It’s Schlag Saturday!

By | April 4, 2017

That’s right! Join us for another edition of The Bother’s Bar Schlag den Star Watchalong on Saturday night from 7:15pm UK as German comic and Ultimate Beastmaster commentator Luke Mockridge takes on vegan chef Attila Hildmann across fifteen challenges for Elton’s €100,000 briefcase – live. Music is going to be provided by Take That.

I do not know what this from David is about:

PSST! Look, Nick doesn’t know I’m posting this, but I’m planning something for the Schlag den Star live stream this weekend and I need YOUR help. If you have a few minutes to spare (and you aren’t Nick, Dan, Scott or Lewis!) then please email me via thelab@qwertyuiop.co.uk and I’ll fill you in. Thanks!

Meanwhile we ALMOST have enough people for a full run of The Smartest Person at Bother’s Bar and I intend to give people dates late Sunday night, so if you want to take part and haven’t got in touch yet then please do so.

What’s My Whine?

By | April 2, 2017

Whoo-hoo! It was the C21 Format awards last night. Do you remember when they used to award best format to The Bank Job and Take On The Twisters? Great days.

The two awards of interest, best Competition Reality Format went to Get The F*ck Out Of My House (the asterisk is a ‘u’ btw), where a hundred people share a house until one by one they can’t take it and leave, with the last person left becoming the winner. We briefly discussed it in comments around Christmas.

But best studio gameshow went to a show called Doctors vs Internet, where a team of doctors race against a team of civilians armed only with Google to try and diagnose people’s problems. It was getting 50% shares in Norway (reminder: Norway), but it’s already been commissioned for a second series on the Netherlands’ NPO1, it says here. Here’s a page on it, and here’s a video:

Unusual ordering

By | March 30, 2017

Filler bag time, and today it’s a 1987 episode of Runway with Chris Searle. Today’s question is: can you think of any other show that deliberately played its endgames at the beginning of the following episode, as a cliffhanger of sorts?

I’m not interested in shows that have games that are of variable length and what will be will be, this was deliberate. It’s also something they got rid of by the time Richard Madeley came along.

I’ve always loved the visuals of the original Runway endgame (although I prefer the later version’s clock music). I always found “would you like to stick with questions on the USA or I can give you questions on Bolivia?” choice non-choice a bit odd.

The Nonary Games

By | March 24, 2017

Something to file under “things that may be of interest”, out on Steam and PS4/Vita today is Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, a remastered collection of 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward previously released on Nintendo DS.

I have played neither of the games previously, but I’m totally on board with the theme – nine people trapped in an unusual situation and having to solve puzzles and team-up/betray each other in order to survive a deadly game. They sound like The Genius meets Saw, basically, but done as an interactive visual novel. A jumped-up Choose Your Own Adventure by the looks of things.

£55 on the PS Store feels a bit steep really but I think it will be my next purchase after I’ve finished Zelda anyway. Did you play them when they first came out? I’m aware there’s a third in the series also on 3DS released quite recently.

Edit: H/t Alex McMillan on Twitter, you can buy it for £43 at Base.com physically. It’s £45 at Amazon.

Edit edit: Some stuff about the Red Bull Mindgamers thing in the comments.