I put my blood, sweat and eyesight into these games for you, you know

Game Boy Advance (2001)

I came to the depressing realisation a number of years ago that I’m a slave to screens. I would spend, and continue to spend, pretty much every waking hour looking at a screen of some description. I go from my work PC to the TV to the games console, with healthy amounts of phone thrown in. And I came to this conclusion even before smartphones were “ubiquitous”, so you can only imagine what it’s like for me now.

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Who says Wario can’t last more than five seconds?!

WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! (2003)

All of us shut-in dweebs have entertained the idea of making our own video game. All that time spent not socialising has to go into some form of creative endeavour, right? After all, even the most lazy of teenagers need to recharge from masturbation eventually. And because we regard book authors as old and grey, not ones to emulate, and because we’re too ugly for film and TV, even on our own heavily filtered phones, our only creative avenue left is video game design.

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“You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on Wario”

Wario Land 4 (2001)

I’m sure we trust each other enough now to talk about drug use. I’m not on about drug abuse now, or drug problems. After all, I don’t have a problem with drugs – I love them. No, but isn’t it a bit rich to look down on illegal drugs when the majority of the rest of us barely go a week, or a day even, with those more “honest” drugs of caffeine and alcohol?

But then, what of the legalisation of certain drugs? It always scores you credibility points to mention in public about how you really think weed should be legalised at this stage. But then, there are some cities you take a stroll down nowadays and you can’t move for the sickly smell of the stuff, thanks to legalisation. Do you really want that?

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Look in the mirror, fat little marshmallow, and tell me what you see?

Kirby & the Amazing Mirror (2004)

I reckon I picked the wrong time in history to be unphotogenic, you know. Of course I’m arrogant enough to believe I’m a tera-hunk, but it only takes a rogue camera to catch you at your worst and it’s all over, the entire illusion is shattered – it’s ten chins, my hair’s a silvery mess and the gut is hanging right out.

Worse still if you’re photographed alongside somebody who knew where to look and nailed their pose. I’m surrounded by models, experts at getting papped. It got so that I’d dread those social media notifications, where people would snap a single night out using what’d be the olden days equivalent of ten rolls of film. With that many candid photos of you floating around, there was bound to be a few stinkers in there, for the object of your desires to find and cringe at, and for you to gloomily reflect on. After all, you can’t filter every photo to within an inch of its life, can you?

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Who’s that green dragon, propping up the bar, gone all topsy-turvy?

Yoshi Topsy-Turvy (2005)

Another advance warning for you this time, I’m about to hit you with some student-level banter, but goodness gracious me, a drinking career is getting tougher and tougher to maintain these days. Of course, I was completely done out of 18 months of social lubrication due to Covid-19, although let’s face it, I was already well over the hill by that stage. And it’s not like I wasn’t practicing the home gargles throughout that period. I’ve always been a strong advocate of that time-honoured money-saving drinking technique.

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Get off that couch, lazy bum, and spindash your way to 5K

Sonic Advance (2002)

The long summer days are rolling in, and you know what that means – it’s a return to exercise. Of course, by this time it’s too late for the summer bod; I’m very committed to avoiding that each and every year. Still, motivation and ambition are fleeting things, and sometimes you just get this burst to get out there and be the best you can be.

I’ll be honest, always my primary motivation for exercise and weight loss is to look good naked – or probably you could say that’s a nice side-effect to my real objective, which is to impress the knickers off women. But you see, being a happily committed man as I am means that this type of motivation is at rock bottom.

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The moment it was all over, for F1 and F-Zero

F-Zero Climax (2004)

I know every F1 fan has their own idea of when the sport went into terminal decline. I know I do, and still I tune in every week. But when classic circuits start getting chopped up, or chopped from the calendar altogether, in favour of armpits like Abu Dhabi and Bahrain, then the writing’s on the wall – and with their human rights records, that message may be written in blood.

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Nothing as sacred as sisterly love, straight to the stones

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (2005)

You know, when a woman walks into the room, I look the other way. When she looks at me, I look at her shoes, trying not to catch her chest on the way down. If she talks to me, I go full clam. I know, I know, you wouldn’t expect a thunderchad like me to let himself down on the big stage like that, but why are you surprised? There were no girls in my schools. No girls in my chess clubs. No girls in the pro Pokémon trading card circuits. And certainly no girls in my house, apart from my mother, but she hardly counts now does she?

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Do you think they’d let you bring a Game Boy Advance to the frontlines…?

Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (2003)

I hate to say it, but I think we may be due another World War. All of the classic signs are there – the population figure is getting too high, and that means there’s millions more wastrels being born every year. Medical science has the gall to continue improving, meaning less and less deaths are occurring from natural causes and disease. Something’s gotta give here.

More people need more resources, and the planet is not thanking us for it. Who knows? Maybe the earth really has started to fight back, by nudging some nasty pandemics along and throwing some icecap melting our way. Also, and let’s be open here, aren’t teenagers getting just a bit too obnoxious and comfortable with their lives these days? Isn’t it high time we shipped them off to war?

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Nothing gets the pulse racing like a harmless spot of online stalking

Metroid Fusion (2002)

I’d better declare something to you right now, so you know just what type of creepy sleazebag you’re dealing with here: I’m an absolutely world-class stalker. I particularly excel in the digital sphere, where I can find people’s entire life stories based off the smallest detail, like a plug socket, or the type of knitting used on their socks, all from the grainiest photo.

And I don’t have any of your fancy image recognition computers either, you know, where some smug, well-hung Fox Mulder PI can say “Enhance by 20”, and the computer somehow not only understands the verbal instruction but gets the photo resolution high enough to get the killer’s full gimp suit reflected in the whites of the victim’s eyes. No, I’m talking about the good old-fashioned method of having a hundred tabs open on your browser and combing through your mark’s entire online history.

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