The state of games in Northern Ireland……

Ahoy there gamers,

I'm from Belfast in Northern Ireland and I kinda' have a problem with the games for sale here these days. Today's games are all about being big! Having massive ad campaigns and spending years in development, although most of the time the hype destroys most of the fun associated with the game anyways. I mean dont get me wrong i'm gonna play the **** out of GTAIV when it comes out and i'm a major XBOX360 fan, but what do you do when you just want to divulge and go back to the days when gaming was simpler, I'm referring to the early 90's. The reason games were simpler those days was mostly because they were just fun and making money on a game was just an afterthought, and also I was too young and stupid to know what the hell a worm in a space suit really meant.

The fact that retro doesn't exist at all in this place makes me pretty annoyed and being 19 years old I still associate games being the best in the late 80's and early 90's, owning a few good retro consoles like the NES, Mega Drive (Genesis), SNES, Master System, Sega Saturn, N64 and I even managed to track down a Dreamcast a few years ago, you can tell my favourite games all include sprite based combat or the awesomeness of side scrolling platformers. The two most memorable games to me would definitely be Chrono Trigger for the SNES and Comix Zone for Mega Drive; those games were the best because they were so **** hardcore!

I wasted many a rainy day in this fair city playing 2 player versus matches in Virtua fighter 2 for the mega drive (Genesis), having a whack at golden axe and beating guys twice my age in mortal kombat 1…..raiden upper cutting Johnny cage off the bridge into the spike pit…..those where the days!

These days games are all to **** corporate and I especially mean EA, these **** are the destroyers of independent games. If EA bought over every company in the world, every game we know and love would basically be turned into an annual over priced ****-fest with special editions like Guitar Hero 13 "Spring Edition" and people would just loose interest in games altogether.

So if you live in Northern Ireland and you're unhappy with the current state of the gaming industry, what can you do to satisfy your retro needs?

Nothing…..

Absolutely nothing……..

Unless you wanna use EBay!

After a good few hours of research I discovered in Belfast there is basically no where to by retro games, a few gamespot or game stores used to stock maybe a handful of SNES cartridges but now even there gone!

So It turns out if you wanna buy any retro games in Belfast, about all you can do is use a computer that is located in Belfast to log onto EBay and buy away, not much help when you don't feel like buying stuff off a site that sells AIR guitars for actual ****

Besides from knowing someone with a mighty collection, I myself have around 20 mega drive games and around 15 N64 games so that's not much to work with…or being near a convenient car boot sale, there really isn't anything you can do about it.

So I guess at the minute the only real viable option you have if youre a retro junkie is get one of the these ( a pc controller) download an emulator and get yourself some free roms.

It doesn't compare to actually owning the game, but in this place it's as close as you can get to having a packed retro collection.

 god damn xbox 360!

I got my x box 360 at christmas, its now july and i STILL cant hook it up to the internet, no matter how any different cables and sockets i try it just wont work and its doin my head in. Then a few days ago i was told that you cant hook the Xbox 360 to your computer if you have your internet hooked up to a USB port instead of the ethernet cable, and if you have that then you cant do it at all.

What the hell for? is this true and if anyone else has encountered the same problem let me know if you fixed it cause im freakin out!

Well as sum of you ay have noticed (or not) there hasant been any gamespot activity on my behlaf for a while and i opolloigze for that but im back and you have my full attention!...........well kinda its still kinda hectic round here.............woo hoo waaa!

This is just some of the wolverine stuff i did recently

My buddy spawn, drawn by john mc farlane (me) but created by todd mc farlane, weird huh

Holy crap i just bought this game and i have to say it kicks ass. its pretty much like the budoki games combined with final fantasy and it works very well, so for all you people that play RPG's get this while you still can because it is a quailty game!

Holy crap i just nought that movie on dvd and it kicks ass, some of the best fight sequences ive ever seen, especailly cloud and severoth at the end, damn

I just read that people like to list there movie collections on this, so here goes!

• Spiderman,
•  Spiderman 2,
• x-men,
• x-2,
• pirates of the carribean,
• Rising arizona,
• time bandits,
•  get shotry,
• evil dead 1-3,
• batman begins,
• bubba ho-tep,
• 28 days later,
• Hostage,
• Walking tall,
• Scary movie 3,
• billy madison,
• LOTR 1-3,
•  ace ventura 1-2,
• Sin city,
• robin hood: men in tights,
• see no evil hear no evil,
• dodgeball,
• jay and silent bob strike back,
• shaun of the dead,
• dawn of the dead,
•  kung fu hustle,
•  the holy grail,
• Life of brian
• zoolander,
• clerks, a
• nger managment,
• natural born killers,
• airplane 1&2,
• road trip,
• equilibrium,
• mystery men,
• the warriors,
• kill bill 1&2,
• the tuxedo,
• the punisher,
• three amigos,
• desperado,
• El mariachi
• once upon a time in mexico,
• lock stock & two smocking barrels,
• Snatch
• dogma,
• south park,
• evolution,
• spaceballs,
• Blazing Saddles
• hellboy,
• starsky & huch,
• underworld,
•  2 fast 2 furious,
• eraser,
• full metal jacket,
• the commitments,
•  the lady killers
• o brother were aret thow?,
•  ghostbusters 1&2,
•  anchorman,
• spawn,
• mallrats,
• rat race,
• chasing amy,
• stir crazy,
• bill and ted 1&2,
• without a paddle,
• hot shots 1&2,
•  alein,
• aliens,
• the crow,
• predator 1&2,
• godzilla,
• sgt. bilko,
• daredevil,
• school of rock,
• baseketball,
• orange county,
• the waterboy,
• me,myslef and irene,
• donnie darko,
• bubble boy,
• the naked gun 1-3,
• leathal weapon 1-4,
•  four borthers
•  be cool.
• The mask
• Lair lair
• dargonheart
• 12 monkeys
• rush hour 1&2
• Police Story
• Star wars 3-6 (a new hope etc.....)
• toy sotry 1&2
• the fast and the furious
• the matrix
• bio-dome
• the devils own

Thats all i can see, take that america

This year there are allot of collousal games coming out like the superman game for the 360, Dead rising which could be the turning point of zombie games for ever, Final Fantasy 12 which is a really anticapted game (i dont know much about it like). and im sure there are sum i cant think of.

By knowing these games and constantly checking on them, reading articles and watching videos of them does that mean that we are setting ourselves to be knocked down. Most games become over anticpaded and we are always disapointed by the way game turn out so maybe these games shouldnt be looked into so much. if we leave these games along before they come out then that means were are gonna be surpirsed no matter what because we have no idea or expectations of what this game should be like.

so if we leave them along and just let them work on it without being pushed for deadlines then maybe the games will turn out better......................or will they?

I've been using this site for about a week now and ive just got to say that everybody ive talked to so far has been really sound! cheers for that its good to meet nice people every once and a while.

ps. is there anybody out there who reads comics? and are there any female gamespot users? im not being sexist or nothin im just saying i dont think ive seen one yet and if i have and didnt notcie, my deepest opolligies.

peace

If anybody needs a sig or an icon made and they cant ue photoshop just sens me a pm or leave a comment with the information about it and ill ake you one if i can. gives me sumthin to do man.