Wrestlevania

A friend once left his Spectrum on for two weeks because a dodgy copy of Shinobi he had only ever loaded successfully once every dozen or so attempts. He would have left the machine on for longer, but the poor little thing eventually got too hot and fried its internals. And it never loaded anything after that...

Another year, another sack-full of worthless generic votes -- the majority of which are based on whatever game was being advertised on the page opposite. The Golden Joystick Awards are a sham, designed to sell advertising space in magazines and that's all.

45 minutes of play and I'm just not feeling it.

Ahem... Cheers for bringing this to my attention though.

Pot, kettle. STFU +

QFT.

Yes, please.

Sennheiser PX-100's ftw; cheap, very travel-friendly, bomb-proof build quality, and the sound fidelity is astonishing for the money. Used mine pretty much all day every day (no exaggeration) for more than a year and they're still in great condition. ...but only if it was the side you're deaf on that stopped working! (Sorry.) Aaanyway: fuck Sony. I've not bought a Sony product since my then-brand-new slimline tape Walkman exploded in a shower of screws and aluminium when it fell off my desk at Uni (which was about 8 years ago).

It's very probable that, when directly compared with this season's opening episode ratings, every TV show episode has "bad" viewing figures by comparison. Pay it no heed, it's just negative spin, and should be disposed of as the contemptible turd it is.

I've got a Japanese copy of Rez but I have a PAL (UK) Dreamcast. I've tried using the DC-Utopia v1.2 boot disc but with no success. Can anyone recommend an alternative boot disc to play Rez with, as information is - unsuprisingly - thin on the ground nowadays...

…which it did – hurrah! I’m not very good at it, but Rez is certainly no less absorbing than all the praise would have you believe. I need to read up on strategies and such to make sure I get the most out of the game though. Incidentally, the game features just my sort of music too, especially when you fight the first level boss.

The damages incurred were sufficient enough to rob them of all their operating capital, which I suppose makes the Lik-Sang company effectively bankrupt.

I played using an Xbox 360 Controller for Windows and had no problems at all. No damn rumble though, same as every other force feedback-enabled Windows game I've played using it. You would've thought MS wrote fully DirectX compliant drivers for their own hardware, but apparently not. Update: Rumble is supported, but you have to use hacked Xbox 360 Controller for Windows drivers to get it working. I'll give these a try sometime shortly and see if they fix the problem. It's the only bad point for the pad in six months of using it. And I bet my ancient Sidewinder FF Steering Wheel still provides feedback in modern games -- just need to dig it out of the loft and banish Mrs. W. from the living room for the evening... Not if you glanced at the mini map in the corner whilst driving they didn't -- not for me at least.

In my opinion, EA have never been able to better the NFS franchise beyond Porsche Unleashed -- which is still just as superb today as it was when it was released years back. And the term 'carbon' only makes your trousers explode if you're a committed petrol head, race fan and mod freak. But then, those people will all be playing [ahem] decent racing games anyway, not this year's dull iteration of a long-past-best arcade racer. So... meh. I do, however, like the fact that EA have cleverly worked in a real-world location to justify this car-nerd subtitle though; bonuses for everyone in the marketing department! Anyway, my $0.02-worth. I played Most Wanted for a while and that was entertaining enough as a simple arcade racer. It also looked beautiful and the sprawling location was varied and immersive. I've mentioned it before, though; the free roaming / spontaneous police chase mode just wasn't robust or challenging enough to reignite the fun of Hot Pursuit. The only interest I have in Carbon is to see if the developers have addressed this problem -- if they have, Carbon might well be worth renting at least, if not an outright purchase.

Is it definitely the Final Fantasy series that you want to play, or simply JRPG's in general? If it's the latter, many people are waxing lyrical about how outright fun Rocket Slime for the DS is right now. I'm tempted to pick it up myself when I'm able to*. * I'm currently stockpiling my 'gaming green' for a Wii, with a couple of games and controllers, when it's launched 6 weeks tomorrow!

Toys 'R' Us do some very reasonable "end of line" deals over here too, but not quite that good (in my limited experience anyway). They're not at all consistent however, wishing to sell you last year's top PC title for £5.99 but still charging £19.99 for a 3 year old - not to mention well and truly battered - GBA cart in a tatty box. Update: The DS Browser is out in the UK!!?

The Hobbit for Spectrum is a shining example of quality text-based adventuring.

A very bad/sad day for games enthusiasts -- i.e. everyone outside of Sony's boardrooms. Does their arrogance hold no bounds? Whilst I want the PS3 to be a decent machine for those souls that fork out a tonne of cash for it, I really want Sony's decision makers to burn for this. It's yet another ultimately pointless and excruciatingly petty win for Sony in the courts, whilst they continue to dodge the bigger issues -- such as law suits failed against them, which they repeatedly rebuff and stall at every opportunity.

Anyone who understands the modern day calendar' date=' and can be arsed to look back at every console generational cycle since the early 80's. ...because Lord knows Nintendo just love shovelling out redundant hardware to the tune of low-volume sales and mass failiure -- VirtuaBoy 2 ftw! Excluding the worthless [arf] "high-capacity media" comment; is it just me, or is that a near-perfect description of Nintendo DS? Also, some basic economics: greatly improved != lower prices, unless you're talking about production effeciency, which you're not. You're just talking out your a-hole. Tip: It's exactly the same hardware in either machine, albeit of a slightly smaller form-factor*. * Use Wikipedia once in a while, ffs. Hang on--you said "greatly improved" just six sentences ago!!? Am comfooz'd and bwain is teh hurty... PS: I'm sure you could've gotten another couple of and's in there if you'd tried harder. ...two of which are completely different to the other two, and two of which haven't been rolling off factory production lines since approx. March/April this year. So yeah, you're totally right! ...just because they can -- genius! Nintendo also want to piss off as many of the new customers they're trying to attract as possible, so this would be a perfect way to do it. Game off! QFT. Watch ou-! Urgh, too late - you trod in it. Brand new shoes on as well. Oh well, they were due for the bin anyway, being as they've been out the box for more than 37 minutes. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=- I can't even be bothered to shred the second block quote. Utterly stupefying that people are this, well... stupid.

…except Mr. Pesci is much less annoying.

BLASPHEMER! Seriously, that game’s brilliant – just bloody hard that’s all. I’m referring to the Spectrum 48k+ version though, so if you mean some other more recent (and heavily bastardised) version then fair do’s.

Two little words: “blue” and “shell”. But I digress…

Hmm, certainly wasn’t the greatest but that didn’t stop me playing it for hours either though. Psygnosis’ output suffered a steady drop in quality from around the time the original Ecstatica was released and onwards, if I remember rightly. Which leads me to… Destruction Derby on the original PlayStation! A pants game that you just had to have one more go on. The same people went on to create the Driver series.

It’s a specific European release delay. Could be that they’re having difficulty getting the story and humour to work ‘as intended’ across all target languages… a theory which is based purely on the assumption that Contact will be released in Europe supporting more than just English. Which isn’t too far-fetched a theory in actual fact, as I’m sure you’ll agree. You can order the US version for £18.99 from MovieTyme (delivered) if you just need an English language version.

Yet again, you manage to make me feel thoroughly ashamed for having never played a peripheral-dependent rhythm action game.