Fidel Gastro’s

Your eyes slowly open. Vague outlines of your darkened room surround you. You look at your clock, see it’s 4am, wonder why you are awake and then feel the pressure in your bladder. Ah. Wee waits for no man.

Deciding you can’t hold it, you stumble to the bathroom, reach for the light switch and you suddenly have a decision point

a) Don’t turn the lights on and therefore avoid the sequence of blinding yourself and then walking back into your bedroom and into the side of the bed as your nightvision has been compromised. You then wee in the dark, fail to hear the ’splish splash’ of wee into water and realise you’ve just wee’ed into your dressing gown.

b) Turn the lights on, get partially blinded for a moment but then wizz with Washington sniper-esqe accuracy, walk back into your darkened bedroom, trip over a pile of washing and smash your shin straight into the side of the bed. Drop the f-bomb repeatedly.

I’m weeing into my dressing gown right now

But yet there is an option c. ‘What is this option C?’ I hear you cry. Well I call it option P in this case; you actually close one eye before turning the lights on, giving you full laser-aim (with slight depth-perception issues ) but then when you have finished and go back into the dark bedroom - open the closed eye and close the open eye. Your previously closed eye still has full nightvision and you can navigate the assault course that is my bedroom and back to bed. AMAZING.

What’s with all the wee talk and can I ever keep this blog SFW? Well wee gives me an easy segue into the Nintendo Wii and it’s white block of fun the Wiimote, and probably not ever really safe for work in the foreseeable future. Anyway while this site is blocked by most financial institutions I’ll just say ‘poo party, poo party’ and head back to the video game discussion.

For years we’ve had the video game controller. An electronic interface between the complicated fragility of the human hand and a fat mustachioed Italian plumber, translating small thumbs movements into the balletic motions of spikey blue hedgehog. But the Wiimote looks to change this - allowing a simple block of white plastic to physically represent the movements of the tennis racket, the golf club, the steering wheel and many more.

Master baiter

The multi-purposeness of the wiimote means this single controller can be used for almost infinite purposes and possibilities. Yet I still long for the days when every type of game had it’s own specialist controller and I could enjoy Sega Bass Fishing with a mock-fishing rod, Point Blank with a replica Glock 19 light gun, Gran Turismo with a proper steering wheel and Samba de Amigo with a pair of electronic maracas.

Assembling this motley crew of plastic peripherals meant you also had the comedy surreality of driving your rally car with the dance mat (moonwalk to reverse out of a ditch) and play Super Street Fighter II with the fishing rod. That one never really worked properly but your trash talking was gold ‘YEAH I’m reeling you in BITCH!’

At the moment Guitar Hero II is leading a revival of custom controllers and with the announced ‘ROCKBAND’ featuring two guitars, a drum kit and microphone, we are hopefully going to see a golden age of extremely marginal and niche ’simulators’ with replica devices to plug into your Xbox 360. So without further ado - here is my proposed list of future games in the ‘Hero’ series.

Slash after chess club on Tuesdays

Super Guitar Hero II - Backstage edition

Taking a leaf out of Mötley Crüe’s book, this expansion pack comes with limited edition clip-on TV sensor to detect the ‘plasma screen out of the hotel window into the swimming pool’ special move and a pair of infra-red inflatable girldolls to re-enact various groupie love multiplayer levels. Getting the bowl of blue m&m’s gets you indestructibility for your whole turn (which I believe Nikki Sixx achieved in real life).

It ain’t no fun if the homies can’t get none.

Sitar Hero

Regionalised for the sub-continent and endorsed by Ravi Shanker, Pataks and Shilpa Shetty; Sitar Hero is bundled with a plastic USB Sitar and features with a final level involving playing the entire soundtrack to the 60 hour Hindu epic ‘The Mahabharata’. Obligitory pointless dancing and sword waving subgames are unlockable.

Master of Poppadoms.

Baby Sitar Hero

Poor excuse for a baby sitar pun. I won’t even start.

Qatar Hero II

Christ - what am I thinking, I don’t even though how I can write a joke about an Arab video game simulator without possibly invoking some kind of bounty on my head. It rhymes - that’s all, um ok let’s see - it’s a video game simulator of playing as the worst team in Fifa 94 on the MegaDrive and comes with a wired shoe controller to throw at something when you lose 9-0 for the tenth time. Bonus points for throwing the controller at the telly and it misses and hits your mum.

I’m going to whip the soles of their feet at half-time

Hiro from Heroes Hero

PS3 exclusive, the joypad is in the shape of Hiro’s chubby face and when the plot of the game gets itself into a cul-de-sac of nonsense, scrunch his face and use his ‘time-travelling’ special move as a get-out-of jail free/deus-ex-machina plot device to somehow explain the next episode in the series.

“This is a dude who, 700 years ago, totally ravaged China, and who, we were told, 2 hours ago, totally ravaged Oshman’s Sporting Goods. “

Beer-o Hero

Abomination game where a sensor in your pint glass controller measures your drinking rate in the ‘chin-a-pint’ level and if you manage to get 6 ‘Stella’ bonus stars, and your opponent spills your beer - it can be used as a weapon in the ‘bar brawl’ stages. Final boss is the toilet where you have to aim your drunken pee not onto your feet and avoid waking up praying to the porcelain god. Also has Dance Dance Revolution, Sing Star Karaoke and Sega Rally mini-games to renact a full drunken night out.

There we have it - we went from wee to wii and back again; just count yourselves lucky Nintendo didn’t call it the Pü - I can’t imagine what I’d have ended up writing.