That guy's a Maniac...

Treasure Island Dizzy: The pain isn't over yet... The year was 1989, I had a Commodore 64. Games like Outlaw, Double Dragon and Bubble Bobble frequented my tv screen. My favourite however was Treasure Isand Dizzy from Code Masters and the Oliver Twins. The plot was basically, you're stuck on an island and want to get back to the 'yolkfolk' . Through a series of inventory based puzzles you build a boat and get off the island by paying the shopkeeper character 30 Gold coins (which you have collected throughout). For those of you who are unaware, this was seen as the most difficult of the Dizzy Franchise, unlike the predecessor which you had 5 lives and the sequel which had 3, in Treasure Island Dizzy you had one life. Consider that for a moment, one life. One life, with no ability to save the game, it was all or nothing. This also wasn't an easy game, you had to essentially memorise the side-scrolling map, often jumping blindly in to the next

As if this week wasn't painful enough, LEGEND Dr Wo 69 has an eleventh hour entry! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee got a 419 in North East Banana Grove. It took a stupid amount of concentration to get to Vice City in the OG GTA and when it came onto the PS2 in full 3D glory it was the version that I played the most and enjoyed the most in a murdering sense. I tried San Andreas but it was just too god damn big! Yeah you can do all this crazy stuff in it with bikes and parachutes but I could never recognize a landmark to let me get my bearings. Vice City, 3 islands, couple of bridges, airport all you need to have fun in. I took a vow on this game that I would NEVER CHEAT! EVER! Not one for anything, if I needed a weapon I would go and find it, if I wanted armour I would buy it, if I wanted an Apache Gunship I would have to steal it. The reason for this, is that I wanted the best Criminal Rating possible and by entering the cheats your rating gets a rapin

Thank god Most Painful Moments in Gaming is over. Not only did the frustration of my individual pains come flooding back but the pain of my right honorouble friends made me cringe anew. However all this frustration will be offset with next week's feature-creeping best moments. In the meantime, I'm going to take a quick butcher's at some of the stuff currently up on the Ninty Channel at the moment. I'm a big fan of the Nintendo Channel, I know not everybody is, but if I have some spare time I try to check it out once or twice a week to see what's new. This week: Monster Hunter Tri still dominates the channel with a massive 19 videos currently up. The latest video, bizarrely titled Hunting Jhen Moran Online is actually just a cutscene from the game (a fucking cool one nonetheless) advertising the now closed(?) event quest. The World of Monster Hunter Tri parts 1 to 6 and the World of Monster Hunter Tri Hunting Grounds set the scene for MHnewcomers but also st

Dead or Alive 4: FUCK YOU ALPHA-152 Fuck you, you cheaty, cheaty fuck! Alpha-152 is the final boss of Dead or Alive 4, so I had played the "perfect game" i.e. I had played through to Alpha-152 with no continues (if I defeated Alpha-152 without continuing I would earn an achievement). I get to Alpha-152 and she pumps me, like seriously; Teleport, unblockable combo, teleport, throw, death. But never mind I remain calm it was only a crappy achievement, I knuckle down to do this boss yet again... and again... and again... and again... and again... and again... and again... and again... *Twitch*... and again.  RAAAAAAAAGE! I WAS FUCKING FED UP OF GETTING MY ASS HANDED TO ME BY THE CHEAP CHEATY EXCUSE FOR A "CHALLENGE". I frantically search for something to take my anger out on, I contemplate kicking the 360. No, it's to expensive. I see a pillow, I could totally punch that, no I need to break something. Then I see my phone, the Sony Ericsson K8

Final Fantasy X-2: No, my "worst moment" is not actually playing through this hyperactive girl-power dross, though it is a major factor. When I bought the game I knew there was a "New Game+" mode so I was determined to complete everything I could on the 1st playthrough, reaching for the FFX2 equivalent of the holy grail; the Mascot Dress Sphere , which would be playable in New Game+. To get this, it involved getting an Episode Complete on all levels.  When I reached the point where I should have unlocked it, it did not happen... Now after a load of research as to why or how this could possibly be. The only thing I can surmise is that; very early on in the game there is a mini-game where you have to protect some crates on a wagon from bandits, I must have not saved enough crates. And well, the game can FUCK RIGHT OFF. It was a poor excuse for a sequel and considering the main bulk of the game was like I had just been brutally anally shafted with a 13&quo

The Simpsons Game: Now this game was a fun romp, I really enjoyed the storyline, parodying many other games, even referencing their tropes (every so often Comic book guy would pop up, announcing that a video game cliché such as "Double Jump" or "Exploding barrels" had been found).  I had been playing it (couch) co-op, and after an epic session taking us to 5am, we were approaching Matt Groening's mansion, to what felt like a final boss character. Given the late hour, we decided to call it. The next day we resumed, or so we thought. Cue that wonderful message; "Your Save File is corrupt". And sure enough, exit to the dashboard and check the file, big yellow exclamation mark. RIGHT. BEFORE. THE. FINAL. BOSS!! Personally I blame EA for this one; "This game features and Autosave feature". And boy does it, it saves every couple of minutes and after every pickup etc. Constantly writing over the same section on the hard-drive over and

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion   Oblivion was one of my first experiences on a 'next gen' platform and looking back I was a far more innocent gamer. I wasn't bothered by achievements, or consulting any guides to make sure I didn't miss out on any weapons or plot developments. I was just happy exploring the world and seeing what happened. I remember the first time i was afflicted by Vampirism and having to abandon the main plot while I dealt with this truly surprising plot twist, I miss that innocence and it was only a couple of years ago. Anyway I digress. Oblivion for me was a return to the days of Diablo, which lent itself to multiple playthroughs where you could share equipment across save files and over time I had amassed a huge collection of equipment. This hoarding nature was quickly appearing in Oblivion too. As I ventured innocently across the world of Cyrodill I started to acquire a lot of cool shit, Unique Weapons, Daedric artifacts,

Too painful to talk about again. /sigh

*Oh spoilers, but if you haven't fucking played it by now, I have no sympathy for you and I really shouldn't cater to you* There is a bit in the game later on, where you have to get by some whirlpools by equipping and unequipping the "iron boots": Time it just wrong and you get a KO from being sucked into the whirlpool and you return to the start of the whirlpool. Which happened over and over and over, keep in mind that to equip or unequip the boots means menu juggling, so it was getting more and more frustrating, till eventually I, out of rage, grabbed the controller and twisted it.  As I did so, the the 2 moulded halves of the controller prised apart However it didn't snap, or break... It did however revert back to it's original state very quickly, the controller snapped shut, the 2 sides closed together pinching a strip of skin on the palm of my hand. Well, not just pinching it actually scissoring the strip right off, forcing me to wear a

Pretty much my whole family plays video games but occasionally, my brother and I would end up having little competitions. I still have all the old notebooks with the score for various one v one competitions that would span hours and sometimes days. My brother was an absolute demon at (bizarrely non cart based) driving games and anything to do with the Second World War and I was competent at beat em ups, kart games and FPS so often the competitions would be quite tight. One time we started to argue about who had 'completed' the most games. It was a stupid argument but he had completed more games than me so I insisted that it didn't count unless you had the save game to prove it. So we end up going into the memory card management screen of the PlayStation and counting up all the provable 'completions'. My brother argued that this system wasn't fair especially when games he liked took up more than one slot. In particular, Gran Turismo took up 5 slots, a third of a

SSX: Tricky The Year was 2002 and Richie! and Cunzy11 had been playing SSX:Tricky with various Portsmouthians on the PS2 all year. Summer came along and Richie! introduced it in to my life and thus started many many hours and many many sessions of Tricky. Now although we all completed the game to get the best boards/characters etc, the main focus was one of the first tracks, Garibaldi. The tracks simplicity lent itself to a points frenzy, so the game was simple; how many points can you grab in one run by hitting as many x2, x3, and x5 multipliers as possible. Over the months, we poured endless hours in to devising the best route that gave the best pay off in points. Often we would incorporate part of eachothers run in to ours, constantly refining the process. We even theorised about what score a 'perfect run' would yield. The right of passage target (before you were considered a contender) was 1 Million points, however quickly 2M was achieved and everyo

Viva Piñata: Trouble in paradise: This cutesy game is really fucking good, there is very little like it out on the market, and as it turns out, it's hella addictive! I had come quite far in the game, I had managed to collect most of the species, even managing to collect the elusive Choclodocus . However disaster struck, I load up my "garden" and get presented with "Your save data has become corrupt", Motherfucker! I had spent fucking ages collecting those piñata species! But Salvation! As it turns out there is also a rolling save, and it had registered my progress with collecting species and their stats. So I proceeded to start a new garden, collect the remaining species, send them off to parties, essentially completing the game. Except, I was missing one entry... the Choclodocus... Which, as it turns out it is, in effect, tied to your Gamertag. Restarting the whole process for collecting him again would not allow me to re-obtain him. He is lost in

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

We managed to get our grubby mitts on awfully named Alan Wake this wochenende. Suffice to say we agree almost perfectly with unreliable Eurogamer's Eleanor Guitar. We almost agree except Mr Wake's constant auto-narrating grated on us even more. The game plays almost like how Silent Hill the movie watches. In our mind he also looks a lot like Lucas not Lucas the other one from Indigo Prophecy 2 so all we really wanted to do was press X to Jason . To be fair, we didn't really press X to Jason much when we played Fahrenheit 2/11. Instead we used the time to check out hot mall chicks. We don't really do malls over here so checking out hot mall chicks was a first for us. It was a double first because when we played Indigo Prophecy 2 we were role-playing Lucas Lucas not Lucas as a transvestite so we were actually lesbian scoping for chicks instead of looking for our son. Bored already? Here's a screenshot from Alan Hill, William Hill's brother. At this point in

High School Student Uses Gameboy To Create Fake Bomb Think that's neat? I just used a sharpener to create a fake bomb. I just used a credit card to create a fake bomb. I just used my fingers and a mouth noise to create a fake gun. In fact I just this second used a pen and my keys to create a fake fourty foot mechanic titan capable of destroying civilization with nothing but happy thoughts. Sometimes. Just sometimes. I think that the gaming "news" sites stretch the definitions of 'gaming' and 'news'. Have you created a fake something recently?

Dear all. We have only just finished Metroid Prime 3: Corruption but before snarky web morons laugh out loud and then point out that it took us three years to complete a game, we would like to qualify that it took us 22 hours actually. We had other stuff to do between 2007 and now. The Other Stuff We Did Didn't spend all our time on Internet forums complaining about how we might have to dust off our Wii because we play every single game that comes out to completion in about two days because we are school-aged losers who have no other life to speak of. Competitive sports. The manly ones. Talking about cars. We like the ones with alloys on the pistons. Trying to get platinum medals for everything on Timesplitters Future Perfect even though officially we pretend the series stopped at 2. Emailing Penny Arcade monthly or so with various ruses. They are either so cunning they see through our excellent ruses or they don't read 90% of the shit most people send them. Lying to our younge

Lightning: We have to stop the Zaffels. A Man Who is Whack: Are you sure? Lightning: .... Whack Man: But I thought you were Pincelplips Lightning: I guess we were all along Whack Man: Quick. Get to Hope. Four inches down a corridor later. Hope: Where is lightning? I always hated it since the Pandforma days. Whack Man: I'd like to submit an edict regarding the use of nouns for names. Lightning: Hope! Did you ride the Vangle Goolies lightning? Hope: Hopefully not Lightning. Lightning: I meant lightning not Lightning. lightning: Zzzzzap. A CHOCOBO CALLED CHOCOBO COMES FROM WHACK MAN'S HAIR Hope: Let's get a slave. Apparently, after twenty hours of this, the game gets 'good'. *Perhaps Square should have waited for the science to have been double checked on this one.

In a frantic attempt to work our way through the highlights of the Wii back catalogue before the deluge of SMG2, Metroid Other M, No More Heroes 2 and other sequels further off on the horizon we picked up a copy of Battalion Wars 2 for a measly £7.99! Yes it was second hand but it was sold out first hand in my three go-to places. I will support your creativity if you fucking let me at my convenience. Sorry guys but thats commercialism for ya! Battalion Wars 2 is very good and for us it itches the spot that has gone un-itched since the good ol' Starcraft days. You know, schoolboy football with loveable tanks and grunts and ships and stuff. Playing it also reminded us of another one of our all time favourites, Giants: Citizen Kabuto. Play time is dwindling in the single figures and sadly progress on the campaign is already up to 20% (:() but already we're hooked, especially on the online modes which had us cursing the day various anonymooses were born. Also, on a plural personal

Lost Planet 2 is out soon, and Capcom are trying really hard to make some hype about it. I have been following it a little bit for a while now, mainly because I saw the trailer with the mighty Sir Om-nom-nom ages ago. I played the Lost Planet Demo and I was ultimately underwhelmed, it played like an inferior Gears of War with grappling ropes. However that doesn't mean LP2 wont add more to the franchise, which ius why  I'm not writing to disparage the game itself. I'm just really disappointed with the hype the game has attempted to generate. They dropped some merchandise in ice in 8 cities in America. That's it, not much more to say, some people got them. They now own some merchandise and a beta code for online...  Now I read a few things about the plot of Lost Planet, and I want to like it, futuristic sci-fi set on a terra-forming ice planet, yet this planet has a mystery... ooooh. But not may people seem to care, Time for some Thatguys Market res

Numerous sites ran with the news today that Capcom forgot to inform players that in order to play Final Fight: Double Impact, players had to be online all the time. They apologised for not telling players about the DRM . However, at the time of writing Capcom have still not apologised for the existence of the Game itself yet. TGAM Editor in Heels, Richie Richards had the following to say: "The world really didn't need either of these games the first time around. This reboot is totally redundant. It would be like releasing Megaman 10 for fuck's sake." TGAM Pilot First Rank, Doppelganger chimed in with: "Great. More middle of the road games. I can barely tolerate to think of the days I used to get excited about games anymore. I hope someone somewhere is genuinely excited to see these games again" This blog, once upon a time a single Capcom IP fan site of sorts, is sad to see Capcom joins the long list of those failing to apologise for their decidel

We are now up to killing these guys. For those of you who have played it you would know that that is not very far. Some people interpret these guys to be "Teh Blacks". Because they are um black? But they have horns and big pointy teeth. To be honest I'm not too happy about genociding them. Two of them were talking to each other just over a tree topped bluff whilst my guys were clearing rocks out of the way to start the genocide. Touchingly, the two chaps were talking about wood, crowns (maybe me?) and each other. I was struck by a pang of guilt as my inept force mowed them down in bloodless violence. One of my guards stood on the head of one and hacked at it with a sword in the face. It turned into a sweet. The horn of another one was harvested for the town coffers. Elsewhere about the town two citizens and two of my guards got married. Both instantly received a delivery of a new born child, one of which saw active service in the genocide mentioned above about four secon

*Please stop these people being our voice* Not because they are Fugly, not because they are male... ...because I'm pissed that they got to #15 in Time Magazine for a trashy webcomic (there are much better ones out there) and maybe a little bit because of their looks, mostly because they do not believe they deserve this kind of honour. I cant say it much harsher; THEY. ARE. UNDESERVING. (IMO) In all honesty you could have slung any gaming celebrity on the voting pole in there place, hell... put Mario on there and he would have done the same/better. Love and the Bald one has been caught abusing animal corpses. Richie X

So who does it include this time? From the Pics we have seen so far:  * An oddly uncanny-valley-esque Incredible Hulk. * A selection of characters from Marvel vs Capcom 2 * And the one everyone is fapping about: Chris Redfield. Chris was the star* of Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Code Veronica and Resident Evil 5.  Chris is not the first Resident Evil character in the Marvel vs Capcom Series and well considering the events of Resident Evil 5 you can understand why she may not be around. Other than that, well we don't actually have a character list, it was just a trap to get google hits. Though likely to be appearing. yet not announced and not from previous iterations: Frank West Sir Om-nom-nom Bionic Commando The dude from Dark Void Deadpool *If you don't get this pun then get the fuck out, nobody cares about your opinion and you cannot call yourself a Resident Evil fan, end of. Love and Zangief, Richie X

No. They are films. Except documentaries. They are TV shows? Anyway, we're already more than a line into this blog and nobody has looked at the wittle puppy. Look at the widdle puppy! This reminds us, if Nintendo and Capcom carry on this massive love in after Monster Hunter Tri then we we would quietly suggest a Nintendogs:Okamiden Version. Yes we would. In other news: this list is pretty interesting . If you are reading this on a feed reader then this is super secret text for you none of the other readers can see this but if they did make Nintenokamiden then they should totally allow bad touching to get the furries buying this sick filth. I'll take a 10% cut of all profits CapTendo. 20% if you allow bad touching. Cheers!

Even in the days of hype and over exposure where every screenshot, press release and 'leak' is vivisected and analysed there are still few moments in gaming that match the trepidation of loading up a game for the first time. Our personal ritual is to make sure there are no other distractions for the first spool up. The tea is brewed, the cat is fed, the phone is silenced, the meat is beat so that until we are prompted to press start our full attention is on the first impression of yet another new virtual world. Sometimes, the impression is a bad one, a misstep in the opening FMV, poor design or a hard to navigate menu dramatically drops the expectations. Sometimes games whisk you through the back door the first time you play dumping you straight into the game, a practice which we are always a bit suspicious about, for some people the mantle really does matter as much as the fireplace. Little King's Story had us completely charmed by the time we got to starting the game, the