“We need to talk… I think we’d be better just as Friend Codes”

Mario Kart DS (2005) NOTX

Every man out there who’s managed to convince a woman to stay in his companny for more than three days will have experienced that blood-curdling, spine-tingling text message that reads: “We need to talk”. I’m certain it’s taught as part of the curriculum in all-girls’ schools.

You know, a quick module they do just before they learn how to show indecisiveness about what they’d like to eat, and how to get the last word in arguments. Well, if you’re a male and you’re reading this, fear not because I have struck a blow for our whole gender – I have subjected a woman to the “We need to talk” routine.

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I’m dreaming of a heroic adventure, just like the ones we used to know…

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Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Reverie (1995)

I’m just back off a week of annual leave, but I don’t even get to have a pathetic attempt at a tan to brag about, as I was cooped up in rainy Ireland for the week. Both the Irish and Greek governments aren’t entertaining the idea of me travelling on Hellenic booze cruises, and Vegas isn’t exactly enticing right now. Something to do with a virus. Is that nanny state-ism in action or what?

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I, Burkey, do take you, Goku, to be my lawfully wedded Saiyan

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Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (1992)

It seems I never get invited to weddings – I’ve only been invited to two in my life, and neither time was I of drinking age, which is no good. Wedding rates in Ireland are going down, too. Small wonder: the last thing you want to end up having is that type of marriage where you’ve gone out, found someone you ended up hating and bought them a house. Worse than that, you’ll go on to lose this house in a particularly messy divorce that you’ll be asked about at each and every family gathering you get guilted into attending.

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Save the world from scaldy monsters? I will in me hole

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Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen (1990)

Accents are a weird and wonderful thing. What I can never get over is how you only need to book it down the road before your own homely accent becomes strange and foreign – I’ve read before that in the UK, there’s an entirely different accent every 25km. So you’ll be going on your usual Sunday morning half-marathon, and then suddenly you find yourself surrounded by people speaking in this alien creole. And it’s a linguistic rule, perhaps written on an Ogham stone somewhere, that says “where there be accents, there be slang”.

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A seminal RPG! But, only find it in America of North and the Moonland Isle

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Final Fantasy IV (SNES) (1991)

Did you know that you change your friends every seven years? That’s right, one day you’re out playing football on the road and a bit of Tip the Can for good measure, and the next moment (well, over the next seven years), they’re just left sitting on your Facebook friends list gathering more and more cobwebs. Actually, Facebook is last century’s buzz, isn’t it?

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Has a mal-attended Pictochat room ever downed a plane?

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Nintendo DS (2005) NOTX

I’m not going to start going at you about whatever the deal is with airline food, but if we’re ever gonna be allowed back on planes again without crowds of curtain-twitchers judging us and denouncing us as Satan, then we’ll have to think like travellers again. It’ll be back to sniffing out the best last minute deals, making that dicey decision about whether or not you really need to spend a tenner on travel insurance. And above all else, you need to make sure you have the right entertainment for the plane journeys themselves.

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Mario’s lost all hope, and all for want of an A-press

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Super Mario 64 (1997)

Do you ever feel like you’re putting too much effort into a game? A bit too much time min-maxing, or playing online, until your Steam account says you’ve been playing Team Fortress 2 like there isn’t gonna be internet tomorrow? Do you ever sit back and wonder what it was all for?

I don’t, because my approach to playing games these days, since there are so many and since I’m cursed with bundles of disposable income, is to leave them on the shelf in their cellophane wrapping. Occasionally I’ll feel a bit guilty, and load up some AAA game of the month like God of War, and give it a whole 30 minutes of play. And 23 of those minutes are spent waiting for it to finish installing.

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It looks like Toon Link’s gone the same way as penmanship

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Legend of Zelda, The: Phantom Hourglass (2007)

I’m often described as being “differently abled”, something I always take umbrage with. After all, I do apply for the Special Olympics every four years, but I get snubbed every time. And I can’t join the regular circuit of the Olympics either, because my 100-metre times don’t especially measure up and Ireland is, unfortunately, a member of the drugs governing body WADA. But I know that I do have one physical ailment that sets my life back considerably, and that’s the fact that I’m left-handed.

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I will be forever glad that I didn’t study Medicine in college

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Trauma Center: Under the Knife (2006)

So the latest dope is in – bacon and other forms of processed pork are carcinogenic. Bacon (hereafter to be referred to as rashers, I’m not very comfortable with Americanisms as you surely know) seems to have now been termed a big fat health risk by what the tabloids would call “boffins”. Is this some sort of WHO backlash? Have the morbidly obese of the world – and I mean the stop-and-stare fatties, the circus sideshows – been indulging in rashers just a little bit too much? I now heavily suspect that a memo of some sort was passed to Reuters and the Associated Press: “Look guys, we’ve done a survey among 1,000  fat messes asking them what on earth they actually eat, how they manage to give themselves a gravitational pull, and bacon is showing up way too often. It’s time we killed it for good”.

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Parrots in court, channeling the dead, and stepladder debates – it’s Casual Friday for Phoenix Wright

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Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2006)

If there’s one profession out there that I’m able to look at with absolute certainty and say “Nup, not for me”, other than moonlighting as a sex slave in the BBW boudoir down the road from me, it would have to be lawyer. Or anything to do with a court of law really. You know, Judge, Judy, executioner, all that. Your every word has to be precise, and there’s no room for made-up hogwash, which sort of puts my potential career as a litigator in chains from the start. No waffling? Forget it! No, I’ll leave all that game to those chosen ones, the type of people called Charles, Edward and Magnus.

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