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Liam O'Rourke

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Posts posted by Liam O'Rourke

  1. Another little thing - I fucking hate when they slow down the tackle that ends a game on The Edge. Overproduced shite. The whole drama is in watching the fall in real time and we never get to, the replay is in slow-mo as well, and the Gladiators fucking up and falling off is way more exciting if we're just seeing it as is because it's so sudden. 

  2. 7 hours ago, TheBurningRed said:

    Traitors Australia had a fantastic final few minutes. 
     

      Reveal hidden contents

    Sam deserved to go home with nothing. His downfall was even sweeter to lose right at the end. Cocky, arrogant shit. Whining at Camille because he deserved it. Actually the biggest wanker of a traitor out of the lot. Great tv  

     

    Spoiler

    It was so incredible. His whining about why didn't you just let me have everything because I deserve it was so much more satisfying than had he just been banished like everyone else. That show was the sorriest bunch of Faithful on a series yet, just an absolute lack of common sense logic all the way through, but that payoff was sublime.

     

  3. 46 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

    The face/head flicks (only way I can describe them) during those scenes are so good.

    Ross' D-Lo Brown to the producer after they finish is out of this world.

  4. Think back to how absolutely zero was said about Brawl Out on TV. Tony isn't saying anything like that on his television show, regardless of the context of the show, without lawyers agreeing he could easily justify it if legally challenged.

  5. Twilight Imperium is an awesome game, really fantastic. Personally I'd recommend a five player game, any more and it really slows the pace and the "community" as it were that gets created becomes less initimate, with five anything that happens to one race feels like it impacts everything and everyone, it's a blast.

    I'd say 8 hours would likely be on the high end, but your best bet is to meet up at 11 and you'll be done by 4 or 5, especially once you've played it before. And the time FLIES.

  6. 30 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

    But all the wrestlers had an element of fear about Vince because they knew he was running things his way. He could get rid of them in a heartbeat, the sociopathic bastard. Nobody is scared of Tony Sniff, the boys know how much they can take advantage of him. 

    Yes, nobody ever had a fight backstage in Vince's company. Or broke the law while in Vince's company. Or sexually assaulted minors while in Vince's company. Or physically assaulted Vince himself over a payoff in Vince's company. Or went on TV while on drugs and in no condition to perform in Vince's company. Or got fined for doing stuff on the air that they weren't supposed to in Vince's company.

    That fear, boy it sure cured all.

  7. 4 hours ago, Mikeymike83 said:

    Hey Liam, is there a place with all your previous podcasts to listen to? I remember listening to an older one about a year or so ago and liking it a lot. But just never went back to listen to others, for some bizarre reason!

    Squaredcirclegazette.podbean.com has them. Or subscribe on iTunes/Podbean/Spotify for the archives. Cheers!

  8. As @wandshogun09 mentioned, the new SCG Radio is up, this time covering one of the most explosive periods in company history - March and WrestleMania 8. The company becomes overwhelmed with negative media press and controversy - drug allegations turns to sex scandal, key officials resign, Vince McMahon is accused of rape, the media hits the story hard with the famous Larry King, Donahue and Geraldo pieces, and amidst the whirlwind, Hulk Hogan leaves the WWF. And of course, we look at the booking heading into Mania 8, as Flair Vs. Savage picks up as Elizabeth takes centre stage, Bret Hart and Roddy Piper have a classic, and the Ultimate Warrior returns to the promotion. A supersized episode, but this is one you don't want to miss. Check it out and enjoy.

    https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/8hmn3q/SCG_Radio_170_-_The_WWF_In_1992_Part_29zhe9.mp3

  9. On 8/8/2022 at 11:15 AM, WyattSheepMask said:

    Awesome, although selfishly I wish the episodes would come around a bit more often. I’ll always have time for early 90s talk as that’s when I became a fan

    Just finished your Pillman book too, really enjoy it.

    Cheers dude, thanks for the purchase and glad you enjoyed it!

  10. 1 hour ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

    I just made that in photoshop. In fact, couldn’t decide which was better

     

    732A5053-66CD-4757-9E3E-6CE1B8566207.jpeg

    If you're taking requests, could you do one with Rick Rude waiting for her at the top of the stairs? Preferably mid-gyration.

  11. What a thread.

    First time I saw a Playstation in action was early 96 - a friend's stepdad had one and I remember a beat-em-up, likely Tekken, was on the screen and I was just in absolute awe. These are the games I imagined we'd all be playing in five to ten years. But it was now. The leap from the previous generation has been mentioned, but it does need emphasising - this absolutely pissed all over the existing consoles. 

    For context, my family was never up to date with the latest systems or anything anyway, I don't think we even got a Mega Drive until...95 I want to say? Something absurd. Then my brother came up with the idea for Christmas 1996 - what if we ask for a joint headliner for a present, the Playstation. To my surprise, the parents seemed to sign off on it, and I couldn't believe it. We weren't just going to have a current hot console...we were getting THE hot console. My brother did some espionage, dug through their wardrobe and found it ahead of time - the Playstation and four games, which were Olympic Soccer (which, shit as it really was, was still a giant leap over Fifa 94 in terms of realism to us), Tunnel B1 (which now has two more mentions than it deserves in this thread), Firestorm: Thunderhawk 2 and the best of the bunch, Alien: Trilogy, which was actually pretty great. After finding the upcoming presents, my brother went out and bought Ridge Racer Revolution so we could play it as soon as we got the console out the box, but had to do a bit of crafty behaviour in playing it, since the Playstaion was in the main room at first and took centre stage as relatives all basked in the glory of these otherworldly graphics, and were otherwise ignored. "What game is this", my Dad asked as he watched us whizzing around the tracks. "Umm...Tunnel B1", lied Kieran.

    Can't stress how happy I am that the Playstation came at the age it did for me - 10, where the following few Christmases, this one included, have a heavy PS (or PSX as the magazines always listed it) influence. The year I got it was also the year it got confirmed for sure Father Christmas wasn't real after kinda thinking that for a year or so - pretty hard to keep up the illusion when my brother told me Santa's goods were being stored in the wardrobe. Oh well, fuck it, let's play Ridge Racer Revolution again.

    I wish I could remember more about the early games we got after that. Tekken was one for sure, Command and Conquer soon followed, as did the totally shite and disappointing WWF In Your House, and Die Hard Trilogy. Tomb Raider was played for weeks. 

    But at some point near the end of Summer 1997, my heart was truly a-flutter. The games magazines at this time were plentiful and amazing, the last true peak of the magazine generation. I read a review of WCW Vs. The World that gave it 8/10. I can't impress enough what a big deal it was to me that a wrestling game got given a legit high score - every wrestling game up to that point was always rated low (for good reason in most cases) and I'd brush it off, thinking the low scores were just because it was wrestling. And it would turn out that it wasn't - the games sucked (WrestleMania: The Arcade Game and In Your House earned low scores, and Power Move Pro Wrestling earned average but respectable ratings, and was the best of the early bunch for sure). Power Move was actually by far the closest to an actual wrestling experience available, and for that reason was actually a ton of fun. But back to WCW Vs. The World...

    I went through that magazine a hundred times, soaked in every picture. Visualised it. 60 wrestlers...40 moves each...while I was slightly confused as to the premise of all these non-WCW wrestlers when they could just do the WCW roster, I'd been reading Power Slam for about three years by then, so I knew enough to know, similar to @air_raid that Sam Song is Kenta Kobashi, Wu Fang is definitely Misawa, David Harley is Sabu, Black Ninja is Great Sasuke, etc. So if anything, it actually made me more excited in the end. I'd been reading about these guys for years without watching them wrestle, now I'll get to see what moves they do.

    I wanted it for months and asked for it for Christmas 97. I even entered the contest on TNT advertised on Nitro commercials to try and win a copy early, if anybody remembers that. I don't know that I ever wanted anything for Christmas as much as I wanted that game. Seeing it in the newly debuting Game store while Christmas shopping with parents that December, I gave a stern notice that there was no excuse for me not to get it on Christmas morning now. My Dad shot a knowing wink my way. The day came, and there it was. The fucking best feeling. The next few months are a blur, the sounds of the backing tracks constantly repeating, cracking bones on submissions and the exhilerating innovation of "Betting The Belt" in matches against family fulfilling the wrestling game experience I'd wanted for years and had only been moderately satisified by efforts like WWF Royal Rumble on the Mega Drive. Moreso than Power Move, this felt like wrestling. 

    In that same magazine I read the review for WCW Vs. The World, I'd seen a game called Final Fantasy VII get 10/10. Sounds good, I'll ask for that too. What an awakening that was. Again, the game experiences I'd had for the previous 12 months were fucking mind-blowing compared to everything I'd seen before. But this was another level yet, my first JRPG of course. Unbelieveably engrossing.

    WCW Nitro, which I was quite excited for seeing it get a 7/10 in a magazine, smoother graphics and promise of a big roster. Again, the hype train was in motion for a month or so, and I don't think I've ever been as immediately and bitterly disappointed by a game as that. Of the 64 promised wrestlers, 16 were the developers putting themselves in, and 16 were creatures like Frankenstein and a T-Rex. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT!? These aren't wrestlers. And this gameplay is a load of fucking shit as well. Goddammit. Where's WCW Vs. The World, get that back on.

    WWF War Zone seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere. Walking around town with my Dad on a random Saturday morning and seeing a poster of Steve Austin in the window of Electronics Boutique. I zipped in, one look at the back of the case, and it looked like the WWF had finally gotten serious. Wanted it immediately, had no means to get it, and while I am quietly doing the maths in my head of how and when I can afford to buy it, my Dad just flat out asks if I want it and buys it me there and then. It was a genuinely big leap by WWF game standards and it was a lot of fun, the first ever create-a-wrestler especially. Fast forward a little bit, and I see a computerised version of Stone Cold on the cover of a CVG mag with "WWF Attitude" written on the front, and the details and pictures on the inside were amazing. Full entrances promised with music and pyro. All these match types, weapons, blood, swearing, a proper career mode...all while keeping the War Zone dynamics? It was the most anticipated game ever for me, moreso than WCW Vs. The World for one main reason - the bastard thing was supposed to be released in May and got pushed back to June...to early July...to late July...to early August. Find out years later that it wasn't due to anything to do with Owen Hart, as most people probably assumed at the time, but rather because in an extremely late stage of development, the engine essentially broke and they had to put it back together. There were still, in the released game, very rare moments where you'd apply a submission and the guy doing the move would keep doing his motion while the other guy was no longer in it, and the only way out was to restart the console. Not knowing any of that at the time of course, I'm just left there wanting this "perfect" WWF game to come out.

    So many trips to the shop that ended with disappointment without the internet around to keep us all clued in. I had pre-ordered the game ahead of time (and got a cool WWF Attitude memory card free), and the Friday it was supposed to be released (for real this time) I was excited but my guard was up. Finally, my brother could take no more and phoned a Game store asking if it had actually been released. When he nodded yes, England may has well have won that penalty shoot-out in 96 for my reaction. When Mom came home from work and I told her the game had been released and asked if I could go to town tomorrow to pick up my copy, she told me that she thought she'd best dip in after work just in case they sold so many that my copy wasn't available, and she pulled out that little purple carrier bag...and there it was. Months of waiting. Mine, mine, all mine. 

    Of course, the control system in retrospect was clunky as hell and the game really wasn't as good as WCW Vs. The World for gameplay, not even close, but as an experience that closely reflected the company during the time of it's peak? It had that in spades, it delivered what I wanted.

    Then Smackdown came along and took things up another notch in terms of look and gameplay. I didn't even absorb until a few years ago that the engine was...Power Move Pro Wrestling amped up. It has to be said that as much as I loved the Smackdown games, I was very aware that over on the other console during the War Zone/Attitude timeframe, there was a REALLY awesome looking game called WCW/NWO Revenge that looked like everything I actually wanted - huge roster, gameplay that looked like WCW Vs. The World (I'd played World Tour on my cousin's N64 and knew it was pretty good) and cool looking arenas, music, the lot. It would pain me that some of the best wrestling game experiences I could have...I couldn't have.

    But my God, offsetting that, we have Grand Theft Auto where I can drive recklessly around an open city, run away from cops and shoot civilians? Metal Gear Solid where I use all my tact and guile to hide in a cardboard box and choke out or execute soliders with an unreal depth of story and immersion? We can keep rattling off the experiences - going through Victory Boxing's career mode, playing Worms endlessly, buying Tony Hawk's Skateboarding after playing a demo of it when Attitude was once again delayed and having so much fun on it...Driver got a mention and I'm glad, because never before or since has making videos of yourself driving through Miami and crashing through the tables and chairs seemed like such a blast. Being a ninja in Tenchu: Stealth Assassins and fighting unsavory types with a big fuck off sword. GRAN TURISMO~! felt like graphics taken to yet another insane level with a career mode that was frustrating enough that it would legitimately piss you off, and at the same time rewarding enough to make it worth the agony and try one more damn time. Getting Crash Team Racing and a multi-tap was a thing of beauty as well. As a family without Mario Kart, that game is pure fun, utterly fantastic. 

    The Playstation will forever be my true childhood console. The one friends came over and played on during that sweet spot of 10-14 years old, where games grew up before my eyes and I was on the crest of the wave for the first time, as opposed to playing Alex Kidd in Miracle World on Master System 2 in 1994.

    It's funny how things line up. I never quite realised this until now - in 2001, my parents separated fairly out of the blue, devastating me and my brother to the core. My Mom's parting gift to us a couple of weeks after she left was a PS2 for Christmas, in many ways drawing a line under that wonderful period of time in another fashion. My childhood was over as I knew it, marked by one less person in the house and symbolically with the big black box replacing the grey one. I really did like the PS2 a great deal, but in terms of affinity, it will never beat the first. It's not just the quality of games, it was the excitement around the new possibilities being explored and living it together for the first time. And of course, the age is a big part of it too.

    When lockdown kicked in, like many others I was looking for either new things to stay excited for and, more relevantly for this thread, old pleasures to relive. I made the decision to go and play through a ton of games again because, for whatever reason, I rarely ever finished any of them as a kid. The next unbelievable exprience was around the corner and I never got to find out what happened in so many stories. With the extra time I played through Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider II, Metal Gear Solid, Command and Conquer and Final Fantasy VII (the game I asked for on a whim in 97 and ended up playing years after the one I was actually pining for for months) start to finish. What a fucking console.

    Since this has just been a pointless meandering whistful look back, to close I'll just add that when I was going through that period in lockdown I told my wife the story about longing for WCW Vs. The World and it being my most anticipated present. Anybody who played the game will appreciate this, but that Christmas she bought me these coasters for my office:

    spacer.png

  12. Logged on for the first time in months just to say, for old listeners to the show, that Kyle Ross of TopRopeNation and I have started a series looking at 1992 in the WWF, following on from the 90 and 91 series we did previously. First episode covers January and February, looking at all the major stories, on screen and off, including the media war pitting Superstar Billy Graham and Dave Schultz against Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon, steroids continuing to dominate the headlines as testing begins and bodies start to shrink (or vanish), Ric Flair and the 1992 Royal Rumble, the heel turn of Sid Justice, hot potato with the Intercontinental Title and what it means for Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels throws Marty Jannetty through the Barber Shop window, the tag team division finally plummets all the way into the toilet and what could have been done to save it, as well as all the side stories, debuts, hirings and firings and loads more. 

    https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/8v28cw/SCG_Radio_169_-_The_WWF_In_1992_Part_19flc8.mp3

  13. The Ruby finish was intentional, it just wasn't done very well. The story of the first match was she pulled that kick off and won a match Nyla dominated. This time she couldn't pull her off the ropes for the kick, so it didn't happen, Nyla won. It was just poorly executed.

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