Retro Pick-Ups: Ultimate Fighting Championship [DC] and Sheep [PS1]

I was doing a dummy run the of the route to my college by train after finding out that the train, if timed right, can be much faster than the bus, so I thought I'd try that.

I took the bus to Central Station, and on the way walking from the bus station there to the train station, I came across a games store, called "G-Force", so I decided, since I had plenty of time, I'd go in and take a quick look, the first thing I saw, was a bunch of PS2 games there, including the recently released FIFA 12 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2012, (The latter by the way, STILL hasn't arrived, so much for pre-ordering it!) I had a look around to see if they had anything older.

If you read my Gamestation rant, I said I wanted a store in Glasgow, or at least in Scotland, that sells retro games, checks if the disc is in the cases and if they work, stuff like that, it seams like I found that store, the store is full of retro games, it has PS1 games, Dreamcast games, Saturn games, PS2 games, Gamecube games, Xbox games, and even Mega Drive games. Although the store's main focus are modern games, it's mostly Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PC games, they seam to care about their old games, like the modern games, they put the disc and instructions away, to avoid theft, stuff like that.

I bought 2 games from there, the first is Ultimate Fighting Championship for the Dreamcast, if you don't know what UFC is, it's a mixed martial arts sport, where people with different martial arts, hence the name, fight it out in a octagon cage, none of it's scripted, it's all real, or so I've heard.

I had the PS1 version of this game already, and I enjoyed that, but I've heard that the Dreamcast version was much better, and it was £3 in this store, so I got it, tried it out, and everything I've heard is true, it is much better than the PS1 version, it runs much faster, and the controls are much more responsive, I still like the PS1 version, but this is far superior.



I also got a game called "Sheep" on the PS1, my cousin back in the day had this, while it wasn't the best game I've played, it's still okay, the game is about herding sheep, the game isn't as boring as sounds, but it's by no means an essential purchase. I bought it anyway for nostalgia's sake.


Both games worked perfectly, and since I'll be passing by this shop every day (Well, 3 days a week, but you know what I mean.) on the way to and from college, I think they'd earned themselves a customer!

Oh yeah, and Happy Halloween!

Cobra!

Retro(ish) Diary - 30/10/11 - "There are Trip Bombs everywhere!"

It's been a fairly busy week this week.

On Wednesday, my 3DO arrived, although I wasn't supposed to get it until Christmas, (I know it's early to be Christmas shopping, but I found a really good deal on eBay, so I bought it before someone else did.) my dad accidentally put it in my room, like he usually does, he forgot he wasn't supposed to this time around. I was thinking of testing it anyway, to get a preview of it, so I did, I played

• Need for Speed
• Crash N' Burn
• Gex

I only wanted to preview 3 games, being that they were just copies anyway, just to test if the console worked, and it did, however, some of the games didn't, after trying out the first 2, I tried playing "Stargate" and "Samurai Showdown", in that order, both of which didn't work.

The next day, I found an Amiga CD32, the other console I'm after, for £50, unlike the previously mentioned item, it came with a controller and the UK power supply, and, you'll never believe this, I still don't, 1700 games! They're all copied onto 3 CDs, apparently, they're Amiga Computer games burnt onto a CD for the CD32, I'll try them one just to see if the console itself works, then, I'll perhaps throw them away... nah, probably not, and pop in Darkseed!

It was £20 more then the one I mentioned weeks ago (Including delivery), but if I were to buy that one instead, separately, I would have to buy a controller, which are usually £20 plus £2-3 delivery, and a plug converter, which is £2 with free delivery, totalling to £25! So I actually saved £5!

---

It was Xbox week at grans today, well, sort of, my brother wanted to bring his PS3, because it was the rare week when he wasn't playing a match at Rugby, I decided we could bring both, and once we got bored of the Xbox, we'd play the PS3, very much to my surprise though, we wanted to keep playing the Xbox, so we did pretty much, here's what we played:

• Black
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
• 007: Nightfire

Unfortunately, we forgot the one game we started playing the Xbox again for, Timesplitters: Future Perfect, so that was all we played, and only one of them was multi-player, that didn't matter though, because we found new love for 007: Nightfire, we chose to randomise the weapon set each match.

Just so it's easer for me to write and for you to read, we'll label the players of the game, but at the same time, trying not to give out their real name:

• 1st Player - my cousin - Stephen
  
• 2nd Player - me - Cobra!
  
• 3rd Player - my other cousin - Gay Gian
• 4th Player - my brother - Retardo

The first match, we had the usual, a match in the snowy level with a burst sniper rifle, surprisingly, I dominated that match. However came last almost every other match...

The second match, the level was loaded with Golden Guns, which kills people with one shot, although for some reason, Stephen couldn't find them, at least not for the first half of the game. I came last even with that advantage, but it was rather close.

The third match, and the first my brother, Retardo, joined in as the 4th player, we were all armed with a couple of trip beam bombs, and we all ended up setting them at this one tunnel, there were so many trip beams in that tunnel and some of them in the most awkward places, it looked like one of those security halls you see in films, with all the awkwardly placed beams. I always went into this one room, planted all of my trip beams there, so no one can get in, well, that was the theory, and took control of the nearby mini tanks, and killed a couple of my cousins in it, IN THE GAME! of course. However, when I did that a few times, Gay Gian somehow got in without setting off the trip beams I planted, and while I was controlling the tank, pushed me into the trip beams, killing me, that b*stard! In the end, I came 3rd, I think, and Retardo came last, with 2 kills and 22 deaths, what a record!

The forth match, we were armed with sniper rifles, all kills were caused by sniper-ing one another, so not much happened, but we enjoyed it alot, a moment I remember was that me and Gay Gian were at opposite balconies, we were both aiming to headshot each other, but we were both strafing, to avoid the other's fire, it was hilarious, then I saw Stephen in the balcony blow, but he didn't notice us, so I aimed for him instead, and before I knew it, Gay Gian shot me, great! We got ourselves in that situation a couple of times, and he always came out on top. I came last, again, but for a round with just sniper rifles, it was action packed, and fun.

The fifth and final match, and also my favourite, we were all armed with Remote Controller Missiles, There was so much going on, with explosions and all that, that the game slowed down constantly, it seams not even the powerful Xbox can handle the awesomeness of the game! I don't blame it to be honest. I came out last in the end, but boy, what a match that was! I'll be remembering that for a long time!

After that, we put the Xbox away and we started playing the PS3.

All we played on the PS3 was Driver: San Francisco, it was amazing how you can play multiplayer in the full map and still be playable, but for some reason, I had no interest of playing, I just wanted to play more Nightfire!

That was what happened this week, next week is Gamecube week, I hope as usual, that will turn out great!

Cobra!

Retro Pick-Ups: PGA Tour '96 (US Longbox) [PS1]

It was a typical day at college, we got bored, had a break went down to the library to be bored, back to class to get bored again, lunch, then one last class of boredom.

Something very unusual happened on the way back from lunch however, me and my friend were walking past a charity shop, and I was looking in to see if anything caught my eye, or even if there were any games there, my friend decided that we should go in since we had nearly an hour until the next class, so we did.

I found something I can safely say I would've never expected, I found a couple of PS1 games on a shelved, and say one of them was much taller than the rest, I thought at first it was a special edition of a game or something, so I pulled it out and found it was a normal game in what people call a "longbox" even though it's actually taller, (but I suppose "tallbox" didn't have the same ring to it.) I heard that early PS1 games didn't have this, but that was only in America, over here, we've always had the shorter cases.

I looked closer, and found that it WAS a US copy, how did it end up in Scotland!? I knew there would be no chance on earth I could get it running on a PAL console without modding it, but I was tempted to buy it, because it looked so cool, and I suppose if I wanted to, I could boast about it. I asked how much it was at the counter, it was only £2, I had £5 with me, so I bought it. I thought that was a fairly good deal, no matter how much cheaper it was on eBay, the postage will be £10 or more, it always is when importing something from America.

When I got home, I thought I'd put in my PS1, just to see what comes up, I might even get lucky and it'll work, but there's a very low chance of that, all it said was "Please Insert Playstation(R) Disc" with a red grid background, it didn't even acknowledge the region, not as exiting as I had hoped.

That's the story, I'll keep it for collectors sake, unless someone from the US will for some reason want it, give me a shout, and I'll send it.

I leave youse now, with some photos of it, I forgot to take a photo of it compared to a normal PS1 case, but it's twice the size, just stack 2 PS1 games on top of each other and you'll get a rough estimate as to how big they are:


I did manage to play game the game through the magic of emulation, I own a PS1, and the game, obviously, and there's no other way to play it, so it should be alright for me, here are some screenshots I took:

The PS2's Final Moments: WWE All Stars Review

I'm going to start doing reviews on this site, I've been doing reviews for several sites, and since my readers think I'm good at reviewing, I though make some here, particularly this series I like to call "The PS2's final moments.", where I review the PS2's last games.
When did they come out? The more appropriate question is, when WILL they come out?
That's right! Believe it our not, they're still games being made for the PS2, usually a port of a game, although there's no mention on the advertisements for the games, or reviews of them, that's when I come along, I'm going to buy every individual game that comes out on the PS2 from 2011 onwards.

I also want to know, if there's any game I've missed that's coming to PS2, tell me about it, like I said I want to experience the PS2's last moments, I want to be with it, on it's deathbed, sitting beside it, holding it's controller, until it finally rests it's laser and is discontinued.

The first game in this series is WWE All Stars, yes, believe it or not, there's a PS2 version, don't believe me? Check on Amazon, it does exist, however, THQ themselves have never mentioned a PS2 port, why not?

As a PC gamer, at least when it comes to modern games, and a fan or Wrestling games, I am annoyed that THQ never release the WWE games on the PC, and have to resort to getting them on PS2, and recently, we were given a very good port of Smackdown vs. Raw 2011, the graphics were actually comparable to the other versions,and the game ran fast and the controls were very functional, in fact the only complaint I have with it is that the commentating wasn’t very good, sometimes they repeat lines a couple of times or just say something totally out of context to what’s going on, and the load times were awful, it can take up to 5 minutes to load up a match, apart from those, it was a great port and probably the best PS2 game in years, and being it was released when it was, I thought it would be the last, ending the PS2’s life with a bang.

The best thing was, unlike every other game from 2008 to present, they didn't just grab the Wii version and port it without a care in the world. The graphics were better on the PS2 overall, for instance, the ropes were 3D and the names on the wrestlers, telling you who you're facing, didn't have a black box behind them unlike the Wii version, the framerate was much more reliable too, in fact if I can recall right, it never slowed down on me, not even with 6 wrestlers in a TLC match, it's just things like that that proved that THQ put real effort into the PS2 version!

On the back of the instruction manual it has an ad for the then upcoming WWE All Stars, and having done a little research, I found that it was coming to the PS2. The game was going to be an unofficial sequel of sorts to WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade game, it’ll be cartoony and not the slightest bit realistic, I loved that game, so I was looking forward to this, and after playing the PS3 version at HMV, and enjoyed it, I didn't expect a perfect port, but I still expected a great port nonetheless, like what we got for Smackdown vs. Raw 2011.

Before I started playing, I heard they grabbed the Wii version, and put it on the PS2, I thought that was kind of lazy, but I'll give it a chance.

The game as you imagine, doesn’t have much of a story, just win matches and become the champion, you can choose from 3 champions, I’ll get more into that later.

I started the game up, and played a quick match, and wow, was I disappointed, the arena looked pretty nice, the textures were actually really good, the best I’ve seen from the PS2 in fact, but the characters look awful, the texture quality is awful, the colours look all washed out, sometimes the clothes look as though they were just part of the wrestlers skin. The worst part is, the game doesn’t even run a good framerate despite this, The gameplay suffers big time from this, I’ll get to that later.

The music is... well, there’s no music, instead we have JR and Jerry “King” Lawler commentating the match, if you wanted a fast paced, fun game, put in some upbeat music, or at least something that give you the impression that it’s fast. I’m sick and tired of hearing JR and King’s annoying American accents, to give them credit, at least this time around they got it right, they don’t repeat the same lines constantly and everything they say relates to what’s going on in the match.

The sound effects are awful, they honestly sound like they recorded the sound effects using a microphone to a speaker and then compressed it. It just sounds awful.

The gameplay is terrible. the controls lag, what I mean by this is that the buttons only work half the time and sometimes you have to press a button multiple times for it to do something, the AI are annoying as well, sometimes, they just won’t give you any chance to attack, they’ll punch you when you’re down getting back up, this can get very frustrating.

There are a few game modes to keep you occupied, you have the fantasy warfare game types, where they have matches where they get a WWE legend and their modern equivalent, for example, Andre the Giant vs Big show, both of them are big and heavy, or Sgt. Slaughter vs. Jack Swagger, both of them being obsessed with their country, the USA.
You also have a Path of Champions mode, which a mentioned earlier, you can choose from 3 champions to chase, the classic WWE championship (Undertaker and Paul Bearer), the modern WWE championship (Randy Orton) and the WWE tag team championship (D-Generation X), they’re all the same thing, you play 10 matches, the championship one included, so there really isn’t much to say about that.

The presentation is average, well, it would be had it not of been for the awful muffled sound effects, and the terrible load times, they aren't as bad as Smackdown vs. Raw 2011, but they’re still awful.

To end on a high note, if you’re playing with a friend for the sake of laughing at the game for it’s many flaws, there’s actually some fun to be had with the game, because of the low gravity moves and, lack of music and bad sound effects give off the impression that they’re on the moon, you have a great laugh out of that.

Overall, it’s is an awful port, they put no effort into it whatsoever, they just grabbed the Wii version and dumped it on a PS2 disc. On multiplayer, however, it’s so bad, it’s good. Unless you can find it very cheap, like say 50p, and want to buy it for the multiplayer, don’t bother.

Graphics: 3/10 – They would be considered bad even if it was a launch title, and it can’t even run a good framerate, not even the great textures can save it.

Gameplay: 5/10 – Again, unless your playing it on multi-player to laugh at it, it’s just boring, the controls are delayed and sometimes don’t work.

Music: 1/10 – There’s no music in the game, and again, the commentators will really get on your nerves, The sound effects are Awful, absolutely awful, I give it 1 point for at least getting the commentary right.

Overall: 3/10 – Overall, A terrible port of a great game, I do not recommend you get this version. It wasn’t like you were going to get the PS2 version anyway, I’m just saying, don’t!

Was this any good? Give me your honest opinion, I want to know.

Retro Diary - 23/10/11 - "It's like they're on the moon..."

A lot happened this week, at least as far as retro gaming goes.

---

On Wednesday, my friend came over to my house to have a game of FIFA 12, on PS2!

He thought it was rubbish compared to the Xbox 360 version, well, he said it was completely different and that it didn't fell right, but he said that it might be okay once you get used to the controls, even though I didn't say so, I agreed with him, because after seeing gameplay of the Xbox 360 version, it looked MUCH better.

We then watched some Red Dwarf and some Fawlty Towers, then he was playing Pokémon Pinball on my Game Boy Color, he was playing that for a good while.

We played a few more games, here's the complete list of what we played:

In the order we played them:
• FIFA 12 [PS2]
• Pokémon Stadium [N64]
• Pokémon Pinball [GBC]
• Half-Life [PS2]
• Timesplitters: Future Perfect [Xbox]
• FIFA Football 2003 [PS2]
• Ready 2 Rumble Boxing [DC]

The most fun we had was playing Half-Life and Timesplitters: Future Perfect, we played both of them for hours and before we knew it, it was time for him to go, so we played a couple of games of Ready 2 Rumble Boxing and then he left.

---

On Saturday, my Atari Jaguar Memory Track arrived! So now I can save data on my Jaguar CD games. (well, game)

It says on the back it can box "125,000" bytes of data, that's only 250KBs, even back then, in 1996, where you had the fairly small 1MB PS1 memory cards, that was rubbish, and it says also that it can store data from up to "250 Jaguar games" but when I went to the memory track manager, the previous owner had data from 3 games, Battlemorph, Hoverstrike: Unconquered Lads and Myst, and that almost took up the whole cart, only about 100 bytes remained! 250 games my ar*e!

---

On Sunday, before we went to grans, my brother wanted someone to play him at Co-op in Super Mario Bros. Wii, he asked me first, I didn't want to, so he got our dad to do it.

When I went down for a coke later on, he was still playing and looked so bored playing it, so I thought since I had nothing else to do, I thought I'd take his place, and surprisingly, I enjoyed it, even if it was my brother playing it, he always shouts and makes loud noises while playing it, we got every star-coins, whatever they're called, in world 1 and managed to unlock level 1 of world 9, we didn't complete it, but I'd love to give it another shot!

---

At grans, it was PS2 week, and since my cousins were still to arrive.

So I decided to play a game of FIFA 12 career mode, when I first played when the game arrived, I didn't like it the framerate was very unreliable and the controls were very awkward (I'm playing on "Be a player" mode by the way), but playing it a second time, I started to really enjoy it, the dynamic camera angles you get when your near a goal I thought were a very nice touch, and I managed to score 2 goals, and it felt very rewarding... and then I got sent off, after "bumping", for lack of a better word, the score to 2-0. Then the opponent team scored not 1, but 4 goals against us! Talk about a bad move, eh? I had to watch the rest of the entire match, the first half wasn't even over yet, I couldn't skip, I could quit, but all progress would be lost and it was count as a retire, it was some of the most boring moments of my life. The score ended 3-4, we lost, and I got the blame, the newspaper said it was my fault and that I was sorry for the loss, bullsh*t!

Then my brother wanted a shot at career mode, but as a manager, so, since I had plenty of memory card space, I let him, and he was playing for about half an hour, despite claiming he hated it,
I told him "I thought you hated this game.",
and he replied "Well, I suppose it's alright when you get used to the controls.",
which was exactly what my friend said, well, assumed, and he was right according to what my brother said.

When my brother started playing, my cousins arrived, and we were talking about how there's still PS2 games being made and making jokes like
"(Cobra!) has probably made a spike in the sales charts for the PS2 version!",
I played along, saying stuff like "Breaking news! Someone bought the PS2 version of FIFA 12!", we had quite a laugh.

I was also mentioning what I wanted to get for Christmas, spent with my EMA money (I know, I'm buying my own presents, sad isn't it? Well, I'm not buy all of them, just most of them.) as I have £300, if saved up, to spend, and I mentioned that I got a 3DO with a few games for just £50! Not bad considering they usually go for £120 with no games, and I told them that I found an Amiga CD32 for just £40, although it had no controller and a EU plug, I can buy both easily for a decent price.

So if you want a CD32, there are 6 available, so get yourself one, just leave one for me, please?

Then, after my brother was done playing FIFA 12, we popped in Timesplitters 2 and played some co-op multiplayer, we only finished 1 level when the cousin I was playing with had to leave.

My other cousin was still there so we decided to play some Timesplitters 1, since he never played it before and was curious as to what it was like, it was kind of boring, I was aware that all of the goals were, get this, then go back, and that it was repetitive, this especially showed in co-op multiplayer, I got bored of it after just 2 levels.

We then had a game of WWE All Stars, just to show him how bad it was, and the game was so bad, it was awesome! Surprisingly, we had a great laugh out of it, because of all of the over the top moves. He said that "It's like they're on the moon!" because of this, and I mentioned that the bad sound effects and lack of music (Yeah, there's no music in the PS2 version.) kind of helped that effect.

So as it turns out, WWE All Stars is like the PS2's Monster Truck Madness 64, it's so horrible, that it's awesome!

Here's the complete list of games we played:

In the order we played them:
• FIFA 12
• Timesplitters 2
• Timesplitters
• WWE All Stars

On the way back, my cousin was dropping me off my house, due to our car not being there yet, and on the way, we were actually talking about this blog, and he mentioned that he liked the logo at the top and I mentioned that it was outdated, as my collection grew quite a bit since, I got a Jaguar+CD, a Game Boy Color, an N-Gage,
and he added; "...with a 3DO on the way!",
and then I added afterwards; "... and a CD32!",
I was surprised at the fact that it even remotely interested him that I was getting a 3DO, of course in a good way, my only guess it was because I was at one point hosting a competition for a game about what console to add to it, and he entered with the 3DO, I cancelled it due to lack of entries later on, so technically, he was the winner, although the game was cancelled.

That was what I was up to this week, next week is Xbox week, a very underrated console in my opinion, in fact I'm probably the only person in the world to prefer it over the Xbox 360. Hopefully, it will be as fun as this week was.

Cobra!

Retro Diary - 16/10/11 - I think we've found the Dreamcast's Goldeneye... Sort of!

From now on, I'm going to be doing in an actual diary format, like I'm talking to myself, just to be authentic to the title, just thought I'd give youse the heads up.

---

It was Dreamcast week this week, and for the occasion, I brought 2 Dreamcast controllers, new ones in fact, for £6 in total, and and they were exactly that, new Dreamcast controllers, it seamed that Sega have started manufacturing them again, because the item on Amazon only appeared this year, and the review someone did said he got them in their new boxes. I would've thought they would've costed alot, being that the console is old, but they were only £3 each, with free delivery, and the item said Official Sega Dreamcast Controllers, plus, that item didn't appear until this year, so my theory of them manufacturing them again must be plausible.

Anyway, I brought the controllers to my grans, and used them for the first time, and they felt great! When you pressed a button, it felt like, well, pressing a button, I mean a proper press, if you know what I mean.

Here are the games we played:

• Ready 2 Rumble Boxing
• Mortal Kombat Gold
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
• Chu Chu Rocket
• WWF Royal Rumble
• Sonic Adventure 2
• Sega GT
• ECW: Hardcore Revolution

The game we enjoyed the most as Chu Chu Rocket, we were really addicted to it, we actually had to give the Dreamcast a few breaks because it was getting really hot because we were playing it that much. One of my cousins said that it was like the Dreamcast's Goldeneye, and I can see where he's coming from, although it's a totally different genre, it's a 4-player game where we gather around and play, and just have fun, it doesn't matter whether or not you win or lose, you're just having too much fun to care, just like Goldeneye!

---

Aside from that, I didn't do much this week, I did order an Atari Jaguar Pro Controller and a Memory track, but only one of them arrived, not surprisingly, the other was from America!

Well, you don't need all the buttons, but I imagine many complained about the inconvenience of the original controller, having only 3 face buttons and having a number pad underneath, the pro controller kind of fixed it, it kept the number pad, but added 3 extra face buttons and 2 shoulder buttons, and these button act as a number-pad button when used to play a Jaguar game before it, Tempest 2000 for example, the extra button change the camera and in Iron Soldier, they're used to change the weapon. Not many games were developed with the pro controller in mind, in fact I think Primal Rage was the only one, I'm not sure though.

So it isn't really inconvenient or complex, and in some cases, even simplifies some games, not to mention, it's thinner than the original controller, so it's easier to hold.

I'm still waiting for the memory track to arrive, so it'll be a while...

---

That's all I did next week, next week is PS2 week, we're going to have a few games of FIFA 12!

Happy Birthday Sega Dreamcast!

Exactly 12 years ago, on 14th October 1999, the Sega Dreamcast was released in Europe. How do I remember this? I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Well, I was only 5 at the time, and therefore had no idea all this was going on, but I would like to wish the Sega Dreamcast a happy 12th birthday.

I would've drawn a picture or something, but I totally forgot about it, I'm so sorry, well, let's make this weekend you're birthday weekend, I'll buy 2 controllers for the occasion, and I can guarantee that we'll have a blast!

Cobra!

Retro(ish) Arrivals: FIFA 12 [PS2]

No, that wasn't a typo, there's is in fact, a PS2 version!

You might be thinking "Why the f*ck would you get the PS2 version!?", well, I have a few reasons:

1. I don't have any of the other consoles the game is on.
2. It's on the PS2! Name any other PS2 game that came out this year, the only one I can think of is WWE All Stars.
3. So I can say: "I own FIFA 12 on PS2!"!

WWE All Stars, so far, the only other game to come out on PS2 this year, was a horrible port, the graphics looked like an early Dreamcast game, it couldn't run at a playable framerate to save it's life, and the buttons didn't respond half the time.

Is FIFA 12 on PS2, any better... only slightly, I got the game brand new, sealed, meaning, obviously there's not a mark on the disc. I've only played for an hour or so, and it has crashed 3 times! That's right, it's prone to crashing. The game itself is okay, it's playable, and the graphics looked better than previous FIFA games on the PS2, but it freezes a lot, and every time I restart it, it didn't recognise the disc, as if the PS2 lens was broken.

Another problem was, you need to clear up 2MB of data on your memory card, it may not sound like much today, but remember, PS2 memory cards only held 8MB, so the game takes up a quarter of your memory card, or so it says, the game file itself is only 200KB, so why did I need to clear up 2MB!?

Once you get past this, the game is actually pretty good, I mean, obviously, being that it's EA, the graphics still look like crap, the players move like their robots and there's no physics engine, despite the PS2 being capable of all this. It's still a good game, although I wouldn't recommend you get it for the multiplayer, because of the crashing problem mentioned above.

Overall, it's nice that they made a PS2 version, but it wouldn't hurt to put some effort into it, if you're a massive football fan, unlike me, than just get any of the next gen versions, I'm sure that was your original intention anyway.

I played a game and a half with my brother, the half being it crashed the first time, and he was complaining how it was sh*t, I kept asking him why, and he said the controls were crap, and I asked how are they, and he mentioned because the "graphics and the animation were crap", which doesn't effect the controls at all.

I'll admit, EA could've easily of made the graphics better while keeping the fast framerate on the PS2, but in terms of controls and gameplay, both the PS2 and PS3 FIFA games are exactly the same, and trust me, I've played both.

I'll leave youse now with some photos of the case and screenshots I've taken:


Forgive me for the blurry screenshots, it actually looks clearer in real life.

Well, FIFA 12 was a little disappointing. I've pre-ordered Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 on PS2, let hope that's better, at least in terms of how good a port it is.

Cobra!

"Retro" Diary - 9/10/11 - I've been reminded why I started retro gaming in the first place.

Guess what happened this week, absolutely NOTHING.

Alright, I kind of lie, one of my brothers got an Xbox 360, and since getting, he's become a total brat, and got all worked up over nothing.

Another brother of mine got a PS3, and having played that, reminded me why I started retro gaming in the first place... I'll make a standalone page dedicated to it.

Alright, those are pretty big things, but they aren't really "retro", are they?

Nothing really happened on Sunday at my grans, all that happened, was that my brother brought the Xbox 360 and was constantly killing himself in Halo Reach, on purpose.

Cobra!

Retro Diary - 2/10/11 - What!? That's not Random!!

Yes, it's that time again, folks, it's time for another retro diary, the most bland, boring and repetitive blog series on the face of the internet!

This week was the console that started all of this Retro nonsense, the Nintendo 64, and we had alot of fun, surprisingly.

Unfortunately, my cousin forgot to bring his games and controllers, because he thought it was Dreamcast week, I'll explain how the week system works below, so we were stuck with just 2 controllers, kind of ironic when you think about it, because we had 4-controllers on PSone week because of the multi-tap, when we usually have 2. It's just as well I brought in my copies of games he had, just in case he forgot, what I forgot myself, as to bring in Lylat Wars, I was exited about that!

My other cousin gave me back my controller after giving his back a few weeks back, after the mix up of controllers after Gamecube week all of those weeks ago.

Anyway, here are the game we played:

In the order we played them:
• 1080 Snowboarding
• Ridge Racer 64
• Goldeneye
• Pokémon Stadium
• Super Smash Bros.

We were playing Ridge Racer 64 the most, I forgotten how much fun it was.

I was humiliated this week, as somehow, I've lost ALL of my games, I guess I wasn't on top form today, because I did awful in the game I thought I was good at.

If you're wondering what the title is all about, well, it's yet another in-joke, where we, for a joke, assume that "random" is it's own stage/song/whatever rather than choosing all of the existing ones randomly, so when random does it job, and randomly chooses a stage/song/whatever, we're like "That's not random!", "You call that random!?", stuff along those lines.

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Ever since I've started this series, I've never specified the list of weeks that we're doing, as in, what console do I own, and what order we're doing it weekly, I'm going to rectify this problem, just to clear some heads:

1. Mega Drive - 1990
2. Atari Jaguar + CD - 1994/1996 - Optional, as I only have a couple of games and only 1 controller for it.
3. Sega Saturn - 1995
4. Sony Playstation - 1995
5. Nintendo 64 - 1997
6. Sega Dreamcast - 1999
7. Sony Playstation 2 - 2000
8. Microsoft Xbox - 2002
9. Nintendo Gamecube - 2002
10. Microsoft Xbox 360 - 2005
11. Nintendo Wii - 2006

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My brothers have been playing Pokémon Stadium all week, and I'm sick of it, the only people to visit my room are my brothers asking to play it, I suppose I should be somewhat happy that SOMEONE has an interest of old games, but these guys are 6 and 7 years old. I suppose I shouldn't be complaining, so I won't be.

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One last thing, I've made up a game, pick a year, any year, usually a year associated with the console your playing, pretend it's that year, and if anything released, made, born or happened after the chosen year, you go "What/Who's *Insert object here*?", you can also keep count if you like, me and my cousins play it alot.

Why an I telling you this, no reason really, it's just that if you're that into retro stuff, then you could give it a try with your friends or cousins.

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That's it for todays retro diary, I'll see youse here next week when it's Dreamcast week!

Cobra!