Posted by Budgie at September 1, 2007 03:39 PM

"Babylon And Ting"

I've spent the best part of this week playing Jeff Minter's "Space Giraffe" on my 360.

Minter has taken David Theurer's 1981 Tempest arcade game for Atari and remixed it, again in his trademark psychedelic wigout fashion, for the Xbox Live Arcade.

Stick with me on this one. It plays kind of like Tempest (you navigate around the outside of a vector web shooting enemies that approach from within) but instead of controlling a spacecraft, you control a Giraffe.

Yes, a Giraffe.

In space.

Add to this the trippiest light show imaginable, some 100 weird geometric shaped levels and sound effects that include various animal noises, divebombing planes, ringing telephones and The KLF's "MU! MU!" chant.

It all adds up to a bewildering and addictive experience. Once you get the hang of it...

My wife saw the game for the first time yesterday She uttered 3 sentences after watching a few minutes of it :

"It's all just lines and lights"

"No wonder you've got bad eyesight"

and

"Did you actually pay money for that?"

Anyway, this brings me to this post. Each level has it's own unique shape and name. When I got to Level 16 I burst out laughing as it was called "Babylon And Ting".

I'm hoping it's named after this slice of trippy ambient dub...

Track : THE ORB - "TOWERS OF DUB"

You should all know this by now, what with it's Victor Lewis Smith prank phone call beginning and it's epic 15 minute excursion through bass and dogs barking...

Track : PETER RICHARD - "WALKING IN THE NEON (CLUB VERSION)"

As Space Giraffe's light show is part sound to light synthesizer, the game responds well to the addition of your own music. My current fave to have booming out my telly whilst shooting giant flowers and crawlers is this 1985 Italo track with it's "speeding through the cosmos" refrain.

Shame the track wasn't called "Walking In The Nuon".

(one for you Minter fans there...)

Enjoy.

Go Buy : The Orb - UF.Orb
Go Buy : Various Artists - I:Robots : Italo Electro Disco Underground Classics

Go Visit : Llamasoft
Go Visit : The Orb

Feel free to leave a comment about this in The Pipe section of the forum.

Ta,
Budgie