Ja tvoi sluga. Ja tvoi Rabotnik

Very occasionally, cinema goers are lucky enough to witness a ‘wow’ moment—not a film that merely makes you think it was good, but one where you know you just experienced an event, a film that has the potential to change a genre utterly. Pixar’s WALL•E is one such film.

Superficially, WALL•E is a film about a curious little waste-disposal robot, tasked with cleaning up a toxic Earth (whose humans have nipped off in a spaceship while the work’s being done for them), who looks a lot like a squat Johnny 5. Kids will love the (surprisingly brave) initial dialogue-free section of the film, which shows WALL•E going about his business, building skyscrapers of trash, and playfully cherry-picking bits and pieces to take home and categorise (a memorable moment shows WALL•E confused by a spork, and, logically enough, after hovering it over his small pile of spoons and a collection of forks, he places it between the two) and a string of exciting, high-paced action sequences that arrive later.

However, look past the child-friendly sheen and you have the greatest example to date from Pixar of a film that works on several levels. The Earth that WALL•E is trying to tidy appears to have been under the thumb of megacorporation Buy n Large, intent on driving the population into a constant consumerist frenzy. And when later in the film you chance upon the fate of the exiled humans, Pixar’s cartoon-like presentation barely masks a fierce satire on consumerism, apathy, laziness, and a generation’s desire to experience the world via purely virtual means, rather than actually living life and making genuine connections.

Of course, WALL•E is the antithesis of this. Despite being a robot, he has so much warmth and love to give, and yet he’s spent hundreds of years slowly cleaning up the Earth as his fellow droids gradually malfunctioned around him, thereby leaving him utterly alone. When the possibility of companionship arrives, he grasps it utterly, first with a scavenging cockroach, and then with EVE, a robotic probe whose function is to determine whether Earth is habitable. (With EVE’s form being sleek and white, I imagine it’s all Pixar could do to stop themselves plonking an Apple logo on her.)

The fact that every one of these components works brilliantly is testament to the talent within Pixar’s walls. The messages aren’t heavy handed, but will resonate with those who chose to engage with them. The animation is, perhaps unsurprisingly, first-rate, with wonderful designs, direction and characterisation. But it’s WALL•E and EVE’s story that’s the most riveting. And although you might feel foolish at welling up at the plight of two robots—animated robots at that—it’d take a heart of steel to not be captivated by this genuinely heartwarming and hopeful tale about loneliness and how important it is to make connections.

WALL•E seriously considers peeling off and reapplying all the stickers, because life’s just too short.

Can you play Last Ninja 2 on Wii? Shuriken!

In the second game of System 3’s once-lauded series, the last ninja finds himself mysteriously dumped in modern-day New York (well, the New York of 1988, hence the distinct lack of dozens of Starbucks). Once again, his mission is to defeat the evil shogun Kunitoki, with only his wits, weapons and a dreadful control method to aid him.

Plot-wise, this is the kind of high-concept garbage that makes for dodgy Hollywood movies (“Hey! Let’s put a caveman in 2008! No, wait! How about a rap star in the 1800s?”), but the juxtaposition of ninja and New York somehow works, resulting in the best title in the Last Ninja series.

The refined graphics go some way to help, and the variety of locations—Central Park, downtown, sewers, an opium factory, an office block—offer a sense of variety and real-world wonder that the original game and its sequel can’t match. Sonically, the game also appeals, with Matt Gray’s thumping SID tunes driving you on.

Where the game fails, much like the original, is in its lack of gameplay. Combat is tedious and borderline canned, and gauging distances for numerous fussy jumps is regularly made problematic by the isometric viewpoint. On the C64, this is bad enough, but Wii owners will likely find the game an exercise in frustration when playing using the Wii remote.

My advice is to leave your happy childhood memories of the game alone, along with those for things like Thundercats, Bagpuss and The A Team, which are also rubbish in the cold, harsh light of the modern day.

The Last Ninja 2 is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish). As Nebulus came out at the same time, you should get that instead. It was also glossy and visually exciting in the 1980s, but it happens to still be a decent game.

No, I’m the last ninja! No, I’m the last ninja! Etc.

It’s not easy bein’ green

Nebulus is cute. It has a cute little character, Pogo, who lives in a cute little world populated by cute little hostile nasties, and cute little sound effects accompany Pogo’s jaunts to the top of cylindrical towers that, for whatever reason, our bipedal frog-like chum has decided to rid his world of.

Don’t let this fool you, because if ever there’s a game that’ll make you want to smash a joystick to pieces (or your Wii, if you’re playing on Virtual Console), this is the one. And that’s because this game is hard.

The premise is simple: climb to the top of each tower via a maze of stairs, lifts and collapsing platforms. Once atop a tower, Pogo demolishes it (presumably, they aren’t well built; either that or Pogo hides extremely powerful explosives up his bottom), and you get to relax for a few seconds by playing a bonus game that finds the wee green guy catching fish using a high-tech submarine.

One might wonder: if Pogo has access to such technology, why not just hire a spaceship and blow the towers to pieces? But if he did that, we wouldn’t have this game. Instead, you’re lumbered with creeping slowly up the towers, ever mindful of the tight time-limit and the fact that absolute precision is required to pass many of Pogo’s adversaries.

This would all be fine if the game was utter rubbish—it could then be cast aside and you could get on with playing something a mite less frustrating. But the fact is that even 21 years after Nebulus first arrived on the C64, it’s still annoyingly captivating. You’re sucked in by the disorientating manner in which the towers are navigated (unlike most platform games, there are no edges—instead, Pogo moves ‘around’ the towers, which rotate in real-time on the screen, an effect that was astonishing at the time and still looks pretty today) and the utterly devious puzzles. And when you finally demolish one of the structures, you feel a true sense of achievement. Just don’t expect to get very far until half your joysticks are in tiny pieces.

Nebulus is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (about £3.50), and the sedatives you’ll need to calm yourself down after a few games are probably available from your GP.

We’re functioning automatic. And are fully psychotic

Paradroid. If ever there’s a word to make a C64 fan feel all funny in their happy place, that’s the one. Andrew Braybrook’s game typically heads many best-of lists, and it’s just reared its head on Virtual Console. But can a pseudo-3D blaster from the mid-1980s still hold gamers in thrall in an age of 3D shooters with more polygons per character than hairs on Braybrook’s head? (And this bearing in mind Braybrook’s fairly bushy moustache at the time Paradroid was released.)

In a word: yes. I don’t use the word ‘classic’ lightly, but Paradroid is, undisputedly, a classic game, and one of the very few titles from the C64 years that truly holds up today.

Part shoot ’em up, part exploration game, and with a sprinkling of reaction-based puzzling, Paradroid tasks you with boarding a fleet of ships and blowing its cargo of amok droids to pieces. The snag: your ‘influence device’ is rubbish—sluggish, and with about as much firepower as a hedgehog. The plus side: for a limited time, said device can attach itself to any other droid, limpet-style, taking over its capabilities, enabling you to dish out robot justice with vigour.

In the hands of a lesser programmer, Paradroid would have been long-forgotten. But Braybrook’s innovative thinking and attention to detail ensured his creation a place in gaming history. The graphics were limited by the C64’s power, and so Braybrook avoided trying for anything vaguely ‘realistic’, instead creating a highly abstract aesthetic that’s reminiscent of a blueprint. Droids are distinguished by number alone, making instant identification effortless. And yet the game’s stylish simplicity still resonates.

Rather than provide a full-on top-down view, Braybrook also hit upon the idea of a pseduo-3D viewpoint. Your droid ‘knows’ the deck layouts, but can’t see around corners or through doors. Therefore, despite this overhead game having been written in 1985, its de-facto viewpoint mirrors the kind of 3D shoot ’em ups that didn’t really exist until Wolfenstein 3D yomped on in.

Also, battling to take over another droid is a game in itself—a fast-paced battle of wits, with you firing connections to take over the circuit board of your adversary’s brain. It’s a diversion from the main battle, and almost as much fun as the main game itself.

In an era where so many games are smashed into pigeon-holes, the Braybrook vision that’s so obvious in Paradroid is a breath of fresh air. The game’s combination of arcade reflexes, strategic overtones and quickfire puzzles all add up to one hell of a production. And while some will doubtless cite Paradroid’s fans as delusional nostalgics, they’re the ones missing out by not giving this great game a chance.

Paradroid is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (about £3.50), although its sprite-collision detection is a little ropey compared to the original game. Despite this niggle, you are officially lacking in the marbles department if you don’t buy a copy. Well, unless you don’t own a Wii, obv.

The crime is life. The sentence is dentistry

When Judge Death first appeared, he was terrifying. A twisted marionette-like figure with an evil, decaying grin, dressed in a mockery of a Mega-City One Judge’s uniform, the grotesque creature sent chills down young spines. Kids were fascinated by the mystery. What was this creature? Where was he from? We were only offered tantalising glimpses, echoes about Death having wiped the stain of life from his world, where life itself was considered a crime.

Subsequent years saw more of the pieces fall into place, but as the gaps in Judge Death’s backstory were gradually filled, I liked the character a little less each time. He no longer held such mystery, and because the usually dependable John Wagner bizarrely warped the fiend into a tiresome comedy character, he no longer held any allure.

This collection is a long way from Judge Death’s nadir, but it’s no classic either. In a tale that originally saw print at the very beginning of the Judge Dredd Megazine, during the early 1990s, Judge Death holds hostage a Mega-City One reporter, forcing him to write Death’s history. This largely revolves around a cruel younger version of Judge Death (named Sidney) being inspired by his brutal dentist father into becoming a full-on genocidal maniac, ably aided by a little black magic and some college friends.

Ultimately, insight like this wasn’t really needed, and Young Death veers a little too far towards the comic side of black comedy. And although the story is fine—in fact, it’s quite enjoyable in itself—and well illustrated by the dependable Peter Doherty (despite his take on the Judge uniforms of Sidney’s world oddly bearing little relation to Judge Death’s own garb), it’s ultimately an irreverent and somewhat expendable tale that sits uneasily between the superior original Judge Death stories and the return to the character’s horror origins in My Name is Death.

Judge Death: Young Death is available now for £10.99. For more information about 2000 AD graphic novels, check out the 2000 AD Books website.