AUI

Amiga User International

International Rugby Challenge review
Score, 75%

It must have been a tricky thing to do but Domark have made a very good job of it...

IRC is a winner! Well done, Domark.

SC cAP26

Stuart Campbell

International Rugby Challenge review
AP26, 2%

LIFE'S A BITCH, THEN YOU PLAY INTERNATIONAL RUGBY CHALLENGE
International Rugby Challenge is bad. But exactly how bad is it? We decided to set up a scientific comparative test with some of the most-bad things we could think of to find out.

THE WAR IN BOSNIA
Hundreds of thousands of deaths, terrible atrocities committed in the name of 'ethnic cleansing,' the disintegration of entire nations into endless warring factions pitting brother against brother and father against son.

Badness Rating: Not Nearly As Bad As International Rugby Challenge.

THE FAMINE IN SOMALIA
Hundreds of thousands of deaths, relief supplies being looted and plundered by corrupt officials, starving people being shot by the opposing sides in a prolonged and pointless civil war.

Badness Rating: Close To, But Not Quite As Bad As, International Rugby Challenge.

THE RODNEY KING BEATING
Slight speeding offence punished by life-threatening assault with heavily-weighted sticks, perpetrated by four armed police officers against a defenceless man lying motionless on the ground. Led to huge riots in Los Angeles area, causing millions of dollars' worth of damage and several deaths.

Badness Rating: Approximately Half As Bad As International Rugby Challenge.

DEPLETION OF THE OZONE LAYER
Wanton destruction of a vital section of the planet's atmosphere by entire population of the industrialised world. With aerosols. Lowered resistance to lethal ultra-violet radiation causes massively increased incidence of skin cancer, not forgetting catastrophic climactic change and global warming, which in turn brings on melting of the polar ice caps, widespread flooding of much of the world's arable land and hence massive food shortages. Combination of these effects almost certain to lead to complete eradication of human life on the planet within the next 200 years.

Badness Rating: Would cause death of Jeremy Beadle, therefore Still Not As Bad As International Rugby Challenge.

HAVING ELECTRODES ATTACHED TO YOUR GENITALS AND BEING FLOGGED SENSELESS WITH A KNOTTED ROPE
Self-explanatory, really.

Badness Rating: Actually, This One Probably Is As Bad As International Rugby Challenge, But It's A Close Thing, And No Mistake. (Right, that's it, you're coming with us, sonny. Get in the van. - The Taste Police)

AP2
AP2

Domark's lawyers then issued a writ, the gist of which was that comparing the sheer terribleness of their sports game to various world atrocities threw the game and the company into a bad light, so they were seeking the withdrawal of all copies of AP26.

Foolishly, however, they made the old, old mistake of vigorously defending something palpably horrible. Merely briefing our defence counsel to pause the game, which entirely fails to halt the clock, would have secured victory, so we were totally confident in asking if Domark were stupid or something, or what?

Wisely, they gave up.

RB

Roger Bennett, head of ELSPA

Letter to Chris Anderson, then head of Future

It seems a little unfortunate that while we are trying to create a responsible perception for our industry, or at least deflect substantial media and political criticism, is it not perhaps irresponsible to trivialise major disasters worldwide by comparing them with an insignificant computer game?

It may be meant to be an innocent comparison, but it does infer a very strange sense of values being purveyed to a youth readership.

SC
Stuart Campbell

Of course, the thing that nearly everyone misunderstands about the infamous IRC boxout was this: I meant it.

Y'see, the world's fundamentally a terrible place. This much we all know. And certain things will, fundamentally, always happen in it - things like famine (inevitable because of the structure of the world's economy) and war (inevitable because of the nature of human beings).

And those are awful things, undeniably, but they're unavoidable, and so we have to learn to live with them.

International Rugby Challenge is worse because it's unnecessary - there's just no need, and no excuse, for anyone to add to the burden of human misery by producing such a piss-poor travesty of a half-baked computer game. On a day-to-day basis, sad though this is, people are depressed a great deal more by being ripped off for £25 of their hard-earned money than they are by world poverty.

I meant it then and I mean it now.