Pick 5

www.Gamespot.com asked visitors which 5 games they could not do without. Got me to thinking. 400 or so in my collection which 5 do I pick? So here's my dream 5!



1) Gran Theft Auto: San Andreas (Xbox) - Man that game would just keep ya exploring for a lifetime me thinks!



2) NHL 2006 (Xbox) - A guy needs his sports and mine is Hockey (strange for an Aussie I know but... I'm strange!)



3) Mario Kart DS (DS) - Does this island have a hot spot? Hmm... may have to reconsider this one!



4) Halo 2 (Xbox) - This almost falls into the same catergory as Mario Karts query. Just shows how important online gaming has become!



5) Shenmue (DC) - Did I hear a pin just fall? No that is my final game! I just spent a week in Japan and I can't believe how well Sega captured the vibe of this country! The innocense of that game is something I truly admire.

Cool Spot (SNES) & Splatterhouse 3 (MD) Reviews Posted

Finally got some time to fire up the scanner and re-release some more crusty old school reviews of mine! This time it's January 1994. Sonics still on the mage covers, Toe Jam and Earl gets a sequel and the most excellent Super Empire Strikes Back gets released. So what does the editor give poor old Brian to review? Bloody platformers! Oh well. They were not too bad though for the time.

Atari Jaguar was also making headlines, not sales. I never knew that the Jaguar had slightly more punch than the 3DO. Both were cool consoles. Just over zealous with their goals. Or no realistic path set to achieve them! "It doesn't matter how good a system looks on paper, without good quality games, it hasn't got a hope. Third party licensees are very important. 3DO have already lined up hundreds of the buggers; Atari have less than 20 and this will probably be Jaguar's biggest problem." Funny the word Sony isn't even uttered at this stage! Hindsight's a wonderful thing.

From Megazone we now go to HYPER!

I've now entered in all my material ever posted in Megazone magazine which now moves me onto the extremely successful Hyper magazine. Back in 1994 a major change in the industry was taking place. Mega Drive was slowly dwindling in sales along with the other 16 bit Super Nintendo. Talk of 32 bit was upon us and Sony of all companies was to enter the games market. Who'd have thought? Get ready for more retro reviews as I log onto Gamespot and post away!

 

In the meantime check out the cover of the inaugral issue of Hyper magazine. 11 years on and still going!

More Reviews From the Vault of 1992

Uploaded tonight for your viewing pleasure:

Bonanza Bros (SMS)
Pengo (GG)
F-Zero (SNES)
Predator 2 (MD/GEN)
The Simpsons: Bart vs the Space Mutants (MD/GEN)
Speedball 2 (MD/GEN)
Blue Lightning (LYNX)

Of those reviews the most controversial was my review on The Simpsons. It was altered much to my disgust and I think any true gamer will see why when they read it. I was told to get out of the editors office after I gave him a serving for messing with my review!

Just head to my Gamespot page for all the reviews!

Streets of Rage (MD/GEN) Review Now Posted

My Streets of Rage review from Megazone April May 1992 was finally posted today after I re-typed the whole blooming article into the site tonight. That was not one of my best reviews me thinks but I did state that the game had the makings of a classic and still people mention Streets of Rage when talking Mega Drive/ Genesis.



I just wish they'd launch a number 4. Complete with old school game play and new look graphics. But they have to get Yuzo Koshiro in on the action or it'll just not feel right.

Nintendo GB Micro & Mario Kart DS

One of those good day days today. Got Mario Kart DS so NEW Super Mario Bros (gay name I'm sorry) will have to wait a little longer. Got it relatively cheap (AUS$47). But the big scoop was getting a Gameboy Micro for a gob smackingly low AUS$50!!!! I honestly figured it to be a mistake. But no mistake was made. GBM is now mine and I'm really stoked!

Firstly Mario Kart DS. I love this new title. Short time was spent fooling with the settings to get Wi-Fi set up. But a connection was made and my choice to invest in a wireless modem/ router was once again showing to be a god sent. Got stuck into a Region game. No single player nonsense as I figured I'd go straight into it. I was up against some stiff competition first up. Some guy who seems to live on there with 10 times more wins than anyone else plus 2 other guys. I actually managed to come 1st in my first race! But the fun stopped there. Bummed out here and there and ended up 3rd. I loved the new weapons and the new courses look absolutely excellent. I'm looking forward to more MKDS.

As for the Gameboy Micro, well what a buy! Not bad considering I was originally seeing if I could find an original GBA but saw the price tag on the Micro and JUST HAD TO ASK! The Micro is damn small. Bit bigger than a box of matches. Screen is really cool. So bright and easy to view. Buttons handle well but L and R buttons are a little way off to reach in a hurry. This thing is best suited to RPG's I think. Text can be read with little hassles. Face plate is a cool idea. My first eBay search shall be to get the Game & Watch plate as I collect Game & Watches (have 12 G&W's with 3 of them in original boxes!). Down side to the Micro is it won't run Gameboy Colour or plain old sucky GB games. No real heart ache but Zelda: Ages and Seasons are games I'm meaning to finish off! But overall this new mean little monster is one heck of a console. I'm not even sure if you could class it as a console as it's so small!

 

10 Reviews In One Day!

 Well OK I cheated. I scanned them from old old issues of Megazone I had stored away in the garage. But the transfer from print to screen was not smooth. OCR (Optic Character Reading) technology is a little wishy washy at best. But sure beats retyping them totally. These are the old games revisited:

 

Gauntlet: The Third Encounter - Atari Lynx

 

Test Drive 2: The Duel - Mega Drive

 

Streets of Rage - Game Gear

 

Mick & Mack: Global Gladiators - Mega Drive

 

RoadBlasters - Atari Lynx

 

NHLPA Hockey 93 - Mega Drive

 

Mickey Mouse: World of Illusion - Mega Drive

 

James Bond: The Duel - Mega Drive

 

Contra III: The Alien Wars - Super Nintendo

 

F22 Interceptor - Mega Drive

 

Yeah I know. Some real crusty ones in there. But I'm extrating these reviews as I find them. No order of preference! Quite a trip down memory lane indeed!

Old Skool Revisited

Ambitious I know but it's been bugging me and until I complete it I won't rest! I am cataloguing all my old reviews in Mega Zone, Hyper and any other rag I've been published in and getting it online. I'll be posting up the reviews on my www.gamespot.com profile (sirbargearse off course) and placing links to finished work up here on my blog as I go along. I have a box of old mags to go through that weigh a ton and so this could take a while.

 

Wish me luck!

 

 

GTA: Vice City (Benny Hill Style)

Feel in a stupid mood? Wanna see something that'll get a laugh out of ya? Watch this crazy ass GTA Vice City video some guy has put together using a PC mod and GTA: Vice City in a kinda tribute to Benny Hill! Enjoy!

 

 

Job Envy

Just got word that a mate of mine who use to be all jealous of the fact that I was working for Sega here in Sydney Australia on the Sega Hotline as a professional game player is now working for Sega in Japan! So basically he saw my Sega Hotline job and raised me a Japanese location! This guy speaks fluent Japanese which is something I never got the chance to learn in school. Back in 1990 I was running my own Fanzine (as we didn't have internet back then we resorted to more dire actions to get our opinions out there!) called "The Sega Times" and once I got my job in Sega I kinda let it go and stopped running the fanzine. But we wanted to run up a magazine of our own simply called Vid Gamzin' which was going to feature ALL consoles. We had our own artist who thrived on drawing SF2 characters with huge muscles and small heads! We had mates queing up to get reviews printed. There was me with the internal access to Sega and Gwyn my mate who wrote the longest reviews in a flash and LOVED RPG's!

Well the magazine didn't eventuate for one reason or another. Mostly because I was as poor as anything spending money on going out on the piss! But mostly because some people who promised to kick in and fund it ran off when the time came to produce the dough. But who'd have thought 10 years later there'd be this whole internet thingy and games would be downloaded and portable colour games would be played via a thing called Wi-Fi and against people from around the world?

Good luck with the job in Sega Gwyn and you know one thing is for sure. I'm as jealous as all &*^&^%&! LOL

Peeved Off at Cronulla Sharks

If it weren't for Cronulla Sharks (THAT'S MY THAT'S MY TEAM!) I would have had a perfect round in this week's footy tipping comp at work. Instead an upset in the form of a skeleton crew, Broncos, knocking over my team to ruin what would have been a nice way to end the weekend. Stupid stupid stupid Sharkies. I blame the Sharkettes. It's obvious they didn't cheer the boys on hard enough. Maybe they were too scared of the horse as it kept doing laps whenever the Broncos scored!

1st Anniversary Already!

Just a brief entry to say I can't believe that Yutang and I have been married now for one whole year already! Seems just like yesterday that we were as tired as anything waiting at Sydney Airport for our flight to Gold Coast the next morning only to find that we were to be stuck on the tarmack and then diverted to Brisbane due to flooding!

 

Just for the record we went to an Italian restaraunt in Cronulla to celebrate and a last minute live Orchard (with a more decent present to come) was the gift from yours truly!