Retro Diary - 24/6/12 - "This-Game's-Great!"

Monday 18th June 2012

I finally got around to playing the Browser version of Plants vs. Zombies, and I really enjoyed it, the Game of the Year edition of the game is only £5 brand new on Amazon, so I suppose it's a why not, I'm getting it!

My PC got sent off to get fixed today, well, I hope they actually fix it, I have a gut feeling they'll just send it back, broken...

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Tuesday 19th June 2012

My MDickie compilation DVD arrived! I was expecting the Disc to contain absolutely, pretty much like it was claimed to, but sadly, it didn't, a few DOS games and the original version of the 3D Big Bumpz was missing, I've downloaded the rest, as they're all free, but it would've been nice if they were on the DVD as well.

However, I found that the DVD contained 2 mods to his popular Wrestling Mpire 2008, one of them being called "The Wrestling Channel 4: Fight!", which featured far improved graphics and presentation, and the game had a better atmosphere too, I can honestly say that this is the best wrestling game on the PC now, it'd be awesome of Matt Dickie himself and the team and modded it joined forced to make a sequel, how awesome would that be!?

So yeah I've been playing that, even if it runs like crap on my laptop, I want my PC so bad...

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Thursday 21st June 2012

My sister came up to my room to play some Mega Drive, she reached the same spot before getting bored, she keeps saying to me she'll come over and we could complete it like we did with Sonic 2, but never does, I'd be lucky if she even comes up to play it half the time.

I've just noticed, my brothers have nearly finished school, which sucks, I was hoping to spend those extra weeks off by playing some awesome PC games while my brothers are at school and aren't here to annoy me, but my luck doesn't want any of that, and my PC broken down, seriously, why me!?

I suppose on the bright side, I haven't heard anything back from ASUS, no "we can't fix your PC", or any of that crap, so I suppose no news is good news, but I have a feel it's still just in a very long line of PC that are to be inspected, and I bet knowing my luck, it's be weeks until they finally get to my PC and say "Sorry, we can't fix it!", making all of that time, waiting for it to get "fixed" gone to complete waste!

I saw Wolfenstein 3D + Spear of Destiny on eBay, and as a bonus, that particular copy also included Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, all on PC... Ordered!

I was once looking at a "Let's Play", or rather a "Retsupurae", which makes fun of bad Let's Plays, and found one on Ultimate Doom, so I decided to look at it, and saw that this guys copy ran faster, had a different HUD, and was running on a bigger resolution, I thought, "Wait, how come my copy isn't as good!?".

It turns out, he had a mod put in which makes all those improvements and more into all the Doom games, it's called Z-Doom, called so because you can look up and down, unlike the original, I tried it out, and it was like upgrading a computer or to a new computer, you suddenly get a massive improvement in performance! I was in awe playing it, the resolution could go much bigger, and therefore looked so much sharper and clearer, it ran much faster, the new HUD rules, and tonnes more, I practically fell in love!

Later on, I was browsing for my games because I was bored and wanted something to play, then I discovered a few PC games I've had for years, but never played, one of them being a £1 budget game called "Winter games", I decided to try it out.

I've tried other budget games published by the same people, and they were quite enjoyable considering they're only £1, but this one sucked!

However, I discovered trial games that came free with the game, one of them being "Brick Buster", which is a 3D breakout game, I decided to give it a try, and I really, really enjoyed it, so I looked it up online to see if I could find a copy cheap.

You can download the game, it costs £10, which is outrages, however, on eBay, I found a retail copy which also came with another game, and that was less than £2, seriously, why do people digitally download games these days?

Physical copies are usually cheaper, you can install them on other PCs/Consoles, and if you feel nostalgic for a game years later, chances are, the digital download will no longer exist, but you can still install the physical copy!

My sister came into my room to play my Mega Drive again, which I don't mind, she gave up, again, because she wasn't doing as well as usual, so I had a go, and done even worse...

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Friday 22nd June 2012

I've been told I will get my PC on Monday, hopefully fixed, but they haven't said otherwise, so that's a good sign, but I'm still not getting my hopes up...

I discovered a Free-to-play game on Steam called "Trackmania Nations Forever", which is a game all about whacky tracks, and the fact you can make your own! I had a go of it, and I loved it! Unlike every other F2P game I've ever played, it doesn't ask you for money anywhere in the game!

I might know where they'd get income then, from their other, more advanced game, Trackmania United Forever, Nations is a Free Trackmania game, everything else is like a mainstream game, a case with a disc, that costs you about £20-£30. United Forever is all of the Trackmania games and expansions put together into one game. After playing and Loving Nations, I'm definitely getting United Forever!

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Saturday 23rd June 2012

My sister came into my room and played Sonic 1 for a bit, then gave up, so I gave it a try, and I actually reached Labyrinth Zone Act 2, by far the furthest I've ever gotten, until I got a game over!

I completed Episode 2 of the Ultimate Doom, and the end boss for that episode, is absolutely merciless, I couldn't defeat him no matter what I did, I lost count of the amount of tries it took, not that I counted in the first place.
So I decided, f*ck it! I put a cheat in to get the BFG, and then I completed him my first try... Alright, second try!

I realized it was 3DO next week, and I didn't have a working copy (or even a proper one at that) of Twisted, and that games makes 3DO week, 3DO week, so I went online, and there was only 1 copy left, it was £15, but I made an offer of £10, and not even a minute later, he accepted it, so now I'm getting a proper copy of Twisted! Hopefully it'll arrive before next Sunday...

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Sunday 24th June 2012

It was Mega Drive this week at grans, unfortunately, I only had one controller, so I brought along the Sega Master System controller, in hopes that it would work... It didn't.

I was playing a bit of Mortal Kombat for a while first.

Then I played a bit of Aladdin, still trying to figure out the level skip cheat I knew of years ago, it seems it's activated when I press A, B, B, A, while rocking the D-pad, but it doesn't do it when I leave it alone or hold it in any direction.

Then Giancarlo played Streets of Rage for a bit, he reached the boat level before getting a game over.

Then Steven came in a while later and played Spiderman, and couldn't get past the first level.

Then he played Bart vs. the Space Mutants, same thing there, couldn't get past the first level.

Then he played Micro Machines 2, he played a lot of races before getting bored. We have something new to say during the countdown of that game, while it counts down, in rhythm with the countdown, we say "This-Game's-Great!"!

Steven decided to let someone else play a game, so Giancarlo then played Sonic 2, because we couldn't go through Mega Drive week without playing that, no really, we couldn't!

While he was playing, he mentioned that once he gets a job, he's getting an Xbox 360, and he also mentioned he's getting a computer as well.
I thought "What's the point?", I mentioned he could just get a gaming PC, sure it may cost more to get a gaming PC than a console, but you're going to buy a console and PC anyway, it doesn't cost much to get a PC that can play all the modern games and PC games are generally cheaper than their console counterparts to pre-order and get brand new the day a game comes out. (Sometimes with £15 in difference!)
Besides, me and Steven play mostly on the PC now, so it'd be awesome if all 3 of us did!
It's his choice, I know, but I'd go for PC gaming if I were him, but then again, no one's like me.

He reached the Casino Stage Act 2, but then Giancarlo had to go, so Steven took over, and reached Hill Top Zone Act 2 before we left.

I bidded for an item of "Ultimate Quake!" for the PC, basically, that's the first 3 quakes (including 3 arena) for I think modern OS PCs, luckily, no one else placed a bid on it, I wouldn't think anyone would, these days, if anyone who's not me wanted a PC game, they'd get it on Steam, not me, I hate digital download games and try to avoid them as often as possible, luckily, I don't need to download anything to play Quake 1, 2 and 3 Arena any more!

Next week is 3DO week, it's time to land on the Challenge Square!

Happy 21st Birthday Sonic!

I just thought since playing the excellent Sonic Generations on PC, I've been a Sonic fan again, I just realized that today marks 21 years since the release date of the original Mega Drive game, technically making it Sonic's 21st Birthday!

So... Happy Birthday!

I suppose Mega Drive week was good timing, so we'll be playing the Sonic games in celebration for the event!

That is all I have to say...

Rant: Free to Play games

Ive recently read an article which said that Peter Moore, the same pr*ck who killed Sega as a hardware company, had said that Free to Play games are an "Inevitability".

If that's going to happen, then gaming is going to suck, I can tell the industry will fall apart, alot of people, including myself, hate Free-To-Play game, or at least the idea, I'm here to rant on it, because just like my last rant, I just want to get it off my chest, it worked last time, I hope it does this time.

For those who have no idea what Free To Play games are ("Oh, NOW you're explaining what they are!?", you might think.), they're games which are free to play, hence the name, but, to do anything cool, or at time to even progress in the game, you need to give the company who made the game money.

I'll get the (minor) positives out of the way, it's cheaper, but you have to constantly pay.

Also, I suppose Peter Moore makes a point, just not a good one, he said you can enter stores, browse around and looks at stuff for free, but if you want to but something, you have to pay for it, that's true, but he's talking about 2 different things, that's the whole point of stores, to go in a buy what you like, and one of the things you buy in stores, are games. The whole point of games, are to be played, and enjoyed.

Let me give an example of a "Free-to-play" game, there's a Facebook Sims game, called "Sims Social", don't get too exited, because they have this energy system in the game, you get 15 energy, and each activity costs about 3-5.
How do you get more? You've guessed it! Give EA your money! Otherwise, you have to wait a whole day until you "rebuild energy".

With the Sims 3, however, you pay £20 once, and you have access to the whole game without paying a single penny more, unless you'd want the buy expansion packs, but that's besides the point, and you'd be addicted to the game too, I was addicted to the demo on Origin, and am getting the full game, you know, paying only one.

Speaking of, Demos are a far better way to get people to play a game for free, you get, say a level or so for free, but just pay about £20-£40 more, and you get the rest, simple as that.

Heck, I'd even go with Episodic games, like Telltale games do, you pay a small amount per episode, or wait until the end, like I do, you can buy a DVD which has the entire season for about £10-£20.

Where's the fun in that!? I don't want to be constantly giving money in order to do anything in the game, I don't know about youse, but I don't find constantly getting forced to give money, fun!

I'd much, much rather pay £20-£40 quid for a game I can play from start to finish without having to pay anyone anything, or get interrupted for any reason, wouldn't youse?

In fact, I personally would rather play any game that I paid for rather than a Free game, but that's just me.

It's like watching a movie, you get the film itself for free, but every chapter, it gets interrupted asking forcing you to give money to watch the next chapter, That would just suck the fun right out of the experience, wouldn't it?

The same thing happens to games, the Sims Social would've been a fun little game had it not have constantly prompted you to pay them to continue playing, or to get anywhere in the game. Sure, you don't pay much, but that's not the point, it's the fact you have to do it in order to progress, it's annoying.

Also, in the long run, if you're addicted to a free-to-play game, you'll end up paying even more than you would a mainstream game, so at the end of the day, a mainstream game would not only be better, but cheaper too.

What's more annoying, is that more and more games are becoming free to play, World of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2 and DC Universe Online being examples.

Unfortunately, I don't have much else to say about the subject, I've slammed into the writers block at full speed, I have absolutely no idea what to say next without repeating myself.

The bottom line is, if the industry will be full of free-to-play games, I'll stop playing them, I'll still have some awesome retro games to keep me occupied...

I doubt that will happen, though, to be honest, because alot of people hate free-to-play games.

I reckon, if anything, episodic gaming will be future, at least I can stand that, once they are companies like Telltale games, who do it properly, throughout the year, 5-6 episodes are released, you get the choice of either getting each episode for a small fee, or wait until they're all released, a year or so later, and get the DVD of the entire season.
Sure, I prefer full games, but I think episodic games are a good way to get about as well, unless you have to wait years per episode. *cough*Sega*cough*Valve*cough*

Retro(ish) Arrivals: A few PC games, and a compliation

Over the past week, a few PC games I ordered online have arrived, I just couldn't be bothered posting about it, until now!

I got Peggle and Peggle Nights on PC, I tried out Peggle Extreme and Steam, and really enjoyed it, so I decided to get both games in retail form, because I'm really against digital download games, as I'm sure you're all well aware of by now.

I opened the first one, and have been playing that, but left Peggle Nights sealed, I'm waiting until I complete the first game.



I also got the Doom Collectors Edition, which is a compilation of the 3 classic Doom games, all windows compatible, and "preview content" for Doom 3, I had a bit of trouble installing the game at first, but then I put it in compatibility mode for Windows XP, and it installed and played fine!



Lastly, I got "The Rise and Fall of the MPire", which is a compilation DVD containing all games released my MDickie, when I got it, and mind you, this is meant to be new, the case was damaged , the to of the case was cracked and a big part is practically dangling out, and disc had a few scratches, they must've picked a really sh*tty mail service to save money. The content is fine, it has everything it claimed to.

The compilation was originally a CD until MDickie released a couple of new games, then added them in and made it a DVD, and also added his old DOS and exe versions of his flash games, and even some mods! Despite it now being a DVD, he didn't bother changing the banner at the top, it still says "PC CD-ROM", that's kind of lazy.



Just thought I'd let you know I got these games.. you know what, there's no point doing this, I should only use this feature for retro related stuff I've actually picked up, that's what's the feature was originally for, this is the last "Retro pick-up" that isn't technically a "Retro pick-up".

Retro Diary - 17/6/12

Monday 11th June 2012

Day 5 with no proper PC, and I can tell you, it's boring as f*ck, I have no idea how I managed without it before, well, probably because I didn't have games that needed a PC that powerful, but the fact is that I do, and I want more games that need it, this sucks!

I ordered the MDickie collection on DVD today, you'll get the link to do so on his website if you want to as well, it's only £10, and you get basically everything he's ever created, everything on his website on a DVD, including his old DOS games, offline versions of his flash games! It may be pointless as everything on his site is free now, I'm preparing for if the site ever goes down and loses everything, if that ever happens, I can still play his games using his DVD compilation.

So I decided to take my mind off it by playing a bit of Gran Turismo 3, FIFA 12 and Toy Story 3, all on the PS2, mostly GT3.

I realised there's an unlockable feature on FIFA 12 on PS2, which I didn't see on the PC version, and that is funny SFX, which replaces, all of the game's sound effects to funny ones, for example, when I shoot, instead of hearing a kick, I hear a rocket! Or if I hit the post or the bar, I hear a bell noise, the same for when someone headers the ball, only it's a different bell sound! It's fun to have on, even if it gets old fast.

Throughout the whole day, for some reason, I wanted to play a racing simulator game, like Gran Turismo, or Sega GT. So I decided to play the one I've had for months, but never played, Gran Turismo 3! So I've been playing that, and enjoying it, even if it's frustrating as hell to get the licences!

One of the games I wanted for for PC that only my broken PC could run, was Toy Story 3, after playing the Wii version and really enjoying it. In excitement in getting my PC fixed and playing, I've been playing Toy Story 3 for the PS2... so yeah...

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Tuesday 12th June 2012

Day 6 without a proper PC, and I'm seriously on the brink of insanity! I want to Play games like Sims 3, left 4 Dead 2 and Toy Story 3 so bad, but I'm not able to!

So, out of extreme boredom, I decided to play one of the few games the laptop I'm using can play, Peggle Extreme! I decided to give this a shot, as I never got the chance with my now-broken PC, and I really enjoyed it, I will be getting the full game if I get my PC fixed, because you can get both that and it's nights expansion in retail form from Amazon!

I also played Codename: Gordon, and completed it! Now I only have to finish Half Life 2 Episode 1 & 2, and Half Life: Blueshift, and Half Life: Decay... Well, I'm one step closer to completing all of the Half Life games out so far.

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Wednesday 13th June 2012

Day 7, a full week without my PC, and I am officially losing it, seriously, I hope writing this will keep me sane, if not, then god help us...

My Amazon basket a.k.a, the list of PC games I want, is filling up, and I realised that some items would be quickly going out of stock, one of them only having 1 left, no big deal, right? No, Except that, that item didn't have other sellers, if I place that order for that one copy, I can forget about getting that game at all, so I thought since my laptop could probably run it anyway, I ordered it thankfully, it dispatched, so I got the last copy.

The game I'm talking about is Peggle, the full game, I also ordered Peggle Nights, the sequel, and I also ordered Doom: Collectors Edition, which is all 3 of the original doom games made playable on modern Windows Operating Systems, plus, you also get a demo of Doom 3, chances are, my laptop could at least run the original Doom games, so I got that as well.

Throughout the day, out of total boredom, I decided to check out a few DOS shareware games, such as Doom and Duke Nukem 3D.

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Thursday 14th June 2012

Day 8 without my PC, and I swear to god, I'm going to go insane, I mean insane asylum kind of insane, I know it shouldn't be a big deal, but I did everything with that PC, played games, make stuff, do browsing, my laptop does an awful job in comparison on all 3, especially games, I can hardly play anything on this toaster! I can't take my mind off it because pretty much everything reminds me of it!

I have just about given hope on my PC, I am very confident that ASUS will not repair it, and all the PC repair shops will end up charging us more than we have, so I'm f*cked, £1150 gone right down the drain, it's nothing more than a paperweight now, and there's f*ck all I can do about it!

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Friday 15th June 2012

Day 9 without my PC, and usually at this point, I'd be totally insane and wrecking the house, but I'm not, and I'll tell you why.

2 things, first of all, my copies of Peggle and Peggle Nights, as well as Doom Collector's Edition have arrived, so I won't be as bored.

Secondly, but by no mean least, when I was bored, "knowing" I can't play games like FIFA 12, PES 2012, NBA 2k12, Left 4 Dead etc., I looked at my game boxes to make sure of this, and I found out that, theoretically, this laptop actually can play them all on low settings! It'll do until my PC gets fixed, if it ever gets fixed, so at least I can still play FIFA Euro 2012 in the mean time. The most surprising thing is, this laptop is 5 years old, and can still play some fairly new games, and when that was new, that couldn't play any games released at the same time at high settings.

If my PC gets fixed, and that can play todays games on high settings, I'm looking at, at least 4 or 5 years until that becomes obsolete! So yeah, I'm all cheered up knowing that.

I played a bit of Revenge of Shinobi for the Mega Drive, and I got farther than before because I accidentally did the unlimited shrunkens cheat, which also gave me more lives, I managed to reach Round 2 Level 1, in other words, level 4, before dying, it may not sound far, but this game is very hard, I'm lucky to reach the end of level 2!

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Saturday 16th June 2012

I went to the cinema today to see Men in Black 3, I really enjoyed the film, although the 3D effects were mediocre at best, which wouldn't usually be a problem, but it costed us £50 to get in! What a rip-off! Despite that, like I said, I enjoyed the film.

I tried out FIFA 12 on my laptop, and minimum requirements my ar*e! My laptop could barely run the game on arena, where there's only 1 player and 1 goalkeeper, and half a pitch, if even that! On an actual match, it was just unplayable! The game literally run at like 2 frames a second, if even that, and my laptop surpasses all the minimum requirements by quite a bit, I'd hate to try it on a laptop that just only meets the game's "requirements"!

My sister also came to my room to play a bit of Sonic 1 on the Mega Drive, but only for like 1 level, until she went out.

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Sunday 17th June 2012

It was Wii week at grans today, unfortunetly, Giancarlo forgot to bring his Wii, fortunately, however, I brought mine, just in case this would happen.

I played a bit of No More Heroes first, and it make me think why I stopped playing in the first place, I really enjoyed it, maybe I'll dig it up, because I still have No More Heroes 2 sealed, unopened, from a couple of years ago, and I want to open that up, and play it, but I want to beat the first game first.

Then me, Giancarlo, his sister, and Steven played a good few matches of Super Smash Bros. brawl.

Then we played Wario Ware Smooth moves, and we had a blast!

Then we played a few Gamecube games, first being Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects! Me and Steven played a match or two.

Then we played a couple of matches of Beyblade V-Force: Super Tournament Battle.

Then we played a few races of Mario kart Double Dash.

Then we went back to playing Wii games, by playing Super Mario Galaxy, it didn't take long for us to get bored, though.

Then we played Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010, the game ironically wasn't as good as the Wii sports golf game, and PGA tour was dedicated, we played a few for a few holes, though. One thing we did notice was that the graphics were so good, our gran thought it was a real match on TV!

Finally, we played Sonic Heroes on the Gamecube.

After we went home,my mum got my uncle to photocopy something, and she would go over to collect it half an hour later, I wanted to go as well, so I did, and I showed Steven the Peggle games, and showed him the 'Weird Al' Yankovic song: "It's all about the Pentiums" and he showed me the Plants vs. Zombies game, and he said there's an browser version to try out, so I'm trying that out right now.

So next week is Mega Drive week, we're going back to the start of the cycle, time for some blast processing!

Retro Diary - 10/6/12 - "PC Week"

Monday 4th June 2012

Today, we went to grans again because we had leftovers from the party beforehand, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to bring a console over, I decided to not tell anyone until after my cousins have had their dinner.

...and that console turned out to be *drum roll*... The Nintendo Gamecube!

First, Me and Giancarlo and Riccardo played a few matches of Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, played a few two player match, taking turns, as the game's only 2 player.

Next, we played a few matches of Beyblade V-Force: Super Tournament Battle, Steven later came in, and had a few matches as well.

Then me and Steven played a game of Horse on Matt Hoffman's Pro BMX 2, the horse name as h0ba0a008, and I won! 12-5 to me!

Finally, we played a race or two of Mario Kart Double Dash, then we left.

Steven's family took me back as my family left earlier on, while I was at my house, I lent Steven my Sam & Max games and BTTF the game, as they are DRM free, so you can install them on any PC, and that he wanted to try the games out for a while.

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Tuesday 5th June 2012

At about 12:00 up until 1:30 in the morning, me and Steven were playing Co-Op online on Portal 2 on PC for the first time! It was so much fun! We played through 2 chapters before getting bored, and that it was getting late... after that, I of course went to sleep.

When I woke up after that, shortly after, my brother, Riccardo, challenged me to a game or two of FIFA 12, but this time, we'd be playing on the PC, we first had a game of Euro 2012, my brother went Scotland, and I went Bulgaria, the teams were chosen at random by the way.

For a while at the start of the match, I thought I was Scotland, as I always play them and are used to controlling them, this almost lead to scoring an own goal, but then I figured out I was actually Bulgaria, and the owning commenced, I don't remember the score, but I remember I won!

Then we played a few matches of the original FIFA 12, for all the matches we played, I went Bray Wanderers, and Riccardo went as Athletico Madrid.

Then first match, which we didn't finish, I was winning 3-1, until Riccardo forced a rematch, in the next match, Riccardo won, I think the score was 8-4. The last match, I think I won 5-1.

Then I played a bit of Need for Speed World.

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Sunday 10th June 2012

On Wednesday, my PC broke down, it couldn't even boot up, so I'm using my laptop, and to save time, nothing happened between then and now.

Originally, it was going to be Wii week, but Giancarlo went to a music festival, and Wii week is nothing without him, so we done a different week, and go back to Wii week when he returns.

So we decided to do a one-week-only "PC week", but it went to waste, because we didn't play anything we spent the whole day trying to connect me and Steven's laptops together, which is odd, they worked perfectly fine before, but it just won't work now, and I swear Microsoft are trying their best to make this task as hard and complicated as humanly possible!

So we left without playing anything.

I hope next week will be better than this, but I doubt it, seeing how my PC, which is worth £1000, is dead...

Retro Diary - 3/6/12 - "This-game's-diff-rant!"

Thursday 31st May 2012

My brother, presumably out of boredom, challenged me to a game of FIFA 12 on the PS3, since I was bored as well, I accepted.

Before I continue, I like to set my sliders to make the game fast paced and arcade like. In translation, shot and pass error to 0, speeds of both and acceleration to 100, and goalkeeper ability to 20.

It turns out, my brother did a similar thing with his game, so I would fit right in!

Surprisingly, in the first match, I was kicking his ar*e, I think I won 6-2! A fluke you say, maybe, he got one back, with 3-1 to him.

However, in our next match... He still won, but it was close, VERY close, I mean the he-scores-I-respond kind of close, the score was 6-6 in full time and the match went into extra time where he scored once more, and I failed to respond, to match ended, as you might have guessed, 7-6 to my brother.

Then we moved to FIFA UEFA EURO 2012 on the PC. Why? because we could! For all the matches, I went as Scotland and he went Netherlands, for some reason...

For some very odd reason, at that time, my eyes were watering, and my eyesight went really blurry, I could barely see the screen, I couldn't just wipe my eyes or close them, because one eyelid hurt when I did, which only caused them to go worse, it's probably just hey fever...

This put me at a major disadvantage, but despite this, I won the first 2 matches, then we won a third, which made us equal, with 3 wins each, so we decided to play a final match, however...

A problem arose, because in order to play multiplayer on the PC, I needed to get another Xbox 360 controller (I have a wireless receiver, oh, I'm so spoilt!), so I used my younger brothers, as he was away at the time, however, I forgot at the time that his Xbox 360 had a problem with recognising controllers, but he came back, he was raging, and it took me an hour to fix the problem he was having.

After all that, we went back to playing FIFA 12 on the PS3 to play that "final" match, we went as an El Classico, I believe I won 10-5! So he asked for a rematch, this time, I went as Celtic, he went as Real Madrid again, and I beat him 5-1!

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Friday 1st June 2012

This morning, my mum brought some old Vinyl record from my grans! They were originally my dad's. My mum said I could keep them! The reason for this is because I've had a recent fascination with Vinyl records, and was soon planning on getting a record player. (An ION one, to be exact, so I could put the song onto my PC, like I do with CDs!) My mum must've been aware of this and gave me the records.

Throughout the day, I was bored out of my skull, so I browsed through my games to see what I haven't beaten, and I found the Timesplitters 1 and 2, and realised I haven't completed them, but I completed Future Perfect multiple times, "That's not right!" I thought to myself, "Time to (split, and) sort that out!".

So for a few hours, I played through both games, it was a lot of fun, I got more the series' awesome story, and it's not that difficult, so why the heck did I not complete them earlier!?

Anyway, I successfully completed both games, and now I feel whole again!

Also, today, a game I got off eBay a few days ago arrived, chances are, you haven't heard of it, it's an E.T. point and click adventure game, simply called "E.T. The Adventure game", it's a PC point and click game by Ubisoft back in 2002, back then, I loved it, and and having recently gotten into point and click games, thanks to TellTale games, I thought I had to own this again, so I looked it up on eBay, and only one English copy popped up, there were other copied, but they were foreign, so I bought it before anyone else could.

I got it, and already completed it, the game is surprisingly short... I was a bit disappointed with the game, it was a great as I remember it to be, simply put, it was way behind it's time, it was short, and in some parts quite frustrating. However, I like it for it's nostalgic value.

Out of boredom, I decided to play Angry Birds Space, and I actually beat the game, well, I beat all of the "available" levels anyway.

---

Saturday 2nd June 2012

I was bored, so I decided to browse through the free games on Origin, and came across a game called Need for Speed World, and it didn't say demo, or anything like that after the name, so they must be offering the game for free.

I thought "nah, it's probably a crappy 2D flash-like game, either that or they say it's free, but you have to pay to progress in it" but since it was free, I thought I'd try it anyway.

After downloading and installing it, and I played, and to my surprise, neither of the things were the case the game was 3D, it was pretty detailed as well, the graphics were very good, I never saw anything that asked for my money, you can buy in game currency with real money, but you can earn it by doing races, and after setting it up, I played the actual game, and surprisingly, it was a lot of fun! So I've been playing that all day...

---

Sunday 3rd June 2012

Well, that was the most boring party in my entire life!

I expected me, Steven and Giancarlo, would do nothing but play awesome multiplayer games all night, like the old days.

I played exactly one game, and only 2 levels, me and Giancarlo just played 2 levels in Co-Op.

After that, I was in my room for a few hours doing absolutely nothing except for writing this.

After that, Steven came in, and he seemed strangely enthusiastic about everything, I thought it might have been alcohol influenced, but upon secretly testing him by engaging him in a conversation, and getting him to enter a cheat code in Goldeneye, he seemed sober, well, sober enough.

So the first game we played was Mashed: Fully Loaded for the Xbox, we kept playing until at least one of us won, and that surprisingly took ages.

Then we played Robot Wars: Extreme Destruction, we played a couple of annihilator matches and a couple of sumo matches.

Then we played Medal of Honour: Rising Sun, we completed the first level, and that was it, and... oh yeah, we did our trademark "Medal Of Honour Dance", where we look up, keep spinning while constantly toggling between crouch and stand!

Then we played Goldeneye 007 for the N64, we played a gun match with turbo and paintball cheats on, it was frantic! Then we played a quick "You only live twice" game before Steven had to go.

Overall, I guess it was fun, but not nearly the party I hoped for, but I suppose it wasn't my party, so my cousin couldn't spend their whole time with me, I guess that's fair enough.

Next week, it will be Wii week, where (hopefully) Giancarlo will bring the week. It's time to dig up Wario Ware Smooth Moves!

New Arrivals: FIFA Manager 12 [PC]

I mentioned about a week ago that I got the demo for FIFA Manger 12, and surprisingly enjoyed it, and was going to get the full version>

Well, it arrived, I now posses the whole PC FIFA 2011/12 game "collection", all 3 games!

I haven't got too much to say, so I'll just show you the photos:




This is a very odd story about the photos, but I promise, it's true, when I originally transferred (not copied, transferred), and when I went to upload them, they disappeared, I couldn't find them anywhere, not even if I did a search it's as if someone has hacked in to delete it, just to take the p*ss. It's not the case that I forgot to transfer them, because the files didn't appear again. I had to retake the photos again.

A few weeks ago, actually, on my college computer, there was suddenly a computer created called "im watching you", could they both be linked? Hm...

Whoever it is, they're wasting their time doing this, they're just as well just revealing themselves and have a go at me.

Retro Diary - 27/5/12 - "We're going to play MSR in a whole new time zone!"

Dear Diary,

I decided that instead of writing the entire thing on the Sunday, I'd write it as it happens, so some of the stuff may be in present tense, probably not, but just a warning...

---

Friday 25th March 2012

For a while, I've always wanted to try out FIFA Manager 12, because I already had FIFA 12 and UEFA Euro 2012 (Both physical copies!), and it seemed as though if I had manager, that would be the PC collection complete!

So after looking a bit on Origin, I found there was a downloadable demo available, as well as Sims 3 and pets, so I downloaded them, and gave them a go.

I surprisingly enjoyed FIFA Manager, I previously tried the Football Manager 2012 demo, and I found that boring, this was pretty fun, though, even if it's pretty glitchy...

I really enjoyed Sims 3 and pets as well, the Sims 3 "Teaser", as they call it basically give you a minute trial of an area and you move to the next, you get to go to 3 areas, the pets demo is basically just the create part, nothing else. Although now I'm considering getting both games, but I can't, as I'm saving up to pre-order FIFA 13 and PES 2013 on both PC and PS2...

---

Saturday 26th May 2012

My sister came into my room while she was visiting, and she asked if she wanted to play Tony Hawk's Underground for the PS2, so I let her, and she was playing for about 10-15 minutes, even though she wasn't doing any tricks, and was hardly jumping, she seemed to be enjoying it for a while.

---

Sunday 27th March 2012

This morning, since I recently got a new ISP (O2, we used to have AOL), I thought I'd try FIFA 12 and PES 2012 online, before hand, it just didn't work at all, I was lucky to play half a match on either, but with the new ISP, I played several full matches without a problem!

I won my match on FIFA 4-2, we were both Barcelona. On PES 2012, however, the people there are complete ninjas! The first match, I lost 8-2! Not only that, my 2 goals, were my only shots in the whole game, the other guy had, I kid you not, 22 shots! Another Barcelona, Chelsea moment... The second match I played was even worse, I lost 13-2! I would've rage quit, but if I did, the game would restrict my account, it's nice to know that system works...

It was PS3 week at grans today, we only played FIFA Street, me and my brother, played 2 matches of "Last man standing", which, if you score, the player that scored gets sent off, and player who send their entire team off first wins, he won both times.

The me and my cousin, Giancarlo, played a 5-a-side match, which I won 6-2 I think. Then me and my other cousin, Steven, had a game, I don't remember the result for that.

After that, I left.

Steven came up to our house not long afterwards, and we played a bunch of games!

We decided to try a challenge, and attempt to play all of the consoles that night, we just called it: The Console Challenge, it's good enough, plus it has alliteration.

We started off by playing FIFA 12, in celebration that FIFA 13 was coming to PS2, widescreen and in 60Hz! I went as Barcelona, and he went as Athletico Madrid. We enjoyed it, despite the game being completely different, but not for the better, and the game kept slowing down, we played a match, I won, but I don't remember by how much.

We then played PES 2012 for the PS2, in celebration of PES 2013 coming to PS2, I went Barcelona again and I think Steven went as Manchester City ,more of the same here, except the game had no widescreen mode, not that it's that important.

Then we played Timsplitters, and trying to figure out what to do! If you don't know what we mean, the game's objectives are very simple, literally, every objective is take something, bring it back, me and Steven have an in-joke of pretending that we don't understand the objective! We couldn't pass the level we were on, because we had no idea where the item in question was and there were too many guys pumping lead into us.

Then we went up a step, and played Timsplitters 2! We were on Neo Tokyo, where you had to follow someone without her noticing you, we finally passed it!

Then we played Vib Ribbon on the PS1, I challenged him to complete a 'Weird' Al Yankovic song on it, as I mentioned to him it was almost impossible, he couldn't do it!

Then we played the revolutionary Rise of the Robots for the Amiga CD32! We played a couple of matches, He won the first, I won the second.

Then we played Sonic Adventure 2, we played a Kart Race, I don't remember my position, but Steven came last. Then we played a couple of action stages, I won both, which was enough to show him the levels we never played in before.

Then we played Metropolis Street Racer, we set the time to the console default (midnight 1st Jan 1998), but we set the time zone to a random one to mix things up, and it landed on GMT +9, then Steven said "...and now, we're going to play MSR in a whole new time zone!" Brilliant! At that moment, I knew I was goign to use that for this diary's title.

We played a couple of races, both of which I won, the first one, which was in Tokyo, by quite a margin, 20 seconds between my finish, and Steven's, the second one, which was in London, was close, but it was still clear who won.

Then we played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 on the Xbox, so we could get our Horse of the week, we played in the airport level, where it all started! The "horse", was wVjlYSfRR4! I won it despite my handicap! 11-5 to me!

Then we played Mashed: Fully Loaded on the Xbox, we played f*ck knows how many matches, we got addicted for a short while! We had force ourselves out to play something else!

Then we moved onto the Saturn to play Sega Rally Championship we had a race, unfortunately, I won the race...

Then we had a game of FIFA 97, also on the Saturn, and it was awful, but in the awesome kind of way! We soon realised why the Sega Worldwide Soccer games got so much praise back in the day and still to this day has a fan base... this was the alternative!

Then we played Forsaken on the N64, the game is fun on single player, not so much on multiplayer, pretty disappointing, especially since the N64 is the system for multiplayer games!

Then we played 007 Goldeneye, on, what else, the Sega Saturn! Oh wait... We played a game of licensed to kill slappers only, as always, but we had turbo mode on, which, as you might have guessed, speeds up the players, and it was a lot of fun, I expected it to be frustrating, because you might not be able to hit the players, that was the case, but it was still fun! Then, for the first time in a long time, we had a proper gun match, with turbo mode on, but still, and we had an absolute blast! We should do this more often!

Finally, because all we needed was the Gamecube to have completed all the main consoles I have, we played Beyblade V-Force: Super Tournament Battle, once I finally explained to Steven how to launch the Beyblade in the game, once that was over and done with, we played a proper match, and we enjoyed it, well, at least I did.

We were about to play Sonic Heroes on the Gamecube, but Steven had to leave unfortunately, so we weren't able to, obviously.

Before we left, I showed him my recently acquired key chain Beyblade and launched it, and asked him "Doesn't this bring back memories?", he said "Aye, it does.", just thought I'd tell you that.

Here's what we played:

In the order we played them:
• FIFA 12 [PS2]
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 [PS2]
• Timesplitters [PS2]
• Timesplitters 2 [PS2]
• Vib Ribbon [PS1]
• Rise of the Robots [CD32]
• Sonic Adventure 2 [DC]
• Metropolis Street Racer [DC]
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 [Xbox]
• Mashed: Fully Loaded [Xbox]
• Sega Rally Championship [SS]
• FIFA 97 [SS]
• Forsaken [N64]
• 007 Goldeneye [N64]
• Beyblade V-Force: Super Tournament Battle [GC]

It was a fun week overall, next Sunday, we're having party for my brother's communion at my house, and all of my cousins are going, it's going to be a frantic week!

The week afterwards will be Wii week, because it's been far too long since we played a game of Wario Ware Smooth Moves!

Article By: Cobra!
Recall help provided by: Steven

If youse thought FIFA 12 was glitchy...

...You've seen nothing yet, few of you would probably know there exists another FIFA franchise exclusive to the PC, called "FIFA Manager", I downloaded the demo for the 2012 edition, and it's a really good game, but the 3D match parts, the new feature to 2012, is, I kid you not, even glitchier than FIFA 12!

Although in it's defence, it's supposedly the first game to have this feature, and it is the demo, so I'll give it some slack, but unlike even the first 3D FIFAs, there's not one match I've been through where a glitch doesn't occur.

Ready for a glitch-fest showcase? No? Well, tough! I'm showing youse anyway!:
















Aside from this, it's still a very good game, I ordered the full game off Amazon, I hope this glitch won't be in the full version...

What's odd, but in my opinion, Awesome, is that to download the game off Origin, it's going to cost you £35, yet to get the physical version off Amazon, it's only £15 with free delivery!

Good on youse EA! Fighting the digital download invasion!

Retro Diary - 20/5/12 - "'Lawl!' *Pique face*"

Dear Diary,

Not much happened this week.

It was Xbox 360 week this week, me, my brother; Riccardo, and my cousins: Giancarlo and Steven, played a 4-player match of FIFA 12, it was me and Riccardo as Barcelona against Giancarlo and Steven as a team called "Lods", I think they're Portuguese, I could be wrong. The first half ended 3-1, I think.

After the first half, Steven's big brother took over Giancarlo, and scored against us. We scored 2 back, so the match ended 5-1.

We had another match, this time it was me and Riccardo as Bayen Munich against Steven and his brother as Manchester City, for both halves, we tied, and went to extra time, where they scored against us, and won.

After that, Steven was constantly playing Halo with my little brothers, who are, dare I say, Halo junkies.

After that, we left, not a whole lot happened this week, I never though I'd say this, but I hope PS3 week will be more fun.

"Retro" Arrivals: Left 4 Dead: game of the Year Edition [PC]

I realised something, most of my "pick up" articles, aren't actually about things I've pick up, but rather just arrived in the post.

I decided for those types of situations, I'll just call them "'Retro' Arrivals", a little more fitting, isn't it?

Anyway, my copy of Left 4 Dead: Game of the Year Edition arrived in the post today, I still haven't opened it up yet because I'm writing this stupi-I mean "Retro" blog.

Anyway, I'll just cut to the chase, I got this because I've been wanting it so badly, so I ordered the Game of the Year edition off of Amazon.

Here are the photos:

Retro Pick-Ups: Starblade [3DO], FIFA 97 [SAT] and Forsaken [N64]

I went into G-Force again, which is a shop I sometimes go to on my way home from college, for those new to this blog.

I noticed the old games weren't where they usually are, I thought they threw them out, but it turns they did almost the opposite, they now had a whole dedicated to them, not only then, they had more games for more consoles, like 3DO, NES, SNES and they had more Saturn games!

So I thought since my EMA came in that week, I thought I'd buy some stuff, and I found that a lot of the game were quite cheap, the NES games went for only £5 each, they were loose carts, but that still doesn't sound bad.

and that was the NES, that apparently did awful over here, I found a few games I had wanted for a while, I had always wanted to play Starblade again, I used to play it in Tekken 5, and I knew for a while there was a 3DO port, and was apparently the only version to make it outside Japan, I could be wrong though, and luck would have it, the store only had one 3DO game, and it was none other, than Startblade!

I think it's a US copy, I could tell by the CD being pretty thing, in the US, they had Big boxes with little jewel cases inside them, over here, I believe we just had jewel cases, but they were the double CD cases you used to get.
However, on the back of the case, it said "This title displays in letterbox format on the 3DO PAL System", and on the bottom it said "Made in UK", hmm...

I also got FIFA 97 for the Sega Saturn, I normally wouldn't have bothered, but it was only £2, so it was a why not.

Last, but not least, I got Forsaken for the Nintendo 64, my friend said he loved the game back in the day for the PS1, and the N64 version is supposed to be the same, but with more levels, nice!

This really isn't a "Pick-Up", but I thought I'd post it here anyway, my copy of Back to the Future the Game on PC! Unfortunately, I got impatient and opened the seal before I took the photos, but hey, look at the bright side, I can show you what's inside now.

Speaking of, here are the photos:

Retro Pick-Ups: PS1 (Old Model)

I was at that charity shop near my college today, the first time in ages, the first thing I noticed with an old PS1 model, I have no idea why, but I feel in a sense, attracted to the old PS1s, even though they have the dull grey colour, and they don't last as long as slim models (they tend to go out after 7 years), I've always wanted one, so I asked how much it was, the shop keeper said it was £5... I only had £5, which would be enough, but I needed to keep at least a pound, just in case I lot my train ticket for when I go back home, to buy another.

The shop keeper then said "I'll give you it for three.", I thought she said "Free", so I got a little exited, then when I was about to go out, she mentioned that I've still to pay, so I gave her the £3, then I realised, "Oh, she said she'll give me it for Three".

I looked up the same model to see how it went for, they go for around £10, so I didn't get a bad deal! I also discovered that when I said newer models lasted longer, it turns out that that didn't just mean the slim PSones, but also later versions of the original, and luckily, the one I bought was one of the later versions, so that's good news.

The console didn't some with any controllers or even a display cable, but I already had enough of each, so that wasn't a problem.

If anyone wants to know, the model I got was a SCPH-5552.

So I'm going to give youse my first impressions of it and tell youse the advantages and disadvantages of this compared to the slim I already have.

Advantages include that it operates much quieter than the slims, I'm so used to heard the PS1 make noise as it loads, but this one didn't so I assumed that it was broken, but when I flicked the TV to the PS1 channel, it worked fine.

Another advantage is that the memory cards load and save much faster than the slim, almost as fast as the Dreamcast! I know it depends on the game, but I remember the game I tried on it saving and loading slower on the slim.

Speaking of, the game I tried: Formula One Arcade, actually ran slightly faster on the fat model than it did on the slim.

Finally, this is minor, it has a reset button, the slim doesn't, so that's useful.

The only disadvantage, is that, obviously, it's bigger, it just barely fit on my shelf of consoles, and had no room for my multi-tap, it's not a huge problem, as there's hardly room for 4 people to play in front of the TV.

Here are photos I've taken, excuse my awful photography:
















Now I'll be off, I have a date!

...I meant I was going to play the PS1, if course I don't have a real date, I probably never will, especially not that I have all of these old games and consoles... it's worth it though!