Tag: super famicom

Winging it with Peter and the pre-promotes

~ Burkey Gaming ~ Leave a comment

Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (1996)

I’m here today to call BS on a piece of conventional wisdom that I keep seeing repeated everywhere, and that’s this idea that everyone around you is winging it to some extent, that nobody really knows what’s going on and we’re all just trying to get by. I’m sorry, but that is one enormous coping mechanism, probably designed to make you feel better, or smarter, about yourself. A couple of jobs ago, this was brought home to me; I’d thought of myself as fairly intelligent, which isn’t too arrogant or self-deluded right? Don’t we all like to think that of ourselves?

But in this job, in an office of about 50 people I was fone of about four imbeciles, and I most certainly wasn’t just “getting by”, nor was everyone else just winging it and pretending to know the score. What I’m getting at here is that if you’re’ not sharp, then in most cases you shall be found out very quickly, and just see what happens if you call the person sacking you a blagger.

Continue reading “Winging it with Peter and the pre-promotes” →

Mystery of the menus, curse of the cursors, the death of design

~ Burkey Gaming ~ Leave a comment

Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (1994)

I don’t know if we’ve just become spoilt by the wealth of apps and online services available nowadays, but is it my imagination or are user interfaces and user experiences getting worse and worse? Strangely, it also seems to me that there’s a growing abundance of money in UX / UI Designer jobs. Perhaps this means they’re throwing more money than in God’s wallet at the problem, but it’s still to no avail.

You take the video streaming services, and we pretty much have them all as we’re awful couch potatoes. Well, you try and search for something on Netflix and you can forget it. The search function is slow, sometimes difficult to find, and the thing you’re searching for is either not there (but here are dreadful knock-offs, a classic Netflix move. Or your desired result is buried beneath a load of child porn-enabling series and other bleeding heart liberal rubbish.

Continue reading “Mystery of the menus, curse of the cursors, the death of design” →

There’s plenty to click, and it’s not much of a drag either

~ Burkey Gaming ~ Leave a comment

Mario & Wario (1993)

To this day, I still can’t decide whether or not I like mice. I’m not talking about computer mice, to which I’m fairly ambivalent. I’m certainly a lot more ambivalent about them than an old boss of mine who was from an age before computers, and therefore distrusted them immensely. He’d pull the old wired mouse around his desk like he was trying to start a lawnmower, and he only ever called it “the rat” in a low grunt. You’ll know the difference between mice and rats if your cats ever bring them in, that’s for sure. Here’s a tip – rats are a bit more chewy.

Continue reading “There’s plenty to click, and it’s not much of a drag either” →

It’s another trip to Dracula’s castle, where the grass isn’t even slightly greener

~ Burkey Gaming ~ Leave a comment

castlevania dracula x

Castlevania: Dracula X (1995)

It’s a desperate situation that we’ve all found ourselves in, perhaps with a beautiful lady to impress as well, which only makes the stakes even higher. The scene is dinner at your local ‘kid-friendly’, ‘family-oriented’ restaurant which, loosely translated, means they’ll let any scum under the sun in.

Oh well, no matter, you’re busy making your heavily rehearsed order, staying well away from potentially embarrassing choices: the steak that you’d end up asking to be cooked well-done, or those very messy chicken wings. Or that fish fingers meal that looks right up your street but is only available on the kid’s menu. Is that ageism or what?

Continue reading “It’s another trip to Dracula’s castle, where the grass isn’t even slightly greener” →

A trip back to the wild west, before undergoing the trials of social media

~ Burkey Gaming ~ Leave a comment

Trials of Mana

Trials of Mana (1995)

If you asked for me twenty years ago, any day of the week or time of the day you would have found me on a Windows Millennium Edition computer, playing emulators using a keyboard, or perhaps watching Love Hina on Winamp through my dialup internet. If not that, then I would have been whiling away my precious preteen hours on AIM and IRC. An absolutely pathetic way to start puberty of course, and yet, would you trade internet nostalgia for the world?

Continue reading “A trip back to the wild west, before undergoing the trials of social media” →

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

~ Burkey Gaming ~ Leave a comment
dragon quest 5

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.

Continue reading “I, Burkey, do take you, Goku, to be my lawfully wedded Saiyan” →

When I find a chav paradise I like, I stick with it

~ Burkey Gaming ~ Leave a comment

dq3

Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation (1992)

People often talk about what’s in their bucket list, this bucket presumably being the one that we’ll all eventually kick. Top of most peoples’ lists is ‘travelling around the world’, which I find extraordinary. I’m a miserable old sod as you well know, but this travel the world thing was never for me. To be honest, with the exception of Japan, New York and maybe Vegas for a laugh, I’ve done just about all the places I wanted to. Australia, where I have to wrestle with spiders? China, where God knows what’ll happen next? African safari, where I might get eaten by lions, or far more embarrassingly, giraffes? No no, that ain’t for me.

Continue reading “When I find a chav paradise I like, I stick with it” →

Space travel? No thanks, it’s a bit too chilly for me

~ Burkey Gaming ~ Leave a comment

star ocean

Star Ocean (1996)

Look, I can understand it, but it still really astounds me just how many children want to become astronauts and go into space when they grow up. They don’t know anything about what that entails, of course. They just want to wear a cool suit and they think space is cool and they think rocket ships and meteors and lasers are cool as well.

Continue reading “Space travel? No thanks, it’s a bit too chilly for me” →

Some word association for you: prom date, dweeb, Unlikely

~ Burkey Gaming ~ Leave a comment

lester the unlikely logo

Lester the Unlikely (1994)

It might seem ridiculously hypocritical, but I simply cannot stand nerds. It’s not that I blindly hate them because it’s my sworn duty as a jock. And it’s not even that I hate them because they’re smelly or that they share some of my hobbies or that their names are Melvin, Cedric and Andrew. It’s more that they have bipolar mindsets. I’m not kidding – we all know that arrogant, obnoxious neckbeard of a dweeb who’s done all the research on athiesm, and God will he let you know about it. You better not open your mouth about sci-fi films or comic book lore either, because he will have all the info, all the knowledge, and he will know everything and you will know nothing. And, of course, he’ll be really loud and annoying about it. Right?

Continue reading “Some word association for you: prom date, dweeb, Unlikely” →

Plagiarism is a serious thing, and the Gunman’s Proof of that

~ Burkey Gaming ~ Leave a comment

 

gunmans proof

Ganpuru: Gunman’s Proof (1997)

Did you know that I was actually once convicted of that much feared crime of college plagiarism? The one that they like to pretend is worse than a chilling murder-rape? It’s actually a true story this time, unlike all of those other ridiculous anecdotes I tell that invariably star me as the hero. The only little detraction from this story I’m about to self-indulgently regale is the fact that I was actually done for self-plagiarism. That’s right – because I submitted two essays for two different modules that had some admittedly similar paragraphs, the Evil Computer flagged me as a big fat plagiarism number and I was summoned for a chat with one of the lecturers in question, who looked like Milhouse with a goatee.

Continue reading “Plagiarism is a serious thing, and the Gunman’s Proof of that” →