That guy's a Maniac...

Cast your mind back nearly two decades, to the heady days of 2001. Harry Potter... Lord of the Rings... Big Brother... Sopranos... 24... Friends... Buffy/Angel... 9/11.  In smoke filled hazy rooms akin to that seen/heard in the Streets Irony of it all, barely-twenty-somethings were, uncompetitively competing with each other all over the UK. Seeing how long they could last at 5 stars wanted rating in a tank on Vice City, or in this case who could get the highest score on SSX Tricky, Garibaldi, Showoff.  This was no ordinary competition, this was classic arcade leaderboard shit. We would sit about for hours on end passing the controller between us. Each run would last (to completion) around 5 minutes, but as we became more advanced and driven for the "perfect run". The rules changed. We were peaking around the 2 million mark. And restarts abounded. Restarts were generally reduced to 3 and could only occur before a certain point, you had to nail your first large...

Dystopia Noun An imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. By Dystopian nostalgia, I actually mean I am nostalgic for the classic dystopian atmosphere created by the games of the 90's. The 90's did dystopian really well, with films like 12 Monkeys, The Matrix, Dark City, Terminator 2, Tank Girl, the influential series Aeon Flux, and the anime such as Ghost in the Shell and Akira. These all created hi-tech Sci-fi worlds, where capitalism/totalitarianism is the new world order and the masses are oppressed  90's games did dystopian. In fact a great deal of games at this time encapsulated the dystopian vibe. The early 90's had great story-driven titles like Syndicate/Syndicate wars, Chrono Trigger, or Beneath as Steel Sky. The late 90's with the advent of the original Sony PlayStation saw many titles encapsulating this dystopian atmosphere fore-mostly the introducto...

More chatter about the Final Fantasy VII re-release. A few days ago some intrepids spotted squeenix had written a menu for what seemed like a FF7 remake, this however turned out to be simply a re-release, most likely a digital download for iPad or the like Now a few months back I mentioned bootleg from qhimm.com, it simply takes your original install of FF7 and updates music, graphics to make it much prettier to play (also you can add silly, but well thought out, mods like Aeris resurrection). Squeenix sa y: Optimized for PC – FINAL FANTASY VII has been updated to support the latest hardware and Windows Operating Systems. But will it be prettier, like will they optimise it for widescreen? will the models be updated? will it still have the terrible midi music when it can be replaced so easily with MP3s? That's the information, for some reason, I care about. Meh, I bet it doesn't. But then I suppose there is always the argument that it wouldn't be a "pure" re-...

So yeah a "collection" of the older PS2 Dragonball Z games is due out for 360 and PS3, HDified. This collection has Budokai and Budokai 3. Budokai 2 was missed out entirely, mainly because it had a stupid story mode which involved a board game interface. The first Budokai was not brilliant and seems to be a token in this "collection". However we should all be excited about Budokai 3. It include a huge roster of characters a lot of nods in the fans directions, and better game play than the 360/PS3 successors, "Raging Blast". Raging Blast  attempted to  inappropriately  touch fans of the series and keep it a special secret, it stripped down the number of characters, which honestly felt like they were doing it to: a) Make DLC for monies b) Make way for a slurry of sequels which died with Raging blast 2 and its lack of any real additions. Most disappointing Raging blast was less fun to play. Interestingly enough, did you know that...

Wow! just Wow. For the past week or so I have been having cravings to play Zelda: ocarina of time. So through the wonders on the internet I dug out an emulator. I also dug out my 360 wireless adaptor. I set that bitch up! Plugged my PC into my TV, set the Graphics to all maximum settings, and set the Controller like an N64 pad. And started it up. Amazing, I never new that all those details were possible despite the backgrounds and some of the textures being a bit pixelly its flawless, and plays really well with the 360 controller! Here's to Retro Games and HD. Love and Saria's song Richie X

Since I was a kid, gaming has always been synonymous with Nintendo. Here was a company that for me had awesome graphics, huge libraries of games and timeless franchises. However this relationship unfortunately ended with the Game Cube and while the Wii has been a runaway succes it got me thinking why did they lose me as a customer? My first gaming system was a Commodore 64, a system that looked enough like it might be educational to fool my parents, however for me it was purely for games. While I spent many hours with Treasure Island Dizzy (one life and no saving!!), bubble bobble and Rick Dangerous, my first experience with what i believed to be 'true' gaming was the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) I would accompany my parents on trips to Makro and immediately split from them and head to the gaming isle where they had a Nintendo wall with NES systems running Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. These Instant gaming machines let you slip in to a simple, co...

'Free lads' have been arrested for mimicking drive-bys using a 'PlayStation Gun'. The beeb knows the score . "The gun was found to be a silver plastic PlayStation gun. " Shoddy reporting from the beeb. Was it a G-con? A G-con 2? G-con 3? Or was it a MadCatz pile of shit? Either way the boys should sue Sony because there is fuck all you can do with a PlayStation light gun these days so what other option do kids have after purchasing expensive peripherals that are in no way supported by new platforms. In unrelated news: Here is a list of light gun games for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 you cannot play on the PS3. Area 51 (Justifier) Crypt Killer (Justifier) Die Hard Trilogy (Justifier) Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas (Justifier/Guncon) Elemental Gearbolt (Justifier/GunCon) Extreme Ghostbusters: Ultimate Invasion (GunCon) Ghoul Panic (GunCon) Gunfighter: The Legend of Jesse James (GunCon) Judge Dredd (GunCon) Lethal Enforcers 1&2 (Justifier...

Might finally be out soon :D Another 800 MS points, on a Live arcade game... ...That I will play for like 5 mins Richie XX