Below os a list of my favourite Gamecube games.

Number 5

Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door



The original was brilliant but this was longer, better looking, harder, more expansive and had better gameplay. How a sequal should be done.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker



Better than Twilight Princess? In my opinion, yes.
The graphics are gorgeous and make the series fresh again. The sailing was a bit dull but it was new and different at least.

Resident Evil 4



I absolutely hated previous Resident Evil games. The controls and camera were awful, limited saves were annoying, the action was dull. But RE4 totally reinvented the series and I love it.

Super Smash Bros.



While Resident Evil 4 changed my opinion of a series, SSBM changed my opinion on the entire fighting genre. I simply cannot play other fighting games, I am awful at them and I find them dull. But this plays so differently to other fighters that I can not only tolerate it, I adore it.

Metroid Prime



Moving from 2D to 3D is never easy, but when the wait has been neary EIGHT years the anticipation was sky high. Then it looked like Nintendo were making a FPS out of Metroid! Thankfully Nintendo (or Retro) managed to capture Metroid gameplay in a first person view and made an instant classic.

Best Video Game



While Combat Evolved all but redifined console FPS it was lacking in only one area, multiplayer. Thankfully Halo 2 had full online support making it, in my opinion, the perfect FPS and the best game I have ever played.

Best Movie



The Matrix was just astounding. Brilliant fight scenes, unique "bullet time" effects that have been copied hundreds of times by other movies and a brilliant story.
The didn't enjoy the sequals as much, in my opinion it could have stayed as a stand alone film.

Best Video Gmae



I was young when I got A Link to the Past, I still enjoyed it but I didn't quite get it. Ocarina was my first Zelda game I really hyped and really wanted, and I was not disappointed. A truly epic game and when I got it again with Wind Waker I went and completed it again, it hasn't aged a day.

Best Movie



If you want to get transported into another world then this is the film to do it. I was totally engrossed from start till finish. And the battles were some of the most memorable in my cinema history.

Best Video Game



There are very few games that would make you want a console just to play it. But GTAIII is one of those.
Whenever I went round a mates house who had this game I just played it all the time. It was totally unique an experience.
Definitley the best PS2 game and my third best game of all time.

Best movie



The original was great but I really don't like horror films much. But Aliens takes the series in a completely different direction, and it is one of the best action movies ever.

Best Video Game



One of the best FPS ever.
This was the first FPS game I really played and the multiplayer alone had me and my mates hooked for months. I didn't even complete the single player, even though it was great, because of the brilliant multiplayer.

Best Movie



I had watched plenty of Disney films before but Spirited Away was my first non-disney animation and it is better than anything Disney ever did.
A brilliant fairytale told in a very unexpected and imaginitave way.

I think (for fun) I will just list my favourite video games and movies ever (IMO).

Best Video Games

At Number Five......



Did anyone not see this making the list?

Mario 64 is now a common classic and has a place in most peoples games collection. It was one of the first N64 games I got and offered me countless hours of fun for many months. I was quite young when I got it so I had no idea just how revolutionary it was, all I knew was that it was darn fun.

And I think you know a game is great when you buy it several years later for a handheld and instead of feeling nostalgic you enjoy it just as much as when you first got it.

Best Movies

At Number Five......



When I picked up this film on DVD I didn't really know what to expect. It looked like a spoof on the zombie genre and the name certainly seemed to follow that but it is so much more.

This is brilliantly thought out romantic comedy that takes its zombie theme increadibly seriously. This is a real zombie film that just happens to have a comedy focus rather than an action one.

This is basically a brilliantly crafted film that will delight you with its wit but still scare you and shock you with its horror and action sequances.

Nintendo have been touting their upcoming Wii console as if it were the second coming of Jesus. Wii will apparently save us from the humdrum of joypads and we will all be jumping around like monkeys waving our arms around while its graphic intensive competitors gather dust on store shelves.

But is that going to happen. Are Nintendo going to be able make us feel part of the action. Will swinging our arms to the actions of a golfer, boxer or bowler actually going to make us feel part of the action more so than realistic graphics, ingenious AI and real time physics.

I am of course talking about the fourth wall, the single entity that prevents us from actually being part of the game. The wall that means we are not actually part of the action. That means we are not the Master Chief, not Mario and not Solid Snake.

This wall is present in all games but it would seem the sole purpose of video game evolution has been to destroy this fourth wall and make us feel a little but more like that dude on the screen.

It is clear that Nintendo are taking a very different view on how this fourth wall should be broken. Nintendo think innovative motion sensing controls are the future. Microsoft on the other hand think extreme power will lead to a more realistic game world. And SONY seems to think we need both in one console.

After playing Gears of War on XBOX360 the argument of which console is taking the right path has become more intriguing. At least to me.

Gears of War is probably the first 360 game you look at and just know that it is next generation. You just know that this game was built for next gen. and really takes advantage of what the 360 has to offer.

And when playing it this shows. The superb graphics, AI and particle effects all make you feel part of the action. You feel like you are Marcus Fenix. When a grenade goes off next to you it does make you squint. When you plough a chainsaw through someone’s chest it feels and looks real.

I am just not so sure that the Wii will deliver an experience above that of the 360. I am still not sure an innovative controller is going to make me feel more part of the action. After all, isn’t a complete redesign of the traditional joypad the least organic evolution there is?
If we have grown up with the joypad (of which Nintendo were one of the first to perfect remember) isn’t it very unnatural to completely alter the way we interact with games?

After all is said and done only time will tell which console delivers the most absorbing gaming experience. I am still a firm believer that the Wii will deliver a very satisfying gaming experience and that it will definitely prove itself as a innovative piece of kit. But I am not so sure it will deliver a more satisfying and absorbing gaming experience than the 360 and PS3 which have the advantage of extreme power on their side.

I was recently handed power of the Wii60 Gamers Union where I was a charter member. The union is, as it sounds, a union dedicated to the pairing of Nintendo's Wii console and Microsofts XBOX 360.

There is already a core of 200+ members within the union but (sadly) activity has been slack for some time now. I even fear the union will get the dreaded AWOL status if things do not improve.

That is where you, yes YOU! Need to help me out :D

If you like the sound of this pairing then please come along and see what is happening in the union and maybe join if you feel so necessary.

You don't have to own both the consoles or even plan to own them. You just need to have an opinion on them and you can make this opinion heard on our boards.



Thats all for now.

Hi, I am back with a few new pics I made.

This would have been here quicker if my internet hadn't crashed and remained so for about a week. I had to make do with a very tempermental dial-up connection and trying to do this blog post with 56k would have been suicide.

I made these using a tutorial made by Master_Odin from Liquid Designs, thanks again. Here is a finished pic:

The rest haven't been finished because I didn't know how to. I forgot how to ad some finishing touches to the image before adding text so I decided to create a batch of sigs and choose my favourite(s) and finish those. Here are the rest:

More soon, I hope. 

I said a while ago that I was going to get into photoshop and try to learn the basics.

Well, I thought the summer was my best opportunity so I have been messing around and trying to create something pretty. For now it is just userbars but you have to start somewhere right?

I'll let you be the judge of how well I have done (bear in mind I have been using the software for two days):









Here are four Userbars I made for a union. I think the bottom one is the best.



Here is, probably, my favourite userbar I have made so far. I found this image of paper mario and stuck him in the leftbut I felt like doing something different with the background. So I made the background using tons of mario sprites from the original NES game.





Here are two userbars I made for Metroid. I made the top one first then added a couple of new images. I decided to post both because I am not sure which one I like most. Even though it is plainer I think I prefer the original.



And finally, my very first userbar (also my very first Photoshop creation). It is a pretty generic userbarbut I still like it.

And thats it (for now).

I think I will be messing round with all the features of this software before I create something bigger.

Thanks to the numerous tutorials on the internet that helped ease me into photoshop. I can't list them but just type "userbar tutorials" into google and you will probably see most of ones that helped me out.

Who knows, in a few months I might be making the tutorials and not just using them :wink:

Oh, and thanks to Imageshack for letting me host my "work" so easily.