Artur Tabiszewski, what, in the name of all that is combustible, were you thinking? As you are listed in the credits as Fire Commander’s designer, producer, and lead programmer, I’m guessing you are the person who made the bewildering decision to leave fire hoses out of this 2022 firefighting RTS.
Beware! The air quality on Tally-Ho Corner is going to be abysmal this week, and thanks to the tangle of quivering hoses on our puddle-strewn drive, there will be trip hazards galore. Keen to address one of my stranger blindspots (While I’ve dabbled with the odd wildfire tactics title in the past, for some reason I’ve not explored games in which buildings and their contents are the primary flame fodder) I plan to audition a number of firefighting games.
Using the following clues (the map above is purely decorative) in combination with Street View, work out my location.
V is for Verbose sleuthing. It’s a fairly safe bet fans of The Case of the Golden Idol and The Rise of the Golden Idol will enjoy the Confidential Killings trial. The game’s short but tangled whodunnits are set in late Seventies Hollywood and are solved by accurately filling-out crime summaries using words collected from crime scenes and witness statements.
Thanks to a much appreciated submission from a reader, Roman spent most of yesterday afternoon amongst squabbling sparrows, overdressed bumble bees, and peripatetic marbled whites rather than at his desk. My colleague added the odd word to the following hive foxer but the majority of it is the work of guest foxer setter, Colonel_K.
Q is for Quick stogie card. Significantly larger and younger than all previous occupants of this slot, the thirty cards that make up ‘Soldiers of Waterloo’ were issued in 1995 and came in packets of Castella cigars. The text on the reverse of the card pictured below includes the story of Kenneth McKay, the plucky piper who, at the height of the battle, marched around the outside of the Cameron Highlanders square playing Cogadh no Sith (War or Peace).
L is for Largely forgotten rally sim. The first video game worthy of the tag ‘simulation’ wasn’t a flight sim but a 2D side-on recreation of the sport that’s currently monopolising the THC idiot box. An attraction at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s annual exhibition in 1958 and 1959, Tennis for Two was played with custom-built controllers and used an oscilloscope for a screen.
F is for Flying pencils added to Scramble. Slitherine’s thoroughly 3D BoB wargame has some Schnellbombers at long last. While the new Do 17s must run the gauntlet of player-controlled Spits and Hurricanes, there’s no danger of them suffering the fate Feldwebel Johannes Petersen’s Do 17 suffered on August 18, 1940. During an attack on Kenley, Petersen’s flying pencil had a fatal encounter with a Z Battery, one of WW2’s most outlandish anti-aircraft weapons.