What Happened To Laird's Lair?

[Guest]

@Shaggy the Atarian

 

Well that sort of sums him up to a tea, mate. So you put forth a pretty good argument for something 'The 64 was better than the Amstrad CPC at racing games' Oh no, now you've upset him. He would then tell you Burning Rubber is better than ANYTHING the 64 had, better than Outrun Europa, Chase HQ 2, Lotus, Turbocharge, Power Drift. Despite the fact 95% of games for the 464 were crappy ports of Speccy games in a mini window.

 

He once told me Pitfighter was an all time classic. I mean personally not only were the ports iffy as, the Coin-Op was rotten.

 

The thing is, whatever you say, he says the opposite. He does this to try to demonstrate his supposed superior knowledge over you. He made such a thing of Ninja Spirit (a great game) and how good he was at it that I sat down for THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE - I'd never got round to playing the excellent version on the 64 (I have now) - and I got straight through to the second level. He couldn't get over it. When he had played it, he got killed pretty quick and I soon sussed he was no gamer in the sense he was not very good at games. This was at a retro event. Back before I knew he was a dick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lost Dragon]

I don't think anyone would claim the likes of Rescue On Fractulas, Ballblazer,  Elktraglide Dropzone etc are better experiences on the 8-bit Atari hardware, due to faster CPU, more colours etc.

 

But when i read Kierens C64 review of Elktraglide, i knew he'd never actually played it as he failed to mention how the music reacts on this version and not on the Atari.

 

 

He had one of my reviews of his A to Z books on the C64 pulled by Amazon.co.uk, as i had put a link to the GTW entry, proving he couldn't of played the Ocean/Imagine version of Victory Road, neither attempt was ever finished and all that's been recovered was a loading screen. 

 

 

His cross platform reviews in these guides were a joke as well.

 

Chuckle Egg:physics are different between versions, A8 has solid 3D style platforms. 

 

Bubble Bobble:Again physics on bubbles differ between versions.

 

Cabal:missing a level from the Coin-Op, but mistake never corrected. 

 

Centipede:You've never controlled any bug spray or bug spray gun, it's refered to as a shooter in the Coin-Op, spark firing magic wand in the home versions,yet the error appeared in every review.

 

And he is an Atari fan? 

 

 

His comments about John Carmack and Jaguar Doom having no in-game music and why Lynx Wolfenstien were totally wrong.

 

 

One book introduction still had text from an earlier book in it, he doesn't even read back what he wrote when he edits a few lines to suit.

[Guest]

I saw someone pointed out in one review that he had copy pasted the introduction from another of his 'books' in the one reviewed which said it 'wasn't a definitive A-Z of SYSTEMB' when in fact the 'book' was for SYSTEMA.

 

Does he even know what Physics are ? I would think Max Payne etc not basic maths in platform games. He is obsessed with Atari but as I say it's all very dubious and most of us know more than he does.

[Galahad]

In one of his Amiga tomes, he reviewed Agony by Psygnosis.

 

He then went on to claim that Psygnosis "stole" the box artwork from a Spectrum game called Planet of Death!!

 

When you look at the Spectrum game in question, they liberally covered the artwork with text.

 

So rather than officially licence it (which they did) he must be suggesting Psygnosis ripped off the artwork and then presumably redid the artwork to remove all the text!!!

 

The reality is that Psygnosis licenced it off the author Anthony Roberts, and also paid Roger Dean to provide the Agony logo, the same Roger Dean that did lots of their box art, the same world famous Roger Dean that did Yes album covers.......but sure, Kierens claim that Roger Dean would get involved with actual theft from another artist and put his name to it..........wtf?

[Lost Dragon]

52 minutes ago, BubbleBobble77 said:

I saw someone pointed out in one review that he had copy pasted the introduction from another of his 'books' in the one reviewed which said it 'wasn't a definitive A-Z of SYSTEMB' when in fact the 'book' was for SYSTEMA.

 

Does he even know what Physics are ? I would think Max Payne etc not basic maths in platform games. He is obsessed with Atari but as I say it's all very dubious and most of us know more than he does.

We do and the irony here is years ago when he sent me the abusive email,after it turned out he'd lied about Jeff Minter and Lynx Ultra Star Raiders, he said he had yet to see any real proof people like myself knew more about Atari than he did.

 

You've had that proof every day since Kieren.

 

Every day and at every platform going.

 

And not just Atari, people have been correcting you on:

 

Atari,Commodore, Sega, Sony, MSX,Amstrad, SNK,3DO etc.

 

Any subject you presented yourself as an expert on, the community had to correct your claims to prevent misinformation being taken as fact.

 

The community has basically proof read and fact checked the A to Z guide reviews so he can make corrections for his compedium book editions, for free for him.

[Lost Dragon]

I don't think i have ever seen any writer quite as happy to honestly boast of their ignorance on any given subject matter, as Kieren. 

 

Take his Human Killing Machine review, in Stuart Ashens book: Attack Of The Flickering Skeletons.

 

(Irony starts with our Atari Expert Kieren, proclaiming he'd previously never even heard of Domain Of The Undead by Red Rat Software for the A8 range, when reviewing the book at the time on his channel)

 

 

Kieren claims the game  was hyped for months by the  games press.

 

Not true.

 

Zx Spectrum Magazines merely pointed out it looked to be more challenging than the original Streetfighter, that they loved the look of the games big sprites and detailed backgrounds.

Sinclair User featured it as a cover game, but it only pulled in 78% at review, Y.S gave it a 7/10 score, Ace 568/1000, Crash 73%, The Games Machine 70%

 

Yet Kieren presents it as being the  Rise Of The Robots of it's day.

 

rise having  pulled in rave reviews from CD32 Gamer magazine, Computer and Video games magazine on SNES and PC CD, plus it was a cover game for many magazines at the time.

 

Kieren made the claim:"Every single magazine out there swore that H.K.M was going to be the next big thing, the game that would take fighting games to a new level and assert US Gold as the dominant force in home computer games".

 

 

No they didn't. 

 

His next statement was:"Now in hindsight it's quite obvious that said magazines were likely in receipt of bulky brown envelopes handed over to them in a dimly lit Birmingham car park.."

 

WTF?

 

US Gold placed a lot of magazine adverts for it yes and that was advertising revenue magazines needed, but what a statement to make.

 

Then came Kierens biggest folly, a complete and utter understanding of the games press itself:

 

The only mega score awarded was the 99.9% score, which was in fact  a MOCK score, given Danielle in Crash magazine and any true writer would of got the joke, espically as she mentioned Thunderblade, LED Storm and Last Duel, all US Gold titles.

Danielle was of course, Danielle "Woody" Woodyatt, US Gold's lovely P.R lady.

:-)) 

 

No research.

 

Statements made with no supporting evidence. 

 

 

Failure to get the most blatant magazine in-house joke review. 

 

 

 

[Guest]

Hmmmm. HKM.

 

I've long suspected US Gold gave incentives for good reviews. I know that quality was not high on the agenda especially for ports where a lot of money was paid for licences then they had 4-6 weeks in some cases to pump out 'anything' and let the PR girls to go out drinking with the guys from the mags. I even once joked about a US Gold game I think it was that I 'hoped the reviewer enjoyed his BJ/holiday' he got for a gushing review.

When it comes to H.K.M, I don't think it was ROTR territory. For one thing every mag had 6-8 page previews for months up to the release. I can still remember clear in my mind C&VGs cover. Every mag the game was to come out on had so so much coverage.

 

It was a technical breakthrough using high end rendering machines to produce superb graphics (for the time). The problem was when it was crushed down to the 16 bits it became the equivalent of a Live Action Movie that had been 'translated' by a five year old with a sketch pad and a bumper pack of crayons. 

 

It also played like a dead dog. HKM looked pretty good. I'm sure it got a fair bit of promotion. The aforementioned Danielle was shit hot at promotion. But there is no way you can compare the two. No way.

 

The problem with Kizza is, he seems to make these mental connections himself and then wholeheartedly embraces

his own speculations as PURE FACT then relays them as such and in doing so shoots his own credibility to shit.

 

 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Galahad said:

The reality is that Psygnosis licenced it off the author Anthony Roberts, and also paid Roger Dean to provide the Agony logo, the same Roger Dean that did lots of their box art, the same world famous Roger Dean that did Yes album covers.......but sure, Kierens claim that Roger Dean would get involved with actual theft from another artist and put his name to it..........wtf?

Yeah Roger Dean was a legendary cover art artist and synonymous for many of us with Psygnosis's output. Of course this is a perfect example of what I put just above where Kizza makes a mental connection in his own mind and then throws out his assumption as 'Fact' when it is no such thing.

 

Of course a lot of ripping off of artwork did happen in the gaming industry- usually over at Ocean ?️‍♀️

where in the eighties Bob Wakelin was suffering from a bad case of the Roy " Lichtensteins".

[Shaggy the Atarian]

7 hours ago, BubbleBobble77 said:

@Shaggy the Atarian

 

Well that sort of sums him up to a tea, mate. So you put forth a pretty good argument for something 'The 64 was better than the Amstrad CPC at racing games' Oh no, now you've upset him. He would then tell you Burning Rubber is better than ANYTHING the 64 had, better than Outrun Europa, Chase HQ 2, Lotus, Turbocharge, Power Drift. Despite the fact 95% of games for the 464 were crappy ports of Speccy games in a mini window.

 

He once told me Pitfighter was an all time classic. I mean personally not only were the ports iffy as, the Coin-Op was rotten.

 

The thing is, whatever you say, he says the opposite. He does this to try to demonstrate his supposed superior knowledge over you. He made such a thing of Ninja Spirit (a great game) and how good he was at it that I sat down for THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE - I'd never got round to playing the excellent version on the 64 (I have now) - and I got straight through to the second level. He couldn't get over it. When he had played it, he got killed pretty quick and I soon sussed he was no gamer in the sense he was not very good at games. This was at a retro event. Back before I knew he was a dick.

 

I get that we all have our preferences for gameplay, but it should not be difficult to take into account all of the elements between ports (frame rate, color use, included/added or missing features compared to the original, sound/music, etc.) if you are attempting to review a game.   

 

I'm pretty well versed in the arcade universe and no one likes PitFighter because it wasn't a good game, more of a badly controlled mess. Just because something is old or made by a company with a name doesn't make it a classic. I wouldn't waste money putting it in my arcade because people would rather play real classics like Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat. 

 

That Ninja Spirit story reminds me of someone I used to work for (it also reminds me of the game "journalists" that need a special easy mode because they suck at the thing they are supposed to be good at). He was the CEO of a company that sold arcade machines, but when I watched him play games, he would button mash like a 2 year old and die quickly. After I saw that for the first time, I took his opinion on how games played with a grain of salt. 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I get that we all have our preferences for gameplay, but it should not be difficult to take into account all of the elements between ports (frame rate, color use, included/added or missing features compared to the original, sound/music, etc.) if you are attempting to review a game.   

 

I'm pretty well versed in the arcade universe and no one likes PitFighter because it wasn't a good game, more of a badly controlled mess. Just because something is old or made by a company with a name doesn't make it a classic. I wouldn't waste money putting it in my arcade because people would rather play real classics like Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat. 

 

That Ninja Spirit story reminds me of someone I used to work for (it also reminds me of the game "journalists" that need a special easy mode because they suck at the thing they are supposed to be good at). He was the CEO of a company that sold arcade machines, but when I watched him play games, he would button mash like a 2 year old and die quickly. After I saw that for the first time, I took his opinion on how games played with a grain of salt. 

PitFighter was and is shit, digitised sprites or no. Bloody rubbish controls, and now the gfx look dated as F. 

In the UK the original computer mags were staffed not by journalists but by kids literally 16, 17 18 year olds who

were really really good gamers. That's where they were recruited from, the arcades. This sometimes lead to unfair

reviews where they were far better gamers than the general readership, but on the other hand, you want people

who know what they are doing, as they could play through to later stages and such long before they started giving

journalists cheats which became the norm. PitFighter was crap on every system. That's no speculation, that my friend

is fact. Another example of his goading behaviour.

[Guest]

Also, you are entirely correct.

 

You review the game by describing any background to the game, then the story or gameplay and if it is a port or conversion you then compare the flaws or lack thereof compared to other versions. Usually making reference

to the machine it originated on be it an Arcade or a C64 or whatever. That is how it is done. The reason he fails

to do any of this is because contrary to what he puts- Is he:

A not a journalist B not good at games C lazy as F. Or all 3 !

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

After I saw that for the first time, I took his opinion on how games played with a grain of salt. 

Yep. With Kizza you're basically in the UK McDonald's position where when they cook chips (fries), they have a large fryer and every few minutes they pour in more chips. Every time they do this they put in a ton of salt, and when you are unfortunate enough to get the chips that have lay at the bottom for an hour and not been scooped you effectively end up with more salt than chip. That is how you should approach anything laughingboy says.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

I know that some people use the contrarian method just to stir the hornets nest, but the problem is that it's a method that should be used sparingly (and when it is, backed up with insight & logic) if you care at all about credibility and honor. If you only are a contrarian to be a rebel or whatever, you end up disintegrating said credibility. Stretching things to make a bad game or port (or platform) sound good doesn't make you look smart, it shows that you're an idiot.  

 

I suppose PitFighter and Primal Rage serve as examples as to when someone is letting blind fanboyism show through. Atari Games didn't really chase the fighter craze like everyone else because after those two efforts (and Guardians of the Hood), they realized their designers were better suited to different styles of games.  Yes, they did have some unreleased fighters, but it's because they saw that the games would be crap, so they canned them and moved on. 

Edited February 19, 2020 by Shaggy the Atarian
typo fix

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Ooops, looks like from my comments in this thread, I've been banned from the Jaguar Sector III group. Oh well

[deepthaw]

I'd never heard of this guy before all this, but he's causing all this drama over ... what appears to be 8 and 16-bit computer game reviews?

 

WTF man? 

[neo_rg]

3 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Ooops, looks like from my comments in this thread, I've been banned from the Jaguar Sector III group. Oh well

You will only one of many in the purge. JS3 will end up a walled of vacuum of a Facebook group.

[Guest]

Yeah, I mean, it is all very good being contrary when you are right or have a point but swinging random bullshit just to hack people off is another thing. For example I maintain that the c64 version of Ikari Warriors (John Twiddy/UK version) is the best home conversion. A lot of people think the Amstrad port. But although people might not agree with me or my opinion that Meet Joe Black is a classic brilliant movie at least my views have validity. Just saying 'I can't stand Zelda and Mario' is just shit-string. Because half the gaming world loves one or the other. NB: Not really got into Zelda due to the depth. I do like it what I've played. Mario I love esp Super Mario World and M64.

 

Personally I feel if you play computer, video, arcade games and you can't find anything in either Zelda or Mario then I really don't know what you would be into ?

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, deepthaw said:

I'd never heard of this guy before all this, but he's causing all this drama over ... what appears to be 8 and 16-bit computer game reviews?

 

WTF man? 

Goes far deeper, deepthaw. The guy well at first I liked him. But he's one of these people that has more faces than a rubix cube. Goes out of his way to hack everyone off. Claims to be a journalist which is the funniest thing I ever heard. The guy is a fool to himself. He loves the drama. Claims to have autism when he doesn't. Just a cover for his behaviour.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Ooops, looks like from my comments in this thread, I've been banned from the Jaguar Sector III group. Oh well

How on earth will you cope, Shaggy. 

 

The whole point of groups is for free discourse like here, not a dick-tatorship where if you are not licking the boots of the admin you get kicked out. I've just thought of a new nickname for kieren, "Kizza the Jizza".

 

If you're wondering, "Jizz" means ejaculate in the UK.

[+Random Terrain]

Just now, BubbleBobble77 said:

Claims to have autism when he doesn't. Just a cover for his behaviour.

 

I have Asperger's Syndrome, but it doesn't give me the urge to pretend I made games that I didn't (or the other things that were listed in that video). I have the opposite problem. I have the urge to be as truthful as possible, especially since I wouldn't be able to remember what lies I told.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

3 minutes ago, BubbleBobble77 said:

How on earth will you cope, Shaggy. 

 

The whole point of groups is for free discourse like here, not a dick-tatorship where if you are not licking the boots of the admin you get kicked out. I've just thought of a new nickname for kieren, "Kizza the Jizza".

 

If you're wondering, "Jizz" means ejaculate in the UK.

I was a part of JS2 back-in-the-day, so one gets used to these drama/collapse cycles. 

 

Still, it's very apparent Kieran, since I assume you're reading this, that you have a major problem and need help. You've done nothing to refute the claims & evidence brought against you; Pulling that stunt with getting AA banned on FB was quite immature (I won't say childish, as that'd be an insult to children) and a stupid calculation on your part, as you've done nothing more than brought more attention to your bad behavior over the years. If I had known how you had claimed the credit for making games that weren't yours, I would have had nothing to do with you much sooner than now. That is absolutely loathsome. Quadrupling down on how right you are while everyone else is wrong and "vile" isn't how you solve this. 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Random Terrain said:

 

I have Asperger's Syndrome, but it doesn't give me the urge to pretend I made games that I didn't (or the other things that were listed in that video). I have the opposite problem. I have the urge to be as truthful as possible, especially since I wouldn't be able to remember what lies I told.

A lot of people in retro circles are on the spectrum. I know I exhibit some of the key behaviours, but to use a disability as a shield for all criticism is wrong, for one thing and for a second he just doesn't have autism. I do suspect he has some kind of personality disorder though. 

 

A lot of people with Aspergers are very direct (others not, there is a whole spectrum) and in some instances brutally honest. Kizza's behaviour goes way beyond that. He is just offensive for the sake of it which is whole different kettle of fish.

[Skarrj]

Still a better creator than Hancock

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

1 minute ago, Skarrj said:

Still a better creator than Hancock

Meh, Dogshit is still dogshit whether produced by a pit bull or a Chihuahua. ?

[Guest]

The beautiful thing for me, is. I am not on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or other Anti-Social media site... When he inevitably starts to slag me off personally, people will know I am not there to defend his BS. If he wants a chat IRL I am happy to knock him spark out speak to him cordially.

Edited February 20, 2020 by Guest
thought better of my comment