That guy's a Maniac...

With the advent of the  Nindies  and the recent  Konami re-releases , over the past few weeks the term Metroidvania has been slung about a lot at me. While this has not really given me a desire to play either Castlevania or Metroid, is has made me wanna play their estranged cousin - Turrican on the SNES:  I decided to pick up the SNES version of Turrican and burn through that, though... my first fond memories and experience of Turrican was on the Commodore 64: On the C64 the game was a different beast, for starters it was just "Turrican", not "Super Turrican". Note:And just to add further confusion to the whole thing, there was also a "Super Turrican" on the NES, which was a mix of Turrican and Turrican 2... Phew... Turrican on the C64, or the original Turrican had vast expansive levels and despite Turrican being referred to as a "Run and gun" it had many secrets and paths and caves to negotiate and explore which you certainly were ...

Konami announced a Castlevania collection ( among others )  due for some point this year in summer, for some anniversary. As ageing gamergirls, one would expect us to be "flooding the basement" on this one. Nah. One of us once played the one with Jean Luc Picard and Begbie, and found it too hard, so we locked it away. We did play "that bit" in Smash bros adventure mode, does that count? Due to the impact these games had on us we listed out the full titles as best as memory serves, I'm sure the right one is in there? Castlevania: Shadow of dark Castlevania: Dark shadows Castlevania: Shadows Lords Castlevania: Lord of Shadow Castlevania: Lord of Shadows Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Castlevania: Lords of Shadows Castlevania: Simon's revenge Castlevania: Belmont's revenge Castlevania: Samus' revenge Castlevania: Castlevania two Castlevania: Dark of the night Castlevania: Shadow symphony Castlevania: Fates of Shadow Castlevania: Retur...

Wayne's World for the SNES is probably the worst game I have ever played. It is the fucking epitome of the senseless unnecessary movie cash-in games that gave movie tie-in games the awful reputation and stigma they endured for so many years. Countless swathes of 90's blockbusters which were quickly ported into generic shit-platformers* and this one just sticks out in my mind as one of the worst. A melange of lo-fi sound clips straight from the show/movie and even worse 16-bit pixel images. It offers sickeningly predictable sound effects, repeatedly using a crackly "excellent" ad nauseam, interspersed with "Schwing", and the occasional "Not Worthy" chant. The game has no story, it isn't even sure if it is the move tie-in or the TV show tie in. The 1st level above seems to depict the store where Wayne finds the guitar he wants (oh yes, she will be mine) attempts to play it and is "denied" to play Stairway to Heaven. Except ...

Acid rounds is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Richie: I heard that Into the Breach is a game by indie cunts for indie cunts, why are you an indie cunt? Cunzy11: Okay, so yes. In some circles. It's one of those indie darling games. Particularly amongst those bearded, shoes and no socks PC boyos. I'd managed to miss all the hype completely and against all the odds spotted it on the eShop on sale and thought it looked cool. Imagine my surprise to see it on every fedorad arm-tat hipster's game of the year lists. And quite fucking rightly too. I liked it well after it was famous. Richie: So its a hipster strategy game? X-Com: Avocado edition? Cunzy11: *clears throat*  it's a retro styled, tile-based, time travelling, rogue-like, dungeon runner with mechs, tanks and kaijus. Yes. Yes it's X-Com: Avocado edition.  Richie: Right so you beasted this on the Switch, What made it tear you away fro...

First up read this , it's Richard Browne (pictured below) from umm, well he's an industry veteran okay. And he's finally willing to bring to the table that much missing piece of evidence to prove that pre-owned games are killing kids, raising house prices and toppling the game industry. At last. Some actual evidence to scrutinise rather than a dev sounding off because their last poorly marketed shite game that sat on the shelves for two weeks didn't sell as much as Wii Sports . That key piece of evidence? A colleague of mine brought to light how bad this has become just the other week. He went into his local GameStop and was point blank REFUSED the option of buying the game he went to get new. After pressuring the sales assistant for a few minutes he finally got his new game - but only after the assistant got his manager's approval to sell it to him. [via Gamesindsutry international ] Ah, okay. That appears to be an anecdote and a suspiciously tall tale. Bro...

I mean. What were we expecting? Finally a games award ceremony that did games proud? An awards ceremony without cringey moments? We should know by now to temper our expectations. Highlights: Notch gave an excellent speech that at least gave the impression somebody at the ceremony actually knew about games. The début games category was strong. Modern Warfare 3 not picking up any awards.  Also, at some points there were some attractive ladies on stage (and the Saturdays). Lowlights: Little Big Planet 2 not only getting nominated but winning three awards! Dara 'O' Breen or whatever his name is misgauging quite a few jokes by either being too in-the-know or too off-the-peg-stereotypes. About six games getting nominated for most of the awards. Poor categories as ever. Proper Z-list celebrities presenting awards, at least poorly known games industry folk look liked they knew why they were there and what was going on. Rare people for being too a) American b) Arrog...

Remember the GMAs? You know the Games Media Awards? Well it is a UK awards thing for people who write about games. one of last year's nominees was Chris Scullion who writes for the Official Nintendo magazine in the category SPECIALIST WRITER PRINT. Sadly he didn't win and presumably he was having an off day in OPM 79 when he writes the following about Dragon Quest X: Also making the decision tricky [about whether to get the Wii or Wii U version] is the fact that, as it's the first RPG [on the Wii] to focus more on online adventuring (much like Monster Hunter Tri)... Is it the first or is it not? Snark snark snark.