Overload? No thanks mate…

One of the original titles for the magazine before we settled on Maximum. We were extremely lucky to be told beforehand that Overload was the title of a certain… you know, men-who-like-men top shelf rag. Must have been one of the few that Richard did not subscribe too but there you go! Boom. Da Daa! I glanced through a few issues I kept hold of and began to ponder the the reasons for its demise.
1 First off, too many fighting games. What were we thinking? I should have been punched hard in the face for throwing endless beat 'em ups and Neo Geo nonsense across every issue. Sure, it had its place but we went overboard even by Maximum standards. VF, Tekken, Soul Edge, Darkstalkers, KoF, more Tekken, X-Men plus a little more Tekken to wash it all down.
2 Too much import and arcade coverage. Nowadays I just laugh for a LONG TIME when I see the pages we wasted on King's Field. PC Games should also have been canned. Hardly any of our audience even owned a PC back then let alone care for the games on them.
3 Thirty pages with a purple background? Should have stuck with the Overload title methinks…
Zeppelin should have sucked godammit!
But they didn't which makes not being there so much more painful. Then we had to endure smug pensioners leaving the O2 arena gushing praise whilst keeping the false teeth in. Damn their eyes! World Tour now Page!

House full of elves

Been asked by the family to write down some ideas for xmas. So far it's a long list of Xbox games... hehe. List is getting shorter by the day though as some of the games are getting terrible reviews from the press. Normally I would not give a monkeys left nut about what the unwashed masses of 'professional game journos' would happen to think but in some instances (Blacksite) I think they might be on the ball.
GameSpot of bother
The firing of some chap I don't know from GameSpot seems to have the interwebs in quite a state. His treatment is pretty shocking but it's really not a surprise. Having worked for a fair few publishers and heard enough tales from the places I did not work I can confidently say that the 'suits' hold most staff in the highest contempt. These businesses are run purely on profit regardless of what the lower ranks might believe. You are there to make them RICHER! Still, Jeff has balls and took the CNET BS on the chin and walked out with his integrity intact. No doubt he will be much better off because of it and you gotta feel sorry for all the chaps left behind.
Tee for Two?
A interesting retail partnership I formed with some dear friends is close to becoming a reality in the next week or so. Following on from some tshirt ideas I produced for the popular shirt site Teefly.com, I have expanded this idea into its very own site. Not much more to say on it really other than when it goes live I shall let you chaps all know about it!

Whats the Story?

Wrapped up Modern Warfare on hardened the other night. Thoroughly enjoyable romp with the exception of the endlessly spawning enemies that had me gnashing my teeth on several of the stages. Oh, and don't even mention Mile High. Still, like the sucker I am, I will now go through it again on veteran to see if I can earn some extra points. Won't be for a while though as I have Assassin's Creed to work through first then Mass Effect and Blacksite after that. Oh Xbox joy!

Resident Tat

Maximum was one of the first mags in the UK to break the Resident Evil franchise to UK gamers. Of course the rest is history and no doubt it's success was purely down to our hyped previews... yeah, right! Still, despite Maximum dying on the newsstands it was much admired by the industry even if it was only for the chance to get more pages from one mag than all the others put together. Biohazard was also well up there on the office Tat-o-meter with large piles of T-Virus infected produce to enjoy. 99% of it was STARS gear like shirts, jackets and replica firearms which were just a little too expensive to hide from the boss. I picked out a few things I had left like this Anniversary collectors pack with the first three PSOne games and two bits of junk that came with the Biohazard briefcase. Both fall well within the circles of purest tat.

COD FTW!

Yes. It's superb. It's insanely superb. I want to play multiplayer ALL FREAKIN' DAY!!! I felt the same with Team Fortress 2 but no one plays that! No such problem with COD4 as the servers are packed with players. Ground War and 17 other guys going mental on each other is such a rush. A major plus is not having to listen to the usual crowds of pre-teen American 'doodz' with their squeaky, obscenity-laced drivel that we had to suffer with Gears of War. Speaking of Call of Duty 4, I threw together a background for the Live Theme contest they ran on the official COD website recently. Well, after the dust had settled and the votes counted I luckily got my entry chosen for the final pack! The theme is free and becomes available on Live on 16th November. My image will be seen on the 'Games' blade and doesn't look too bad seeing as I had little time to put it together. Congratulations also go out to the three other winners!

Modern Warfare in 12 hours!

That's how long I have to wait before it gets rammed through the letterbox and torn from the packaging for rampant playage. Well, I will have to wait a little longer as I have crackerjack deadlines on at the moment but when I get the chance. Of course that will mean all the other games get put 'on hold' for the foreseeable future. Orange Box, Sonata and VF will need to sit tight. Virtua Fighter 5 is especially enjoyable at the moment even though I am getting mixed results on ranked online matches. Plays like a dream online but, as I had not played VF for ages, I am extremely rusty and slow on the pad. As an ardent Wolf player I am getting mauled by the new characters like Brad, Blaze and Goh so got to keep practicing and figure them out. Still, don't have the time to learn like I did in the old days. VF2 was always a popular choice at the Emap haunt and was a Maximum favorite at the time. VF4 also got some serious workouts during our time on PSW but other than Richard there weren't too many others who wanted to play. Pansies.

It's all GO! here…

During my tenure with NMS I was asked to help out on the other Emap tomes every now and then. One such stint was knocking out the mini-handheld magazine GO! which was a freebie with C&VG. Working with Paul Rand we belted out this portable abomination every month and, as well as the layout of the pages, I also drew these dinky robots for the review section. I don't have any copies of it mind but I did hang onto the artwork.

Multi-tat! Gettit! Chortle... /coat.

Crawling through the attic unearthed this SNES tat treat from yesteryear. Once we sampled the four player antics this Hudson multitap provided we could never return to the Hori monstrosity we had been using before. Though we never used it for Bomberman I might add. Sorry Hudson!

Decent updates incoming

Been chocka with work stuff and no time to wipe one's backside so my apologies for a delay in new posts. Plenty of interesting tales are in preparation for future updates including some choice words on NMS freebies, Maximum, more top tat, Go magazine and others. Wrapped up Blue Dragon a week ago and it wasn't too bad at all. Ending was a little easy due to some insane power levelling that boosted the shadows till nothing could touch us. Blasting my way through Orange Box now so I can clear the decks for COD4!

Puzzling Tat of our Time

Now when you think of pastimes that rival video games in terms of fun and sheer pulse-racing excitement what is the first thing that comes to mind? Freakin’ jigsaws that’s what! They don’t come any better than this T.Hawk 108 piece classic either. Who needs Gears of War 2 when you can idle away the hours figuring out which part of Hawk’s jeans you have in your hand.
Ken ftw!
Capcom announced a new Street Fighter game with a cracking trailer which you can watch now on Eurogamer TV. Trailers aren’t the best way to get me enthused over a game but this particular example is truly superb. The paint splash effects and the stylish use of tones and shading are really nicely implemented. It’s unlikely the game will look anything like this of course but it’ll be interesting to see what Capcom have done to the brand this time around. What we don’t want is another SF EX okay!