My Favourite Game
The comedian, actor and writer on creating games for a laugh, and occasionally beating his son at Street Fighter
Brian ‘Limmy’ Limond talks us through his life in videogames
Brian Limond, better known as Limmy, was a web developer before gaining notoriety through his website, www.limmy.com, and podcast. Following appearances in the videogame-focused online TV show Consolevania and then BBC Scotland’s follow-up, Videogaiden, he went on to create Limmy’s Show. Here, he talks about the urge to create, GTAV crew woes, and the previously unheard-of Commodore Connoisseur. In 2008, you uploaded a spectacular Guitar Hero III Through The Fire And Flames performance on expert. Have you played World Tour? No, I haven’t. There’s no point. It would be like playing my five-year-old son at chess – I would demolish the opposition. There’s no challenge. It’s like when Alexander the Great cried when there were no more worlds to conquer. Do you play with your son often? Aye, we play. We’ve played Fruit Ninja a wee bit, and he plays stuff by himself on his tablet. But we’ve played Ultra Street Fighter IV together, because I showed him some videos and thought, ‘Right, just as long as I explain to him that you can’t walk into school or softplay and grab somebody like fucking Zangief and jump up in the air with them.’ I beat him now and again just to acclimatise him to losing here and there. How old were you when you started playing games? I was sort of there at the very beginning, as a five- or six-year-old. I remember we had something that was kind of like Pong, on the Atari 2600, as well as Pitfall and Combat. I played things like Star Wars, Space Invaders and Pac-Man in the arcades, too, and all of the ’80s Williams classics. Later I had a VIC-20 and then a Commodore Plus/4 – I used to call it a ‘Commodore Connoisseur’. I’ve only recently found out that it was just written on the box because of all the accessories it came with. Nobody fucking corrected me. I also had an Atari ST, and I’d go round a pal’s house who’d have the same games as me but on an Amiga, so he’d have more fucking sound effects. You’d get hold of a pirated copy of Cubase to make yourself feel better, but you’ve not got any equipment, so it doesn’t make up for the fact that all of these games are fucking better on Amiga. How did broadcasting your own gaming live streams come about? The fact is I’ve got a webcam. I’ve not been on it for a while, but I used to go on it quite a lot. If it was on the 360, which I’ve kind of ditched for a long time now, I don’t have the hardware to do all the streaming stuff. But because I got back into PC games, I thought, well, I’ll do what I do all the time and stream stuff. What made you return to PC gaming? I fell out of love with the 360 when Rockstar fucked about with Grand Theft Auto V. I used to play a lot with the folks in my crew and wanted a lot of money quickly. There’s this one-minute race, Cutting Coroners, that we used to do all the time, and you got about $8,000 if you won. Then Rockstar changed it so that even if you won one of the 20-minute races, you’d get about half the money you’d get if you fucking lost one of the shorter ones! So I stopped playing it in a huff. I remember moaning about it for about ten minutes to two Rockstar North guys who were at the Scottish BAFTAs once – they were like, “Oh, right… Well, we’ll pass your feedback on. Bye.” Do you still dabble in development? Aye, I come from a background of web development and wee Flash games, and I’ve done some jokey games in Unity. I like showing off and going, ‘Look what I made!’ I made a stupid wee thing called Jumping that’s based on a sketch that I did on Limmy’s Show. If I see coding on the TV, or in something like Indie Game: The Movie, I’m like, ‘Oh, fuck, I’d like to get back into that.’ There are so many things you can get into, but I just don’t have the time. I’d love to make something again.
“I just fucking loved it! Nothing’s better than double-perfecting somebody – that’s utterly humiliating”
Assuming it’s not Jumping, what’s your favourite game? I think it has to be Street Fighter II. I used to go to Millport for my summer holiday every year, and they had a machine. I used to play cunts all the time at that, and I was the best. Nobody could fucking beat me. I just fucking loved it! Nothing’s better than double-perfecting somebody – that’s utterly humiliating.