That guy's a Maniac...

It's been a while since the last instalment of this series about all the gaming kipple we've collected over the years that fills cupboards and boxes away from the disapproving glances of partners. We started this series with some stuff that predates our video gaming 'lifestyle' choice and now we jump to the latest additions to the collection, which we frequently get out and lick, these ADOWABLE Pokémon near field communication (NFC) figures, designed to be used with the Wii-U game pad. Following on from the outlandish success of the Skylander's series Ninty are trying to cash in with this technology. Simply, you pop one of these figures on your Wii-U game pad and they pop up on the screen in the latest Pokémon Rumble game, one of the lesser Pokémon spin-off series. No doubt about it, it's a cash in (in previous Pokémon rumble games a similar feat was achieved through simple passwords alone) but we're huge fans of My Pokémon Ranch (153 hours 'playing

Sick of hearing about the Xboxone and the PS4 through constant RUMOUR and drip, drip of unconfirmed screenshots of a next gen game taken with a shaky cam from a brown paper bag? Bored of the Official PlayStation magazine tweeting about the number of USB ports on the PS4? Tired of the never ending whine of fanboys who miss the good old days when you had to get cheat codes from the back of a mag and you could only play the latest games at your mates house on all those illegally ripped disks?  You want to hear the facts? You've come to the right place, because we my friends have a source. ON THE INSIDE. It's Alcamoth citizen from inside Xenoblade Chronicles . Here's what she has to say about next gen.  You heard it here first. EXCLUSIVE.

One thing we would like to add to this post : Is that while getting my ass handed to me by all those legendaries, I was able to experience the other side of the pokemon games. Namely what it felt like to be an NPC. All these over powered super speedy pokemon, and here was me with a fucking stunfisk. I felt the pain of those stupid fucking team rocket grunts, making their grandiose claims of world domination with a fucking level 9 Zubat. These comics know what I mean: VGCats Super Effective 63 VGCats Super Effective 64 Dorkly, the fate of all NPC Trainers Fuck 'em, now those NPC's will feel my wrath with a furious vengeance! Love and almost a Pulp Fiction quote, Richie X

Right now until Midnight on Monday, it's the 2013 Global Showdown International Pokémon tournament. For non-Pokémon aficionados, every now and then there are international tournaments that are run over Wi-fi. The tournament are broken into a number of categories depending upon the age information with your Pokémon game; Junior Division, Senior Division and Master Division for old farts like us.  Each tournament has an open registration period, places are normally limited to 50,000 (from a community of 3 million according to the Pokémon Global Link ) and tournament rules sometimes vary. For a short time the registered trainers can take part in as many battles as they wish winning and losing adding or taking away ranking points which everyone starts of with 1500 of. You get to register six Pokémon and then going into each battle you see the six Pokémon your opponent has, both of you choose three trying to weigh up the strategic combinations. This is the first International tour