Attack of the Flickering Skeletons

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Retro is cool.
Everyone says so, so it must be true.

With Stranger Things, Ready Player One, Dara O Briain’s ‘Go 8 BIT’ and the multitude of throwback 80s nostalgia stuffed down our gaping chick like throats, it must necessarily be that retro, and the 80s in particular were a glorious time. Space invaders, Centipede, Pac-Man. All of these titles are living proof that once upon a memory, we lived in a simpler time when video games were amazing. Driven by game play there was no need for fancy graphics and sound. Games in the 80s could do no wrong! Right?
WRONG! 
There was a cavalcade of shit spewing forth from every 5 minute old company desperate to suckle on the teet of the everlasting cash cow that was the video game industry. Craving to be sated, the British public handed over hard earned cash for these poor excuses for games. But we’ve all forgotten that haven’t we? Well, no actually. There is one man still fighting to remind us of the absolute poison that we, often willingly, imbibed.


Stuart Ashen is a man with a very particular set of skills. Skills he has acquired over a long career. Skills that make him a nightmare for tat like 80s video games. If it stops being produced and celebrated now that’ll be the end of it. He will not look for it, he will not pursue it, but if it continues, he will look for it, he will find it, and he will melt it with a blowtorch. (Ahem...after reviewing it)
Attack Of The Flickering Skeletons is the second tome to be produced by @ashens (as he is better known on YouTube and Twitter) and the follow up to ''Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of'. This book is bigger and better, both in concept and also literally. On a larger format with more pages, even more infamous games are on the end of his hilarious lambastations.
There are a set of rules that a game must comply with for inclusion in the main part of the book (not including the interviews etc)
  • Released between 1980 and 1995 inclusive
  • Sold commercially
  • Released for a home computer format, not a console
  • So utterly terrible that it would be almost impossible for a reasonable person to enjoy playing the game
Packed with high quality screenshots, which sounds like a contradiction considering the sometimes culturally objectionable artwork on display, Ashens re-reviews games that weren’t 'good at the time but crap now', but have always been crap. Despite the rose tinted view of home computing that sometimes made an ok thing look great, the reviewers of the time saw through the crap and called out the con artists and rip off merchants for what they were. 

The very funny, and often hilarious, reviews are supplemented by interviews with other connoisseurs of retro gaming about the most disappointing games they’ve ever played/bought/owned, examples of terrible box art and stories of how publishing houses of the day would package any old dross to relieve you of your money.

Priced at 12.99 pounds this book offers a value for money at a series of magnitude higher than any of the games it contains.

Further to the book itself, ashens reviews all manner of tat, vintage, retro and modern, on his YouTube channel which, to date, has over 1.3 million subscribers. I discovered his videos for myself when his video ‘The world's sharpest knife’ was suggested to me by the website's algorithms. This video alone has a staggering 10.5 million views and to my mind is still one of the funniest things to ever grace the internet.
Check out his channel and definitely go to Forbidden Planet on November 2nd to check out both of his books. I am sure you won't be disappointed!


You can follow Stuart Ashen via the following:









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