I cannot tell you how much I am enjoying this weekly show about all Wings. Sadly, being in the UK with a challenging work/study pattern, I cannot watch it live; but I rip them off YouTube to watch in bursts when time permits.
Especially brilliant for me is all the stuff about Privateer 2 The Darkening! Being from the UK the subtle references
@Bandit LOAF keeps discussing I am like "Oh, I know where that's from". Forgive me if people are already aware of this but I made a little list of stuff I want to reference to see if I can provide any more context. If you're like *roll eyes already know*, I apologise!
First and simply, the weird aliens in P2:TD, you mentioned Dolphins - surely that is straight out of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: "So long and thanks for all the fish" - etc. Dolphins are the most intelligent species in the universe, apart from mice IIRC. So that makes sense!
Secondly, some pronunciation issues which are totally understandable. The Ecantona from Eric Cantona, the football (soccer) player, in the UK is pronounced very differently. I can totally see why people would assume the can in "Ecantona" is pronounced so separately.
In any case, here is a video of Mr. Cantona karate kicking a notorious football hooligan who had spent the game hurling abuse at him (an idiot who himself subsequently reenacted the kick in court and got arrested).
Hopefully the video shows what I mean about the name:
Also, I don't know if you mentioned but AShearer is another football player from the English Premier League: Alan Shearer. They were both incredible goal scorers in their time, which was predominately the nineties.
Here is a video of Shearer scoring what is considered his best goal. I apologise the quality of this makes it seem a root vegetable was used for recording:
Another pronunciation thing: Brian Blessed is pronounced Brian Bless-ed with an extra syllable. To think of an example, I chose the scene from Monty Python The Life of Brian where Jesus says Blessed are the peacemakers, which gets misheard:
And finally, the one that you may not know already! Rocket Ronnie, who you spoke about in context of one of the missions and the female pilot who is quite licentious: this must be referring to one of my favorite people Ronnie O'Sullivan, the snooker player. His famous nickname in the UK is "Rocket Ronnie", "The Rocket" or the "Essex Exocet". At the tender age of 43 he has just made it back to world number 1.
Here is Ronnie famously scoring the fastest ever maximum in snooker, a 147, in 5 minutes 20 seconds. This score in this time is a total miracle, has never been repeated since and happened in 1997 a year after P2:TD came out! -
Once again, I apologise if this post is pointless although I like pointless trivia. I am certainly not criticising pronunciation, tomato/tomato, etc. I am sure Cantona is pronounced differently en français, which is where Mr. Cantona is from. I needed an excuse to share my love of sports and obscure contextual minutia!
It seems the original dev team of P2:TD and I share a love of British sports in any case!
Dominic / dizzi