to say they are quite nice, certainly leaving a pleasant aftertaste. Not bad.

Djungelvral are small, super salty monkey-branded sweets that are apparently a must for anyone who calls themselves a liquorice lover. That is complete and utter bullshit!

Just NO! And cat paw to scale.

I tried one and I literally lasted a second before spitting out this little hard sweet of salty shite. It's instant salt overload, leaving a nasty feeling and taste that took a good few glugs of water to get rid of. Honestly, foul spawn of Satan! This packet of disgusting rabbit droppings went straight into the bin. If you happen to like seawater sweets, you know where to look. At least we now know the answer to that hypothetical question...

Kexchoklad was a nice return to something vaguely palatable, a chocolate wafer.

Choklad Kex sounds like an underwear brand...

If you like European milk chocolate, you'll enjoy these. The wafer is just the right texture and the chocolate is smooth and gentle on the taste buds. These were very, very nice though be careful about dropping these...

Another lovely chocolate bar was the Dumle Snacks. A combination of chocolate, sweet toffee and crispy rice, this sounded familiar...

Roar!

And indeed it was - it's basically a Lion bar in a slightly different shape. If you like them, you'll love this. We certainly did.

What we are not fans of is nougat, and the Dubbel Nougat maintains that form. As you can see, it's a combination of almond and hazelnut nougat.

Death by sugar.

It's horribly sweet. I mean, I know nougat is essentially just sugar but Jesus wept, this was sugar coma in a bar. One small bite was enough for us. Naturally, your tastes will vary.

All these snacks were making us thirsty so we went for the included drink next: Trocadero, a sparkling mix of apple and orange that originally launched in the 1950's.

Insipid death piss. You're welcome.

All I can add to that is they must still be using the same apple and orange to get the flavours from as there is bugger all taste and even then, it manages to leave your mouth feeling like a fruit basket has decomposed in it. Insipid to start and death to end with - hardly refreshing...

The penultimate item was Tutti Frutti. You'd think, by now, a small, fruity sweet would be just the job to restore us. Well...

Nope, I don't know what flavours they are referring to either.

These are hard sweets, and I mean, hard! I timed it and it took me four minutes to get just one of these little bastards softened to the point where I thought I could safely chew it. This wouldn't have been so bad if it had that promised taste of orange. But no, there is no taste here at all, which makes this sweet pretty much pointless.

Finally, and not least, we have the Delicatoboll which, as you can see, looks like a coconut covered dog poo. This does not bode well, even if they say it's a great accompaniment with coffee.

Hmmm...

...but tastes great. Good lady hand to scale.

Actually, it's lovely. The soft mocha filling has the proper level of bitterness and the coconut both on the exterior and included in the filling adds sweetness. One thing to note is that the texture may seem a little off, what with that included coconut but it's not a deal breaker. Overall, great taste, dubious appearance.

So there you have it, another SnackSurprise box sampled. Some hits, some definite misses, but that's all part of the fun!

Was That Film Really That Bad??? North Sea Hijack

"You lucky people!" was the catchphrase of Tommy Trinder, and whilst you may not know who Mr Trinder was, you will, by the end of this post, most certainly agree with the sentiment of that catchphrase in relation to this bespoke piece of British cinematic history. Ahem.

There is a sitcom idea in there somewhere...

North Sea Hijack (nee ffolkes, nee Assault Force, nee Demolition Squad Atlantic) is an "action" film based on the novel "Esther, Ruth and Jennifer" by Jack Davies, who also wrote the screenplay for the movie. It stars Roger Moore, Anthony Perkins, David Hedison, James Mason and so many British TV actors that you'll be constantly shouting out "Weren't they in... you know, that one that was on a Sunday night..." if you sit down to watch this movie. 

The plot is fairly straight forward: Perkins and his team of ne'er do wells hijack a North Sea oil rig support vessel (I can see where they got the title from then...) and plant explosives on the largest of the rigs and its support platform in order to get a ransom of £25m out of the British Government. It is up to private contractor Roger Moore as Rufus Excalibur ffolkes (I shit you not!) and his team of ex-special forces dudes to stop Perkins from getting the ransom and blowing up the platforms. However, the way the film sets this up is that Moore's team have already been given a heads up by the insurance industry that such a thing might happen and then, by huge coincidence, Perkin's mob rock up to do such a thing. Hmmm... Anyway, and SPOILERS, the good guys win, the bad guys loose. See, now you don't have to watch this. 

Oh, you expected Moore? Are three paragraphs not enough? Are you not entertained? Oh well, on your head be it...

Do this and it'll at least numb the pain of watching.

The cast then, and we have both Moore and Perkins playing against type. The former is a hard drinking, cat-loving, needle-working, misogynist ex-commando (put that on a dating site and see what you get back!); the latter a twitchy though steely eyed nut job. Think proto-Die Hard Alan Rickman without the good one liners or the suit but with woollen pullovers. To be fair to both, they're given little to do as the script is pretty bare (just how many times can we repeat how much the oil rigs are worth?) and the direction by Andrew V. McLaglen (son of Victor) is as dull as ditch water/any "Light" beer you care to mention and a good few that are beneath mention/the water you use to soak potatoes in (delete as applicable). Whilst you could put forward the argument that ffolkes is just Bond after he let himself go, he's not quite that one dimensional, and kudos must be given for ffolkes having a black cat called Enoch. For those of you too young for political gags of that vintage, trust me, it raised a smile. Mind you, Moore's facial hair convinces less than the later work done on his hair in the likes of A View to a Kill and if you matched Moore's character drink for drink, you'd be rat-arsed by the end. This may not necessarily be a bad thing...

Perkins in his best "Terrorist Woollen" from the Freemans Catalogue.

Hedison is his usual serious self, always looking comfortable gripping a telephone receiver, though I do feel that since his days on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, he never quite hit the limelight he deserved. James Mason just about picks up his cheque, as well as second billing, as a crusty Royal Navy Admiral whilst Jack Watson delivers a good performance as the Norwegian captain of Esther. Incidentally, this was his third film with Roger Moore within a three year period: they co-starred in The Wild Geese and The Sea Wolves, both rather decent movies if you get a chance to watch them though, it must be said, both films suffer from the same lacklustre direction of McLaglan. Honestly, I didn't think it was possible to direct films with all of the vim and vigour of Marvin the Paranoid Android, but McLaglan does it each and every time!

Nothing will happen in the next half hour... or hour...

The rest of the cast are good enough though comment must be made on Faith Brook as the Prime Minister. No, she's not bad in channeling Mrs Thatcher, it's just that in her first appearance onscreen, she looks like she's wearing a cross between the winner's gown from that year's Come Dancing and my grandma's net curtains. In fact, I'd go as far to say that Ballroom Thatcher might have been a winner in the '83 election even without the Falklands War boost! Think of the merch ideas for action figures: Tank Driving Thatcher, Milk Monitor Thatcher, Coal-Miner Thatcher and my personal, and local, favourite, Steel Worker Thatcher. Action Man would have had no chance!

Ballroom Thatcher!

Back to the film and you know there is something up when it starts and the music is all LOUD, EXCITING, STIRRING and LOUD (again)! This, gentle reader, is the first sign that this is not an action film, protesting too much so early on. Oh, there's lots of earnest telephone conversations, lots of examples of ffolkes' "idiosyncratic" character (which has not travelled well to be honest) and many, many scenes set aboard the Esther, which though well acted, suffer from knowledge that the majority of cast and crew on that boat were chugging seasickness tablets to stop themselves upchucking at every available opportunity. Model work is used for pretty much all of the rig work and it's functional at best, cheap at worst. But what the film lacks, despite its cast and overly saturated poster promise, is action. Any action. Apart from the end, you may argue, but even that's dafter than a box of frogs. Nope, this is truly a film you can watch if you've been told to avoid any excitable situations. So a Sunday afternoon then. It's a boring, dated, 100 minute long chore.  

Even Perkins is falling asleep...

If you've not seen North Sea Hijack (nee ffolkes, nee Assault Force, nee Demolition Squad Atlantic), consider yourself one of Mr Trinder's "lucky people". If you want to watch it, then a rather iffy copy is currently on YouTube if you must, though I take no responsibility in any resulting narcolepsy or this:

Th-th-th-th-that's all, ffolkes!

PlayStation Vita - The 2 Old 4 Gaming Collection - Review

The PlayStation Vita was Sony's second (and so far final) portable gaming system. Released in Japan in 2011 (2012 in North America and Europe), the Vita followed in the successful footsteps of Sony's earlier PlayStation Portable (which I have covered here). Sadly, the Vita did not repeat the commercial success of its predecessor, selling somewhere in the region of one fifth of the earlier machine's total (something like 16 million units is nothing to sniff at - Sony stopped advertising sales figures - but nowhere near the 80 million of the PSP). That didn't mean it did not host some truly great games and it's the story of the console and its software that Sandeep Rai has covered in this three volume collection.

Quite the selection!

Funded by three Kickstarter campaigns, Rai's trifecta of volumes are Year One, Years Two and Three and The End respectively. An extra for the third Kickstarter was the Vitazine, detailing the top 100 Vita titles (in the humble opinion of the author) as well as a community voted list and the top twenty PSP games that were available via download. This alone has given me much guidance for starting a Vita collection. Oh, and shame on me for forgetting the three bookmarks (one per volume) included.

A nice little extra.

Year One begins with a 28 page section on the background to the Vita and a potted history of its launch in various territories. I'll not go into reasons here (as you'll have to read this yourself), but Sony did not help themselves when it came to getting the Vita into people's hands and the tale is well told. The following 75 pages are interviews, and what an interesting selection they are, from first party developers such as Evolution Studios and Sony Studio Liverpool, to smaller dev's like Honeyslug to third party publishers Limited Run Games. There is a lot to get into here. In fact, there isn't a wasted page and you get a wonderful feeling for the period immediately after the Vita's launch.

The final 75 pages are filled with retrospectives on 19 Vita titles (both good and bad) that give you a cracking selection of games to aim for if you fancy starting (or continuing) a Vita collection. There then follows a pictorial list of all European and North American physical and digital software releases in year one, plus all first party hardware and accessories, and then finally a timeline of notable events in that first year. As volume one of the set, this is a brilliant start, well written, with numerous screenshots and artwork, and an uncluttered design. 

Years Two and Three is the shortest of the volumes, but still reaches 126 pages. It covers developments like the revised 'Slim' model, the criminally under-marketed (and half-baked) PlayStation TV and the connectivity features to the PlayStation 4. There is only one interview in this volume (but it's an interview with Kinda Funny Games' Greg Miller, so it's a corker), but you get a 30 page retrospection on original PSP and PS One titles available on the Vita (via download), as well as a five page section on the limited range of PlayStation 2 remasters that graced the handheld. Original software gets a 40 page section (covering both AAA titles and indie favourites), plus there is another pictorial list of physical and digital software releases from 2013/14 as well as first party hardware and a timeline for the period.

Volume three, The End, covers 2015 to 2020 and the decline of the console. The stand outs here are the interview with Shahid Kamal Ahmad, head of Sony's PlayStation Strategic Content Division and the retrospectives, covering a diverse range of niche titles (most of which, I must admit, I had never heard of - bad Andu!). These retrospectives are a thing of beauty and show off the breadth and depth of what the Vita was capable of. Finally, you get the software list again, and this time, it's huge - as you might expect from a five year period but considering that Sony let the platform wither away... well, 103 physical games and a whopping 481 digital titles (as of 12th August 2020), well, that's just amazing. All told, these volumes list 229 physical and 661 digital game releases - no software for the console my backside!

The software catalogue is comprehensive.

As noted above, the Vitazine is a list of the 100 top games as compiled by Rai. You get a community top 100 as well as the top 20 PSP games to play on the Vita and a short "Missed the List" page. I know I'll be perusing that list in future purchases!

Hot bookshelf action!

This collection has been a labour of love for the author, that is plain to see. Getting three Kickstarter projects funded and delivered is some achievement. The content is informative and comprehensive, the design and print quality are superb and I am really pleased to have caught the third project and ordered the three physical copies. The Vitazine is icing on the cake, and all four publications will be used as references when I start my Vita collection. Yes, I don't own one yet but I shall, to sit alongside my PSP and its growing library. I'm not sure if physical copies are still available but you can buy pdf's of the whole collection at 2old4gaming.com. You'll also find some Vita videos here from the author's YouTube channel and I suggest you check out some of his other videos too. In the opinion of your humble scribe, the sum total of £13 for the digital collection is a bargain but if you can, go for the physical editions. Very highly recommended!

The Games That Weren't - Book Review

The Games That Weren't is the latest release by Bitmap Books and, I'll admit, the first title I have purchased from the company. Written by Frank Gasking, this tome is the result of five years of research and it certainly shows. Covering over 80 unreleased games, with five hardware pieces and an "honourable mention" section that could make up a second volume (hint, hint), there are over 640 pages of videogame history here. If that wasn't enough, there is even more content available on the Games That Weren't website.

I pre-ordered this when it was announced as it appealed to my interest in videogames history. With a slight delay in release (a matter of days, really), I received an email notification on the new release date and a later email with a link to download a watermarked PDF copy of the book. Whilst I could have started reading that straight away, I wanted to wait for the book itself. This was received on the following Friday afternoon from the hands of a very cheery courier (cheers, Bob!). This was when I got my first surprise: the care and thought that went into the packaging was immediately apparent and much appreciated. Then came the next surprise - it's a hefty book, and of high quality too - the binding, hardback cover and paper quality are all excellent. For £30, I was impressed. That did not change as I started reading.

Now that is well packaged.

The author's style is easy going and very readable. His enthusiasm for the topic is plain to see and you get a sense of joy as each title is covered. Some games only get a two page entry, featuring art and a small text box. Others can be several pages in length with a lot of input by the original developers and more artwork/screenshots etc. This makes the book easy to pick up if you just want to read a couple of entries or, if you're like me, that "just one more section" pull that means you go past midnight without even realising it! For most of the titles, artist impressions have been created to give the reader an idea of what the game may have looked like. Whatever the art, the glossy high quality paper makes these jump off the page. 

There is certainly a lot of content here, as it covers a forty year period (1975 to 2015). What I really like about the author's approach is that where there is a lack of information or help, he clearly states that, which adds an air of poignancy to the book and underlines the importance of preservation for videogames. There is constant referral to the GTW website where more information can be found and the website compliments the book well. Each entry in the book also has a notification as to whether the game is available to experience today or not. 

You do get a real sense of how the industry changed from it's early years to the mass market commercial juggernaut it is now.You also get a real understanding of how much technology has progressed over time and just how cutting edge some of these titles were. Hearing about how developers struggled (and often succeeded) to get software running on some formats was extremely enlightening. It's also nice to see that the titles covered are spread out over numerous formats. As an Amstrad GX4000 fan, the chapter on Gazza 2 answered quite a few questions for me. It was also nice to see the Archimedes get a mention with Spitfire Fury and any mention of the Konix Multisystem always gets my attention, as any reader of ACE magazine and it's hardware section will attest. On a personal note, I must admit this book brought back many happy memories of the 8 and 16-bit era, with the mere mention of long-closed software houses conjuring recollections of buying £2.99 cassettes from the local newsagents.

Are there any negatives to this book? Well, if I am being really picky, I wish maybe a different coloured bookmark as my cat really, really likes that bright green. In all seriousness though, no, I have no negatives to report.

Well laid out with superb print quality.

Overall then, I think The Games That Weren't is an excellent title, one that provides not only an informative and detailed history of a selection of cancelled videogames, but an interesting view of the nature and history of the videogames industry itself. I hope that one day we'll get a follow up volume as there are no doubt many more lost games to be brought to people's attention. In the meantime, for £29.99 including UK delivery, this is a must-buy for anyone with even a passing interest in the hobby.

As for Bitmap Books, they have several other titles that have caught my eye and I think an order for The Art of Point-and-Click Adventure Games is on the cards.