GAME OVER, YEAH

ANIMAL CROSSING CITY FOLK COMING IN DECEMBER TO EUROPE! CRAP YOUR HANDS!

2008-09-25T10:54:00.004+01:00

Why? There isn't an animal crossing picture that we haven't already put up.

We just read this on TVG:

"Get ready to take a trip to the city with confirmation that Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City will be heading to Europe during December."

We are now very excited. Also slightly worried as they haven't said where they got their information from. It doesn't matter really does it?

We're already ready for disappointment once Nintendo dismisses it and tells us that Japan will only be seeing a release this year. Look at it this way, it won't be as bad as the wait we had for Super Paper Mario.

Or Smash Brothers.

Or Animal Crossing on the cube.

Or Wario Ware: Twisted.

Shit.

Animal Crossing City Folk Will Have Motion Control

2008-09-23T09:24:00.003+01:00

We've just noticed that in the latest scans from some Japanese mag...

There seems to be a small mention of motion controlled fishing! Nintendo, we applaud you, this is all we ever wanted to be able to do in Animal Crossing. Apart from being able decapitate crime boss Tom Nook, but we'll await for that chunk of news to appear in the next update.

What else can you do in Animal Crossing City Folk?

ATTACK unsuspecting foliage with your net (no confirmed motion controls)

SLEEP in a variety of beds. Possibly belonging to other citizens.

FETISH yourself up in an exciting array of designs. Be a french maid, a pirate (?), a Japanese fruit hat lady, Duck Man or Elton John.

PRETEND that you are BOND, JAMES BOND with a FISH by pressing the 1 button at any point in game. We're waiting back on a phone call with Nintendo to confirm possible fish attack patterns.

We have no idea what the Internet was complaining about at E3. What more do you want from the worlds greatest?

The LHC hasn't abruptly ended humanity, so let's celebrate with some words about stuff!

2008-09-10T00:08:00.007+01:00

I had been hoping for some apocalyptic resonance cascade event when the first full lap of the LHC was completed earlier this afternoon, and for some poor science bod to rise to the challenge and pull a Gordon Freeman and fight their way, crowbar in hand to the fresh crisp French/Swiss air.

That hasn't happened, unless they've kept it well under wraps and the Swiss army have stormed the facility, knives at the ready to repel alien and researcher alike. So while humanity continues onward it seems only sensible to write some words about things what I like.

It seems that Xbox Live Arcade Summer of Fun has most certainly ruined the future of Arcade, unless they can rope together another 4 or 5 amazing games and release them one week after the other. Those poor bastards who made Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball must have been slitting their wrists when they found out that they were getting cobbled in with Gin Rummy and Shred Nebula only one week after Castle Crashers came out, good luck lads, you're gonna need it!

I'll probably reiterate what every other amateurish blog has written about recently and break down Geometry Wars, Braid, and Castle Crashers into separate little posts and bang on about how brilliant they are and how they've breathed new life into genres that were tasting a little stale. Look forward to that in the next few days/weeks/months!

For those of you who read this who aren't our mums, let me try to sum up the past year in the lives of those in the employ of Game Over, Yeah! towers.

One of us has had a baby.

And that, despite being quite an event, is actually the sum of our doings. But we've recently met people who have reintroduced us to the world of bumbling and heavily opinionated videogame writing, and they don't seem to believe that we done this once, and we managed to get nominated for like an award for it too. So here we are again, lets try to do this thing.

Lets Piss Off Gamestation... All of their 24/7 sale items revealed!!!

2008-07-24T10:49:00.003+01:00

Well worth coming out of hiding for a little shit storm!!

Gamestation tend to do this sale thing where they put on a new item and make you check back every hour to find out what rip off sale item they've put on next. They're doing one today.

Don't want to sit around all day to only find yourself disappointed? Well we've done the hard work for you. What we can't tell you is when they're going to put which item online - they seem to be doing it randomly.

Enjoy!!

Ninja Gaiden 2 To Be The Last In The Series! NOOO!

2008-05-14T12:12:00.007+01:00

Kotaku are reporting that Tomonobu Itagaki of Team Ninja has decided that Ninja Gaiden 2 will be the series swansong.

SWANSONG?

ALREADY?????

Now we know how Vader felt. Itagaki plotted it all along. Bastard.

This is real heartbreaking material. Ninja Gaiden is our favourite XBox game and the sequel will hopefully be our favourite 360 game. It's the sort of game that we could just play for ever, over and over as they release harder and harder levels with more challenging enemies. They could actually just keep the levels identical and put in a couple of new enemies every few months and we would be happy.

Much like our love for Splinter Cell, Ubisoft have guarenteed themsevles a lovely pension thanks to our obsession with that series.

Itagaki does mention in the article that he is interested in something to do with World War 2 (can it be reinvented again?) based around the Pacific, citing the Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers stories as his inspiration. Could he actually be considering a story over two games? Something that shows both sides of a story? There is certainly unexplored terriroty there, the last title that we can remember seeing such a premise successfully was the Half Life addons like Blue Shift and opposing force. You could argue that the concept was also explored in Halo 2.

We can only hope that whatever it is that Itagaki decides to do instead is going to be something just as cool and addictive. Itagaki, in the unlikely event that you're reading this please supply us with a lovely new drug wrapped in leather.

Brad Pitt as Thor? We Want Til Schweiger!!

2008-05-13T14:57:00.004+01:00

There's a rumor going round that Marvel are interested in casting Brad Pitt as the son of Odin in the big screen adaptation that is sure to run up to some interesting crossover with the current Marvel offerings resulting in an Avengers movie.

Simply put, the answer is no.

Marvel, please do not cast the pikey everyone loves as Thor. We're not dissing Brad, we just don't think he's appropriate, he would look wrong in the role and remove any sort of credibility the film has. He's too comedy.

Get in Til Schweiger! You may recognise him from that King Arthur film that also starred everyones favourite 13 year old boy Keira Knightley. We've got it right! He's European, coming from a German background, and you can bet he would pull off a hammer wielding nordic lunatic with ease!

Come on Marvel think about your wallet! If you want to do multiple Thor films alongside another Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America etc before falling upon an Avengers film you need to think about how much all of this is going to cost! Do you want all these money guzzling Hollywood a-listers signing multi screen deal contracts?

We're still not even sure if Ed Norton was the right man to play Bruce Banner, still only time will tell.

GO TIL!

Wii Fit - First Week Results... Yikes

2008-05-05T19:20:00.003+01:00

We've managed to get through our first week on Wii Fit. It's hardly been gruelling mind you, but we are starting to feel the brunt of it. There have been some aches and some pains yet there has been little or no weight loss, we're still around 17st 10lbs. Ish.

It's fair to say that this is no fault of Wii Fit, it's just that we haven't made any attempt whatsoever to adjust our lifestyle to match the regime of the software. Oh, and remember that when we say lifestyle we mean that we still eat like its going out of fashion.

What has worked so far? Well we've got a really good handle on our balance and posture. Wii Fit has certainly made us take a look at how we walk, and its made us raise our heads proudly and stride along swaying our arms looking at the world around us. Just a shame it seems to be full of imported Polish people and chavs right now.

The Wii Fitness Age is the other thing that's gone really well for us. Perfecting our balance has allowed us to perform well in the two tests that we must run through daily to discover what our Wii Fitness Age actually is. We began in the thirties and moved down as low as 22 the other day only to rest today at 25 - our actual age! Finally something to do with fitness that we can excel at! We pursued this further and stepped up to the Balance Board's ultimate balance test and somewhat nervously sailed through the three most difficult challenges the software has posed yet. Finishing on the test that requires you to stand completely still for three seconds (which we have found we can only do while holding our breath) we found ourselves not screaming the curses we have at N+ for the past months but instead screaming for joy!

The games and exercises have all proved extremely entertaining so far. Our favourites being the Hula and the Ski Jump, combining patience and balance! We also seem to be an instant hit with yoga, which we never saw coming! To find out how we've been getting on, and to keep updated on our progress please visit our Wii Fit blog. We hope you've been enjoying the experience as much as we have!

Confessions of a Mid-Core Gamer...

2008-05-01T15:44:00.002+01:00

Great way to start eh? Use a title that has been plagiarised 73,328 times before probably isn't the best way to make a good first impression but then my impressions never were very good... except Loyd Grossman... I've got that one down to a fine art.

Minkage

So hello! New GOY employee here giving some voice to those people who like to play games but aren't as good at them as they would like to be, don't follow things quite as intently as they should but still like to jump on line and bask in the glory of being on a winning team in Halo even though they killed just 2 people, both in suicidal sticky runs. See I do kinda know what I'm talking about.

As well as being Mid-Core, I'm also a bit stupid with money so I'll get it out of the way now... Yes I have all 3 of the current Gen of consoles and currently the PS3 ranks bottom... I consider it to be a glorified bluray player which I can do singstar and buzz on. I'll take the 360 and Wii over it everytime.

Well thats enough about me... Wratty told me to give a brief introduction and I've already bored myself. I'm sure we will become firm friends over the months to come... just don't be that 12 year old american on Halo who just learnt how to say fuck.

Right its back to GTA4 for me... but more about that next time...

Minkage ends.

While You Play GTA IV, We're Sweating

2008-04-29T23:02:00.003+01:00

Yeah you're all gits. Hope you're all enjoying GTA IV, with the killing and the driving and the brilliant mindless destruction. Why weren't we playing it? Well we're moving house in a week or two and we really don't want to start that beauty of a game and then have to stop half way through.

So instead we're occupying ourselves with packing stuff, and Wii Fit. For once in our lives we're actually doing stuff that could be deemed as stuff that is good for us. We're the ones who sit and play games, watch movies and eat food on a regular basis because we can.

Yet in recent times we've decided that it would be a good idea to stop this and do something about our weight. We started biking to work and going for more walks and then Wii Fit came out. As you may already know we're really committing ourselves to Wii Fit now and hope to be doing so for a very long time. We plan to lose one and a half stone in the next two months and we'll be looking to adjust our lifestyle to help ourselves accomplish this goal.

In fact we're so determined to do this that we've opened up to you in our new blog. The new blog will be updated every couple of days with our progress and detailed information on our weight losses or gains. We're looking forward to it. We hope you find it interesting.

Who are we kidding? You gave up reading before the second paragraph didn't you? Oh go on get back to doing stuff with hookers in Liberty City you bastard.

Wii Fat

2008-04-27T17:15:00.003+01:00

Yes! We are fat!

We've kicked off our brand spanking new Wii Fit blog on Wordpress for you all to go have a look at.

Talking about our first experience with the Balance Board and the emotional times we've been through after weighing in, we'll update the blog each day with more news about how we're coming to terms with being OBESE and what we're doing to sort it out once and for all.

This isn't just a game, its a completely new experience and we're on board!

Get over to the new blog right now! Let us know how you're getting on by commenting on this post or in the new blog!

We're Going To Attempt A Comeback With Wii Fit!

2008-04-22T17:39:00.004+01:00

It's been a rather long time since we last updated this site with some parf, and to be honest we really don't think we're going to have the time to keep it updated again. (We've got really good reasons as to why we haven't updated actually - Mrs Wratty has mysteriously been knocked up, our house has been sold and we're just about to switch jobs)

However we're going to give it our best shot when Wii Fit comes out this week. Although that in turn involves getting our hands on a copy which we don't think is going to be easy.

Should we actually get a copy this Friday we're going to give you buggers a daily update on how Wratty is actually doing. Yeah that's right we're going to actually strap in the overweight fool and see if Wii Fit will actually help him lose weight.

Just looking at the newly launched Wii Fit website, it seems that Nintendo does think it will make us fit and healthy. It also promises us a healthier lifestyle. This all sounds good to us!

We just hope that "playing" Wii Fit isn't going to label us depressed after we see our Fitness Age stay deeply routed at 77 for months on end.

Oh and Kev, if you're reading this we're expecting you to cover the GTA IV end of things as we can't afford the money or the time to do that right now.

Limited Edition Darth Vader Wii FOR $15,000!!!

2007-12-09T10:32:00.000Z

Techeblog are reporting on a rather convincing Limited Edition Nintendo Wii that's crept up on eBay. Apparently it is one of only 4 produced that will be used to promote the upcoming Force Unleashed game. Either that or it's a modder looking to make a killing.

do we? don't we?

So should you still be looking to get a Wii for this holiday season, make sure that if you're going to get ripped off then get ripped off properly with a worthwhile purchase like this.

We Liked Paul Thurrott But Now He Has Really Pissed Us Off With His Comments About The Dreamcast

2007-12-06T18:29:00.000Z

Windows / Mac nut Paul Thurrot has featured on our site several times because he's tried out stuff that we like and gets some really good reviews up.

However he is now considered by the staff at GO:YEAH to be Satan himself as he has now revealed to the world that Sega aren't really responsible for the Dreamcast.

Using history as his ally he states:

"And after all, the Dreamcast 2 did come out, years ago. It was called the Xbox. There was even a Dreamcast 3. You may know it as the Xbox 360"

BOLLOCKS

this is the face that made Sega fans all over the world cry

Complete and utter bollocks. We can only hope that these crazy Dreamcast 2 rumors that are hitting the usual websites are going to be true. Then we shall all laugh.

If we look at the original post that Paul refers to on The Digital Home, the poor victim Don Reisinger is simply getting nostalgic for the last wonder that Sega put on earth. He gets a little over excited and compares the pad to that of the XBox pad, but that is all. There are no historical inaccuracies, there is no evil intent! There is one man singing his love and he is being condemned for it.

Paul you have gotten too big for your shoes, and now you're losing a reader.

Grand Theft Auto 4 Trailer Hits XBox Live At 8PM (Less Than 2 Hours Away!!)

2007-12-06T18:22:00.000Z

From Major Nelson's Twitter at 6pm English time:

"majornelson: Next GTA IV trailer going up on Marketplace today at 3p ET today."

Now we're really like a mainstream gaming website / blog. We just need to work on some amusing title's that make reference to stuff that most of you haven't heard of that make us look cool and funny.

Anyway this trailer is going to "kick ass" and do other things to your bum that you'll really really enjoy.

Goodnight.

GUITAR HERO 3, irony still going strong.

2007-12-03T23:37:00.000Z

We're pretty underwhelmed to be honest, there just seems to be something missing from the game - something that made Guitar Hero 2 so essential. With 2, I wanted to play it all the time, I forsaked all other games for around a month so that I could get my rock on. But with 3, I've found it a bit of a chore.

There are a few differences that shouldn't affect our enjoyment of the game, but end up really pissing me off. Firstly there's the artwork. They've replaced the glorious illustrated menus and icons that were everywhere in 2, from real world illustrators like Gunsho and DWITT, with shitty low res pictures that look like I'm viewing them through a pair of vaselined stockings. Even when I'm not. This degradation in the quality of the aesthetic design spreads through to the stage design - for instance, what the fuck is the music video set all about? I don't watch too much MTV, but I'm pretty sure they don't feature promos A) from cover bands, or B) filmed on the back of a heavily branded lorry, in a warehouse. The progression in GH2 was perfect, larger and larger venues, it really made sense.

One of the glorious menu screens from GH2, none such luxuries in GH3

The little clips between the stages really shits me off, I can only imagine that someone at Neversoft or wherever quite likes Metalocalypse and Gorillaz, and wanted to do something between the two, but instead managed simply to produce a shit wrapped in puke. At least they're short, and in theory you'd only have to see them once.

What happened to the great little Star Power routines that the various characters performed when you rock your axe upwards? Admittedly I can't remember any of them now, and while playing the game they are reduced to a small twinge in the corner of my vision that I daren't look at incase I start to go gammy on the fret buttons. But I knew they were there, out on the periphery. As far as I can tell, in GH3, the best that can be displayed is colourful shaped, bats or hearts emanating from the character. Piss poor.

These things really shouldn't change how much I enjoy the game, It still boils down to pressing buttons as colourful discs stream towards me; this all remains the same. I am however, a deeply shallow person, and visual stimulus is pretty much all I can judge things by.

There are some obviously great additions to the series, the multitude of online options add alot to the game, but I get the feeling I'm going to have to improve greatly just to stand a chance of getting to the end of a song against some of the bastards I've come up against so far. Perhaps some sort of cretin room, just for people who are pretty guff at the game, people who refuse to believe that it's possible to play the game on the extreme setting with a standard issue human hand.
I'd also like to see an option for playing multiplayer at home with only one controller, like some sort of take turns thing where the objective could be one-upmanship. I'm not buying another controller to satisfy the guitar lust of my friends, and playing with a standard controller is a bit like cooking dinner with a nuclear weapon - it'll do the job nicely, but much of the finesse will be lost.

Most of the reviews I've read for the game really praise the extensive song list. I can't see what all the fuss is about, 80% of the songs on here are really shitty shit shit. I know it's all about metal, but really, they're flogging a dead horse's dead father with the third title in the series. If we look at the tracks in the first stage of the three vesrions, GH1 had The Ramones, Deep Purple, Joan Jett, White Zombie and Bad Religion. I had heard of all of these songs. GH2 had Nirvana, Motley Crue, Kiss and Rancid, I had heard these songs before, but not all the others on the list though. In GH3, I had only heard the Kiss song before. This is probably a huge omission on my part, I clearly haven't listened to enough shit music in my lifetime, I must get onto that.

Yeah yeah, they've got bands like the Killers and Kaiser Chiefs and Muse, but nobody actually likes them do they? Sure they sell out festivals or something, but they're not actually 'good' are they? There are some great songs on here, School's Out, Welcome to the Jungle, Sabotage, Paint It Black, Kool Thing, But they are really in a minority this time out.

I really hope that for the next installment, they start to think a little outside the cock-rock and nu-metal genres for the playlist. I know it's supposed to all be about axe wielding guitar legends, but if they're going to really crack the masses with this, they'll have to start spanning the genres, Bowie, Velvet underground, Roxy Music, The Fall, Pixies, Pavement, Led Zepplin, Joy Division, they'd all be great for more material, maybe some Britpop if they're feeling a little adventurous, how about some slower stuff? Neil Young? Bob Dylan? I guess It's all down to taste, but I'm sure good taste eventually out classes bad taste. I can only take so much irony.

It is a great game and I do enjoy playing it, just not as much as I enjoyed playing 2, or as much as I think I'd enjoy it if they put some better songs in it, and got those cool kids back to do the drawings.

If you want to buy it, which you probably do, make sure you buy it from HMV, at the moment it's £15 cheaper than at Game or Gamestation. But buying it at Game gets you one of these guitar bags, so you can take to the streets with your wireless Les Paul. If that's the kind of thing you'd like to do.

Super Mario Clouds

2007-11-21T19:42:00.000Z

Every single games magazine has run a feature on the history of the Super Mario franchise in the last couple of months, as the hubbub surrounding Mario Galaxy reaches it's fevered summit, it certainly gives us a warm musty feeling in our brains. Because at least 50% of the GameOverYeah team don't own a Wii, we'll just have to make do with slices of dull musty old nostalgia.

This endeavour reminded us of the glorious work of Cody Arcangel, something we've been a fan of for a little while, this one is a few years old now, but we could never be accused of being a cutting edge site. The young man has taken a Super Mario Bros. cartridge, busted it open and fiddled about in it's guts, Removing the majority of the sprites, the platforms, pipes and all that bumpf.

What is left is a mesmerising scrolling silent cloudscape, geared up to travel forever across your screen.

There is nothing but this backwards version of the video on youtube, but I can recommend you download the ROM of the modified cart and run it as large as you can on an emulator on your screen. The bigger the pixels the better, something to really chew up your retinas.

Of course there is absolutely no merit, and the value in such a piece is purely artistic, with the biggest draw simply being asking why anybody would bother to create something like this. We love it's utter nonsense, sheer pointlessness.

Check out Cody's site here, there are plenty of techno experiments that push the boundaries of beautifully conceited vanity projects, but like, in a really good way.

Cody's Web Log

We'll try and bring you more of this kind of thing over the coming weeks, whether you like it or not, it is cool, and you better just get used to it, you old dinosaur.

Actually, We Bought A Wii Within 2 Hours Of Looking

2007-11-17T10:11:00.000Z

We don't know what the internet is going on about. We decided on Tuesday that we were going to get a Wii for the family for Xmas.

After nipping onto the internet briefly and checking our reader we were horrified to read that Nintendo were expecting MASSIVE SHORTAGES and you would need to engage in fights and schemes in order to secure our tiny console for the folks.

So "bugger it" we thought, lets give Gamestation a go. Rang them up and asked to go on their reservation list, they were happy to oblige but warned us that there was no guarentee that we'd get it before xmas. We then hopelessly went to lunch.

Upon arriving back to our desk we found that we had a missed call from the happy lads down at Gamestation. One quick ring back filled our hearts with joy as we were told we could come collect our console. The only drawback was that the greedy buggers forced us to buy 2 games with the console.

So that timeline in summary:

11:30 RANG GAMESTATION
12:30 WENT FOR LUNCH
12:50 MISSED CALL
13:00 RANG BACK AND SECURED CONSOLE

So there you have it. No fights, no trouble. Its like the shortest Jack Bauer incident ever, an hour and a half. About the length of a movie.

What's all the fuss?

Pointless Review of Predictably Great Game

2007-11-04T18:17:00.000Z

Trying to review a Zelda game is like trying to review oxygen, the ground, or the power of eyesight. If you own a DS and have failed to buy a copy of Phantom Hourglass, it's a little like owning a pair of shoes without a pair of feet. Obviously it's one of, if not the best game on the system. Before this I had lost much faith in the output of the DS; Dr Kawashima has much to answer for.

It does have a few faults, but they don't really put much of a dent in a game which is a real delight to play. For example, going back to the Temple of the Ocean King time after time is a real chore, by about the third or fourth time I really couldn't stand the thought of it, but knowing it would open up a new section of sea to piss about in excited me enough to endure it. The notemaking function on the various maps is a great feature, but they didn't bank on the fact that my handwriting, compressed down to a small pixel display looks more like the spillings of an ant's slop-tray than any form of typography. It means that what starts as well meaning notemaking and annotation soon descends into simple dots and lines.

It does also seem extremely easy, I don't want to sound like some big-headed git, but it really is a breeze, none of the bosses or puzzles have caused me to pause for breath. But that seems to be a bit of a feature with the handheld Zeldas of late; since the Capcom influence of Four Swords, the portable Link has been a cakewalk.

The battle mode is also a bit piss-poor. It's a simple game of cat and mouse, which can easily descend into a meaningless nil-nil draw if both players know what they're doing. Having experienced multi-Link heaven with 4 Swords, this is a little disappointing.

I must admit that I haven't tried the online marketplace for swapping boaty items or pirate booty, but I will cast judgement on it anyway. I can't really see the point in it - if rupees were more scarce, I could see the treasure hunting being more important. If I actually cared how fast my boat went, I could see how the customisation would be worthwhile, but as it is, I'm more concerned with the main quest to be distracted by these endeavours.

I am being a little runty for mentioning these small qualms. Overall the game is incredible, the implementation of the touch screen is amazing; only Animal Crossing uses the screen in such a wonderful manner. There are so many lovely little bits, where drawing on the screen produces something great, I can't single one or two out. This is not because I cannot remember any right now.

The sailing is great, shooting the cannon at the enemies is amazingly pleasurable, I found myself drawing extremely ludicrous paths to the next island simply so I could shoot the shit out of some more of those skull bastards. It would be great if the sea was a little bit larger, so you could have some of that pointless voyaging that we loved so much in Wind Waker.

This all equates to the point that I was trying to make earlier, that it shouldn't take a review from a oik like me to make you want to go out and buy Phantom Hourglass, chances are that you've already been out to buy it. And good for you!

I haven't managed/bothered to take any photos, or even steal any screenshots from more professional sites. So here's a video I've had from Youtube, I started out looking for that video of Emily from X-Factor slapping someone happy, but when that search turned out to be a washout, this was all I could take from it.

I notice none of the people in the advert are playing the game in their house on the sofa, while their girlfriend watches Nigella Lawson, which is the only real way to play any handheld game. Who on earth would play this outside, where Joe Public can see you and then proceed to mug or mock you?

SEGA's rubbish

2007-11-01T18:39:00.001Z

...belongs in here

I tried to think of some rubbish SEGA games that I could recommend they put in such a bin, but I couldn't. Except that nextgen Sonic. And I reckon that SEGA Superstars is probably bumwad.

Street Fighter IV - Pre-emptive Dismay

2007-10-28T21:23:00.000Z

Why aren't we more excited about the prospect of Street Fighter IV?

We are a little bit excited. Street Fighter III was pretty good, but nobody wanted to play as any of the new characters, all the Super Arts and EX moves were terribly complicated, and I personally haven't got the mental capacity to learn all these things. I just wanted 3 or 4 special moves for each character, so it's like a nice easy game to learn, like chess, or Buckaroo.

I bet it's full with as many characters as could fill a small country, and 80% of them are dicks. They'll all have dreary reasons for wanting to win the tournament, none of the heart-warming tales of woe, like Dhalsim just trying to raise some money for disadvantaged blind orphans, or Zangief fighting to show the world how powerful mother Russia is/was.

Beat-em-ups used to be the best things ever, now they're just for twats who know how to pull off 39 hit combos before the round has even started; they'll be the same twats who dress up like characters from their favourite manga. I hate them. They're ruining the things I quite like.

Rejoice! Our Free Wii-mote Jackets Are Now Shipping!!

2007-10-20T11:06:00.000+01:00

We got this in our inbox today:

"Dear Customer, Thank you for your request. Your Wii Jacket(s) are in the process of being despatched and will be with you within the next ten working days This e-mail is for information only. Please do not reply. Kind regards, Nintendo Customer Services."

Rejoice! Winter is here and our Wii-motes can wrap up warmly!

We're also extra excited because we only have 3 Wii-motes and we asked Nintendo for 4 jackets! Advantage us.

Now Playing... Paper Mario and Mario Kart

2007-10-12T11:28:00.000+01:00

We've been off work for most of the week, so we've had plenty of time to play games that aren't available on the XBox 360. Which we can see thanks to UPS (and not the bastard Microsoft) should be here sometime today. Fixed. We can only hope.

So it's Friday and what have we accomplished this week?

We've finished (for the first time) Paper Mario! Yes the N64 one, we haven't got the Super version for the Wii yet. Thanks to the Virtual Console we've managed to go back in time and play one of the games we always wanted to, but never had the time to. What a fantastic game!! We can understand why the Metacritic score is 93! It is an absolute gem and a lot of fun to play, we just couldn't put it down for a minute. From starting off in the little Goomba Village, to taking down King Bowser way up in the skies atop Peach's Castle, you are presented with some of the funniest and sometimes most difficult adventures with Mario and his friends yet. We didn't even tire of the sections where you play as Peach and end up sneaking round the castle!

face it, never gonna happen

We completely recommend this Virtual Console download if you haven't played it yet. Oh and we will definitely be hunting round the shops and EBay for a reasonably priced Thousand Year Door for the Cube too! We may even find ourselves shelling out some dosh for the Mario & Luigi games too! Or do we just jump right in and go for Super Paper Mario?

With news this week of worrying developers murmuring about the Wii's future and their unwillingness to invest in a platform with an uncharted future, you can only wonder where their problems stem from? We've paid 1,000 points for a game we just couldn't put down. To us that is a small price to pay for such a great game, given that the title has already had it's run on the N64.

Now correct us if we are wrong, but haven't Nintendo implied that the Wii is the cheapest and easiest console to create new titles for? Surely the ball is in the developers court then? They should be more worried about coming up with something fresh, new and equally as addictive as some of the titles we haven't been able to put down yet? We don't require big budget Halo 3 titles because we're happy with the smaller more interesting games like Katamari. Nintendo aren't going to let this one die, maybe the casual gamer did buy it after seeing Wii Sports round their mates house, but they'll probably buy your game too! (Provided you put it in front of them, price it and market it well)

stop that you! just make us some games

Anyway, we digress. We finished yesterday by running through the four cups on Mario Kart 64 at 150cc. As far as we can remember that's all you had to do in the game? We've unlocked the "Extra" mode to get the mirrored tracks and we've been in hoots again pissing about on Toad's Turnpike in a backwards fashion. Its funny to think that we paid fifty quid for this back in the day. When you think of the latest iterations of the frenzied racer you certainly feel like you get more bang for your buck.

See, we can't help but compare the sheer amount of hours we've spent on each title, and it's fair to say that until Mario Kart DS appeared we have spent less time on each new title. Super Mario Kart took a lot of our youth along with Killer Instinct and Super Bomberman. Mario Kart 64 was one of the few titles we could afford and only got sidelined when Rare hit a double-whammy in 1997 with Goldeneye and Diddy Kong Racing appearing along with their addictive challenges.

The Gamecube iteration really didn't hold our attention for too long. We were more interested in this XBox Live thing that was kicking about, and if we played our Gamecube it was probably going to be for the Four Swords or Sega Soccer Slam. Problem is these days that we can't play any of these on our Wii because we had one of those US/JAP Gamecube thingys and all our games don't want to play nice with our PAL Wii. Datel, hurry on up with some sort of new Freeloader thing please!

bikes? karting? here? hmmmm

So with another couple of announcements this week regarding the Wii version of Mario Kart we can only hope that it will follow the wonderful example given in the DS version and once again recapture our hearts, and of course of spare time. So far it all seems positive! We've just noticed something about 12 people online and something else about motorbikes? Maybe we're looking at something more like Project Mario Racing? (Sorry we couldn't think of any other way of merging Gotham with Mario... Project Gotham Karting? Hmmm nope.) Either way we just want to play the damned thing. It certainly isn't the game we are most excited about - that illustrious award belongs to Smash Brothers Brawl. We're subscribed to the Dojo on our Google Reader and we just can't wait for the bloody game to get released! Talk about packing so much in to one game! Nice work!

Hmmmm. Back to the now. So we've had a week of N64 titles and a massive Lost catchup session on series 3. It didn't do much for us when we first started watching it, but we've found ourselves strangely compelled this week! Apart from this we've spent our time not winning an award and pressing refresh on the UPS tracking information website waiting for that shitting 360.

Hope you've had a good week too - what's happened in your gaming week?

P.S. I hope we lose some weight before next year!

SHOCKING NEWS: We Didn't Win An Award

2007-10-12T10:34:00.000+01:00

Are we really shocked? Yes we are! We're still shocked that we even got nominated in the first place for a Games Media Award.

Are you responsible for putting us in the "Best non-commercial site / blog"? If so please let us know what inspired you to do so, because we don't understand! While we don't post to this site when we feel like to make money or to get nominated for awards, we really do appreciate the nominations and we hope to keep doing this for as long as blogger is free!!!

We're very happy to hear that the winner is non other than UK:Resistance, one of the sites that inspired us to get out and dump our thoughts into the wide worldy internet thing. Congratulations to Gary and all of the other winners too. The event was awesome and we ate loads.

We just want our bloody 360 back now so we can play Halo 3!!!!

Rarest Playstation Game Ever?

2007-10-02T19:08:00.000+01:00

For only the fifth time in 18 months, the inhabitants of GOY towers are on the move, which means another bout of rummaging. Things we had completely forgotten about have made their presence felt. We're pretty sure that 90% of gamers are at least a little bit like us, and hoard entirely unnecessary items of merchandise or ephemera.

Some of it is taking up space that we now need for grown up things like ironing boards and a garlic press, like those 30 odd playstation one demo discs, but some of these are real finds, worthy of note. I speak of course of things like the Super Mario Jigsaw Puzzle, various copies of Mean Machines magazine, and the pile of Street Fighter comics, including the adaptation of the JeanClaudeVanDamme adaptation (which was on the telly the other week - it's so bad it goes past being good again, into being bad and then out into being good).

But there comes a time when we have to do things we'd never do, sell the 'retirement fund' - a special selection of rare games and bits that we know draw the top dollar. This week saw the time draw near.

CASTLEVANIA - SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT with lovely art book and soundtrack CD

So this little beauty found it's way onto a popular internet auction site.
It was a thrilling battle to the finish line, the wonder of consumerism all concentrated into a small 7 day auction. Anyway, it sold for a amount of money in the area of £75. Which will probably be spent on a combination of Phantom Hourglass, Pro Evolution 2008, or that garlic press I've heard so much about.

The point of this bleating on and on about my own successes in the field of international commerce was to ask whether Castlevania, Symphony of the Night, is in fact the RAREST PAL Playstation 1 game OF ALL TIME. We know Kula World was a bit rare for a while, and Tombi, but is this old vampire jaunt the rarest of the lot? Your thoughts please.

While thinking aloud about this post, a local asked me why on earth anything in this age of mass production would be rare, and in particular a game in a popular series, published by a large videogame company? We didn't have any of the answers, and thus pretended that we hadn't heard the questions.

I'm just off to play the fuck out of it before I send it off.
(unless of course, you are the person who won the auction, in which case I'm off to make sure it's safe in the oxygen vacuum chamber I set up to keep if fresh)

Day Four: Still No XBox 360, Everyone Else Is Playing Halo 3. We HATE MICROSOFT.

2007-09-28T08:29:00.000+01:00

We detest all those sites that reap Microsoft hate. To be honest we detest any sort of bashing, at least any that is undeserved.

We can however, justify our "bashing".

We're PISSED. (not drunk, right now)

Still waiting for the device at the service centre? THIS IS RIDICULOUS!

If anyone from Microsoft is reading this - specifically anyone from the UK service centre... WHAT THEY HELL IS GOING ON? You can't still be waiting for it - UPS took it away days ago! Do you actually have my 360 or not? If you do then DO NOT implement a system that is supposed to update people with the repair status if it isn't going to actually do that job!

We're not sure how to make it any clearer. Phoning you doesn't help. Emailing you doesn't help. We are at your mercy and it is WRONG. Where is the customer service? You cannot treat all of your customers like this. Well maybe you don't, you may just be trying to piss us off.

Well done, you succeeded.

You can get away with it too, it's not like any of this is going to drive us to buy a PS3. The only thing we can do is to sit and wait or actually go out and buy another 360.

WE WANT TO PLAY HALO 3 YESTERDAY!

We're throwing down some sort of gauntlet here. Your opportunity for redemption. Show the world that you can care. Write a comment on this site. Email Wratty. Publish a statement. Show us that you acknowledge our existence.

Or just happily sit there as always just soaking up the little inferior pieces of negative press that you always get.