That guy's a Maniac...

The wii is good an’ all but what I’d really like is 51 episodes of an awful Kirby TV show, for free as a wii channel. Not all at once mind, I want them to be staggered over the next 6 months. Would you look at that! It’s come true. Sure, let’s mess around with Kirby ‘canon’. Let’s give King Dedede a stupid voice. Let’s add two annoying kid characters. Let’s make Meta Knight some kind of Johnny foreigner. Let’s add a stupid theme tune and let’s not use any of the awesome Kirby music that already exists. Still it’s free and yes I’ve watched every episode and will continue to watch them all until episode 51 on the day of release. I’m gripped. Turn on your wii and download the channel now!

We’ve been away and the reason is that we were paralysed by an overwhelming sense of underwhelment. The cause was this year’s E3. Okay, we’ll admit it, we haven’t been the world’s staunchest E3 fans, it’s the time of year that game companies gleefully inform us of what shit we should be eating for the coming year, whether we like it or not. Lesser gaming sites use the occasion to announce all kinds of “exclusives” and “previews” until everyone is bored with it all and all that is left for the next year is the rather tedious exercise of waiting for the games that have been totally spoiled through the year to come out. Microsoft’s Presentation. Remember that tosser with the shades from last year arriving on the stage like the unruly, too-cool-for-school but delivers results rebel. He was back this year still with the shades but it’s clear that he is to Microsoft what Tim Allen is to Disney. He’s now their dancing monkey, their rebel bitch. He ain't cool. They green-lit his motion co

We’re sure we came up with this as a joke ‘game’ around about the time that Eye training for the DS came out. Looks like we’ve got grounds to sue because it’s actually been fucking released on wiiware. How did we get to this? UPDATE: Proof http://www.thatguys.co.uk/2007/10/two-down.html that's a four year old idea.

Time for the yearly dip into the world of PC games. Just under 3 hours of downloading and updating nearly done....

Well following on from my last post raving on about how great the emulator version of Ocarina of time is Graphically and entirely. I decided to dig out all the old N64 games I had and, straight up, create a collection of all my old N64 games and have them running in some oddly-polygony HD glory. Sadly none of them work. My top 5 of my favourite games for the N64 that dont work on an Emulator. (click the images for full rez versions) Mario 64. Mario actually ran quite well despite some visible games between walls, but I'm sure they were there in the fist place. However, there were many areas where things were just not visible first example being the first bonus slide: Closer you got to the slide the more it would disappear, so annoying. 4. Shadows of the Empire. This one I was really looking forward to, I remember this game quite fondly, one of the most under-rated launch titles. However, once you get past this screen, the menus are a garbled mess: 3. Super Smash Bros. Th

I've been exclusively playing Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis and Turok Evolution on the PS2 recently. Partly because you won't be able to play PS2 games through the TV anymore, already it hurts the eyes unless you spend ten minutes of naffing through the menus everytime you switch from DVD to TV to PS2 to Wii. I've been playing Jurassic Park genesis because JESUS FUCKING CHRIST KEVIN FROM OHIO YOU'VE SEEN A Ceratosaurus hunt and eat most of a herd of Dryosaurus and you're pissy because the trees aren't authentic? Ahhh the thrills of accidentally deleting security fences. As for Turok Evolution, I've been trying to finish it for that other neglected webpage . Now, I know it isn't particular a great shooter but considering how easy it is to roll your eyes far back into your own head everytime another FPS comes out it is easy to forget the kind of crap we had to put up with. Here's a list of my personal peeves at Turok, some are specifically aimed a

Wow! just Wow. For the past week or so I have been having cravings to play Zelda: ocarina of time. So through the wonders on the internet I dug out an emulator. I also dug out my 360 wireless adaptor. I set that bitch up! Plugged my PC into my TV, set the Graphics to all maximum settings, and set the Controller like an N64 pad. And started it up. Amazing, I never new that all those details were possible despite the backgrounds and some of the textures being a bit pixelly its flawless, and plays really well with the 360 controller! Here's to Retro Games and HD. Love and Saria's song Richie X

The 3DS hasn't sold a bajillion bajillion copies. Which is a massive failure as everything should sell more than the last thing that sold the most. Forever. Cue cut and washed articles about it. By the family bucket load . TGAM doesn't have one. Here's why: 1) We already have, on average 3 DSes each in various shapes sizes and colours. According to our Peruvian ancestry four is an unlucky number so until one breaks we won't be getting one. If only Microsoft made DSes then we'd probably have to get a new DS every week (amirite?) b) The DSiXL only came out last week. The protective sheet is still attached. C) 3D is to gaming like the discovery of a third nipple during intercourse (yours or theirs) with someone you've paid a lot of money to. It is just a bit weird, not really what you wanted and leaves you feeling that sometimes more isn't actually better. )) The average length of a DS game is around 4000000 hours with all those RPGs (including the one with the

Is a game about submarines. NOT Lesbian Robots OR Robot Lesbians Sadly.

The last panel in this week's triptych about Wiiblindness in the games industry. In the last part I already mentioned EDGE. EDGE 227 has a largely thoughtful article about online multiplayer in games raising all the interesting points around when and why online multiplayer is shoe-horned into a game (e.g Dead Space 2), whether it's devs, marketeers or the consumers who are responsible for more and more games shipping with online multiplayer and the curious mystery around the virtual non existence of crossplatform onlinemultiplayer with one not so notable exception. For no discernable reason not a single Wii game, nor the console itself is mentioned even when it may be pertinent to. Sure, the console is still widely viewed as the little engine that couldn't but it's a glaring omission not to mention Mario Kart Wii when testing 2009 titles for how active communities are. That's a three year old game that not only still has an active community but also a title that get

EDGE magazine isn't just the thinking gamer's read, in our opinion it's one of the few 'publications' that transcends insulting and is actually written for people above the age of nine. By comparison, half of the shit on the web and virtually every other gaming mag falls somewhere between the Beano and the National Enquirer. However, one of the problems with a cross platform publication is that each issue can only offer a limited number of pages to each platform. Increasingly this has meant that every platform but the Wii gets coverage. In this month's issue E227 only one of the 23 games reviewed and previewed is a Wii game. Last month only two of the 24 games were Wii games. Now of course, it pleases more of the demographic,more efficiently to look at the cross-platform games !PS3, PC,Xbox 360) but the truth is that there ain't that much on the horizon . It seems that when Capcom or Nintendo aren't making Wii games, nobody is. Why is that Nintendo magi

There's been a blitz of Wii bashing and just ignorant the platform recently. It's a bit stupid really and recalls times when the PlayStation 2 and Gamecube were prematurely abandoned, the former platform killed off in it's prime and the latter sticking two fingers to Microsoft and Sony with Resident Evil 4. So it appears to begin with the Wii. The first bit of bashing comes from Frank Gibeau, head of the EA Games label describing the Wii as a legacy platform (via Industry Gamers ). "They [Nintendo] understand the dynamics and the fact that HD consoles is a booming part of business right now. Legacy platforms like PS2 and the Wii have dropped off significantly. They’re not stupid. They’re going to figure something out. They’re going to come back at it." Is the kind of moronic rhetoric that gets our goat. What he actually means is that nobody, especially EA have been able to replicate Nintendo's success on it's own console and it is language like this that m

We're not just interested in games we're interested in the cultural products that surround games and gaming. One of which is machinima, essentially films made in game engines. The problem is 99% of it is absolute shit. There are a few gems out there; Red vs Blue , War of the Servers and Trashmaster . Machinima can also be funny (see Top FPS ) and there's even been a decent CoD kill montage video that's been more than looking at a sniper scope with the odd numbers popping up, beautifully edited and link subsequently lost. The rest though is total bullshit. Here's a top tip to would be machinima directors out there, that if taken on board will improve the average quality of all machinima by at least 5%: Having one of your characters say LMAO, ROFL or LOL isn't in any way funny. Stop doing it and instnatly make the world a better place.

Is another brilliant and flawed but only brilliant because it is flawed wii game with more a more fresh feel than anything on release on the HD consoles. Playing it reminded me a lot of the awesome Shadow of Memories for the PS2 despite the fact they have nothing in common at all except they feature a guy. Just saying that's all. You play as Ray somebody who is an all American hero and former International Rescue Team member following a totally predictable tragedy. Ray depressed about the tragedy is now a pen pusher at the Crisis Managment Division until he gets called back in to service. The game follows a series of (not so outlandish it seems) events that start with an earthquake, then a tsunami, followed by a nuclear threat and then gets even more ridiculous with everything from firestorms, volcanic eruptions, floods, terrorist battles and even a lahar. BRING ON THE CHEESE. The game is so cheesy its hard not to smile or believe that the developers are unknowing in the cheesiness

Breaking News:  Wii 2 (Codenamed Project Cafe) has had it s specs Leaked  "the console will include a custom IBM PowerPC CPU with three cores, a GPU from the ATI R700 family with a shader unit at version 4.1, and at least 512Mb of RAM. Backwards compatibility with both the Wii  and GameCube games.  The controller has a six-inch touch screen, a front-facing camera, D-Pad, two bumpers, two triggers. There you have it HD DS in  your living room. FINALLY HD! More on this as more rumours flood the internets Love and HD-Hugs, Richie X

I've been wanting to play Deadly Creatures since it came out way back in 2009. The premise is simple you play as a Desert hairy scorpion and a Texas brown tarantula and go about Arachnida business somewhere in the desert of the southwestern United States. The game is fucking brilliant and also flawed, totally linear but the game drives you on just because you want to see what's next. The game is also incredibly frustrating and right up to the end, death is only ever around the corner leading to occasional rage when a checkpoint is the wrong side of an unskippable cutscene in particularly tough sections. There's some odd reusing of the same level, a particular section of which you return to on four occasions and later level design tends towards laziness with invisible walls stopping you from wandering off piste. Also jarring is the end FMV sequence which is of appallingly low quality. Play alternates between the tarantula and the scorpion, the former is by far the best one

Sarah Kaye, buying manager for Tesco airs her ideas here. Our ideas although we don't get paid for them like Sarah does would be to hire someone who knows about games, I'm sure that £3 piece of shit PC games, DS shovelware and Carnival Games have a strong retail record but visiting the games section in supermarkets makes us want to bring in a pack lunch and spend the whole day fending people away from the bad games. "You don't want to buy this game it's free on the internet". "I don't give a shit if Dora is an explorer or not go and play Shadow of the Colossus". Our second tip is to try to keep the games aisle looking more like a nice sensible place to find games rather than looking like downtown Baghdad following an earthquake all the fucking time. One to four of the ' WTF Ten ' are the same game. Someone's put music CDs in the DS section and the Xbox games are stocked in reverse alphabetical order by game subtitle. The wii section

Apologies to regular readers but here is yet another angry rant about game retailers in the UK. Fortunately, most have been driven to extinction by failing to see the writing on the wall over a decade ago when online mega retailers could beat the high street specialists in choice, price and service. PLUS the only convenience that high street retailers offer is immediacy. I can pick up a game there and then and be playing it that day in theory. However, as a concerned citizen it saddens me to see the decline of the high street retailer. Last week I found myself with some extra money following my birthday and consulted 'the list'. Now, I'm an avid gamer. I've played thousands of games, own hundreds and write for three gaming blogs. However, I also have a fairly demanding job, a family, friends who I don't see half as much as I should, passions other than gaming and a hundred other little things that take up my time. Not only does this mean that those heady days and ni

Some really awesome and intreresting games lined up, and yes they are all Capcom, because we at thatguys.co.uk are "Fapcom canboys" First up Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City! Or REORC as the online community is dubbing it . It's another outing in Raccoon during the timeline of Resident Evil 2 (yay) and 3 even Nemesis is stomping about trying to find his S.T.A.R.S. cookies. Its a 3rd person shooter with some GoW physics. Cover, blindfire etc. reserving judgement till more has been released. Next Dead Rising : Off the record It's the what if scenario, if it had been Frank West rather than Chuck Greene in Dead Rising 2, how would it have gone. Overweight middle aged Zombie wrestling it seems. Finally Street Fighter X Tekken Some more details revealed about the fighting system, the huge character roster of " as many characters as we can humanly fit in ", and a DinoCrisis Stage (another one for that other blog ). Initially it just looks li

Ok the following is some rather impressive artwork! This is Fucking BAD-ASS!!!! Make it happen people! Love and Red Pyramid things, Richie X