That guy's a Maniac...

See that blog title? That's what you can expect from TGAM: cliched post titles. That and tits . Anyway, today I am proud to bring you an interview with someone who properly works in the Games Industry, unlike us scrotes who sit on the periphery. Below is an interview with a lady who has had years of experience in games testing and went on to set up her own games testing company, which, is widely regarded as one of the best QA Testing companies around and doesn't let schlep pass through the door and out the other side unlike other companies. She has chosen the synonym Jill Valentine for this interview which, sure is nice for us because it's like Jill was actually here. C11: Hello, Jill, welcome to TGAM. JV: Hello. I'd like to say it's nice to be here but.... C11: Isn't games testing just an opportunity to get paid for playing games? JV: Yes and no. Do you remember some of the ridiculous time limit challenges in the original Goldeneye that you had to complete to u

As I have mentioned in posts previous, in the UK at least, the PS2 is in it's twilight months. Despite many homes having one under the table, despite the PS2 only really finding it's feet in terms of both graphics and gameplay with late releases like Final Fantasy XII, despite developers and publishers promising to support it after "next gen" it's nearly game over for the PS2. At least on the high street anyway. Go into any game shop and check out the PS2 section. The only new titles are cheap copycat shams targetted at the "casual gamers" or the hypothetical confused grannies. Yes I mean you, Alvin and the Chipmunks game and Petz 2 and World Series Poker 2008 and Hot Wheels: Beat That and PDC Championship darts 2008. Those looking to preowned section will also be dissapointed with the glut of average and obscure games. On a recent trip to the stores I couldn't locate copies of Resident Evil Outbreak 1 or 2 (I know they're awful) or the latest

But Dacav still has the title for best Tetris remix yet. This one is good, the vocals mix it up a bit but as with a lot of Electrance the repetitiveness kicks in. And your talking about Tetris in the first instance which isn't amazingly varied. It needed a bigger ramp up to. Possibly, the B game theme could have flitted in as a bonus for those able to mark subtle auditory mix ups.

Last night TGAM had their first ever official online encounter with each other. Gears and Halo 3 were the games. At one point we teamed up and showed the rest of the online community exactly how you play. TGAM STYLE. The pictures tell the story. We're the Red Team, Team Blue is Team 'Sidekick' (Duffin and Chuff_72) and Team Green were the guys who tried hard but weren't very good (Mr Cyclopse and TLK ToRnaDo Jd) Yes within literal seconds we were shooting at each other. Then we were using vehicles.We were committed to eliminating each other. We managed to stop shooting each other but only when the opportunity to drive around like idiots presented itself. This screenshot here is the result. That's me that is. The other teams were dazzled with out L337 skills and fury. We easily won. The score was something like 54 kills to us. 3 for the other teams combined. We don't need to prove that we are the best any more thanks to everyone who tried

This month's EDGE (181) featured a cool virtual tube (underground/metro or playmobil train set in the case of Glasgow) map on the inside of their back over. Scans coming soon. Anyway each stop featured a virtual setting. Can you name the games? Can you name them all? Cerobi Steppe,Frosty Retreat, Station Square, Nibenay Basin, Gates of Rixis, Brinstar,Ironforge, Bowerstone, Thunder Bluff, Jolly Roger Bay, Dullstown, Skingrad, Gizzard Gulch, Burial Mounds, Cosmo Canyon, Mammago's Garage, Vinewood, Barheim Passage, Nova Prospekt, Monkey Islands, Wario Stadium, Big Surf Groove, Goro's Lair, Blood Gulch, Battle Creek, Mushroom Rock Road, Shady Sands, Kamiki Village, Silk Road Ruins, Phendrana Drifts, Quartz Quadrant, Zack Island, Portland, Sherman Dam, Carrick Point, Death Peak, La Razza Canal, Modesto Heights, Gaia's Navel, North Point, Kakariko Village, Old Bullworth Vale, Ravenholm, Sunset Penninsula, Terramax, Mumbo's Mountain, Tulip Garden, Simian Acres, Spring Val

If you were in the UK this summer you may have noticed that there was in fact no summer, we have lost “seasons”, we have expelled so may fucked up gasses into the atmosphere that we have effectively killed summer. It is this writer’s humble opinion that we have in fact fucked-up the whole world, beyond fixing. Hurricanes, Tsunamis, Seas drying up, and all sorts of other weather related extinction events happening on bigger and grander scales. This of course makes things like wars, oil, Jihads, Politics, Religion, PS4, the 9th WoW expansion, Nintendo doing a global release of a title, the end of Lost, the iPod-killer and the Spice girls re-uniting, all redundant. And so what does our government do to try and stop this issue… it encourages us to use less carrier bags from the supermarket. Yeah nice. The whole problem is that there is too many of us, and we have reached a point in our social evolution to the point where no-one cares, we work 9-5, then eat our tea in front of Coron

So everyone on the internet likes to whinge but there is nothing worse than a loser and a not so loser that like to whinge about their shitty job, online, whilst they work at their shitty job. Go here to read this big bag 'o' shite. Here are the problems with the website "I'm a stupid customer service nerd" in a numbered list: 1) They whinge all the time about how crappy their job is yet never do anything about it like skim people's credit cards or leave the store unlocked on purpose. 2) It's as if they haven't seen Clerks or understand that they just come off as whiney nerds. Everyone has worked shit jobs but most of us managed to move on with our lives. 3) The woman (Mario Mark) almost never talks about women's issues such as periods, pregnancy boobs or grief online. Get with it bird. 4) They so desperately want to be UK:Resistance that they write about it in the comments all the time and steal their posts and spend most of the day in the work t

We all know that there is a 101 things you could probably say about this picture being overly sexist and chauvinistic. There is Princess Peach using her bum as a weapon. What undertones! and Overtones! We all know it's so wrong and so demeaning especially with the wink as well. It would be really serious and perhaps spark debates amongst feminists. However, she is a Princess of a Mushroom Kingdom and she is named after a piece of fruit. Kind of undermines the whole argument doesn't it? Non-lazy feminist gamers might point out the merits of using the Princess as a character in Super Smash Brothers Melee, disspelling the rumour that she is a weak character if used by someone who knows her moves. They might even link to a Youtube video showing some of her greatest combos. They might go one step further and say that at least she gets to play golf and tennis competitively against the men and giant lizards of the Mushroom Kingdom which is more than real life athletes can. U

So it looks like pokemania is taking over the world * and at the same time nothing of interest is happening in the rest of gaming. Seriously, check Gamespot's news page. Snorarama. Looks like everyone took the month off because they aren't going to knock Diamond and Pearl off the top spots (except umm Transformers the DS game apparently). Anyway this week in Omastar Comics, well, see for yourself. This one goes out to TTEchidna in a bad way. *This may not strictly be true but wikipedia doesn't have an article on "Is Pokemania taking over the world?" so what do I know about it?

Yep. As you may be able to tell we're pretty gay for pokemon and we don't feel the need to put the accent over the e either. The games have been going for 10 years or so now but for those who truly want to catch 'em all there is a heap load of effort involved. The question I'm asking today is IS IT TOO MUCH? For example if you wanted to get all of the pokemon from the start here is what you have to do: Buy Pokemon Blue/Red/Yellow (£30 at the time) And Gameboy (£100 originally) Play the games and trade with 'friends' (Probably 150 hours to get them all) Buy Silver/Gold (£30) And Gameboy colour (£90) Play the game and trade between friends or yourself to complete the dex (200 hours including legendary efforts to get the legendary dogs) Buy Pokemon Stadium 2 to get pokemon unavailable and to facilitate self trading (£120 N64, Pokemon Stadium for GBA Adaptor £40, Pokemon Stadium 2 £40, Extra N64 pad £30, spare GBA adapter £15) Buy GBA in preparation for th

When laziness kicks in! Today Omastar goes to Japan to buy cool games and merchandise. Oh boy! Japan is so great all gamers should live there! Click for a bigger version. Coming soon: Something that takes more than five minutes to think about and do! Possible posts: 1) A book review of the Command & Conquer Tiberium Sun paperback I bought the other day 2) Nothing else. Life is very depressing at the moment 3) A story about the time we met the guy who made paperboy 4) Something copied and pasted from kotaku with two lines of text about what we think about it 5) The death of EDGE. How EDGE has got increasingly unreadable in recent months

What happens when a bunch of lazy academics who don't do any real research but want to play Second Life, MUDs and WoW all get together and try to think of something to do? This Dear Terra Nova et al. Nobody cares until we've seen you beat Emerald and Ruby weapon. Until then stop trying to outdo each other by trying to find the first innovation by trawling through MUDs and other crappy subject material to find the first time Chicken Sandwiches were featured in games, sorry platforms or virtual worlds. And in response: A Declaratio n of Virt u al World s Policy made by the writers of That Guy's A Maniac, the Second Greatest Videogame Blog of All Time In the World , assembled in full and free convention with a temporary no cybering cease fire in Gaylando in Animal Crossing: Wild World as the first true Synthetic Worlds Congress. Whereas virtual worlds are places with mostly furries or paedos or unhappy middle aged America, unless we are talking about interesting virtual

Oh man so I'm all "at E3" even though there is no E3 and oh man here's a list of the top ten most anticipated games at E3 and whatever and then I went to a Sony thing at E3 man they've got things and then I'm like all over at Nintendo E3 and we should have a poll about who is better at E3 and it's like totally Nintendo or something and then there's Halo 3 at E3 and Tony Hawk oh man and I'm all over E3 at E3. Here I am with E3 and like a new sonic game. WHATEVER VIDEOGAMES BLOGS SHUT UP NO ONE CARES ABOUT E3. If you take one thing from E3 this year take this and shove it down your japs eye like you used to with the paperclips. Fucking E3.

So controversy week last week what with the Jamie Bulger thing in the new Law and Order game and Manhunt 2 being banned etc. etc. So why do video games attract so much controversy? Books, works of art and films are allowed to portray almost whatever they want. 9/11, racism, people who have their mouths full of cockroaches: many of which are dead but those that aren't are throwing up on themselves and each other and so on. But as soon as games do these things they are labelled as disgusting, evil, exploitative, cashing in on tragedy or just simply wrong. This very quickly gets backed up with all other lazy arguments condemning video games to create a nasty impression in the public media. The reason that this is allowed to happen in books but not games because stupid people don't read books but they do play games. Sorry stupid people. But it's true. Stupid people watch films too but films are 'high art' so for every mother on a crusade there are 40 LA film

"News" from "this" week ] A nice report via boing boing about how most games are now old games. There have been an equal amount of PS3 and Wii consoles sold in space. Thatguy's a Maniac, the world's second best videogame blog of all time is nearly one year old! Check out under "events" to join in with the birthday bash. Hellbound Angels finally signing off. Or only one of them or something. Which I, er guess means that we won! New Gears of War clan TFU (The Fuckest Uppest ) are now top of the UK and US leaderboards . Well done boys and girls I knew we could do it. Nintendo announce another Gamecube remake exclusively for the Wii . Man I can't wait to play another game I've already played but with spacky controls. Everyone blogs about some shooting and videogames . Not us. We've taken the higher moral ground and gone for anime , anti- anime week. JOY FOR US! And that's how, for now. Catch you next w

So after something that happened on not the world's second greatest videogames blog , this not the world's second greatest videogames blog was set up. It's called guilded lilies and it's for women gamers and men gamers who might want to talk to women gamers and it's all about women and games. There is a forum and everything but it has to be stopped . This list explains why: 1) Their logo looks like one of these (!). That's a full stop not some kind of mole 2) The last bunch of people who got together to start a forum for women gamers ended up doing this: They blew up the frickin deathstar by employing their man robots. Stop the rebels! Save the Empire, queue the music Buh, buh, buh, ber, be der de de der. Der der der der de-der de de-deh. DEH, duh, DEH, duh der-rud-der-dud der der der de-rud-der-dud der der dum der der...........

Oh readers....... Who am I kidding? Hey Richie. It looks like after all our years of desperate attention seeking someone has acknowledged our cutting edge-videogame blogging. Yes, yes it may be unfortunate that I was slightly harsh about this guy's site a bit earlier but legendary webcomic artist Tim Buckley, creator of videogame themed webcomic Ctrl-Alt-Del has given That guy's a Maniac a nod . Check it out. Genius recognises genius. Whaddya mean you can't see it. Check the second panel: For those of you who still can't see it, Lucas says "Yeah That's.. That's awful. THAT GUYS do that...". It's as clear as day. Thanks for the props Tim although I suspect you were just phising for more traffic by getting all of our readers to check you out. Sorry for rating you third greatest videogame themed webcomic of all time but Chef Brian has to go and never come back. Image © 2002-2006 Tim Buckley and Ctrl+Alt+Del Productions. All rights reserv

No, of course not. That's impossible but check this screenshot. Big Whoopdies I hear you cry but look at the big version. You see them? At the bottom there. AMMONITES. They could have been dinosaurs, granted, but ammonites are halfway there. This is from some game called LittleBigPlanet yada yada but it's all about the prehistoric organisms. Sony you have managed to fuck up a bit less. For those of you who don't believe me, or think they might be snails here is a zoom in using TGAM patented technology:

Hey guys, girls and gaymers. It's paradox gaming time! That's right, where you the reader get to change the future by answering some hypothetical questions about games. Add your answers in the comments and I'll put them up here. 1) Would you pay £500 to be able to play one game for a month. It could be any game at all. Think of your favourite game, would you willingly pay £500 to play it? Cunzy1 1: My favourite game of all time is probably Timesplitters 2, TGAM Game of the Year 2006. I don't think I would pay £500 to play it for a month though. I'd wait until it was cheap or free. 2) Would you pay £500 to play NHL 2K7? Cunzy1 1: Hah! Fuck off. I've already got a NHL game. You only ever need one. It's like football games. No. Never. 3) Would you pay £500 to add a massive block of plastic to the already tight space under your TV. THe piece of plastic does nothing except play NHL 2K7? Cunzy1 1: No. I need the space for my PS2 which can play all the Playsttion