Fun with fun

By | May 22, 2016

Just occasionally I like to step back from format discussion and share some things I have been watching and doing which you might find quite interesting and entertaining as well. Or you might not.

  • I’m currently playing the Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection on PS4 because I’m in quite the mood for pulp-y adventure stuff. What I’m mainly learning is that the first Uncharted is actually liable to be a bit dull with shooting galleries going on much longer than necessary when I mainly want abandoned places to explore (I had already played U3 which I enjoyed and I’ve got U4 to play when I’ve got time).
  • Following on from this I watched National Treasure: Book of Secrets on Amazon Prime Video last night, mainly because I wanted to watch Romancing the Stone and nobody’s got it. It’s actually a pretty entertaining treasure hunting film with mildly exciting lost city trap aspect to it and didn’t leave me a bit disappointed like the first one did. I almost started a Bother’s Bar Film Club a while ago (We’d be the new BBFC) looking at films with a varying ludology bent but I ended up being too lazy and they’d mostly be slasher flicks anyway. Perhaps I will wander down this avenue again at some point.
  • The other night by accident I discovered Grand Illusions on Youtube where an elderly guy named Tim talks about old toys and puzzles. Episodes are 5-10 minutes long and it’s been going for years and I’ve found myself dipping in and watching 5-6 in one go. Here’s quite an old one on trick boxes, I love these sorts of things but have no patience to actually solve them:

  • Apropos of nothing they’re making a The 7th Guest web series. The computer game was a 90s FMV classic, wandering round a haunted house solving puzzles made by Stauf The Toymaker (I think toymakers are a much underutilized branch of villainy). This is likely to be terrible but I’m compelled to watch it all the same.
  • Marble races! Jelle’s Marble Runs featured on the BBC website recently, they are surprisingly diverting:

  • But if marble race are just too real and exciting for you today I discovered virtual marble races! Evidently there must be a creator somewhere, probably on Steam, as the few videos I’ve seen from different people seem to use similar obstacles. Marvel at the machinery for about two minutes then long for a fast forward button. Music agreeably Lemmings-y. There must be a format in marble racing somewhere.

7 thoughts on “Fun with fun

  1. Chris M. Dickson

    I sort of can’t believe I watched the whole of that Epic Marble Race, but I’ve definitely seen worse.

    You know how TV channels offer virtual horse and greyhound racing? That’s where the virtual marble racing comes in. You’ll need a shorter course so that the whole thing gets wrapped up in about a minute or so, but there are a variety of fun different courses you could have, and the different starting positions of the marbles lends well to them having different odds against winning.

    Surely much more fun than virtual raindrops-on-a-window racing or what-have-you…

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      Yeah it’s totally the sort of thing I’d put on in the background whilst bored and then watch for about three hours.

      I’m really interested to find out what the software is.

      Reply
  2. Qusion

    Grand illusions is one of my go to Youtube channels when I want to be entertained.

    Reply
    1. Andrew 'Kesh' Sullivan

      Yeah, I’ve watched Tim for a long while now, and it’s cool to see all the different stuff he’s collected over the years. He’s like the grandfather I never had.

      Heh 🙂

      Reply
  3. Nico W.

    Great news from German millionaire: to celebrate its 1250th episode everyone in the audience can become the contestant (the 200 people in the audience had to apply as creatively as possible) and there are a lot of twists: their is just one lifeline which can be used twice. It will give the contestant the chance to talk to one of three celebrities (two if which won the million, the other one is well known for answering a football question wrong although he is a football reporter). And the other big twist is a wheel of fortune which will decide where in the money tree the contestants will start. It’s possible to skip the first nine questions (16,000€ our second safety step), but whenever their answer is wrong they will leave empty handed.
    I think this sounds like a very refreshing way to do millionaire and imho the atmosphere will be great with 200 people hoping to win big. I hope they will leave this format to the special episodes and not make it more regularly than once a year or so. German millionaire has experimented with the format a lot in the last two years and it seems they do these epxeriments more often now, because they are rating better than regular episodes.

    Reply
  4. Daniel H

    Yesterday was (I think) only the third time in Pointless history where they had to get a backup question out after Round Two saw two pairs tie on 300 points on Comic Relief Bake Off/Darts Contestants 2015.

    Also notable is that the last four episodes were shown out of sequence due to a reference to Victoria Wood getting rather clunkily edited down.

    Reply

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