Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (1993)
It’s the worst feeling in the world for a man. No, I’m not talking about a Mitre Mouldmaster football, taken full force into the ghoulies on a bitterly cold day, which is heartbreaking enough. I’m not even talking about that very same scenario except this time the football just gives you a glancing blow, which is somehow even more painful. No, I’m talking about being emasculated.
Continue reading “Glancing blows and racing certainties with the Belmont in blue”
Pokémon Sword & Shield (2019)
Many enthusiastic youths fancy themselves as stayers on the quest to become a professional sportspersonmember, but very few make it. The journey to the top takes immense sacrifice, more than a bit of luck, and some God-given talent. A hefty bank account wouldn’t hurt either. Even then, you might still get hacked down before your prime. For every marquee athlete, there’s hundreds who have chanced it all, only to fail and end up with nothing but a hard luck story. Well, that’s not fully true: some of the more fortunate ones might have stolen a peek at a now-famous sportsman’s tackle in the showers, giving them a story to tell for the rest of their lives.
Continue reading “Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, look where my Chatot was”
Legend of Zelda, The: Breath of the Wild (2017)
Can a man get away with crying? Especially in front of his girlfriend. Men are often being told they should feel able to open up about their emotions, but I wonder. Am I now emasculated for life? Forever to be dismissed as a blubbing wreck with no bottle? Will even the children point and laugh at me? I’ll have to buy a muscle-suit and wear it at all times just to counteract that event, maybe with three smokes in my mouth too.
Continue reading “Nintendo blast open-world gaming’s eardrums with a double-necked Flying V”
Super Mario Bros. 2 (1989)
Burkey enthusiasts among you may be interested to note that Super Mario Advance is the one and only game I’ve ever lost. That’s not lost as in given away, in a similar vein to when you give a hoody to a girl and you’re much too unassertive and conscious of your social standing to ask for it back, I’m talking about misplacing the game and never, ever finding it. I’d love to know what I did to it, where it could be now. If only there was some sort of tracking device I could have used back in 2001 – if there was, I’d have put it on everything.
After all, what if someone had stolen it from me? And I was able to track down the guy who did it? Wouldn’t that be a plot-twist? I sometimes read about people having their entire collections stolen, or oftentimes stolen and sold on by their older brothers to buy drugs. For God’s sake, we’re talking SNES collections with Chrono Trigger and EarthBound, here. If that happened to me, I think I’d go on a rampage. I’m serious, I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions.
Continue reading “It’s terrible. Who’d expect underwear cartridge bandits in this day and age?”
Battletoads (TBD)
It mightn’t exactly be best practice to analyse a product before it comes out, but that doesn’t stop the legions of fans out there writing things off, way before they ever come to pass. We all knew the Ricky Gervais episode of The Simpsons would be a disaster, for example. But we couldn’t know that before we watched it, right? Actually, we could, because it really isn’t that hard to read your audience and give them something they want – and not something you think they want. And this is where I, if I happened to run some godawful consultancy firm, would propose millions of job redundancies worldwide.
Continue reading “How to know your audience, and sell them a game they could well do without”
Duck Hunt (1987)
I’m gonna let you in on a secret that makes me look equal parts softy and petty: I had to block someone from my social media sites because they kept presenting photos of ducks that they’d shot on hunting trips. You already know that I all but crumbled when given a gun to shoot, so there’s no way I could turn a shooter on a nice little ducky. We once had to dissect a sheep’s heart in Biology class and I couldn’t even hack the idea of putting a knife into it. So how could I give both barrels to little Huey, Dewey or Louie?
Continue reading “Don’t be a sitting duck – tool up with the NES Zapper and get hunting”
Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal (2001)
I was cleaning out my room the other day, always a thankless task that ends up getting cut short by many a distraction. You’d need a team of top archaeologists to sift through everything in my room, and even if they got past the first few layers of clothes, they’d have to resort to using proper Carbon-14 dating to detail everything else that’s buried in here.
On this occasion, I found my first ever mobile phone: a Mitsubishi Trium Geo flip phone. It’d probably still be working too, if I’d had the charger for it. Actually, I’m surprised it wasn’t still holding on to an inkling of battery. This was a phone from the days when they were designed to last through a nuclear war, if they had to. Well, let’s be fair – their large battery packs didn’t need to power highly complex operating systems, architecture and dozens of applications. Still, WAP was a pretty intense deal, right?
Continue reading “What’s pocket-sized, bundles of fun and never out of a young man’s hands?”
Super Smash Bros. Melee (2002)
You may not believe it, but the website is dead. That’s what all of us top tech bods are saying. Not just that, but mobile apps are dead too. The cinema is dead. Buying music, that’s dead. Pubs are dead. And as for using your voice to talk to people – that’s well into rigor mortis.
I don’t personally believe any of this, of course, but it’s sweeping statements like these that grab attention in marketing headlines, and they might just fool some gullible CEOs into dropping money on unproven new technology. Well, whatever about all that, it is my sad duty to inform you that the ever-popular GameCube game, Super Smash Bros Melee, is also dead.
Continue reading “Saunter in, beat the pros, grab the cash and wavedash outta there”
Mega Man X6 (2002)
A lot of people, when you ask them how their day in work was, tell you that they did “nothing”. Actually, they’ll say the same thing when you ask them what they did last night or what they’re doing for their upcoming 37th birthday. But “nothing” is always something, even if that just entails sitting there, faffing about like a pudgy potato and watching Netflix. And would you believe me if I told you that I once had a job where I was paid full whack for doing absolutely nothing, besides watching whatever I wanted?
Continue reading “Uh-oh! The gravy train have started to move!”
