Friday Foxer #170
This week’s handmade co-op puzzle won’t defox itself. If you’re a dab hand at quizzes, lateral thinking, and search engine sleuthing, why not help out.
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Normal Service Will Be Resumed Next Friday
As Ada and I have been 800 miles apart for most of the past week, and the only gaming I’ve done has involved analysing cryptic imagery, I’m afraid there’s no Friday Feature today. What I can provide is three ancient articles from my personal archives. All three appeared on RPS circa 2009, subsequently losing their images during the Great Pic Purge. They’re republished here with original illustrations restored.
Air Power: Remembering Rowan’s Most Recherché Flight Sim
FASA Corp tentatively blowing the dust off their Crimson Skies licence? Splendid news. I can’t think of another interwar-inspired, zeppelin-crammed, fantasy flight-sim that deserves a rebirth more than Zipper’s classic. Well, apart from Rowan Software’s Air Power, obviously.
Tim’s Touchstones: The Games That Made Me
Clive Sinclair’s be-rainbowed brainchild cast a long happy shadow over my boyhood, but I’m struggling to single-out one game as a personal landmark. Should it be Arnhem, my first computer wargame, or Fighter Pilot, my introduction to flight simulation. Should it be Battlecars, in recognition of the afternoons me and Matt spent chasing each other round autodromes in oil-pissing, flame-spitting death sedans? Or Blockbusters, an improbably moreish quiz game ‘won’ by my sister when she competed on the TV show of the same name? Maybe Atic Atac, Arcadia, Deathchase or Wheelie for just being so utterly brilliant?
Stale Air and Stolen Thunder
I was up at Farnborough International Airshow yesterday, and, while having a crafty fag round the back of the Fuel-Air Weapons Marquee, was lucky enough to run into one of gaming’s most elusive genres. Dishevelled and smelling slightly of wet ferrets, Flight Simulation was in a surprisingly talkative mood. During the course of an hour-long chat we covered numerous topics, none more fascinating than the changing fortunes of the gent himself.
Where am I?
Using the following clues (the map above is purely decorative) in combination with Street View, work out my location.
Enjoy camel dangling and Pawnee pranging? Get Thunder Helix and FS One.
I don’t attend school reunions for the same reason I don’t go back to the village where I spent my formative years. The memories of those times are too precious – I’d hate to muddy them with modern versions. A small, financially illiterate part of me thinks gaming landmarks should be similarly quarantined. Do you fancy doing a Red Baron or an Aces of the Deep retrospective for us, Tim? Sorry, no. I couldn’t do that without resurfacing Memory Lane and felling the magnificent oak trees that line it.
Friday Foxer #169
Every Friday, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. All are welcome to participate.