GameStarz: SPOnG speaks to Bloc Party Guitarist

This week on SPOnG we’re going to introduce a new feature, which we’ve cleverly named GameStarz. It’s quite straightforward. We collar a celebrity who likes videogames and ask them probing questions and hope they agree to answer. We don’t really mind which celebrity we bag each week, as long as they are a good one and have at least a vague knowledge of, and liking for videogames. For the purposes of GameStarz, a ‘good celebrity’ is not measured by talent in any way, but by how many people in the country would recognise them. A really good talentless but universally recognized one, for example, would be someone like Daniel O’Donnell – everyone recognises him, even (especially) your Gran. A really bad, very talented but universally unrecognized one, would be our mate Dave. Dave’s an incredible jazz drummer and artist, but is not a celebrity, even though our Gran might recognize him. But that’s only because he’s our mate. Neither Dave nor O’Donnell will be taking part in GameStarz.

We came up with this genius concept whilst browsing the top shelf at our local WHSmiths (for Windsurfing and Trout Fishing magazines, honestly!). It struck us that these celebrity types must be of interest to around approximately 99% of everybody in the country, seeing as 99% of the magazines on the shelves feature them all glossy and gleaming and photoshopped up on their covers. By extension it struck us that some of these celebrities, when they are not in photoshoots for magazines or opening supermarkets or running charities and all that, must have some spare time to kill. Which (and our brain was really on overdrive now) meant that some of them must play games. Wowza! Lets find out and see what they’ve got to say about it, our brain says. So we did. And we have. We badgered some celebrity and music PR types until they agreed to organise some interviews for us. And here, below, is the first fruit of our labours.

Bloc Party have been the darlings of the Indie Music Scene for some time now. SPOnG went down to see them at Brixton Academy earlier this year, with our much more clued-up younger sister, and can honestly report that it was one of the gigs of our year. Admittedly, we’ve probably only been to five this year, but it was still up there. We even considered buying their album afterwards, but had forgotten all about this by the time we got home (no disrespect to the band you understand, but all our disposable income must, by SPOnG law, be spunked on imported videogame tat). SPOnG spoke to Russell, the guitarist from the band (2nd from the left in the pic), who’s more than happy to step forward and declare his passion for games.


SPOnG: What are your favourite games of 2005? And why?

Russell: My favourite game of 2005 was Kingdom Hearts, because it combined my favourite game genre with a nice trip down memory lane.


SPOnG: What are your top three favourite games of all time?

Russell: Final Fantasy 8, Street Fighter Alpha and probably something Mario related.


SPOnG: Whats your earliest memory of playing video games?

Russell: On an old Atari thing we had at home when I was about 3 I guess, hours of fun.


SPOnG: Xbox, PlayStation, PC or Gamecube? Any preferences, and if so can you say why?

Russell: I was always a Nintendo man previously, but I love RPG's so Final Fantasy heading to PlayStation pretty much stole me away.


SPOnG: Unless you are one of the lucky few who already has an Xbox 360, will you buy a next-generation console in 2006? And if so, which one? Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Revolution?

Russell: Probably not.... i don't get much time to play games these days, and I have a real backlog of PS2 games I've not even opened yet.


SPOnG: When you are buying a new game, how do you make the decision what to buy? Magazines? Word of mouth? Pot luck?

Russell: It used to be from magazines but now.... well, I don't get that many games so its either word of mouth or just getting the next Final Fantasy game!


SPOnG: Do you play games alone, online with others or multiplayer with your partner, family and/or friends?

Russell: I used to play with friends all the time but sadly that’s pretty rare these days so its mostly alone.


SPOnG: If you were given carte blanche to design the game of your dreams, what would it be?

Russell: Hmmm... I'm pretty happy with the suprise of not knowing what a game brings.. if you designed it yourself there wouldn’t really be any fun in playing it.


SPOnG is looking forward to The Godfather game, which is out in early 2006. With this in mind, which other movie license(s) would you like to see video game versions of?

Russell: Movie games are almost always rubbish... well, 99% of the time anyway. Except Bladerunner on PC, that was completely amazing, it really was like being in the film. An update of that would be nice.


SPOnG: Do you play games on tour? If so what?

Russell: We do if we're on a bus... last tour saw certain members get heavily addicted to GTA San Andreas and a Snooker game.


Well, there we go celeb-gamer fans. It turns out that Russell’s a man after SPOnG’s very own heart – being both a huge Final Fantasy and Bladerunner fan, whilst also being very suspicious of dubious movie license cash-ins. And the more we think about that idea of updating Bladerunner for next-gen consoles, the more we like it and want someone to make it so.

Thanks to Russell for his time and to Simon at Coalition Management.

Next week: Pop music uber-brain Phil Jupitus