Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a spinning roundhouse kick

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FatalDeviation

Fatal Deviation (1998)

When it came time for me to watch Fatal Deviation, it was obvious that a Blu-Ray, a DVD or even a dirty, corrupted old Betamax tape wasn’t exactly going to be available. Naturally I took a quick visit to a certain bay, which is usually my last resort (honest). But it wasn’t even available there either. And obviously, since there are approximately six films total on Netflix, and even those guys appear to have some sort of standards on what gets shown, this film wasn’t going to be found there. No, Fatal Deviation is what you’d call a YouTube-tier film, and there it was – Ireland’s first and last kung fu movie.

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It’s nice to look after the environment, but give us back our plastic straws

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Sonic CD.png

Sonic CD (1993)

I know the environment is on a collision course to apocalypse land and that we’re killing the icecaps, and wringing turtles’ necks with six pack plastic rings. But what do you want me to do about it? Vote for the Green Party?! No chance. You leave it to them, and we’d all be stuck going to work in an ass and cart. They’d make us ration the amount of times we can flush the toilet each day. And fancy a straw or two for your freshly made G&T at the end of a long week? They’ll have you hauled over the non-GM coals and set alight with free-range fire.

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The US Air Force keeps writing checks my body can’t cash

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R-Type Delta

R-Type Delta (1999)

Bored on the job, I decided to investigate the possibility of a career change. I was therefore looking up the requirements to be a jet fighter pilot and bloody hell, the list was as long as your arm. I ask, do they want an air force or not? You’ll end up with nobody up there and the battle for air supremacy will be lost if you keep up that carry on. I’ve got more runner-up and participation medals than you can imagine, so clearly I’m a pretty qualified guy. But these Air Force heavies, all they wanna do is exclude you.

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My dear Dr. Jekyll has several personalities, and they’re all terrible

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1989) 

The ‘Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ is no strange case at all. We all know the ending by now, of course, since it’s become a byword for every bipolar ex you’ve ever been with. The novella itself isn’t much to write home about. It’s nineteenth century, and set in Victorian London, so it’s all stiff upper lips and gollys, and my butler’s given me the incorrect fork for my liver and onions.

“Crivvens, Mr. Utterson, mayhaps I heard you ruminating in the drawing room” “I say, I wonder why you seem to be associated with a monstrous individual?” “Pray we shall speak no more of this” “I understand, old friend, though I don’t seem to be able to put two and two together for love nor farthings” – all that lark.

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In his first foray into Maths and Stats, Mario graduates with honours

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super mario rpg logo.png

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (1996)

I spent my college years wandering about in this kind of cynical trance, like Holden Caulfield. Didn’t really have anywhere to go, anyone to meet, so I just sat about writing and listening to music instead. Even if I’d studied or attended lectures, it’d have hardly made a difference anyway. I went to a ‘prestigious’ university, see. And they can’t fail you.

Maybe if you don’t turn up or if you vomit crayon wax all over the exam paper, you’ll score a big fat zero. But write your exam number down, blindly fill in some of the multi-choice questions, regurgitate parts of your earlier assignments that only barely passed anyway, and you’ve pretty much nailed it. See, if they were to fail you, then you’d go down as a negative statistic, harming the college’s reputation that bit more, domestically as well as internationally. And you know what that means? Lowered funding, something more unspeakable to an educational institution than Voldemort and Macbeth combined.

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Pepe, turn the game console off right now

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metal_gear_solid_2_logo

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2002)

Memes have a lot to answer for, you know. I admit that I never saw the potential harm they could do, back in the days of the incessant le rage comics and whatever other rubbish Reddit were proud of. And now look – any fool can slap the Impact font onto some non-descript photo or Simpsons scene and think they’ve got a top meme, just waiting to go viral. Your parents are now sharing memes on WhatsApp, for God’s sake. We even have a meme US President.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 15)

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pkmn logo2

Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 15)

I’ll say this for Generation 3, they sure gave us a whole heap of new Pokémon, over 130 new boys and girls and Claydols to get acquainted with. And unlike Generation 2, which barely even showed you a nipslip of its new Pokémon, Hoenn invited you backstage to a strip show with everything on display.

Everywhere you looked it was bouncing Spoinks and smooth Lunatones and horny Solrocks and thick Wailords. It threw its Pokémon in your face until you couldn’t breathe, and the Gen 1 Pokémon waiting for you at home suddenly looked so bookish and librarian and frumpy in comparison. You know what I mean?

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8 Gruesome Ways to Die in Gaming

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8gruesome

8 Gruesome Ways to Die in Gaming (2019)

It’s true – game characters die all the time, and sometimes you just can’t do a gosh darn thing about it. Still, being shuffled off this mortal coil isn’t that much of a bummer for them. Almost unfairly, they’ll always simply start over from a checkpoint or save point. Or at worst, back at the level’s beginning. Unless it’s that crazy mech game Steel Batallion, then death might very well be death. But other than that…

No, death for a gaming character tends to be merely a slap on the wrist in this day and age, but you had to look after your limited lives a lot more in retro games, especially when your poor characters suffered some pretty grisly fates. Even in some of the cutesiest games around, the methods of death could be fairly macabre, even if the designers didn’t mean them to be so. In true Christmas spirit, then, here are what I consider to be eight of the gruesomest, most alarming game deaths, in no particular order.

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The NES is like heroin, and not in a good way

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NES Logo

Nintendo Entertainment System (1987)

To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, retro, for lack of a better word, is good. Retro is right, retro works. Retro clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the gaming spirit. Retro, in all of its forms; retro for life, for money, for love, for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. Retro is what sells, and everybody wants to be retro.

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Put me in your best high heels, and I’d do no better

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Metroid

Metroid (1988)

I saw a recent picture of Heather Locklear the other day and it was a sad sight, readers, a sad sight. You get this idea in your head that someone like Heather would be what you’d call ‘infinitely attractive’. As in, even after a thousand years, with the polar ice caps fully melted and we’re living in Water World, you’d still get Heather herself cutting about and looking head and shoulders above everybody else. I must sadly report that these days she’s a bit of a mess of collagen, puppy fat and wrinkly eyes, and her bolt is well and truly shot. I suppose it’s an unfortunate fact of life – everybody eventually declines with age. Everybody except Kylie, of course.

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