It's a slow news month

Hey Jimbeeer, i hear you cry, why are there fewer witty insightful thoughts and musings this month than normal? Are you getting bored or something?

Well the main reason is there's absolutely buggery flip out this month, what being the backlash of exmas. So far we've had Burnout Paradise which holds your attention for about the same amount of time it takes to smoke a cigarette.

I sincerely believe i've had the game on pause longer than i've actually been playing it, so i just sit there blankly, listening to the serene classical music and let the auto camera pan up and down the empty highway while i skin up and smoke a spliff. As i sit there i think precisely nothing, i do wonder why i'm not playing it. Then i play it in between spliffs and I realise why. It's just that teeny bit boring. Not to mention frustrating when I've taken that tiny wrong turn in the race, then i watch my position drop from first to last in the time it takes to cough.

So i turn it off and play Splinter Cell: Double Agent, but i'm stuck on the second mission in the JBA headquarters, you know the one where you have to get the blueprints and get the voice commands. Spent 20 minutes running around, scratching my arse and watching the seconds tick down, then i turn it off and see if i can get some entertainment from the XBox console, like messing with the resolution, brightness, that kind of crap.

What's coming up in the next couple of weeks then eh?

We've got Devil May Cry 4, Mercenaries 2, The Club and Conflict: Denied Ops.

Or in other words: absolutely fuck all.

At least nothing interesting. I'll probably get the above games but i can't see me actually playing any of them to completion. They might just hold a bit of interest until something decent comes out.

I'm so fucking sick of fps where you're military/ex-military/lone gunner/world war 2 serviceman/modern war/biochem meltdown apocalypse survivor and you gun down wave after wave after wave then boss, then repeat until completion.

Of course we've got Smash Bros for the Wii coming out soon but anyone who's played the other 2 on the N64 and Gamecube knows that Smash Bros is only good when played in very small doses, if you've got a whole bunch of mates to come round and play 4 player it gets pretty good fun and quite manic. If you're like me, you have very few friends, even less that'll come round to your house, then you play the single player game on easy, complete it in half an hour and then only play it every now and then over the next 6 months.

Ah well, at least S04E01 of Lost is on tonight, but due to the sodding WGA strike there's only 8 episodes instead of 16 like there's supposed to be.

Let me be the first to say:

FFS!!!!!!!

Ah, classic games

Watched a documentary over the weekend called 'The King of Kong'. Absolutely great film. All about the world champion of Donkey Kong and the challenger trying to beat his record on it that he's held since 1982.

Classic games were great. If you've never done it you want to get hold of M.A.M.E. and get hold of all the greats. I know modern games are wonderful and immersive but not one modern game of the last 10 years is as difficult as most of the arcade games in the 80's. Most people's game of Donkey Kong doesn't last above 3 minutes. And Pac-Man; how many people can actually last over 10 minutes on that game? I certainly can't.

Also the score was key, today's games are a journey from A to B, there's no real score as such. But the 80's games were all about the score, getting your 3 letter initials on the illusive top 10 gave you immense bragging rights, especially if your local arcade was decent enough to save the scores when they turned the machines off.

Of course, growing up in Blackpool during the 80's had its perks as i was down at the arcades every friday night with my £1.20 pocket money. 10p a game, 12 games, and that would keep me there for at least 2 and a half hours. The secret was to only play the games you could last a while on or if you were good at something, you could play street fighter and winner stays on. Also i was damn good at Dragon's Lair II so 10p could easily last me half an hour. Completed that bugger eventually!

In case you're too young to know half the games here's a short list of the absolute pinnacle of classic games:

• Donkey Kong
• Pac-Man and all derivatives
  
• Crystal Castles
• Ghosts n Goblins
• Joust
• Marble Madness
• Commando
• 1942
• Gauntlet
• Combat School
  

I know i've missed a couple of belters but the list is just off the top of my head.

Also if you think you're pretty good at a classic game try checking your score against the Twin Galaxies website that's the official place for classic game scores. These guys are the absolute best in the world at any classic game you care to mention.