That guy's a Maniac...

So Pokemon Black and White are now out in some parts of the world and there's now a whole bunch of new Pokemon to go after for the impossible task of catching them all . As ever when there's something new of different people will fear, hate and even write essays on their own wiki discussion pages. Team TGAM is split on the new critters. Richie is excited about some of the new type match ups and I just look at this page and slowly shake my head until my neck aches. However, love them or hate them this new generation has finally given us that last Pokemon with the specific characteristics needed for us to create this image which we've been dreaming of making for years. Click for its splendor to fill your screen. Okay. Time for a new dream!

Like all aspiring middle class people the only paper we buy is the Graudian and the Observer and every week we get a little bit angry that games are never covered in The Review supplement. That Travel and Sport get their whole own separate supplements is a bog post for another day. Like a lot of other gamers we're still waiting for an audible 'ding' to alert us to the fact that yes, games are now socially acceptable. If you so wished you too could hijack a dinner party/pub lunch with a boring lecture about games in the same way that it is acceptable for wine bores, travel bores and I've just popped a child bores to do. Even though games probably already are socially acceptable we're still waiting for the ding. The batman signal in the sky, the ironic t-shirt that becomes an unofficial trendy uniform, the endless historical documentaries on BBC4 or even our own OBE. Even more frustrating is that the Guardian do have a fairly decent crop of games writers who don't

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are happy to announce that the Barioth from Monster Hunter Tri is the latest video game character to enter the 'Jumpy Twat Hall of Fame'. Barioth is the latest video game character to have solicited over 1 million frustrated calls of 'Jumpy Twat!' and thus eligible to enter the JTHoF joining such luminary jumpy twats as all of Bowser's children, Half Life headcrabs, Alien facehuggers and eliminators from Resident Evil. Jumpy Twats all. Why can't you just stand still for a second? I'm just trying to do something.

CLICK THIS SHIT.

...another whinge about the problem with pre-owned games. Our stance is very clear and we've bored each other (and hence 100% of the readership) silly with it but until news posts about it desist we won't desist looking on in amazement. Our problem with retailers is that they, in no way, really try to offer up the best of gaming. Older platforms vanish from shelves within weeks and new games enjoy the spotlight for a couple of weeks. We for example are keen discerning gamers at the time of life with a little bit of disposable income yet time and time again we have to head online or buy second hand games to get the kinds of games we want to play. At all. There isn't a brand new copy sitting on a shelf with convenient distance that I'm ignoring. I prefer to buy games brand new (although not on launch day and certainly not at the ridiculous prices some games are). In most cases, these games aren't obscure or limited run games. They're fairly big releases (recent ex

NOT BEN10 that hideous cartoon that isn't as good as all those cartoons we grew up on M.A.S.K etc. but a charming little Belgian film. When we're used to getting excited about, analyzing and dismissing media before it has even been released it was nice to be taken by surprise by this little film. I hadn't heard of it and in fact wasn't really aware of it being at all video game themed and a quick Google seems to suggest it wasn't picked up by the monolith of websites calling themselves video game blogs. It's a touching tale 'based on real life events' that quite heavily features video games but not in a brainless sense a la Gamer or a massive advert a la Wizard but featuring a video game ( ArchLord , missed that on the wikipedia page didn't ya, wiki cunts ) as part of a normal life. Dare-we-say-it even in a positive light? For gamers out there I'd recommend giving it a watch. Not only is it the best video game related film out there at the moment

The unreliable eurogamer has an interesting piece just up about some guy who made the blogeadlines back in 2007 by ranting against the Wii at GDC. That's fine, each to their own but what Hecker does go on to say is the kind of idiotic rhetoric that gets our goat here at TGAM. From the linked article: "Game design and gameplay is not separable from CPU power," he told Eurogamer. "You can do more interesting games with a faster CPU. Nintendo made an underpowered platform, relative to what you could have made at the time. This in itself is theoretically uncontroversial but is moot in reality. Where are all these 'more interesting games?' on other platforms? We've said it time and time again but the reason why at least one of us isn't writing off the Wii as an acceptable console is because now, perhaps more than ever there is a real dearth of diversity of good games across all the current generation of games. Furthermore, the quality of graphics with Xbo