The Mysterious Christmas Present...

I mentioned on last weeks Retro Diary that I was told to wrap up my little brothers' presents, well, what I didn't tell you, mainly because I forgot, somehow, was that my mum also gave me one of my presents to keep safe until Christmas day.

Problem is... What is it?


Honestly, I have absolutely no idea what it is, not a clue!

I originally thought it was my 3DO, because the box it came in was the same shape and size, and it was around the same weight, but my brother and mum told me it wasn't and I saw the 3DO box in my parents' room (the door was left open slightly), and saw the 3DO in it.

It can't be my CD32, because the box that came in is different and again, I saw it in my parents' room.

It can't be a TV because the box is too fat and heavy for the modern flat screens and too small and light for it to be a CRT.

My mum and my brother told me it wasn't a console, maybe they weren't being specific, maybe it's a console add-on, maybe it's a Mega CD! I've always wanted one of those... nah, it probably isn't!

There's no way it can be a VCR or a Blu-Ray/DVD player, because I already have one of each, and yes, this paragraph was a filler...

It's haunting me whatever is in the box, sometimes I can't sleep because of it, I'm so tempted to open it up, but my common sense side is telling me to wait until Christmas day to find out what it is, it's probably better if I do.

It doesn't help that I have to keep it in my room until Christmas day.

What is more annoying, was that they are actually, for some reason, damp patches on the wrapping paper, although you can't see them in the photo, they're there, when I try to look through them, all I see is more wrapping paper! They've layered the wrapping!

I'm looking forward to that morning when I wake up on Christmas day and opening this big mysterious present and finally finding out what the heck it is.

What do youse think it is?

Retro Diary - 4/12/11 - "I want to change my team formation!"

Dear Diary,

On Thursday, me and my brother had a few games of FIFA 11 on the PS3 in his room, I don't remember the results, I haven't written them down, sorry, but I do remember scoring a few good goals in it.
Afterwards, we went to my room and played a game of Smackdown vs. Raw 2011, unlike out games of FIFA 11, I took notes from it when the memories where still fresh, we only had one match and man it was a long match!

We had a 6-man Tag Team No DQ Best of 3 falls match!

I played as 3 of my custom characters, their names were Ricky Dateen, Chad Paiphin, and "The FAT! Guy!" Cobra!, the latter of which is an interpretation of the old, fat me!

He went as Kane, and our 10th and 11th Doctor Who CAWs, yes, we actually made them plus the 9th Doctor in the game, I made a Youtube video about it.

My brother was at the start dominating the match and got the first win.

I, however, fought back, and got the second win.

At this point, it was very tense, it was virtually neck and neck, momentum switching back and forth, we literally wrestled in every spot, every individual polygon of the arena, eventually, I cleared the announcers table, got my momentum up, and performed a table finisher, pinned him and I won!

That was a match that I will NEVER forget... Who won again?

---

On Saturday, we were told to wrap my brothers' presents with the brother I played against in Smackdown vs. Raw 2011. On the Saturday, I was playing FIFA 12 on PS2, and I told my brother to take over for a while, when he was done, he actually asked if he could play another game, I was surprised, I thought he hated the FIFA games on the PS2, I guess he wanted to give it a chance, so I said yeah, but unfortunetly, the next match was an international match,

'Why is that a problem?' you'll probably be asking, dear diary.

Well, it's because I was a defender in the international matches as opposed to mid-fielder.

'Again, how is this a problem?' you'll probably still be asking.

Well, it's because the game gives you goals that only apply to strikers, and they're pretty persistent when your a defender, meaning you HAVE to stay near the back, yet it gives you goals like attempt at least 3 goal shots or score a goal from a cross... How are you supposed to do those!?

Anyway, My brother almost scored a goal from his side of the field, it was SO close!

After the match, he stopped playing, I imagine he's p*ssed off, I'd be too, I've been there.

---

Today, it was PSone week, unfortunetly, my cousin, Steven, couldn't make it because he had a 10 hour shift at Asda which lasted all throughout the time we were there.

For about an hour I was just sitting there, bored, playing Crash Team Racing, it's a great game, don't get me wrong, but when you're playing on your own at a time when we're meant to be playing multi-player, it can be boring.

Then my other cousin, Giancarlo, came along.

Then I remembered that I forgot to bring Vib Ribbon, which was Giancarlo's favourite game for the console, however, I bought along a game that isn't as much fun, but will do to fill the gap left by forgetting Vib Ribbon, and that was a game named Sheep, he used to have it back in the day, and the intro brought back alot of memories for him, although he didn't act like it, am I the only person who shows an emotion when something brings back my memories?

We played a few 2 player games, neither of us had tried 2 player before, even back then, so we assumed it was a co-op game, it was a 2D game, so the Playstation could handle it easily, but we were disappointed, it was just a game of football, we thought we'd give it a bash anyway.

What you had to do in the game is herd sheep to getting the ball into the other played goal.

It was okay, I mean it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. Giancarlo changed places with my brother, nothing to say about that match, then I switched places with the other cousin that was there, and he kept saying stuff like "This is the worst thing I've ever experienced", and was also joking about by saying stuff like "I want to change my team formation!" and "I want to make a substitution!".

After that, we played a few games of Tekken 3, even though it was my game, and therefore had the most practice, I lost most of the matches!

After that, we left.

Next week is N64 week, I hope Steven will be there next week, because N64 week is kind of boring without him.

Cobra!

Retro Diary - 28/11/11 - "Are you ready to press a button? Then let's go!!"

Dear Diary,

Sorry I was late, I didn't have any time to write this weeks entry yesterday, I had to get up early the next day, personal reason, I'd rather not mention.

I had a fairly busy week this week, but I need to write notes down from now on, because I forgot the order these events happened.

Throughout the week, I have been revisiting old games that I had in my 'collection' which I completed ages ago, but was tempted to do again, Timesplitters 2, the Tony Hawk's Underground, Tony Hawk's Underground 2 and Tony Hawk's American Wasteland.

I've still to play the latter of the list as I'm in the middle of Underground 2, I and if you must know, I'm playing the Gamecube version, I've never played that one, I completed the first Underground on PS2, and after playing the Xbox version before... wow, I have to say, the PS2 version looks kind of rubbish, as for the Gamecube version, I've never played that, so I can't comment on it.

I was playing Timesplitters 2 on PS2, but while I was on that, I went to my cousins house, and we played through the Xbox version it there, so I didn't see the point in completing it on PS2 if I've more-a-less seen everything. Alright, I lie, we only went through a couple of levels, but you get the idea.

---

While I was at my cousin's house, we played some games, mostly on N64.

I brought a few games with me in case we got bored, just as well we did I guess, but we had a problem with the N64, it wasn't able to save or load data from cartridges, so when I put in Ridge Racer 64, it said the memory had gone corrupt, and the data in Perfect Dark was gone too, but when I went back home, and tried them on my N64, the data was still there.

Anyway, that didn't stop us from playing a race or two on Ridge Racer 64, although I was moody the whole way through.

First, we played Tony Hawks Skateboarding on N64, my cousin told me he never played the original Tony Hawk game, I was surprised, he loves Pro Skater 3 and Underground, but never played the first game!? Alright, fair enough, I was like that at first, but eventually I got the whole collection up to Tony Hawks Proving Ground on PS2.

Anyway, we played a few games on Graffiti, and I more-a-less annihilated him, with scored like 12-4!

Then, we had a few games on Hockey on Monster Truck Madness 64, and he got me back, he kept beating me with scores like 6-0! I think I an safely say, I've lost my touch...

Then we had a game of Ridge Racer 64 and tried to play Perfect Dark, but like I said before, the N64 had problems reading the data.

Then we played Timesplitters 2, and like I said, we played through a couple of levels until I had to leave to go back home.

Here are the games I think we played, in the order I think we played them:
• Tony Hawk's Skateboarding [N64]
• Monster Truck Madness 64 [N64]
• Ridge Racer 64 [N64]
• Perfect Dark* [N64]
• Timesplitters 2 [Xbox]

---

Speaking of Perfect Dark, I was also playing games I haven't completed before throughout the week, such as Matrix: Path of Neo [Xbox], Driver 2 [PS1], Burnout [PS2] and Perfect Dark [N64].

Perfect Dark was the only games out of those games I actually completed, I'll go back to the others and complete them eventually, but man did Perfect Dark feel rewarding for one reason, I was given a bonus mission that's mostly about shooting anything that moves! That was alot of fun!

---

On Sunday, at grans, it was Sega Saturn week, we restarted due a confusion, I'd rather not mention why.

I played a match with my little brothers on Fighters Megamix, of course with a handicap for balance, and they were having an absolute blast, they kept bugging me to play more.

Eventually, I convinced them to try out Sega Rally, they didn't like that too much, racing games, as I've discovered, aren't my little brothers' strong points.

Then they wanted to play the Sonic games I had on the Saturn, so we had a game of Sonic 2 on Sonic Jam, and then we had a couple of races in Sonic R. I actually convinced my uncle to play a game of Sonic Jam with me at Sonic 2, we had fun, although we didn't get far.

Then my cousin arrived, and we had a game of Virtua Fighter 2, then he wanted to watch the Fifth Element, which was coming up on Channel 5. I wanted to play him in a couple of fights every time an ad break starts for 3 reasons:

1. I wanted some time spent towards playing the Saturn, we didn't spend much time playing for it.
2. To make the ad breaks seam shorter.
3. To give the Saturn rests, to keep the Disc Tray and Cartridge slot working, so then we could load my Virtua Fighter 2 data from the Backup Cart, so we can play Virtua Fighter 2.1!

Believe or not, this did all 3 jobs perfectly, it made the ad breaks seam much shorter, we had a blast every time, and the Saturn for the most part, kept working perfectly.

We even gave ourselves a name by the last ad breaks, we called ourselves the "Rapid Virtua Fighter Response Unit", or the RVFRU, because the second the ad breaks came on, we literally rushed to the TV, turned the Saturn on, switched the channel and played a few games! I think we were overall equal in the record, I won alot of the matched, but he won alot as well.

As for the film itself, It was brilliant! I had no interest to watch it before and never pictured myself actually liking it that much, but wow, were my expectations blown out of the water, (get it?) it had a little of everything I wanted, it had alot of funny moments, it had an all star cast, I loved the environments, it had a great atmosphere to it, and the story, although it seamed a bit ridiculous in my opinion, was very good and kept you watching until the end. I'll definitely be getting myself the DVD soon...

During the film, We recognised the actor that played as Ruby Rhod, or at least he was familiar, but we couldn't figure out where we seen him, then I said "He looks and sounds just like that guy from Rush Hour.", then my cousin looked it up on his smartphone (or 'daft-phone' as I like to call it.), and it turns out I was right, he was played by Chris Tucker, who played James Carter in the Rush Hour Films, so that was where we'd seen him!

In a nutshell, Here's what we played:

In the Order I think we Played Them
• Fighters Megamix
• Sega Rally
• Sonic Jam
• Sonic R
• Virtua Fighter 2/2.1

---

Afterwards, I went to my other cousin's house... again, and we were playing FIFA 11 on the Xbox 360.
My brother was playing with my cousin in a match, I forgot the result of that.
Then we had a match, I lost.
Then he a match with my brother again, and my brother lost, with a 8-1 score no less!
After that, we left, we didn't stay very long.

---

The following day, we were at my old flat, literally, everyone in the family were there, even close friends and old neighbours were there, again, I don't want to mention why.

Good thing I started to keep notes, there are thing here I never would've remembered!

Me, my brother and my cousins got kind of bored eventually, so I decided to go to my house and bring a console, but by the time I went there and back by bus, as I have no driving license, they would've gone, so my uncle said he'd drive me there and back, I always feel bad when I get other to do stuff for me like this, but he said he didn't mind, so we agreed that I'd do that.

I asked my cousins what console I should bring, at first, they said "Whatever you want." like they didn't care, then I said, or at least I practically said, "I meant should I bring the Saturn, so we can play Virtua Fighter 2.1 again, or bring the Playstation, as that's next on the list.", then they said, "Bring the Dreamcast!", of course, I happily obliged, I brought the Dreamcast.

When I did, one of my older cousins was intrigued by the fact that I bought the Dreamcast, he lived through that era, (Lucky b*stard, I was too young back then!) and remembers it, and so we played a few 4-player games.

Before that, though, we were talking about games in general, and because I was a retro gamer (Who knew?), we were talking mostly about old games, and I found out that my Mega Drive that I have now, I bought from my cousin: Giancarlo, it was actually his Mega Drive originally (The older cousin, not the one who sold me it.), and he gave it to him before selling it to me, however, he apparently had the Mega CD attachment for it, but I didn't find out what happened to it, I would've loved to have that though!

We were talking about a game on the Mega CD called "Night Trap", which was meant to be a cult classic, but is supposed to be one of those games that's so bad, it's good. After that, we were making fun of how enthusiastic the old FMV videos were, they were over the top, saying that they said stuff like we were going on adventures, when in reality, we were just pressing buttons in a sequence, I made fun of them by saying "Are you ready to press buttons? Then let's go!"!

We have this partial in-joke, I say partial, because I'm p*ssed off at the reason that I made it, basically, when someone mentions the Xbox, I, for a joke, assume that they mean the original Xbox,
let's say for argument someone says, "I'm getting Modern Warfare 3 for the Xbox!",
I say "There's an Xbox version!?",
The conversation would probably go on like:
"Yeah, it's on Xbox and PS3."
"Isn't there also an Xbox 360 version?"
"Yeah, that was what I meant."
"Then why did you say you were getting it for the Xbox?"
"Shut Up! You knew what I meant!"

It does p*ss me off how people just call the Xbox 360, just the Xbox, because I have an original Xbox and still play it today, and I'm probably the only one, but nevertheless it still really annoyed me, so I created the in-joke.

Why am I telling you this Dear Diary? Well, because the cousin who lived through the Dreamcast era. (I need to give these guy nicknames, I don't want to give away their real names.) was talking about something for the Xbox 360, I forgot what it was, but he referred the Xbox 360 as just the Xbox, so I done that In-joke on him, he was confused at first, but then my other cousin explained the in-joke, and then for a joke, he called me a "Retro pedant!".

We played a couple of games of Ready 2 Rumble boxing, a Dreamcast night just isn't a Dreamcast night without that! I was facing Giancarlo at first, I won, then I faced my older cousin (nickname pending), and he won, but he was button bashing, even my youngest brother gave him advice by telling him to keep pressing the Y button, and it worked...

Then we played Chu Chu Rocket, 4-player! It was madness, just as I expected!

Then we played WWF Royal Rumble, just to try it, I didn't expect much out of it, but surprisingly, we had an absolute blast playing it, we played a good few matches of that!

---

Then me and Steve (Nickname from 007 Nightfire a few weeks back) had a game of Tony Hawks Skateboarding, he said he'd be better than me in the Dreamcast version, I didn't believe him, but then he actually beat me in a game of graffiti, I beat him the next game, then we tied, so it was neck and neck, next time we play will be a decider. I have a feeling though he used an N64 emulator to practice the N64 version... Then we played a game of horse, unfortunetly, you couldn't change the name, so we were stuck with 'horse'. So we played a game, and I lost... wow.

Then we played Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2, we played a game of Graffiti, that I won, then we had a game of horse, but this time, we could change the name, so what did we do, we both moved the d-pad in random directions and kept tapping A, and then came the final result:

I'll be introducing a new feature, perhaps outside the Retro diary as I think it deserves it's own articles, we call it, the "Insult of the Week".

So, without further adieu, we present to you, the Insult of the week is... DCCJJIBCSS!

Hopefully, I'll document the highlights of the matches we will have and make it a new full feature of the Blog, but the score will be backdated.

So the match winner was... Me! That's 3-0 to me! Steve is the DCCJJIBCSS!

---

Afterwards we played WWF Royal Rumble again, but this time, we did a Royal Rumble Match match, it never seamed to end! It turns out that we needed to eliminate the computer opponents, (Because this game supported up to 9 wrestlers at the screen at one, which is very impressive considering that the newer Smackdown vs. Raw games can only handle 6! So we did that, and all we had to do, was eliminate each other, but once you were eliminated, you can go right back in by pressing start after you've been eliminated, so theoretically, in a 4-player game, it can be never ending! Just as well it didn't but it take half an hour of our lives!

We then had a game of ECW Hardcore Revolution, because it was so much fun to play, because it's so bad, so yeah, we played 3 matched, we had a good laugh out of it.

After that, I had to go, and then wrote the blog entry.

---

Note to Self: Take notes from now on.

Cobra!

Retro Diary - 20/11/11 - I'm going to keep this one short... sort of.

I'd rather keep this weeks Retro Diary short this week, personal reasons, I really don't want to talk about it. Although I'm sure everyone who has me on Facebook know exactly what the reason is.

---

Dear Diary,

On Wednesday, I got myself Earthwork Jim for PC for 50p, mainly because the place I bought it from thought it was just an Audio CD. It was built to run on Windows 95, so obviously, I would have problems running it on Vista, and I'd be right, the game itself works just fine, however, there are no sound effects, even when it's set to full blast in the options. Still, the game is fun, as people say it was, but I think I'll just get the Mega Drive version, because the absence of sound effects really bug me.

---

The next day, I got the Red Hot Chilli Peppers album "By the Way" for the same price, because it actually WAS an Audio CD. With the exception of "Californication", it has every song I liked from Red Hot Chilli Peppers, so that's good.

---

The day after that, I got myself Actua Soccer 2 for PS1 for £1, the game is good for short blasts, but as a serious football game, it's not very good.

---

On Saturday, my cousins came over to my house, I'd rather not mention why. I'll say this in advance, I've almost totally forgot the order we played them, so bear with me.

We played Timesplitters first, there's not much to say about that, all we did, was take something, and bring it back, that was always the objective.

We had a game of Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 on PS2, I was FC Barcelona, I forgot who he went as, but I was beating him 3-0, then, for the last 10 minutes of the game, my cousin gave his controller to his brother, and he told me "I'm going to annihilate you!", then he scored an own goal... yeah... so the score ended at 4-0 to me, and he said "Not quite the annihilation I hoped...". In case it wasn't obvious, he was joking about when he said he'd annihilate me.

Then we had a game of FIFA 12 on PS2, the game ended 4-2 I think. Then I asked him what he thought was the better game, he said he though PES was better, because the controls were smoother.

Then we played Tony Hawks Underground for the Xbox, we played a game of graffiti then we played a game of horse, and like we did with Pro Skater 3, we but put in random characters to make a word, this week, it was 'BTHABBBBBBBD4'.

During the game, we discovered that shouting "LET'S DO THIS!" curses that turn and makes you bail, and funnily enough, it worked every time! Even when we said it in the others player's turn.

In the end, it was my cousin who was the BTHABBBBBBBD4!

We played Half Life: Decay, which is a PS2 exclusive game, it's a co-op exclusive as well, you can play it in single player, but it totally sucks on one player, because you have to control BOTH of them, you press select to switch between them, and you have to constantly move them to progress through the game, it's just a pain.

It's fun when there's 2 players though, we played through a couple of levels.

Then we played a couple of games of Gran Turismo 2, we initially put Car and tyre damage on, and it sucked, it only took one bump and we struggled turning left, eventually not at all. So we turned them off, and we enjoyed it then.

We then played Resurrection: Rise 2 for the Saturn, even when the handicap was set so that he had tonnes of health, and I had practically none, I still thrashed him, although he DID win a couple of matches.

Afterwards, we played a game of 1080 Snowboarding, or rather, TEN EEEEIGHTEYYY!!! We played a few matched of that.

We played Star Wars Episode 1: Racer for a while then he had to leave.

In a nutshell, here's what we played:

In the order I think we played them:
• Timesplitters [PS2]
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 [PS2]
• FIFA 12 [PS2]
• Tony Hawk's Underground [Xbox]
• Half Life [PS2]
• Gran Turismo 2 [PS1]
• Ressuection: Rise 2 [Sat]
• 1080 Snowboarding [N64]
• Star Wars Episode 1: Racer [N64]

---

Today, I actually found one of my old Robot Wars VHS recording at my grans today, it'd be collecting dust in a copboard for years, and surprisingly, the quality is pretty good considering what it's gone through.

---

Well, I said it was going to be short, and I still got kind of carried away, although it's shorter than my usual entries...

Retro Diary - 13/11/11 - Prepare to cry, FIFA fanboys...

Dear Diary, and yes, I am going to be adding this every week for authentic-ness, I guess.

On Monday, we sent off the CD32 back to the seller to get it fixed or replaced, because the disc tray wasn't closing properly, we just received an email from the seller saying he got it on Friday and he replaced the top bit of the console and will be sending it back on Monday.

---

When we played FIFA 11 on PS3 my brother said, for a joke, "Imagine FIFA 13 being released for the Jaguar! Or even the Saturn!", and then I added, "Or, more importantly, the N-Gage!", you know, having a laugh. Why am I telling you this? I don't know, I guess to just create conversation. Besides, it was unusual for my brother to make a joke like that, that's usually the type of joke I would make.

---

I've been playing both FIFA 12 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 over the week because I had nothing else to do, and also, to decide which is better, because from the little I've played from both, my opinions were more-a-less the same, but I've played enough from both to decide which I think is better.

Believe it or not, contrary to public belief, I actually think Pro Evolution Soccer is better, the controls aren't as stiff as in FIFA, especially when sprinting, and overall just feel better, and the game also has a far better atmosphere than FIFA. Don't get me wrong, FIFA is still very good, but PES is better in my opinion.

---

As you may already know I went to that charity shop again, and got 6 VHS tapes for £1 and the Matrix Soundtrack for 50p.

What I didn't tell youse, mainly because there was no point, is that on Friday, I got 2 more CDs for £1, the first one is the soundtrack from the Rocky Horror Picture show, I've never seen the film before, but the reason I got the soundtrack is for the Time Warp song! I absolutely love that song! The other CD I got was the Darkness Album "Permission to land", which contained the song "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", which was the song that introduced me to The Darkness, so that was why I bought that.

They both work and I've been listening to both soundtracks.

---

On Sunday, we went back to Gamecube week.

I played a little bit of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 until my cousins came, nothing else to say about that except I was still playing for a little bit even after my cousins arrived, I was talking about what I said back up there, and it turns out one of them agreed with me and that he always thought the same, and that people only preferred FIFA just because they have more licensed teams, even though PES has the better gameplay. (In our opinion)

We were playing that game throughout the day where we pretended it was a past year, and we act like anything that appeared after that doesn't exist, or that we just haven't heard of it. This week we pretended it was 2004.

After that, we had a few games of Mario Kart Double Dash and when I say a few, I mean, roughly about 20 races, it felt like it.

After that, we played Mario Party 6, which is always a blast to play! Unfortunately, we didn't expect for it to last as long as we did, we set it for 20 turns, big mistake there, the game lasted I think 2-3 hours or something, after we finished, he turned off and were rushed to get back home because it was late. Despite how long it lasted, it was on hell of a game, we had great fun!

In a nutshell, here're the games we played:

As usual, in the order we played them:
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4
• Mario Kart Double Dash
• Mario Party 6

So yeah, in theory, since it was Xbox 360 last week, due to one of cousins being absent that week, and now it's back to the usual order, it should be PS3 week next week, but my brother, the one with the PS3 wants to save PS3 for after Christmas. So we're skipping to Wii week, and as we all know, the Wii can play Gamecube games...

---

One last thing, I was getting sick of my little brother always asking me questions about what happened in Pokémon Red, Green, Blue and Yellow, spoiling himself, I know he's young, but he should be playing through the game himself to find out these, it's more rewarding, so I told him to play the game himself, then he said he doesn't have it, so I let him play though my copy of Pokémon Red. At the same time, my younger brother asked me if he could play Mario Bros. Deluxe on my Game Boy Color.

Fancy that, I've got my 6 and 8 year old brothers hooked to Game Boy Color games! I don't know if I should feel happy that they're playing proper games, or guilty, because they should be playing games from their time.

That's it for this weeks entry, again, next week is Wii week see how that turns out.

Cobra!

Retro Pick-Ups: 6 VHSes, and a CD Album for a total of £1.50!

Remember a week or so ago, I got a US Longbox version of PGA Tour '96 from that charity shop near my college? Well, I went there again yesterday to see if I could find any more games. Unfortunately, I didn't find any of my interest, but I found something else, something I've always wanted but never came around to getting from Amazon.

I found a copy of Lilo & Stitch on VHS, I used to love that film as a kid! I thought I wouldn't have enough money, because all I had as a pound. When I asked how much it was, and he said "It's 6 for £1", which meant not only did I have enough to get it, but also 5 other films! Assuming they were on VHS.

So I picked out Lady and the Tramp 1 & 2, 101 Dalmatians (Cartoon), Tarzan and Anastasia. Apart from the first 2, wasn't very keen on those films, but hey, they were a pound for 6, why not?

So far, as I'm writing this, I've only tested 3 of them, the first 3 I mentioned, and they work perfect, I watched Lilo & Stitch last night, it wasn't as great as I remember it to be, but it was still great!

Here're a few photos of them all:

---

I went there again today, just because I had time on my hands before our next class started, I was searching through the CDs, just in case they mistaken a 3DO or even a CD32 game, as they usually come in the thin jewel cases, the latter usualy in a big box, but they're rare and I don't fancy the chances of anyone still having them, let alone give it to a charity shop.

I didn't find any, but I found a couple of PC games, most notable Earthworm Jim, and also, the Matrix Soundtrack, I am a huge fa of the Matrix, I have the ultimate collection, and both Enter the Matrix and Path of Neo for Xbox, just so the Xbox's Black and Green colour scheme matched the Matrix's theme. So I thought I'd get it, I asked how much it was, just 50p, bargain! So I got it.

The disc had pretty much no scratches on it, or even any marks for that matter! I've got the songs imported, and I'm actually listening to the songs as I'm typing this.

I found out though that they were actually 2 soundtracks for the first film, the one I have is the first, so, obviously, it doesn't have all of the tracks from the films, however, all the tracks I liked and wanted from the films are on it, so I don't have any reason to get the 2nd one, except maybe for collectors sake and that I'm a huge fan of the Matrix.

Here's the soundtrack itself:


Now that I think of it, I should've got Earthworm Jim as well, I mean, even if I doesn't work on Windows PCs, it probably would've been 50p because they probably think it's just a CD album, gutted! Ah well, I could just get it tomorrow...

Cobra!

Retro Diary - 6/11/11 - Am I turning... normal?

This week has been crazy!

On Wednesday, my Amiga CD32 arrived, like the 3DO, I've not to actually get it until Christmas, but I had a shot of it to test it, and I have alot things to say about it before playing any of the games...
I thought the Xbox 360's power brick was heavy, I wasn't ready for this, believe it or not, it's even heavier! Honestly, you could probably do reps with it!

The console has the most awkward design ever, the controller ports are on the side, and the power switch is on the back!

The disk tray is massive too, almost the whole left side of the console lifts up, or rather, springs up, you could use it as a catapult!

However, the controller, contrary to what I've heard, actually doesn't feel cheap or plasticy at all, it feels rather well built, actually, and you may not think this from seeing pictures, but the controller is actually pretty big, but fits pretty snug into your hands.

One of the games that came out was the infamous Rise of the Robots, so I decided to try that out, but it wouldn't load, and I kept hearing noises from the disk tray, then I realised that the left side of the tray was a little bit up, it wouldn't go down, when I held it down, it loaded the game, so that was the problem, I use blu-tack to hold it down, if I do that, it works fine, so I was hoping that the seller would give a partial refund, ad it does work, just not properly, but he said if I sent that one back, he'll send us a replacement, so we did that.

Rise of the Robots was pretty much the only game I tried, as I wanted to keep all of the others for Christmas, it was just to test if the console worked anyway.

And Wow, if you thought the SNES and Mega Drive versions of the game were bad, play this, or rather, don't! However, it seams so bad, that it'd be awesome on multi-player!

Overall, although the console has an awkward design, and it isn't very powerful, it can't even do textured 3D graphics like the other consoles of it's generation can, or so I've heard, the console looks so cool, it has some better-than-the-original type ports of classic Amiga games, such as Darkseed and the Lotus Trilogy, and that why I bought one, it was like a best-of package.

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Throughout the week, I've been playing FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 and Call of Duty: Black Ops with my brother, and you'll never believe this dear diary, I actually started... enjoying them...

...Yeah, I thought I'd never picture myself enjoying a Call of Duty game, at least not one that came out since 4, but I was introduced to the game modes, Sharpshooter, One in the Barrel, Sticks and Stones and Gun Game... gee, how original(!) Don't be fooled by the names though, they actually add a touch of, get this... unrealism, to the game!

I won't be going into detail about these modes, because I want this to stay as a retro diary, and talking about Call of Duty: Black ops isn't exactly sticking to the title, besides, anyone reading this will probably know anyway.

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At grans today, we had a change of plan because the cousin who makes Gamecube week as we know it had to do something for his charity group, so instead, we skipped to Xbox 360 week, and then back to Gamecube week when that cousin returns.

The only Xbox 360 we played was Portal 2, and that was to play the new DLC... but then it turned out you needed to complete the original Co-Op Test Chambers to play in the additional DLC ones.
I brought up some original Xbox game in case we got bored, and I have to say, that was good call, that was exactly what happened, we had a game of Tony Hawks Pro skater 3 first, we had 2 games of graffiti, where you have to trick on objects, and they'll turn into your colour (Blue or Red), and is yours unless your opponent steals it by scoring a higher score on it, I lost both games.

We played a game of King of the Hill afterwards, you have to get a crown and keep it for the time set, in this case, 5 minutes, but your opponents can take it off you by bumping into you or skating past you when you're down, I won that game.

We then played a game called "Horse", where you take turns to beat each others high score, failing to do so, you'll get a letter and whoever gets all the letters first, loses. You can change the name to whatever you want, we just typed random character, from recall, it was "cpccpQQcOz"! It was alot of fun, this round, my cousin, as he was the first player, started off, he bailed it, so I had to set the score, my brother said "Just do a Kickflip.", so I did, but I bailed from doing that, talk about humiliation... In a funny way of course! For a while afterwards, we just played like normal, then one round, I cracked my knuckles, like a piano player and was like "Let's do this!" like I was really determined, then I bailed the first move, and to think, I've played every Tony Hawk game up to Proving Ground, that's how rusty I've become at these games! In the end, I won it, make my cousin, the cpccpQQcOz!

We then tried to play Robot Wars: Extreme Destruction, but the game was too awesome to play on the Xbox 360's emulator, it seams, bummer.

We tried Raw 2 next, and it worked! We played a match, and well, yeah, it was kind of like WWE All Stars, except the gameplay was much better, we just a laugh the whole way through, then we tried season mode, in 2-player, and it was the same there, just a laugh the whole way through! I asked my cousin, the other guy who was playing what he thought was better, he said that for a laugh, WWE All Stars is better, because of the exaggerated moves, but Raw 2 had much better controls and the graphics were better on it, I have to agree, actually.

After that, we went home. In a nutshell, here's what we played:

In the order we played them:
• Portal 2 [Xbox 360]
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 [Xbox]
• Robot Wars Extreme Destruction [Xbox] (Well, we TRIED to play it.)
• WWE Raw 2: Ruthless Agression [Xbox]

Hopefully, our cousin will be back, so we can have Gamecube week!

Cobra!

Retro(ish) Arrivals: Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 [PS2]

Finally! After 4 days after the game's release, my copy of Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 on PS2 has finally arrived.

That's the last time I pre-order anything off Amazon, we originally pre-ordered it off Zavvi, which was not only cheaper, but they would've dispatched it earlier, but my dad thought he couldn't pay for it due to the f*cked up payment system they have, but after cancelling it, it turns out he could've just used Paypal, that sucks!

I shouldn't be complaining, it's arrived, and I'm going to do what I didn't with FIFA 12, take photos of it still sealed, and so I did, here you go:


The last picture was supposed to show the PS2 logo repeating through the box, remember them? The first thing you had to do with rip that off and the rest was easy. Well, you either did that or you did what I done, get something sharp, and put it at the handle, the bit that opens, and rip it off with that.

As you can see, the camera couldn't focus on it to save it's life, so this is the best I can do.

I've still to open it as I'm writing, this, once I'm done, I'm going to open it, and try it. This will probably be the last PS2 game, let's hope it got something decent...

Cobra!

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!

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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...

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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!