Oh crystal ball, crystal ball
Save us all, Mini-Scribes is beautiful
Mirror mirror, on the wall…

Q: I was wandering through the Servants’ Dormitory trying not to get pummeled to death by a Jessie N’ Clyde in Grabbed by the Ghoulies when I noticed a Frankie Goes To Hollywood Shirt on the ground to the right. My question, simply put, is why is there a ‘Frankie Says Relax’ shirt in my Ghoulies? Does the Baron wear it as he flies around in his pantomime plane? Is Crivens a fan of controversial ’80s synth pop? Or does it mean something else entirely?
   Relax, don’t do it.
   Lance Kolaher

A: We have asked designers. We have asked artists. We have asked Professor Stephen Hawking, Professor Brian Cox and anti-Frankie 1980s DJ Mike Read, or at least thought about it. None of those people confess to any knowledge of the content of this allegation. Either what you’ve uncovered here is a fragment of the most well-guarded conspiracy in human history, or the person who put it there has since left the company. Or, equally conceivably, half the people who worked on Ghoulies have chronic memory rot from years of reality TV, junkfood and alcopops.

Q: Dear Rare,
   Since for reasons unspecified you refuse to make the action/adventure games your fans have been demanding for over a decade could you at least put some of the beloved characters from those games in your sports games. I think it would take away a little of the sting if I could at least play as Banjo and Kazooie or Conker in one of your sports games.
   Sincerely,
   Jimmy

A: Reasons unspecified: we can’t possibly create every sequel and remake and XBLA port that people bawl at us to make on a daily basis, and when it comes down to it, Kinect Sports has proven more popular than anything else we’ve done in recent years. So while we never rule out returning to action-adventure or any other genre, we also have to a) be able to afford junkfood and alcopops and b) satisfy an active audience of more than three million people who now know Rare best for Kinect Sports.
   Many ideas were (and continue to be) tossed around for Sports mascots; the inevitable consensus was that the audience for this franchise is different enough to find a load of old-school Rare references bewildering rather than encouraging. Especially if one of them was Mr. Pants, which I would make damn sure it was.

Q: This is a little mockup I did of Blast Corps on the ZX Spectrum — I hope you like it! I tried to make it as accurate as possible, but living in the US I really don’t know much about the ZX Speccy, nor its internal hardware. I WAS raised on BC, though. !#!@% SIDESWIPE!
   Evan Gildow

A: Don’t you mean !#!@% BACKLASH!?
   This is very nearly incentive enough to rouse the old 48K beast from hibernation in the attic and see if it still works. You just know top-down cyan Blast Corps with one-channel bleepy ukulele music would have been a Crash Smash and a Your Sinclair Megagame.

Blast from the Past: December 24, 2003

Q: Speaking from a purely personal view, I reckon you guys need to sort yourself out and do an update of Blast Corps for the ‘Cube. There are just not enough Heavy Machinery Save The World From Nuclear Disaster games on the market right now so I reckon your niche awaits. So there you go. Get on with it.
   What are you doing still reading this? You know what you have to do.
   Then we can talk about JetPac…
   Alex Trowers

A: I thought your name was ‘Alex Trowsers’ at first. Sadly, the reality wasn’t half as funny. Have you thought about changing it?
   Blast Corps update = unlikely. GameCube version = currently impossible. Put the two together, and you have…

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