Can't wait to reach good 'ol Level 10. What happens at Level 10 I hear you ask? At Level 10 I get to be able to submit video blogs! Bore you guys all to death with stuff that I'm interested in! Actually that's not true. I'll be opening up my video blogs with questions for all you guys to reply to. Stuff like what's the worst cover of a game in your collection or what's the most expensive title you ever bought.

Till then you can keep sifting the old school reviews I'm churning out. Once I've exhausted my collection of old reviews I'll start reviewing my collection. Going as far back as I dare should go! My oldest games go way back to 1980 so you've been warned!

I've now entered in all my material ever posted in Megazone magazine which now moves me onto the extremely successful Hyper magazine. Back in 1994 a major change in the industry was taking place. Mega Drive was slowly dwindling in sales along with the other 16 bit Super Nintendo. Talk of 32 bit was upon us and Sony of all companies was to enter the games market. Who'd have thought? Get ready for more retro reviews as I log onto Gamespot and post away! In the meantime check out the cover of the inaugral issue of Hyper magazine. 11 years on and still going!

Uploaded tonight for your viewing pleasure:

Bonanza Bros (SMS)
Pengo (GG)
F-Zero (SNES)
Predator 2 (MD/GEN)
The Simpsons: Bart vs the Space Mutants (MD/GEN)
Speedball 2 (MD/GEN)
Blue Lightning (LYNX)

Of those reviews the most controversial was my review on The Simpsons. It was altered much to my disgust and I think any true gamer will see why when they read it. I was told to get out of the editors office after I gave him a serving for messing with my review!

Just head to the bottom of this page and click on any of my recent reviews! Better still head to my contributions to see ALL my reviews listed.

My Streets of Rage review from Megazone April May 1992 was finally posted today after I re-typed the whole blooming article into the site tonight. That was not one of my best reviews me thinks but I did state that the game had the makings of a classic and still people mention Streets of Rage when talking Mega Drive/ Genesis.



I just wish they'd launch a number 4. Complete with old school game play and new look graphics. But they have to get Yuzo Koshiro in on the action or it'll just not feel right.

One of those good day days today. Got Mario Kart DS so NEW Super Mario Bros (gay name I'm sorry) will have to wait a little longer. Got it relatively cheap (AUS$47). But the big scoop was getting a Gameboy Micro for a gob smackingly low AUS$50!!!! I honestly figured it to be a mistake. But no mistake was made. GBM is now mine and I'm really stoked!

Firstly Mario Kart DS. I love this new title. Short time was spent fooling with the settings to get Wi-Fi set up. But a connection was made and my choice to invest in a wireless modem/ router was once again showing to be a god sent. Got stuck into a Region game. No single player nonsense as I figured I'd go straight into it. I was up against some stiff competition first up. Some guy who seems to live on their with 10 times more wins than anyone else plus 2 other guys. I actually managed to come 1st in my first race! But the fun stopped there. Bummed out here and there and ended up 3rd. I loved the new weapons and the new courses look absolutely excellent. I'm looking forward to more MKDS.



As for the Gameboy Micro, well what a buy! Not bad considering I was originally seeing if I could find an original GBA but saw the price tag on the Micro and JUST HAD TO ASK! The Micro is damn small. Bit bigger than a box of matches. Screen is really cool. So bright and easy to view. Buttons handle well but L and R buttons are a little way off to reach in a hurry. This thing is best suited to RPG's I think. Text can be read with little hassles. Face plate is a cool idea. My first eBay search shall be to get the Game & Watch plate as I collect Game & Watches (have 12 G&W's with 3 of them in original boxes!). Down side to the Micro is it won't run Gameboy Colour or plain old sucky GB games. No real heart ache but Zelda: Ages and Seasons are games I'm meaning to finish off! But overall this new mean little monster is one heck of a console. I'm not even sure if you could class it as a console as it's so small!

That mysterious force, better known to us regulars as the Gamespot Ranking System, has always been... well mysterious. But I've sent my level berko by going up to level 7 from 5 in just 2 days. Let me see... 11 reviews in one day, average word per review being 1000 and most of them on old old titles from years gone by that NO ONE ELSE has placed a decent review on (sorry but "played it, it sucked, buy X instead" doesn't, shouldn't constitute a review in my books) deserves a little push in the rankings I say.

While I am blowing my trumpet let me just continue by letting you know that the old crusty reviews shall continue. There'll be no new game reviews till I finish my quest of unleashing my old material unto the unsuspecting public!

Before I finish off I'll explain a coupla things to those of you who:

a) Live outside of Australia (poor you!)

b) Were not around when the 16-Bit wars were heating up (again poor you!)

Megazone was a nationally sold magazine both here in Australia and New Zealand. It was owned by Sega Ozisoft who distributed Sega games and other Amiga/ PC titles of the day. So the reviews were not always... unbiased. One thing I didn't stoop to doing was bowing to managerial pressures to push scores and generous remarks up. Maybe that's part of the reason I no longer work in the industry? LOL It covered mostly Sega with the odd token Nintendo title chucked in and PC stuff as well. They became Sega Megazone and eventually defunct. RIP Megazone.

Also Hyper magazine was the other magazine I wrote for. I had the honour of having printed works in their #1 issue. They still print today and have been around for over 10 years. Big achievement in this tough industry and my hat goes off to them! Hyper was much more funkier and hipper than Megazone and this was especially evident in the Bohemian atmosphere of their office. I still remember being at their office when they unvieled the Sega Saturn for the first time and editor Stuart Clarke yells out "Aww that's 5hit!" when we saw Daytona USA for the first time! That was a bad moment in Sega's already sketchy past!

Well I hope you enjoy the reviews and please excuse the references to 90's bands music or anything localised that will have you foreign readers saying "WTF?". It's all part of it's charm!

I've done it. 10 reviews in one day. OK so I cheated by using my old printed material from my days on Megazone magazine but I had to get that stuff republished one day as it was killing me having it tucked in a box and not unleashed on the net!

Keep coming back as I've only gone through about 5 magazines so far. Many more to go! :wink:

:!: You'll find my reviews under my "Contributions" page.

Ambitious I know but it's been bugging me and until I complete it I won't rest! I am cataloguing all my old reviews from Mega Zone, Hyper and any other rag I've been published in from my brief stint in the video game industry back in the 90's and getting it online. Partly the reason why I want to do this is that it pains me to see games listed on this website with no box art nor no reviews. I know they are old and crusty but some of those old crusty games offered alot to many people once upon a time. Besides it's a crime that the history of gaming hasn't been monitored as well as it should have been.

I have a box of old mags to go through that weigh a ton and so this could take a while. Keep returning to see what old dark title I scan and copy next!

Feel in a stupid mood? Wanna see something that'll get a laugh out of ya? Watch this crazy ass GTA Vice City video some guy has put together using a PC mod and GTA: Vice City in a kinda tribute to Benny Hill! Enjoy!

Just got word that a mate of mine who use to be all jealous of the fact that I was working for Sega here in Sydney Australia on the Sega Hotline as a professional game player is now working for Sega in Japan! So basically he saw my Sega Hotline job and raised me a Japanese location! This guy speaks fluent Japanese which is something I never got the chance to learn in school. Back in 1990 I was running my own Fanzine (as we didn't have internet back then we resorted to more dire actions to get our opinions out there!) called "The Sega Times" and once I got my job in Sega I kinda let it go and stopped running the fanzine. But we wanted to run up a magazine of our own simply called Vid Gamzin' which was going to feature ALL consoles. We had our own artist who thrived on drawing SF2 characters with huge muscles and small heads! We had mates queing up to get reviews printed. There was me with the internal access to Sega and Gwyn my mate who wrote the longest reviews in a flash and LOVED RPG's!

Well the magazine didn't eventuate for one reason or another. Mostly because I was as poor as anything spending money on going out on the piss! But mostly because some people who promised to kick in and fund it ran off when the time came to produce the dough. But who'd have thought 10 years later there'd be this whole internet thingy and games would be downloaded and portable colour games would be played via a thing called Wi-Fi and against people from around the world?

Good luck with the job in Sega Gwyn and you know one thing is for sure. I'm as jealous as all &*^&^%&! LOL :D