That guy's a Maniac...

I can't remember quite how but one of our group of friends had managed to get hold of a not so legal version of the PlayStation game, Thrill Kill. Thrill Kill, for those of you who don't know was infamously unpublished, at the time 'unpublishable' due to its violence and mature content. BDSM, cannibalism, Gimps and various circus acts duked it out in such gritty locales as a sewer, a car park, a car park sized mental institution and a car park in hell. Remember kids, this was back when Carmaggedon had to be heavily edited in order to see release. Thrill Kill obviously piqued our interest because of the 'senseless violence' promised but more appealing to our small gaming clan was that it was essentially a four player beat em up. Yes, the amazing Shaolin offered up to Eight player fighting (still one of the best multiplayer experiences ever) and later Gekido allowed for a similar four player fighting experience but for this one day we had Thrill Kill, a chipped P

Cast your mind back 10 years to the heady days of the Nintendo 64, and that gem: Goldeneye. I'm sure we all remember it well, it had 4 player deathmatches, on the same screen! now that is tech! So one afternoon there are 4 of us lounging about playing deathmatches, one of the modes you could get was "The man with the golden gun", where one shot was an auto kill. At that point we were playing 1 vs 1,  one of the guys  got the Golden Gun, retreated to a ramp where my only hope of killing him was to climb that ramp.  Every. Single. Time. boom dead, boom dead, booooooom dead.  Now I'm a persistent guy so I kept going at it, he had accrued a score of around 50 kills and I was getting madder and madder, redder and redder, breathing heavier and heavier through gritted teeth. Eventually at one point I had breached the perimeter where I would usually die, I got closer, scrambled with the controls out of pure excitement. then boom dead, yet again. I exploded... 

Alright Troops! We at Thatguys decree that this week is National Most Painful and Glorious gaming moments week . As such over the next week we shall be sharing with you some of the most heart breaking and heart warming stories from the Thatguys team. Well actually, it's kinna coming up for 4 years of www.thatguys.co.uk and we thought we'd do a feature, we don't do them very often. We tend to fart ideas and opinions at random, and often offer nothing more save from some rather disturbing metaphors and analogies. Though attempting to go for shock-value on the internet is as retarded as stillborn puppetry, we like to think that we still have the warmth of a fat-man's bowel movement and wit that is dryer than yer maws snatch. Well, gentle readers, we present you a little insight into the best and worst moments in our history of gaming... Love and hugs, That Guy's a Maniac... X

A Tweakquel is a sequel to a video game which is essentially the same as the original except with some marginally game improving new features. Common tweakquel features are: You can now dual wield weapons (e.g Halo) There is a vehicle section (Tomb Raider) You play as another character for part of the game (Devil May Cry, No More Heroes) The torch and gun are no longer mutually exclusive (Dementium) Two player co-op (Resident Evil) Some of the best levels are removed from the game (SW Battlefront) You get some decent songs licensed (Wipeout) Live action is left out (Resident Evil) Everything is shiny. So shiny (Perfect Dark) Remember, you heard it here first.

Avid reader! You may have noticed one third of TGAM hasn't been pulling their weight around here recently. That is because Richie! got sucked into Dragon Age: Origins. Big time. We managed to lure him far enough away from the 360 version of the game but only with the promise of helping explain to you avid reader why 'marmite' Dragon Age was worth playing, how Richie likes to roll (two meanings!) and why all dwarves are scots. How do you normally play RPGs? General dick or worthy saint? It's a tough one and particularly pertinent in Dragon Age as there are achievements either way for the moral decisions you make in the game. And unless you are Save Scumming you are only going to get one half of them on your first play through. But in general, when I play any game, I tend to be as nice as possible, helping everyone I can find, doing every quest I can, but also most importantly getting to grips with the world and it's mechanics, then when I'm aware of the world an

How many news posts can be squeezed from four new pokemon and three new screenshots ? Too many ? Don't get us wrong, we're a little bit excited but not that excited. Still, we're the fool for expecting anything approaching measured responses on the internet. Especially not in the slums of the gamosphere.

About 8-10 years ago we did a big ol' search for books about gaming and aside from hilarious compilations and dry history of computing books there was virtually (ha ha) nothing. Searching on Amazon this weekend and boy oh boy are there a load of books with interesting titles about video games (aside from Halo novels, Prima guides etc.): Exodus to The Virtual World, Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World, Casual Revolution, Introduction to Game Studies: Games and Culture, Computer Games: Text, Narrative and Play, Teaching Video Games (Teaching Film and Media Studies), More Than a Game: The Computer Game as Fictional Form and a shed load of others. Sadly most of them are more than a bit hand wavy and 90% of them start with the same hundred or so pages pleading with the non-existent non gaming reader who accidentally picked up the book: "Games are important, my university tenure is so valid, games really are important". I recently went to a book shop to pi