That guy's a Maniac...

With the, how shall we say, 'fan backlash' to the recent confirmation and reiteration that some Pokémon would not be compatible with the upcoming  Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield for Nintendo Switch it's perhaps timely to check in with Dactylocer, the Omastar that, alongside a few others, we've transferred from game to game, region to region and hardware generation to generation since 2004's  Pokémon Fire Red for the Game Boy Advance*. The Story So Far We last checked in with Dactylocer back in 2013 in blogpost  An Omastar is for life  charting one spiral pokémon's journey from Game Boy Advance to Game Cube to Nintendo DS to Wii to a pedometer and even exploration of the Dream World on PC. Unova had been conquered and we were waiting to hear about compatibility with Pokémon X and Y and the chance to take on the Kalos region. Generation Six Fortunately, after a little longer wait that anticipated , thanks to the delay in  Pokémon Bank and a quick st

Acid rounds  is a semiregular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Cunzy1 1: So, this one's a blast from the arse . Back in the heady days of 2013 when you still saw white dog turds in the street, earwigs were still a thing laying eggs in peoples ears and casual everythingisms was the norm, developer Level 5 released seven games in the Guild Series for the Nintendo 3DS (R.I.P. In Peace, you died before your time). Cheap and cheerful games often twists on a fun theme. Between us we played a number of them and this one has a special place in Richie's heart. So, Attack of the Friday Monsters , what's the skinny? Richie:  I genuinely have no idea what made me pick this one up! I usually hate this type of game, throwaway indie title. I have absolutely no idea what even drew me to it 5-6 years ago. My guess is there was some sort of EV training burnout , and I caught this game on a sale... As I mentioned in my previous post the beauty o

Taking a break from posting to the three people who actually read this blog! We will return in the Summer, with more observations, content, ridiculous features, themed weeks, another game(?), edgy interviews, and analogies about games being so good they flood basements, #nocontextscreenshots and most importantly uninformed opinions on breaking games news. Love and If we took a holiday, Took some time to celebrate, Just one day out of life, It would be, it would be so nice, Richie and Cunzy1_1 X

Soul II Soul aside, and hereby referencing my age, making the following post just that touch more creepy... After a solid few weeks of following the Capcom hype-train and completing RE2:Remake and DMCV, I am maintaining a transport metaphor and like a midwestern early 20th century hobo I'm grabbing my belongings in a handkerchief suspended in a stick over my shoulder and jumpin’ carts, scuttling back over to the Nep-train with a jug of moonshine. I needed a change of pace, too much panicking, getting bitten and quick action Super Sexy Stylin’ button mashing. I found myself pining for turn-based JRPG,  where not exactly the most thrill chasing of genres, ultimately just some menus which make flashy wooshes and sound effects interspersed with some plot advancing text. I miss the grandeur of Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and um… More recently… um? I dunno, I guess that Miitopia one? And maybe Pokemon?  Most turn-based JRPGs nowadays are linked to  massi

No Acid Rounds this week. To busy beastin' games

Thatguys.co.uk is old, we have been doing this shit, and "getting too old for this shit" for an excessive amount of time. Our site has gone through a plethora of iterations all wonderfully designed in by our expert in-house team. Half of our old links don't work/exist any more, our SEO is duct-taped together in separate timelines, but on the upside we did close down our Myspace account... right? We rewind time to see how painfully cringe we once were. We go through our archives to find out how right or wrong we were, and wince at the non-woke-ness of the of our past selves. In today's RETROspect we look back at a classic Richie Post: Soul Calibur Wankery In this post I get all excited about SoulCalibur IV, mainly I get all fanboy geeky about the addition of Darth Vader and Yoda. And on top of that in a predictable Richie response, conscript Cunzy1_1 and we made a list out all of our favourite fantasy additions to the roster: Zoro (One Piece)  Anyone from

Flame rounds  lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Cunzy1 1: What're you selling? Richie:  Fucking ice levels, most specifically that annoying inertia slide which get applied to your main character. Annoying, get some crampons. Cunzy1 1: Are we just going to cycle through 90's gaming tropes is that it? We had five original ideas and are now just rehashing our old forum posts? Richie:  Looking back at our archive we are subconsciously rehashing ourselves over and over again. Ironically we are probably the only blog in existence with the label "bored of the same arguments" however time for us to take a long hard look in the mirror, sunshine. Doesn't make slipping on ice a game that is

*shudder* The scene opens in a seedy backstreet, a valve hisses with steam, a jittery dropout approaches a shifty looking man in a trench coat. The twitching skinny looks like a university student, wearing jeans and a half life 3 t-shirt and is fervently clutching a Devil May Cry 5 "V" card. He utters, "Please sir, I'm collecting for a badge on a devil may cry game a really like... I bought it from you." The man in the trenchcoat is unflinching, the light in the alley is dim and shadows flicker across his face, only his eyes are really visible, piercing yet soulless. "I have two of these 'V' cards, I was hoping to trade it in for one of the cards that I don't have. Can you help me Mister Marketplace" pleaded this geeky student-looking man, stretching out the card before him. Mr. Marketplace, reaches down and plucks the the card from his hands, in his gruffest poor-people east London accent he replies, "I might know someone, who

Acid rounds is a semi-regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Richie: Sunday is the day of God, apparently it was made his day cuz he had just churned out a 6 day week, and decided he was gonna rest on his laurels. Every week we do the same, except instead of resting on our laurels we brag about games we have beasted from start to finish, Last week I went off on one about Oblivion this week Cunzers tells us about yet another spaceship game ! So What's this one about? Cunzy1 1: Starlink: Battle for Atlas is an interesting mix, it's part space game, part planetary exploration and part RTS with a more-complex-than-it-needs-to-be toys to life element. Pilots, ships, wings and weapons can either be changed on the fly by plugging and swapping around physical parts or used to unlock parts and pilots for time limited use in digital/handheld mode. The story in Starlink won't be threatening narrative titans of Sci-Fi, Starlink is a b

Having historically shown but a half-arsed interest in video game development and support to date it's interesting to see that both Google and Apple have recently announced half-arsed plans to continue. In the Red Corner we have Google Stadia. A website which...YouTubers...terraflops at 60 fps which is technically very impressive. In the Blue Corner Apple have announced Apple Arcade which will...games...apps... so expect to see that in coffee shops all over the world! The pixellated elephant in the room however is WHAT VIDEO GAMES ARE WE ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT? The administrators and system designers have spent so long on the beanbags in the flexible working open plan offices, they forgot to tell us the key part of these boring projects. Fortunately, dear readers, we have the ultimate inside source, it's Alcamoth Citizen reporting from inside Xenoblade Chronicles and she has EXCLUSIVE news on the games to share. This, her first report from the stream cloud piss:    

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Richie: So! What trope has bested you this time! Cunzy1 1: Super Mario Brothers 3. Level 3-3. You're having a good time with your brother Luigi fighting the Koopalings and making progress then this level happens and it gets real. It gets brutal. Boss Bass just outright murks you. It's not so much the being swallowed by a big fish thing it's just the sheer bluntless of it. You're there one minute, fish boy jumps, open gobbed then. Gone. I want to remove Boss Bass from gaming so I can sleep at night without waking up bolting upright and screaming because I thought I'd been swallowed out of fucking existence. Richie: Just dodge him/

With the advent of the  Nindies  and the recent  Konami re-releases , over the past few weeks the term Metroidvania has been slung about a lot at me. While this has not really given me a desire to play either Castlevania or Metroid, is has made me wanna play their estranged cousin - Turrican on the SNES:  I decided to pick up the SNES version of Turrican and burn through that, though... my first fond memories and experience of Turrican was on the Commodore 64: On the C64 the game was a different beast, for starters it was just "Turrican", not "Super Turrican". Note:And just to add further confusion to the whole thing, there was also a "Super Turrican" on the NES, which was a mix of Turrican and Turrican 2... Phew... Turrican on the C64, or the original Turrican had vast expansive levels and despite Turrican being referred to as a "Run and gun" it had many secrets and paths and caves to negotiate and explore which you certainly were

Acid rounds  is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Cunzy1 1: Ahhh yes the game that started it all The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion . Aside from a few ill fated forays into Skyrim, I've not touched the Elder Scrolls games at all so interested to see what you have to say. First up this is that sword one in first person with the dragons, dwarves and fairies right? Richie:  Just the one dragon in this one, unlike Skyrim where it's hard to move with out one overencumbering you with bones. No Dwarves or Fairies either, Dwarves are in Elder Scrolls are long extinct, dunno about fairies, maybe. But yeah this is the fourth Elder scrolls game, set in Cyrodiil, notably with Jean Luc Picard, Wonder Woman and Ned stark doing the voiceovers. Cunzy1 1: Did you play any of the other Elder Scrolls games? Richie:  Well, Skyrim, to death, but back in the day I did play Morrowind, but it suffered very heavily from PC-game-itis. Relying he

Konami announced a Castlevania collection ( among others )  due for some point this year in summer, for some anniversary. As ageing gamergirls, one would expect us to be "flooding the basement" on this one. Nah. One of us once played the one with Jean Luc Picard and Begbie, and found it too hard, so we locked it away. We did play "that bit" in Smash bros adventure mode, does that count? Due to the impact these games had on us we listed out the full titles as best as memory serves, I'm sure the right one is in there? Castlevania: Shadow of dark Castlevania: Dark shadows Castlevania: Shadows Lords Castlevania: Lord of Shadow Castlevania: Lord of Shadows Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Castlevania: Lords of Shadows Castlevania: Simon's revenge Castlevania: Belmont's revenge Castlevania: Samus' revenge Castlevania: Castlevania two Castlevania: Dark of the night Castlevania: Shadow symphony Castlevania: Fates of Shadow Castlevania: Retur

Mario Kart 8 was released for the WiiU in 2014 and the Deluxe version of the game came out for Nintendo Switch in 2017. The Mario Kart series of games remain highly popular and although the longevity of these titles through online racing means that these games demand high prices years (almost decades in the case of Mario Kart 7 ) after release, the communities that build up in these games are rarely subject to academic enquiry or basic coverage in the average games media.  Fascinatingly, because Nintendo EAD, the developer of the game and Nintendo the publisher take online harassment and bullying seriously players of online Nintendo games and games on Nintendo platforms often have a highly limited mode of expression to communicate with other players when playing online together. This is of interest because enterprising players use the limited tools they have to contrive and develop new languages and forms of expression through cosmetics in games (costumes, 'emotes', equip

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Cunzy1_1: What're you flaming? Richie: So you have completed the story of this sandbox game. Congratulations! Now go to all these places on the map and find 100 of this thing. I hate this! So many games, specifically around the advent of achievements and trophies, would have this additional achievement to walk round the map finding glowing orbs or such.  They dub it in the name of exploration, but is just often descends into a nightmare of keeping track of an online item location guide. This is also usually coupled with a lack of any reward short of perhaps a 10GP blip. Tacked on and just annoying. Cunzy1_1: But Richie, people spent a long time meticulou