That guy's a Maniac...

Flame rounds  lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Cunzy1 1: What're you selling? Richie:  Fucking ice levels, most specifically that annoying inertia slide which get applied to your main character. Annoying, get some crampons. Cunzy1 1: Are we just going to cycle through 90's gaming tropes is that it? We had five original ideas and are now just rehashing our old forum posts? Richie:  Looking back at our archive we are subconsciously rehashing ourselves over and over again. Ironically we are probably the only blog in existence with the label "bored of the same arguments" however time for us to take a long hard look in the mirror, sunshine. Doesn't make slipping on ice a game that is ...

Mario Kart 8 was released for the WiiU in 2014 and the Deluxe version of the game came out for Nintendo Switch in 2017. The Mario Kart series of games remain highly popular and although the longevity of these titles through online racing means that these games demand high prices years (almost decades in the case of Mario Kart 7 ) after release, the communities that build up in these games are rarely subject to academic enquiry or basic coverage in the average games media.  Fascinatingly, because Nintendo EAD, the developer of the game and Nintendo the publisher take online harassment and bullying seriously players of online Nintendo games and games on Nintendo platforms often have a highly limited mode of expression to communicate with other players when playing online together. This is of interest because enterprising players use the limited tools they have to contrive and develop new languages and forms of expression through cosmetics in games (costumes, 'emotes', equip...

Acid rounds  is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Cunzy : Theme to this week then is there? Richie : Yeah, I am old and I have been getting some SMW nostalgic feelz recently. It happens every so often, this game is so heavily inscribed in my DNA.  Occasionally it works it way up through social responsibility, financial woes and my crippling suicidal depression, and I get prangs to play this chirpy early 90's platformer again. To my mind I have beaten this game at LEAST 5 times, and by beaten I mean doing every level getting the alternate colour "96" Cunzy : It is a great game and to my mind Super Mario World really mixed it up. It's the technical Super Mario game as evidenced by the Super Mario Maker  SMW levels I have no idea how to beat with spin, run and toss tech. Richie : SMW itself touches only very lightly on tech the tech you mention and is more forgiving than its predecessors on heart breaking f...

Last year, Nintendo made the slightly uncontroversial and in line with what competitors have been doing for decades business decision to start charging for the service to play games online with the Nintendo Switch. In order to sweeten the deal somewhat a paid membership gets you access to online play, exclusive offers (such as cosmetics in some games and those stupid but cool but stupid but expensive but worth it NES Switch controllers), sometimes cloud saves and most controversially gives you access to a growing library of NES games playable as long as you're subbed up. Some vocal gamers, however, did not like this decision at all because they either already own and play the NES games on offer (lies nobody ever intentionally bought Super Dodge Ball let alone played it on the go) or they didn't want the NES games but wouldn't mind free N64 games or SNES games perhaps? Like winged monkeys with neckbeards they took to social media en mass to whine about it. This level of...

Hi guys, Another year has gone by, and we out-did our productivity from the previous year by one whole post! Which I'm sure on a chart somewhere we could spin into some kind of TGAM Renaissance . This year we are turning 13 which is, I'm sure, a milestone for many bloggers. Is blogging still a thing? We have seen so many die... Last year we made some bold statements, did we follow through on them? More "reviews", this year we are going to enter the world of steam curators. Expect more obscure and awkward scoring systems. Um well we actually did do some reviews, and at least one of them was current. and we genuinely became a steam curator, Steam expect more questionable creepy anime games to pop up on that one! Sex sells, as does Cephalopods. Due to our dulling imaginations we will do sequels to our most "successful" posts (Boobs, Nude Cheats, and Omastar, see below). Kinna, we did reference our old stuff on DMC4 , but it was sad to watch....

The brick path was laid out before me. The sky hung above me, empty save for one cloud, the air was charged with tension; an electric blue.  Behind me the proud outline of a hill, distant and calm. I ran forward. I ran with determination, as I ran past some bushes I noticed a strange floating square, golden and flashing with an inscription. But before I could investigate further, a creature came ambling towards me, as big as a man, round and with a terrifying stare. Instinctively I leapt into the air, soaring as high as I could, then came crashing down onto the creatures head, flattening it. My foe dispatched, I decided to investigate the floating golden block, but yet there appeared to be more squares. Throwing myself into the air again, I raised my fist and punched the block. The block went dead, turning into a dulled brown, however as a I landed I realised, through whatever trickery, I now had a coin!  Venturing forth with my new found power, I slammed into the next gold...

The Comic- con, t he platform for all the announcement about films, games, media, and apparently comic books is upon us yet again. Its time for the socially inept to don their steampunk bugs bunny body suits and get involved in some hype. So far it's all been Twilight and Expendables news. However there is one film that is piquing our interest, exposing our tip, jangling our change, giving us that special feeling, that good hurt, stirring up some violent repression... Wreck-it Ralph. Disneys take on computer games. Ralph is the main bad guy in a fictional retro game, seeking redemption to be the good guy. As can be see from the trailer it features some cameos from Street Fighter and Nintendo. Spanky.  TGAM  will keep out special eye on this one, not that we like Disney or anything... Love and Hakuna Matatas, Richie X

Do you know about the backloggery? If you don't you should know about the Backloggery . It ticks a lot of boxes in our brain. You create and account and then (manually, but it is worth it) add all the games you've played, review them and then note whether you've not beaten the game (bronze), beaten it (completed the 'story' that's a silver medal) or 100% (gold medal) of for those doubly hard bastard out there MASTERED IT (a gem that denotes you've played a game inside and out and back again). Then after all that at a glance you can see what percentage of all the game you own you've seen all the way through to the end. You may find it all a bit arbitrary and in the same vein as the compulsion to "Thousand" games on the Xbox 360, beating the game and getting all the achievement points for it. For us, the backloggery helps us to document and progress on the all the games we own and haven't finished yet. I don't know about you but we h...

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