About the Alfies
Introduction
Welcome to the DeadAlfs gaming site, where we aim to provide you the reader with a light-hearted look at all things gaming. The DeadAlfs team are a voluntary group of individuals, all heavily immersed in the wonderful gaming world, be it PC based or console. We hope that your visit here will be a pleasant one, with amusement to boot.
This is the 7th incarnation of the website!!
DeadAlfs?
The DeadAlfs were formed as a general gaming group, that anyone could join up and partake in the tournaments and server invasions planned, centering at the time around id software's Quake 2. DeadAlfs were formed in March 1998 by myself and Tony aka Belshy. This ran very successfully for 6-8 months, with the eventual membership toll being 65 people. I wound the DA group up in May of 1999, exactly a year to the day that the original website was created. I rapidly started to realise that I missed it all, so I resurrected the DeadAlfs, but this time not as a gaming club, but as a gaming site.
Around October 2000 we unleashed the all new DeadAlfs 2000 site (D2k) which took the site into the database age, along with a stunningly good interface designed by my brother Richard aka Mr.Biscuit. The burgundy colour was to bring joy to households the world over!! Unfortunately a lot of the initial ideas for sections never came into fruition, and lay dormant for too long, and also the need to shed the '2000' part of the name became a necessity. After much talk and promise the new design was created in one inspirational weekend. I wanted something simple, and easy to maintain, and my Mr.Biscuit didn't disappoint with what I thought was a clean and clever design. The look also leant itself to a far easier db design for Iain aka Ebow to work around, and hand in hand to that, make my life far FAR easier!
This leads us to this version of the website, developed and designed by Ebow (yes, you can thank him for the orange colour later). It has all sorts of clever database type stuff going on, which makes my life EVEN MORE easier!! Ultimately the idea is to make you, the ever loved and cherished visitor, enjoy your visit more and to make navigation through it all just that less of a headache. But above all, it's to encourage anyone and everyone to participate! So, what you waiting for, create an account and tell it how you think it is!! I'm sure you'll receive unbiased, level and non-opinionated talk.*
* - To be taken with a very small pinch of salt. :)
What's it all about Alfie?
Just what is a DeadAlf though? That question has to rank as the most commonly asked. What in the hell is a DeadAlf? Okay, it's not that easy to explain, but here goes. Myself and my long time friend Tony aka Belshy, sat and amused ourselves by listening to the filth filled albums of Derek and Clive. Basically these were a couple of characters created by Pete Cook and Dudley Moore, that simply went about acting out various incredibly rude and obscene comedy sketches. Oh how we laughed! One particular sketch grabbed us, namely the Alfie Noakes sketch, where they both think they're Alfie. We adopted this sketch and hence forth lost the ability to call each other anything other than Alf, Alfred, Alfie, Alfonso etc..etc.. It's an affliction which still plagues us today! In fact, it's gotten so bad, that Tony's wife is referred to as Alfina and his newly born was almost called Alf!!!!
So that's the Alf part explained. The Dead part is a little more obscure! It all came about when I was mulling over doing something 'like' the DeadAlfs, some sort of gaming group. Tony had gone Quake 2 skin crazy, and one such skin had a picture of him fast asleep, mapped over the Q2 head. Now, this picture of him struck us as him looking rather dead, deceased, no more! It was this very picture that gave birth to the term DeadAlf. The DAs were born.
This is who we are
DNM - Co-founder of the DeadAlfs religion and editor of the site. He enjoys walks along the riverbank, gleefully kicking Autumn leaves and killing lots of people in Quake. Likes to pull the legs and wings off of Crane flies, simply as an exercise in fragility.
Drumbaby - The artist formerly known as Belshy! The other founder of the new order of the DeadAlfs, is far too busy with his plastic flower business to waste time with silly games .. He enjoys the smell of coconut oils, the strength of perception and anything to do with Sue Pollard.
Ebow - He's the guy that sorts the coding for the site ya know. Often finds himself in a starters orders position of a morning, commonly known as the 'Sebastian Coe Syndrome', after much gentle soothing he returns to the things he enjoys in life:- picking loganberries, bending paper-clips and moving traffic cones while no-ones looking.
Mr.Biscuit - Brother to DNM would you believe! He's the guy responsible for how this page looks. In his spare time he likes to visit old war memorials to pay his respects, keeps a collection of historic oil lanterns and has been known to toss a coin to make important decisions in his life.
Bobi Roka - The most prolific review writer for the site, which is quite fortunate because the rest of us are lazy bastards. Bobi's small form allows him to make hasty retreats following his many house and bank robberies, though he always returns his ill gotten gains claiming he is merely pointing out flaws in security. If life was governed by the rolling of a pair of dice, Bobi would be in his element!
Koorah - Little is known about this foul creature, but those that have witnessed his affable and yet evil nature have never wanted to speak of it ever again. Intelligence informs us that Koorah enjoys the ladies of a more mature status, keeps a collection of ants under his bed and often hides in bushes, only jumping out now and again to startle young children.
MhORe - The laziest bastard of them all, bar none, 2nd to none, defacto, the one! When he's not doing absolutely bugger all for the Alfie site, he can be found painting multi-coloured stripes on garage roofs in preparation for the 'psychadelic war', picking daisies with his hiking buddies and dribbling uncontrollably in the bi-monthly 'Apple in the Mouth' tournaments.
VWCamper - If it can be power-levelled, VW will be there. Not a great deal of information can be found about this strange bespectacled chap, but intelligence reports that he runs an amateur porn movie company from his seedy base in London. Honours include holding the record for peanut flicking, coming second in a junior school hop-skotch competition (at the age of 22) and coming joint first in the Waltham Abbey annual treacle competition.
Fivethumbs - Locked away in his laboratory 24/7, Fivethumbs is a very hard man to track down. There are rumours that he comes out of the lab by night, to examine the washing lines and wheelie bins of famous people, to return to his lab for DNA testing. Amazingly he finds the time to write the odd review for the Alfies, but insists on using snail mail and felt-tip pens for his submissions. A warrant is out for his arrest in Spain, but no-one has established the reason(s) why.
Other Seedy Characters (aka Not DeadAlfs Staff)
M1ckey - Famous for his marrow growing skillz and flea market expertise, M1ckey contributes now and again to the site. Currently living in Australia where he hopes to find the solution to famine.
Giant - No-one knows the whereabouts of this man, and rumour has it that he was last seen in Newcastle docks screaming at the containers. Giant has provided the Alfie public with RTS based reviews.
B3z - Unable to strafe jump, this man is limited in his movements, but is deadly all the same!! B3z provided us with the Beyond Divinity review when DNM simply couldn't be bothered to do it! Good chap!
