Lazy month for blogging…

Yeah I know. Not much new post action this month. Been away for a few family things and a ton of work meant I had little to no time to throw some Harrod mirth your way. Service will resume during April hopefully! I have fished out a few tat titbits for you from the attic. A few scans of some old Emap rags with which to regale your senses. A little tale or two from the GameFan period that will surely dazzle your imagination. Maybe some new games to talk about as I have nothing going since I knocked Frontlines: Fuel of War out the park. Actually, I need to finish The Club. Which reminds me. I read an interview in last weeks MCV with the agency responsible for the creative behind The Club. Some chap was boasting about the critical acclaim their work was receiving. Right. What a crock. Good packaging sells products and The Club didn't sell. If you're an FPS and you don't sell on the 360 then you're either a diabolical game or the marketing money was spent on drugs and booze. Since I own the game and it's fairly decent I can only surmise that the 'critically acclaimed creative' was another cynical agency attempt to produce something arty so they can get themselves a Nike campaign.

The Golden Age

Right up to the moment I started at Emap, everything I knew about gaming was learnt from the arcades. My coin-op career spanned from the 80s labor club classics like Pong and Space Invaders, right through to the 90s Soho test center tournaments involving Street Fighter and Tekken. I worked at a local arcade when I was still as school and got to play pretty much every major release on free credits once the place was locked up for the night. The king of the arcades in those days is unreservedly Capcom. They were so consistent in quality and so perfect in execution. Monster hits like Ghosts 'n Goblins, Trojan, Black Magic, Forgotten Worlds, Section Z and others sucked down so much of my time. So it was news from the recent Capcom Digital Day event that got me very excited. I knew that they had plans to reinvent some of these classics and bring them back for XBLA but just how they would turn out was still unclear. Well, general opinions from some respected journos would suggest that Capcom have done good! Commando! 1942! Bionic Commando: Rearmed! Whilst not my first choice out of Capcom's extensive library they're still all classics and the updated versions put on show are apparently awesome. Better stock up on the points for summer methinks.

Lost and found

On the final stretch of Lost Odyssey and it's been a cracking game. I have the choice now to finish off Gongora or try to complete the last lot of side quests to get a few more achievements. I'll be honest and say it's a lot of work for the small amount it would add to my Gamerscore. Frontlines and Condemned 2 are calling!
Love it longtime
Like most people I look forward to the usual blockbuster movies that come out each year. With two Marvel obsessed kids I have been following the progress of the Iron Man and Hulk films that are both due this summer. Sadly they both appear to be slightly too 'mature' for my lads so I'll need to placate them with some overpriced merchandise so they don't get too upset. It's very annoying though because the kind of kids that would take an Iron Man lunch box to school are likely to be too young to watch the movie. Go figure. Imagine if the games industry did the same? Manhunt rucksack and pencil case anyone?
Don't Workshop
Did a trawl of my bookmarks the other day and I came across some unusual stories about Games Workshop suffering from massive financial woes. A little more digging and they seem to be in a right old state. Job losses, closing stores, shutting down Black Industries and making a desperate bid to sell to new overseas markets to stem the blood loss. I always wondered how those GW stores made any money operating solely to push their own product rather than stocking other stuff and attracting more customers. It wil be interesting to see if the make it through the year…