A petition to standardise the Scots Language

A petition to standardise the Scots Language http://ift.tt/1HtqSMR I know this has nothing to do with what I usually post, but this is very important to me, I’d like to ask if youse could at least have a look at this, and even if you don’t speak the language but agree it needs a standard […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1HtqSMT

HA!

I was asked to give the translation of “sofa” in Italian, which I forgot, so I quickly just typed il sofa, and I was right, Ha! …Well, I thought it was funny…Filed under: Other gaming stuff Tagged: Browser Games ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1GNkcZy

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…

Filed under: Other gaming stuff Tagged: Browser Games ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1Bhvgt3

Really… ?

Are you kidding me Duolingo… are you fucking kidding me!?Filed under: Other gaming stuff Tagged: Browser Games ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1FlNUXn

ABC Revives ‘BattleBots’ As Summer Reality Series

YES!!! YES!!!! YEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!! =DFiled under: Uncategorized ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1zXANuQ

Thanks Duolingo!

I just thought I’d post this, since I haven’t posted nothing in ages, I was playing on Duolingo again, and I was doing a timed practice, and there was a sentence that I wasn’t 100% percent sure about, so I hovered over it to get some hints, then this happened… No complaints from me! Also, […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1yfRpv3

Maybe it wasn’t just our nostalgia this whole time…

Okay, over the past few days, something quite amazing has been happening! One day, my little brother (who is 11 at the time of typing this) decided to come to my room, as he was bored, and then asked me if he could play my GBA. I told him he could, and then we went […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: https://cobraretroroom.wordpress.com/2014/12/27/maybe-it-wasnt-just-our-nostalgia-this-whole-time/

Yass!

I took this while I was playing Sunset Overdrive on my Xbox One, and when I fast traveled to do a sidequest, what usually happens is my player drinks then passes out, but they become ragdoll then, and I was on a tall, curved structure, so this happened… Well, alright, the clip above wasn’t the […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1uaWce3

I got an XBone!

Who’d have thunk it, eh? In the space of 2 months, I got 3 consoles! I’m spoiled, aren’t I? I fell guilty now… Anyway, I was waiting to get one for weeks from Tesco, who kept posting a deal about an Xbox One plus a certain items (a few deals came to shore) for a […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/10E8CAn

Duolingo Glitch

I was playing Duolingo, practicing my Italian on Duolingo, and I was doing timed practice, and then this happened, see that big number on the top right? That’s counter, in minutes and seconds, I kid you not! Usuallly, you have 30 seconds to start with, and 5-10 seconds if you get a question right, 2 […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1u1fhAG

I got a PS3!

Yep, after a mere few days after getting a PS4, I went one back, and got a PS3 as well! Looks like things went full circle… I managed to get a super slim model (with the cool top-loading sliding tray) for £90! To put that in perspective, they go for £160 at game! “Hold on! […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1FiTbhB

I got a PS4!

That’s right, I got a PS4 today! I was planning on getting one of these for a while, more a less ever since I’ve heard that WWE 2k15 is coming to PS4 and Xbox One, but not the PC. Yesterday, my mum asked me if I wanted to go to GAME and get my PS4, […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/ZDe9Yq

Today marks the 10th Anniversary of Acclaim’s Death (I think)

According to what I’ve read online, the game publisher Acclaim declared bankruptcy on the 1st September 2004, which makes today it’s 10th anniversary. Well, since I rarely get to talk about these guys and the games they’ve made, I guess I’ll dedicate a little time today to so now. I’ve always thought Acclaim were an […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1qcaueN

R.I.P. Robin Williams

I just heard the news about Robin Williams, and I was very shocked about it, I used to watch a load of his films, like Hook, Flubber and Mrs. Doubtfire. He apparently committed suicide, but I don’t get that, what would be his motive? He wasn’t living a hard life, he didn’t end up like […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1ukNCLB

My (Quick) thoughts on the STV Scotland Referendum Live Debate

DISCLAIMER: I am aware that this isn’t the usual kind of stuff I would post here, but I feel that this topic was too important not to discuss, however, if you feel that this is too off topic for your liking, then feel free to disregard. I usually don’t like talking about personal events in […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1r2RdJj

Retro Pick-ups: A DVD game and a couple of PC games

I had a friend’s birthday party to go to yesterday, and me and another friend were in town to get him a present, and got him a couple of DVDs, but I also got myself some things as well, some cheap things I found. I found Worms Blast and Pariah for PC, the latter of […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1oZfxh4

Rant: Checkpoints in Video Games

It’s that time of the month again, where I need to get something off of my (mostly) hairless chest (better there than my head), and this time I am going to be ranting about games that use checkpoint, and use them sparingly, and especially thos who defend it over quicksaves/quickloads. I will be mostly talking […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1A668Jc

Cobra!’s Retrospectives – Soldier of Fortune

I have finally finished a game series, and thus stars a new series I am doing! Retrospectives! Well okay, this series was only 3 games long, but it’s still an achievement, at least it is for me. So as you could probably guess, I have been delving into the Soldier of Fortune games, and now […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/VYhwXI

Retro Arrivals: Sony Pocketstation

I got a Pocketstation… so yeah. “What’s a Pocketstation?” I hear you ask. Well, long story short, it’s Sony’s take on the Dreamcast’s VMU for the PS1. I saw this Pocketstation on eBay a while back, and I thought I’d try and bid a bit on it, so I put in £5, and decided if […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1fEglpk

My Thoughts on the new Call fo Duty announcement (mostly)

My Thoughts on the new Call fo Duty (mostly) So a new Call of Duty had been announced, who would’ve saw that coming!? The plot actually seems interesting, Basically, a team are invading a dictatorship country in hopes of overthrowing the leader and turning the country into a democracy. Now I usually get the Call […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1mok48X

My argument against digital games

My argument against digital games If you’ve been following my blog for quite some time (precisely none of you) then you’ll know that I hate digital and DRMed (That includes Steam!) games with a passion! I much prefer getting a physical, DRM-free (or disk-check) product! “But why?” I keep hearing people whine at me. This […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1gDlSKI

Review: Klonoa 2 [PS2]

Okay, I just found out about this event they’re calling “Review a Great Game Day”, which is today, so I thought I’d write a quick review for today, with a game that never appears on any top PS2 games list, but is one of my all time favourite games, Klonoa 2! I never spent much […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1hd1Gjs

Yay(!) Thanks(!)… ?

This was ages ago, but as always, I was planning to upload it somewhere, like Facebook, but never got around to it, so here it is here. I was sent an email saying I got a key to access a Wildstar, but when I read the email, I found out that I only got what […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/QDLApa

Retro Pick-Ups – 19/03/2014

Well I was at CEX again, and I decided to get FIFA Football and Virtua Tennis 4 for the Vita. Do you ever get that exciting feeling when you got a new console, that you’re game collection for it is really starting to grow? Well, I’m starting to feel that now with my Vita! Also, […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1h0SD0z

Mystery Console 2 Revealed

That’s right, I got a PS Vita! I managed to get what I thought was a great deal, I got the Tearaway bundle for £150, it also came with Little Big Planet and a 16GB Memory Card I say Thought, it turns out that both games were merely downloads, and I hate downloads! Also, the […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1gjJSxK

Retro Pick-Ups – Not PSP this time!

I’ve got a few deals in the past week that I’ve been forgetting to post here, so here’s a round-up of what I got this week. Clockwise starting from bottom left, I got Tony Hawk’s Project 8 for the Xbox, because why not? I was wanting to see what the Xbox version of the game […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1iKv2Ih

Retro Pick-Ups: A bunch of PSP games

On the train home from college today, I was talking to one of my college friends about, what else? College work… Nah, we talked about games… I told him I was getting a new console, I never mentioned it here, so I want to keep it a surprise, yep, it’s another mystery console! The only […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1nCbyEu

Rambo: The Video Game [PC] – Review

Rambo: The Video Game is an on rails shooter released on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. The game was developed by Teyon and was published by Reef Entertainment. The game was released on the 21st February 2014 here in Europe, and is due for release on the 25th March in North America, according […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1k76W7W

Retro Pick-Ups: PSP 3000 and some games

I got (Another) PSP today! It’s a 3000 model. I got it from CEX for £52, it came with a 4GB memory stick and a years guarentee! For comparison: On eBay, the cheapest deal on a working PSP I found is £80, and it comes with no memory stick or any guarentee, you DO get […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1fHRb7W

Last one, I promise!

Here’s another Harvester Screenshot I took, I found this hint funny!Filed under: Other gaming stuff Tagged: MS-DOS ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1d7p67B

I had no idea! Thanks for telling me that, game(!)

Another screenshot I was originally going to send, but didn’t, so here it is, this is a screenshot for Harvester on the PC.Filed under: Other gaming stuff Tagged: MS-DOS ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1mSD6VM

Guys, there’s a new Tony Hawk game coming out… and it’s a mobile game…

Guys, there’s a new Tony Hawk game coming out… and it’s a mobile game… When I started hearing that Activision were working on a new Tony Hawk game, I got super exited, it could be Activision’s chance to bring Tony Hawk back to it’s glory days! Close to it anyway! There weren’t many details about […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1cqqPBx

I’m thinking of starting game reviews again.

Yes, this was my “Announcement”, but why? I hear you ask, well, recently, as I’ve been writing my retro diary and my retro pick-ups articles, I’ve been thinking to myself, “Who cares about these?”, but then I remembered gaming channels such as the all gen gamers channels, they all do game pick-up videos, who cares […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1fDUtaG

Soul Calibur [DC] – Gameplay

It’s another thing I had made/recorded a while ago, I remember having a specific reason for recording this, but right now, I can’t for the life of me remember what it is! It was around the same time as I got the Dreamcast VGA cable, but the device I used to capture this only accepted […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1k9NfM7

Retro Pick-Ups – 25/02/13

Right, after this post, I have an announcement thing coming up, so stay tuned, assuming you tuned in in the first place! Yet again, I was at CEX yesterday, and I found some games I’ve been looking out for, at decent prices, which made me happy, let’s get right to it… I got Mortal Kombat: […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1efrb2e

I just found this old photo I took of Broken Sword 4

I took this photo ages ago, because I found an MP3 player I found in the game was a spitting image of an old MP3 player I have, so I took a photo to compare. I was originally going to upload this to Facebook, back when I actually used it, but never did for some […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1efey7b

Retro Pick-Ups – 18/02/2014

That’s right, I’m starting to give these articles titles dates, I just thought it might make sense to do so. So anyway, after college, I was at CEX and G-Force as usual, but I was there for a reason, you see, I’ve made myself a wishlist (well, still am), of games I want in the […] To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/M4x06Z

Retro Diary – 10/02/2014 – All about the PS2!

Dear Diary, Monday 3rd February 2014 I was at college, during break in the morning, my lecturer noticed my ZX Spectrum bag, and we started talking about the ZX Spectrum, he showed my his ZX Spectrum Emulator on his Iphone, and even showed me some games he bought for that emulator, and he showed me […] To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/M4x06Z

PS2's Final Moments: FIFA 14 review

It's been two years since I've done one of these, but to be honest, since WWE All Stars, the PS2 hasn't gotten anything aside from yearly sports games, so I decided to wait until the last of them come out, and then review them, since they'll be the same anyway.

I think I can safely say the 2014 editions will be the PS2s last, considering the PS2 has stopped production in Japan, and FIFA 14 on the PS2 was only released in PAL regions.

For this review, I will be looking at FIFA 14, I'll do PES 2014 another time.

This review is coming from a guy who doesn't follow football religiously, I watch the big national matches, that's about it. I enjoy playing the FIFA and PES games every year though, especially with friends, on the newer machines. Don't b*tch at me if I don't cover everything.

My brother has FIFA 14 on PS3, so I had a few games to see what that's like, My friend has the game on PS4 as well, I've played a game or two when I was over at his house. It's amazing when you think about it, here is the brand new PS4, just came out a few months ago, getting FIFA 14, with a new engine, and cutting edge graphics (well, not really), but on the other hand, here is the PS2, a 13 year old console, getting it's version of FIFA 14.

So what's FIFA 14 on the PS2 like, well, have you played FIFA 13? No? How about FIFA 12? FIFA 11? FIFA 10? 09? You played FIFA 09? Yeah? Good, Well, it's the same as that! They've changed nothing for the past 5 years! The only thing they've changed was of course the teams and kits, and from what I hear, they didn't even do a good job of that either! At least this year, they're giving it to us straight, but dubbing the PS2, and other versions, the "Legacy Edition".

Let's start with the presentation, because that's the first thing thrown at you in any game, and all I have to say about the presentation is... What presentation? You get the EA sports logo, you choose a language, and then the title screen comes up.
For an actual match, it's the same as any football game, the commentators introduce themselves, and tells us who's playing, shows us players in the back walking out, and shows us what I assume are flashbacks, they flash into a black and white sequence where the players are celebrating, I'm not sure what that's about.

How about the graphics? In the main game, they're nothing special, the models and textures look kind of nice, but not mind blowing, it seems EA attempted to give the players a more cartoony look, like they did with the Wii FIFA games, I didn't like the style there, and I don't like it here. The framerate is smooth for the most part, although it has is share of slowdowns. I say in the main game, the quality differs in another mode, I'll get to that later.

The game of course supports Widescreen (in this day and age, it's a necessity).
It also supports 60hz, but the feature is hidden, you can get to it by holding X and Triangle at the language screen, it looks horrible, though, the text is unreadable, don't bother with 60hz! It's okay to bother with the widescreen though, it does the job.
From what I hear, it doesn't support 480p, FIFA on the PS2 never did in PAL regions, and since FIFA 14 is PAL only, no 480p for anyone!

How's the gameplay? Well, as you'd imagine, it feels outdated compared to the current/next-gen consoles, the game feels stiffer, animations seem robotic, you can't do conditioning, and sprinting sucks, as you only turn at 45 degree angles. The game also seems slightly slower on the PS2.

Of course there are no physics engines, or sliders, none of that! The PS2 probably couldn't handle the former, but I think it can do better than what we got, but on the other hand, being in the state the PS2 is in, I can't exactly imagine there being a nagging demand for a more faithful port of the game.

It isn't even as fun as the early PS2 FIFAs, I have FIFA 2003, which I played for comparison's sake, and 2003 was a lot smoother faster, and more fun than FIFA 14, my friend, who also played both games, agreed with me.

So what game modes does it have? Well, it has none of what you have in the FIFA you're familiar with, of course, it has not Ultimate Team, or any sort of online modes, it does have career mode, which has been largely untouched since whenever EA have stopped caring the PS2 so much, because the career mode, or at least the core gameplay of it, seems mostly the same as the newer versions.

For those who haven't tried it, you create a player, and you play as that player in the team of your choice. The camera is different in the mode than others (on default) in the sense that it's pointing to the goals and is with your player at all times. A cool thing about the camera, though, is that when you approach the goal with the ball, it zooms in the player, and shakes, which makes scoring the goal more intense, I love it!

How far you'll go in career, depends on how well you play, obviously, but it's not just about how many goals you score, there is a bar that you have to fill up, I'm going to call this the "trust meter", it fills up as you do good things, such as staying in your position, successful passes, intercepts, assists, and of course, scoring goals. It goes down, however, if your passes get intercepted, call for a pass at the wrong time, and for not staying in your position, The game is very strict about your position, luckily, you can just hold L2 to automatically run to your position when you don't have the ball, which is convenient.

You also get objectives to do every match, such as doing skills, scoring a certain amount of goals, etc., which further increase your chances of ranking up and then playing for national teams. The problem with this is that the objectives remain the same regardless of your position, I've had times where I've played in defence, and the game asked me to score a hat trick...

The graphics in this mode look like p*ss, the models look like they came out of an Atari Jaguar game, most of them don't even have textures, some kit have stripes, but nothing beyond that, they don't even have any faces! The framerate as well is very unstable, despite the bad visuals, it's 60 frames at peak, but slows down more often than not, it even sometimes goes down to 10 fps! Even when the game is running the full 60, the animations look very choppy, so it doesn't feel smooth.

As you play through the career, you earn points, which can be spent on buying kits, stadiums, footballs, and more celebrations, you can also buy the Classic XI and World XI teams, and a cool little feature that I'll get to later.

The career mode is actually quite good fun, even my brother enjoyed it when he had a shot of it, but because they haven't done anything to it in years, I stopped caring about it after FIFA 12...

There's also "Lounge Mode" which seems like a league which is played by two or more players, I can actually imagine this being fun, but sadly, after playing one match, nobody wanted to play the game with me again...

As for other modes, there's also a season mode, which is the same as career, only you control the whole team, a tournament mode and a practice mode.

That's really it for game modes, EA have outright lied to us about the modes in this game, the back of the game's box said the game had "Historical Challenges" and a "Be a Pro" mode, but I haven't seen either in the game, "Be a Pro" turned out to be another name for "Career Mode" that wasn't used in the game. It seems they just copied and pasted the text from another version onto the PS2 box...

How about the sound? As always, I didn't like EAs choice of music for the soundtrack, and the sound effects and commentary are what you'd expect, they're all quite good quality, actually, easily the best thing about this game. One cool thing about the game, is the ability to unlock "Funny SFX" in the career mode store (That was the "little thing" I was talking about). When you do, it's actually quite funny, and when I played the previous games with friends, we had a laugh with it, for a couple of matches...

Overall, I didn't expect the game to break any boundaries, but apart from the career mode, the game isn't even fun for a PS2 FIFA game, you're just as well getting a used copy of an older FIFA game, which go for about 50p-£2 in most game stores.

Presentation - 4.5/5
Graphics - 7/10
Gameplay - 5.8/10
Sound - 8/10
Overall - 63%

I'll eventually be doing a PES 2014 review, and then give the PS2 it's final send off, it might be a while, though, as college work, and my laziness is getting in the way.

Retro Modern Pick-Ups: Black Friday Madness!

Today was Black Friday, as I'm sure we are all aware. What exactly is Black Friday? I hear many asking. Well, apparently, it's a holiday where many stores have discounts and sales. I only heard about it 2 years ago, and I had no idea what it, or the fuss, was about. Until now.

GAME was one of those stores, they had a great deal on a Wii U game I wanted: Rayman Legends, they had it, brand new, for only £15! The deal was only available for an hour, so I quickly got the bus, and went into game to pick it up, and the place was packed! The line went all the way to the entrance! There was no room to grab the game, since the line covered the Nintendo section of the store, so I had to stand in the queue and get it on the way there, while I was there, I found another game, Ninja Gaiden 3, for, yet again, only £15 brand new, so I thought "What the hell!", and got that as well!

I wanted to get Call of Duty ghosts as well, but GAME never had it, even when I specifically asked if they had it, the cashier who served me didn't even know of any other store selling the Wii U version! Shocking! It's no Wonder the Wii U version is selling poorly! You need to sell it, Activision! You can't just expect sales without any effort on your part! Maybe they wanted it to sell poorly, to give them an excuse to not develop for (or rather publish to) the Wii U...

HMV had the Wii U version for sale, though, for £50... f*ck that!

I also got a game in Tesco, I got Wii Party U, with a free Wiimote, for £30, £4 off... okay that wasn't a great deal, but do you know what was great? The game itself!

A wee problem arose, I wanted the white wii-mote package (Nothing against blacks, honest! I already had a black wii-mote, I wanted to distinguish, that's all), but Tesco only had the black one, the website, which I checked before going to Tesco, never had the game listed at all!, so I asked one of the staff about it, their database never specified the wii-mote colour, and checked the back to see if there was any, there wasn't, they tried contacting another store that I can go to to see if they had any, no dice! So I guess I was stuck with the black wii-mote, oh well.

Rayman Legends was pretty good, Ninja Gaiden 3 was great! Wii Party U was awesome! I had a game of Wii Party U with my brother, and we had a lot of fun with it! It's not a good as Mario Party, because it's more based on luck than skill, but it was great fun, I wouldn't say it was worth £30, though, I would wait until it reduces, if it ever does, this is Nintendo we're talking about... Well, I guess the free wii-mote helps justify the price...



Amazon had some great deals as well, they had 007 Legends for £9 and ZombiU for £15, and I thought I might as well get Call of Duty Ghosts as well, even though that was £45...

So overall, I think it's been a good day today, I think I'm going to enjoy these Black Fridays!

Mystery Console Revealed

Remember in my last Retro Diary, I mentioned that I was getting a new console, but never revealed what that console is? Well, it's here, so I'll reveal it, drumroll please...

...

...What, no drumroll? Ah, screw it! The console I got was...

That's right, It's a Super Nintendo! For those unaware, no, this is not a Japanese Super Famicon, the PAL SNES' had same design, the differences I'm aware of, are obviously the name and the Super Nintendo logo on it, and that the cartridge door has "PAL Version" written on it. I'm thankful we got the Japanese design, because, I think the North American design is really ugly, and dull, no offence to any American SNES fans watching,

I am quite exited to have this, I've always been wanting to play the Super FX games on it, and this game happened to come with one of them, or should I say two of them...

...Ha, get it? It's because I got two copies of Starwing (That's what Starfox is called in Europe), that makes two, but it's only reall- ah forget it!

For those who haven't seen a SNES before (The SNES did poorly here (at least compared to Mega Drive), so people like that exist here.), you probably think the cartridges are pretty bug, and you'd be right, they are, for those who make the argument of "They were small for their time", the Mega Drive came out 2 years before and had much smaller cartridges, and I've heard they can actually store more, here's a size comparison I made:



It also came with 3 controllers, although only 2 work, and only one of them had a functional start button...


Finally, here's a photo of the SNES all set up, ready to play Starwing!

One thing I like about the SNES, is it's eject button in the centre, it's just so satisfying to push and watch the cartridge pop out!

So I've played the SNES for a bit, and it's a pretty good machine, the controller feels great, and considering I can only view it from an RF output, it looks great on my TV!

So I'm going to play Starwing some more, BYE!

-Cobra!

Retro Diary - 10th November 2013

I'm not being very consistent with this retro blog, am I? Well, the reason I haven't posted anything for the past few weeks, is because I don't have anything to post! That is not the case this week! I have some big news... sort of, to report!

Monday 4th November 2013
I was at CEX today after college, and I had found a great deal, I found 2 games for sale, Ace Lightning (Remember the show?) and Mall Tycoon, both for PC, and guess how much, in total, it costed me to buy both games... No, go on, guess... 45p! Ace Lightning costed 15p and Mall Tycoon was 30p! I thought that was a bargain! That was until...

I had installed both games, and I can see why they were both so cheap... Ace lightning was absolutely atrocious! I feel like I had been ripped off, that 15p could've bought me... erm... they have me there...

How bad is it? How does this sound? No mouse support, Tank style controls coupled with a Mario 64-esque camera, respawning enemies, space to jump, ctrl to shoot, and alt to swing your weapon... You have to do the spock hand to play this game, and it really puts a strain on my fingers after a while, and on top of all that, the game is boring to play... To give them credit, they captured the atmosphere of the show quite well, it feels like an Ace Lightning game. Another thing of note, they never got Ace Lightning's original voice actor for the game, instead, they got who sounds like Tom Clarke Hill, the voice of Cortez from Timesplttiers, the game's credits didn't mention the voice actors, and IMDB and Wikipedia have nothing on it either, so I'm not 100% sure, but I swear, it sounds so much like like him!

Mall Tycoon isn't a classic either, the controls are loose and clunky, and adding walls to is an absolute nightmare! For 30p, though, I can't complain, I got a bit of fun out of it once I got used to it... I tried a trial of Mall Tycoon 3 after playing it, and it's so much better, It'll be hard to go back to the original, so I uninstalled it...

Thursday 7th November 2013
I was at CEX again, and I saw all of the Smackdown Vs. Raw games as well as Smackdown: Shut your Mouth and Wrestlemania 21, all for £1 each, so I decided to nab all the games I didn't have, sadly, Smackdown vs. Raw (original) and Wrestlemania 21 don't work, everything else works perfect, though. Does anyone know if I have to go through buy or sell, or can I go through either to take what I bought back?

Friday 8th November 2013
I got a new console off of eBay, it came with 9 games (Including 2 copes of one game, the game I wanted this system for!), and 3 controllers, I thought I got a great deal on it.

I was never fussed about this console before, but then I saw someone put for sale on what's called "Facebay", which is a Facebook group where people from a certain city (they have groups for each city, I believe), sell stuff, for others in that city to buy and pick up at a meeting point, and vice versa, you can buy someone and go to a meet up point.

Anyway, someone was selling this console there, for a good price, it came with 4 games, and 2 controllers, so I was trying to make a deal with him, but he declined everything I offered, saying he'd get more on eBay and that he'd be "missing out", I got so exited to be getting this console as well, so I decided 'Screw it! I'm getting one off of eBay!' ...so I did.

What console am I talking about? I'm not telling you, I'll reveal it once it arrives... I bet youse are tempted to know what is it, aren't youse? No? Well, screw youse, I'm not telling youse either way!

Sunday, 10th November 2013
I had brought the Dreamcast to Grans this week, we didn't play much, though, I played a bit of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 with my brother, then I played a wee bit of Shenmue 2, I didn't get much further in the story, though.

Then I played a game of Chu Chu Rocket with my cousin: Steven.

Then my cousin: Giancarlo, came in, and we played some Ready 2 Rumble Boxing (Rumble Bumble!), and we had a blast playing it, then me and my (other) brother had a few matches. The graphics for that game still amaze me to this day, it looks like any regular PS2 or Gamecube game from the mid 2000s, and runs at 60fps, and this was in 1999, I can definitely imagine, somebody being blown away by the Dreamcast version of this game! I know I would've, it amazes me now!

The I had a wee game of NBA Showtime... that is all.

That's all we got up to this weel, maybe next week, I can bring that mystery console to grans, who knows?

Until then, BYE!

Cobra!'s Retro Diary - 22/9/2013

It's been a long time since I've done one of these, but then again, it's also been a long time since I was able to bring a console to my grans house and play some golden oldies with my cousins!

I have been on a shopping spree with CEX and GeForce, it's kind of like Steams summer sale, only with physical games.... and it's cheaper! Most games sold there are really old, so don't give me that rubbish about cheating publishers out of their money!

The most notable game I got was Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX on the PC, it was only £2, I though it wasn't a bad price, even considering it's an Acclaim game.

Acclaim had made some brilliant games in their time, don't get me wrong, but most of their games were kind of... meh. So I bought it, thinking it wasn't going to be great, but I was pleasantly surprised! The game is so much fun, it has tight controls, a great soundtrack, brilliant physics for it's time (Ragdoll bails!), and it has features in the game that even the Tony Hawk/Mat Hoffman games haven't implemented at that point, such as trick modifiers, spine transfers, double trick variations and manuals! (I believe the game pre-dated Pro Skater 2 by about a month (I can't be bothered looking it up!)) The game was way ahead of it's time, and apart from the physics, I think the game has aged very well!

In my opinion, the game is almost criminally underrated and undervalued, it was the best £2 I had ever spent! If you can find a copy for £10 or less, jump at the chance, you won't be disappointed!

Sunday, 22nd September 2013:
I brought my Nintendo 64 to grans because I knew one of my cousins, Giancarlo, was going to be there, so I set the console up, and tested it, because I haven't tried the N64 I brought in a long time, it was covered in dust when I dug it up. So I put on Tony Hawk's Skateboarding, and apart from a slightly blurry screen (that might be just because I'm so used to watching Blu-rays and playing PC, Wii and Wii U games in HD.) it worked perfectly!

So after a wee session of that, me and my cousin had a few games of Goldeneye, and the memories it brought back! It has only been a few months, but it's felt like years!

After that, we watched one of the worst if not the worst film of all time, Troll 2! It was awful, we had so much fun watching it! That's one half of my goal fulfilled, now I just need to watch The Room, and decide what is the worst film ever!

That's it for my diary, I know it was short, but that's all that happened, sorry about that! I just hope I get to make diaries more often!

That's all I have, see youse in another few months!

-Cobra!