That guy's a Maniac...

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Achievements (Trophies if you swing that way). In some respects I hate the fact they try and control the fun to the extent where I feel like I can't cut loose and just enjoy game anymore. I do however like to have something tangible now from a game upon completion, something that I can look back on and at a glance tell how much I got from the game , how long I spent and even to an extent how much i enjoyed the game. So when we did the  Painful Moments in Gaming  week it got me thinking about games from my past and how it would be nice to have a record of time spent on games from my childhood. So here is my top 10 list of games that I spent a lot of time on as a kid, each of which I'd love a record of achievement for and what I think I would have scored.. (I am aware that some of these games are available on XBLA)  #1 . Treasure Island Dizzy(C64): 970,  I was  robbed  of a perfect 1000 score... it still

We used to write a blog about Resident Evil dontcha know?

We already mentioned ALREADY JESUS CHRIST ALREADY GET OFF MY BACK MOM ALREADY! That we are big fans of video game soundtracks. Be it the official tunes, an inspired remix and very occasionally we even allow songs which have merely sampled an OT. to creep onto our MP3 player. PRO TIP : Never ever, ever be tempted to listen to a video game related song which has been filed under the 'comedy' or 'humorous' genres. They are almost exclusively 11 year old boys who sound like girls on helium doing the first season Pokemon theme tune. Tetris remixes aside, of which we are veritable connoisseurs, we do like hard copy soundtracks. They are often objects of beauty as well as magically trapping the music onto a disk. Here's our top 5. Yeah that's right bitches. Doing a list. Lists are normally the reserve for the green around-the-gills, unskilled new video game bloggers. But when you've been blogging as long as we have you are allowed to sometimes ironically do a list

Is? Is this a new series ? Maybe, maybe. Chronicling the activities of the often underestimated bug/grass pokemon. Do not underestimate bullet seed. Full article from here .

TGAM gives you the low down on the Nintendo Channel, Nintendo's sometimes under-used promotional channel available for free download on your Nintendo Wii. This third of team TGAM is a big ol' Nintendo fanboy and is keen to evangelise the rather good comunity stuff that is on offer for the Nintendo Wii. Another two weeks of Weekly Downloads Trailer On Wiiware, DSiWare and Virtual Console , round-ups of the latest new content on the Nintendo Shop. Pearl Harbor [sic.] Trilogy- 1941 Red Sun Rising actually looks quite good. Kung Fu Funk looks like fun in short bursts if you've never played Warioware . The mental Toribash is given a bit of love although even we wouldn't buy it from the weird ten seconds of footage. Zenquaria: Virtual Aquarium is yet another virtual aquarium for your Wii except this one had Mii compatability. And looks rubbish. DSiWare has the rather shambling new line up including Steamworld Tower Defense (yet another tower defense game!), Hair Sal

Omastar is away this week: It has happened. The rot set in. The series sold out. Omastar comics will never be the same again. In order to get the #8793rd most popular webcomic on the web to go back to its roots and ditch this new style then sign the petition here. To be honest Omastar, in your absence, the ratings were up, readers loved the new style and to be frankly even more honest than before fictionalised cephalopod molluscs just don't sell copy anymore. You're done and I'll see to it you never work in this town again. Again. In other news: No gaming news. Nothing. Nada. Go outside you rapscallions. Blockquote tags discovered on blogger and used in odd ways by bloggers!

News story from here . Shame on you Paras.

Books innit? In between writing about games, listening almost exclusively to gaming soundtracks and reading about games on the Internet we occasionally find the time to actually play some games. Rarer still, we find time to pick up a game related book and give it a bloody good read and now is a good a time as any to be reading about games. This time five years ago, you'd be hard pressed to find any gaming based literature in your local book shop. Now, for the discerning reader, it is hard not get buried by it. First up, we've been reading The Second Life Herald: the virtual tabloid that witnessed the dawn of the metaverse by Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace. This book is 3 years old now but charts the early days of the growth of things like The Sims Online and Second Life and where interesting stuff happens with emergent behaviours in games. If you completely missed this chunk of gaming history but want to know more about why people bother with second life, what the Upskirt Museum

We played and wrote about (in yellow?) Lost Planet and pretty much hated it because it let us down. This was supposed to be next-gen. Then Richie tried to hide his excitement following the hype train for Lost Planet 2 and bemoaning the near-transparency of this IP amongst several 'hardcore' gamers. Well, like the adolescent boys we are we've had a little play for the first time [of Lost Planet 2] and we like it. WHAT WE LIKED 1) This is essentially an HD, fighting large things version of the truly truly excellent Freedom Fighters. Why didn't a single review (disclaimer: that we read ) draw this parallel? Freedom fighters was excellent. This game is also mostly excellent. Space dwelling snow pirates freedom fighters! 2) The Capcomness. Unlockables include emotes, nom de plumes, weapons and clothes. There are thousands of emotes and nom de guerres to collect and it''ll take even keen players forever to unlock them all. Once again, some of the unlocks are CAPCOM

Congratulations to out favorite Uk-based Official Nintendo Magazine on their new Guinness Book of Records (Gamer's Edition) World Record for: Most articles published on least content [Nintendo Franchise] The prestigious magazine picked up the tenuous award upon posting the article titled "New Pokémon outed". This record breaking article made the books as the 2210,0067th article on the unreleased game Pokemon Black and White. So far, a handful of screenshots and a dozen confirmed new pokemon have inspired the skilled team at ONM to: Write more news articles on this one game than Pokemon in the pokedex (with the new editions). Produce articles which when printed out and bound, forms a series of volumes larger than that human genome book series that twattish scientists keep banging on about . Write more words than neurons in the average human brain. Draw more inane comments than bricks in the Great Wall of China. The record was previously held by blogger Ed Green, who, due

Sometimes, you can't help but just post up a link and encourage people to go and bloody click on it. So BLOODY CLICK ON IT . I promise to you friend, you won't regret it. Via RPS . Post Script: Sometimes also, we wish we could write too .

We bitch loud and hard every time a Pokemon event comes to town. It means looking like a paedo, travelling to undesirable parts of the country and is a massive pain to lie to everyone about going to. However, despite "hating it" we did go to the Arceus (and the Mew event but that is a different tale ) event earlier this year. I only just got round to doing the special in game event, the first of two, the second I will never do because you have to have yet ANOTHER Arceus and well. My eyes have just experienced perhaps the trippiest thing I've ever seen on my DS. SPOILERS by the way if you intend to ever do this event and want to keep it secret. Against my better judgement I feel special for being allowed to see that little video first hand without cheating. Certainly better than other DLC and makes the traumatic experience of obtaining these event pokemon that little less painful. Good on you Nintendo I say, good on you! Also, props to the 'community' for taking t

It has been a while since we checked the Nintendo Channel to give you, the armchair hardcore gamer who 'hasn't plugged the Wii in for months', the low down on what is essentially Nintendo TV. We (well I) am a big fan of this service and I'm keen to get more of you to use it and I'm keen for Nintendo to contiue to support it. Nintendo TV episodes put together by the Official Nintendo Magazine continues with three new installments. Episode 3 highlights the best of Wiiware and DSiware (Lost Winds, World of Goo, Bit Trip, PicoPict, Earthworm Jim). A lot of people on the ONM forums were complaining that this episode was a bit unneccessary but having seen first hand how; a) few Wii owners have ever explored the Nintendo Shop let alone understand what Wiiware is and b) hard to navigate the stores are if you don't know very specifically what you are looking for, I'd say that this particular episode was well in order. It is stil a shame that Wiiware demos are

Due to the general time constraints of normal socially adjusted people, there’s barely enough time to play games let alone write about them. This is my disclaimer for this particularly navel gazing part 1 playthrough of Dead Space Extraction by squeezing out the most words with the least play time. In the industry, this is called 'reviewing games'. That and I loved the Runner series on Mirror’s Edge . Feel free to pick up a copy of this game and join in. Chip in with your thoughts. Also, it’s fair to say this is gonna be spoilerific. This article was written after two playthroughs of the first level. Prologue. I’m an old fashioned kinda gal. I still like to buy games from shops and I like my hard copy games to have a story associated with them. The story of Dead Space Extraction starts last year sometime. I’d played Dead Space in an idle half an hour on a friend’s console and after that I knew I liked it. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t play the first half and hour. I played a ran

Like Mario? Got an Android 2.1 Smartphone? All that extra battery life getting you down? You need this! Đ

Dear M.I.A. In response you your recent, um, comments regarding kids getting trained for Afghanistan via the medium of videogames... Quote: "...t here's a whole generation of American kids seeing violence on their computer screens and then getting shipped off to Afghanistan...". This coming from the woman who got a kid to sing about folding paper planes and getting high. I would also like to state that there is a whole generation of kids going to school, and then going to university. disgraceful innit? Fuck off M.I.A. Love and hypocrisy, Richie X 

Tits? Check. Big gun? Check. Progress is so over rated. This is a screensht from Koei's Samurai Warriors 3. Not Samurai Warriors 3 but the Capcom one that looks just like it. In other news. This is an image of the new pokemon called Scrapebotto. Scrapebotto is a scraping the bottom of the barrel type Pokemon. Other new Pokemon announced are household appliances (did that), letters of the alphabet (also done before) and a new Pokemon which takes the shape of other Pokemon . All the ideas have been used. All of them. Just go for a squirrel thing, a walking ball thing and a Dr Robotnik Pokemon . Oh FFS.

What a nonsense. Video Games | Resident Evil: Revelations | E3 2010: Debut Trailer XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii It has always been a bit of nonsense but really?

I've just received my subscription copy of the latest Official Nintendo Magazine to find that they have a WORLD EXCLUSIVE on Goldeneye Wii. Which is brilliant because it is only two days behind the actual world exclusive announcement at E3. Okay, what, so maybe they wrote the article earlier but then had to put it in a bag to mail it out. So the exclusive was written before it was exclusively announced at E3 so technically it was at some point a world exclusive but only to the person who wrote it and an editor or two. If this is how exclusives really work then we're officially calling the exclusive on Gears of War 4, Megaman 18 through 21, FIFA 2012,2013 and 2014 and Colony Wars 4. You read it here first.

Some quick thoughts. Some of us aren't huge E3 fans here. But here is our unbiased thoughts about how Ninty's show went following the Microdisaster . First off, I'm not a LoZ fan at all so there was little in the first 20 minutes for me. Do the controls really need explaining anyway because they've BEEN THE SAME SINCE FOREVER . Also, BINGO Cringey Playthrough. The 'Universal Appeal' bit. What is Madden? What is NSomethingsomething2K? NBA? Although, we're happy that if we do buy Mario Sports Mix, we're confident we'll never need to buy another sports game again. Which is very clever and a bit dirty. But the HD fanboys will be too busy lamenting the casual-ty of it all to notice. Plus, there's some much needed couch multiplayer party games from the looks of things. You know games you can play without standing up KinLOLLOLLLOLect. STATISTICS. LIES. Well okay then, IN YOUR FACE HD CONSOLES. Move it along Reggie. Wii Party. Secretely excit

Attending prior international affairs, means that today will be spent trying to hunt down fucking E3 videos (we just don't trust your spin) and catching up with the good ol' Nintendo Channel. Fortunately, a paltry FOUR videos since last time means it'll all be over soon and we can get back to finding E3 videos. Nintendo TV continues with episode two all about the 'Wii world cup'. This video feels oddly familiar pitting the Miis of various famous Englishmen against the Miis of various famous Germans in a five challenge in Wii Sports Resort, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, Mario Kart and Wii Fit Plus. Why don't you create your own Wii World Cup? Nice idea ONM but a credit would be nice next time Chris. Super Mario Galaxy 2 has a third trailer up on the channel. Fortunately, it's a medley of the all those bits you've no doubt seen before so don't worry about more spoilers. We get the point Nintendo. We'll buy it already. Christ on

If E3 was the Gulf of Mexico and Kinect an oil spill you can find all the sickly oily penguins trying to work out what the fuck over here . E.g "It is not possible to make any serious hardcore game without a controller with this level of technology." Fact. Brilliant. Also, bingo .

So E3 then? So what do we have to look forward to in the next year for the 360? Ahem, Kinect. It's Wii style flappin, without the controller. It's all very sophisticated supposedly, it's like a really expensive webcam with features like face recognition. Apparently all you need to do is wave to select your profile... I'll believe that when I see it... I still resent that 15 minutes of switching profiles when I go to a mates house, but at least I don't need to get everyone in the room to look away when I enter my password, now I just... need... to... wave... Cough, The new Xbox. It's shiny, smaller, quieter, has a bigger hard disk, 5 USB ports and some special connection for Kinect, pretty much everything you could want in a "Slim" model. Achooo, Sequels. Gears of War, Halo, Fable, Call of Duty, Metal Gear. not to be sneezed at. Love and Sony/Ninty better be more interesting, Richie X

So yeah Dead Rising 2 (due out around Autumn) is gonna have playboy advertisements in it: Now as far as in game advertising goes, I'm not overly offended... But of course certain members of the games community are taking offence at this...  There was one guy - I shit you not - complaining, "great another game I cant play in front of my kids"... like really... REALLY!?! The game where you pick up a Stick and a Chainsaw, secure them together, to create some deadly hideous object, (Which I like to call a "Chick" or a "Stainsaw") and then swing it around dismembering the living dead, along with some rather nuts non-dead people... That game? BUT Now that it might have tits in it, your kids definitely can't look at it, what ass-backwards logic... Tool. Oh yeah, and it's not offensive to women or gays either, because neither women nor homoseckshuals will play/understand Dead Rising 2. So yeah, playboy meets the living dead. Let the Necrophi

From EDGE " The Wii and DS markets have “collapsed”, according to Namco Bandai’s VP of sales, marketing and publishing Olivier Comte....... “It’s a tough market,” Comte told MCV . “We had a lot of product, and the average quality of a game on DS and Wii is very, very bad. So in the mind of the consumer today, to buy a DS or Wii game is to buy a game that isn’t very good." Namco's E3 lineup From ONM Namco Bandai Dragon Ball: Origins 2 (DS) Pac Man 2010 (TBC) . Okay so Pac Man 2010 might just be the Citizen Kane of games . No no. Fuck off Namco Bandai. Just fuck off.

The excellent Everybody Votes Channel on the Nintendo Wii has the uber Web 2.0 option for (l)users to submit questions for future polls. About a month ago I made the following suggestion: This has still not been a question on the channel yet so something must have gone wrong when I sent it in to Nintendo. I have emailed them this JPEG this time so they definitely won't miss it. Expect to see this question on the channel soon!

We all saw the rise, the fall, the rise again, the predictable re-fall, the return, the fall to rock bottom, the Hello! recovery special, the weight problems, the diet series, that Oprah show, those photos, that white powdery substance from that part of that Lickitung. Those ads, that smile, the love Omanyte scandal. But now. Defying the odds. HE. IS. BACK. AGAIN. The one, the only. Oma. Staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar. Of course, there's no way we'd let comic 26 just go by uncelebrated so this one is with special guest star, that's right it's only fudging Omastar. No it's all different now. Some stars should be allowed to fall. Sell out. Selloutstar more like. Get me Octillery on the phone. We need a new star. TO BE CONTINUED

E3 again folks! E3 again! Want to see the games you'll be picking up for £10 in two months from now? Sure thing . Need some more ammunition to keep up those tired old 'console wars' between you and other moron-losers on the forum? Hey fuckface. It's Efunking3. Want to be told what shit you'll be eating next and exactly how to grin whilst you do it? Well then, you may have heard of a lil ol thing called E3. Here's our how to guide: 1) Find the official live E3 presentation stream a Danish pirate stream that occupies a small 2 by 3 cm screen with six or seven pixels worth of definition, get some popcorn and settle in to watch the laggy presentations whilst clueless meatheads keep asking "So am I supposed to play Gears 3 standing up?" over and over and over again in between the indistinguishable Danish chit chat in the 'open chat box'. 2) Milliseconds after anyone says anything Alt tab to the one of the myriad of fora you have open and type in LO

We've finally got around to picking up a copy of the reasonably acclaimed De Blob for our Nintendo Wii. We have played the first couple of levels and out current analysis is: JOY. The sound, the colour, THE PURE HAPPY JOY. We're only three levels in; we hope that the Inkies don't suddenly turn into SUPER GENET(/R)IC MUTANT SOLDIERS or the game dramatically turns into a flight sim half way through because it's only a fundamental game change of that order that has the potential to ruin the rest of the game. It is a happy and pretty game and this cutscene might rank as one of our favourite game cutscenes of all time (well okay second to sexing a dead man ). The one we're on about is 2.28 in the video below, the favourite cutscene not the necrophilia one which can be found here . A lot of writers have been going on about the problem with ubiquitous violence in video games but a quick glance at the games shelf and Zack and Wiki, Another Code: Rubbish, De Bl

Over at that other filthy site I sometimes write for I have a new article up about what would happen if Jesus, Charles Darwin, Adolf Hitler and Albert Wesker went head to head in bloody battle played some gentlemenly sports against each other. Something is wrong with the writing because at least three people have asked about the scores after the golf game. I say to ye, read the text carefully. Anyway as a special little gift to the TGAM faithful, here's the footage for the rounds that didn't make the final cut: Adolf and Darwin go head to head in the dress up as a cowboy and catch a slippery grumpig competition. The winner was the one who identified the 'real pretty mouth first'. Darwin doing pretty bady in the chat up a bitch round. There was also the hide the sausage round but that's a post for a slow news day y'know? Bonus features!

As some may be aware, if you buy a new copy of Dragonage you get a redemption code for 'The Stone Prisoner' DLC included in the box. For those not buying a new copy the DLC will cost you 1200MS Points, which quite frankly is quite a lot for a little plot and an extra character. But hey it's a nice way of keeping people buying new games and supporting the medium right? Well imagine my dismay when I see on the back of the box in the small print that the code expires on April 30th! Seeming like an obvious EA scheme to maintain the high price of an ageing game I was naturally pissed off. However dear reader, the silver lining (and the point) of this tale is that I fired in the code anyway (on June 2nd) and it worked anyway!! So if you are on the fence about buying this great  game and feeling cheated about the DLC, then get involved, the code (as of June 2nd) has yet to expire! Đ