Princess Peach: Showtime! (2024)

The next time I feel my brow furrowing and my blood boiling at the next incomprehensible TikTok trend, or when I'm coming under social major fire because I haven't heard of some ultra-megapopular popstar, then I really must take a second just to remind myself that it's OK. It’s fine to admit that I am not a spring chicken, nor am I the target audience for this kind of thing anymore, if I ever really was.

TikTok and Taylor Swift and Labubu will all get on just fine without me and my support. I will just have to stick to what's appropriate for my age and gender. Which, depressingly soon for me, will be trainspotting, birdwatching and fishing.

I had come to terms with all of that. But I still had to wonder what I was doing when I started playing Princess Peach: Showtime for the Nintendo Switch. By this point in the Switch's lifetime, Nintendo were really running at full throttle. They couldn’t buy a hit during their Wii U run for love nor money, but no such problems during the Switch days.

Princess Peach Showtime is the kind of game that not particularly many people were asking for, so it was a moderate surprise when it was announced. But you just knew it would be pretty decent, and it was exactly the kind of experimental work that a company can make when all their other sales figures and metrics are sky-high.

I should have probably recognised ahead of time that any target audience for this game would be, well, female. And probably under the age of 12. Rather the polar opposite of me, in other words. But I'm drawn like a moth to a flame to any kind of Nintendo-published first party game, so why wouldn't I give Princess Peach Showtime a go?

And from a feminist perspective, it's a decent leap forward. This isn't the first time that Princess Peach has fronted a game, you know. She had her own title, Super Princess Peach, on the DS; another gaming system from Nintendo that sold like hot cakes. But that title didn't exactly scream girl power, being that it was the highly temperamental and changeable emotions of Princess Peach that powered much of the game's mechanics.

Here, in Princess Peach Showtime, there's no such inhibitions, limitations, or any other snide design choices that would seem to subtly suggest, "well, we all know a woman can't really do this stuff, but let’s just pretend". No, Princess Peach Showtime keeps it real - the princess of the realm attends a theatre show one night, only to find it all falling to pieces when she gets there.

That's the game’s story, mostly, but the key point is that this is not some title about having to go and rescue Mario, or any other sucker in the Mushroom Kingdom for that matter. This is a Princess Peach adventure on her own terms, she ain’t leeching off anyone else’s creative endeavours here. Every other character in the game is original, most of them being funny little ant-people who serve as the actors and extras for the theatre's stage productions.

The key gimmick for this game is that each level is centred around a costume change for the Princess. Critically for my own fragile male ego, this doesn’t mean that the game is relegated into being some kind of Princess Peach Dress-up Simulator. Well, you can go and make slight alterations to Peach's pink dress, as well as the accoutrement sported by her helper buddy Stella the Sparkle.

That’s definitely points in the game’s favour. I always love unlockable customisation options, and I’d be lying to you if I said that getting new dress patterns for Peach didn’t make me feel a bit like Waylon Smithers anytime a new Malibu Stacey came out.

But never mind the aesthetic stuff - each level brings about properly functional costumes, each of which changes the gameplay entirely. I won't list all of them, but they are fairly unique - you've got Cowgirl Peach, who romps through Old West settings, often on horseback. There's Detective Peach, who has to solve riddles and mysteries in lieu of actual platforming; there's Dashing Thief Peach, making us all wonder when a top-budget Carmen Sandiego game is gonna come out.

There's even a Patissiere Peach, where the one and only goal is making several cakes and cookies in accordance with the on-screen instructions. Probably the best costume change of the lot is Swordfighter Peach, which enables you to do some fencing with enemies, featuring some slick combat gameplay.

There are some problems here, though. Firstly, even though a game like this shouldn't be terrifically taxing - it's mostly just a 2.5D adventure, going from left to right - sometimes there are frame-drops, lag and generally it can be surprisingly unsmooth. That kind of thing doesn’t bother me greatly though, having grown up in the Nintendo 64 days.

But even if the game was running full speed at all times, you'll find that you can get through the bulk of the game in no time at all. Each of the levels may be about five minutes or more, but there are only a few level-types each - 3 Patissiere levels, 3 Ninja levels, 3 Mermaid levels, that sort of thing. Even at a discount, you mightn’t get too much of your money's worth.

Also, for whatever reason, possibly to bolster the replay value a bit and make the appeal of the levels last longer, it's one of those that’s quite annoying to complete with 100% of the goodies, namely collecting all of the Sparkle Gems in a level. Pretty much every level contains more than one point-of-no-return.

A lot of the time, you’ll only have one attempt at grabbing a particular Sparkle Gem as well. This inability to get up and quickly try again if you miss one, means you may have to repeat a particularly level half-a-dozen times before you can properly get everything.

I'm not saying this is a difficult game, far from it. Yet it's one of those games where you could get a bit bored, your mind may wander, your attention may lapse. And then you take a few too many hits, or you miss out on that split-second Sparkle Gem, and you sort of wonder if it's really worth it to get everything.

Again, we go back to the target audience thing, and I know that when I was 9 years old, princess-loving-little girl or not, I had absolutely no problem in trying some video game level 50 million times before I actually managed to do the business. For a bitter, jaded mid-thirties fool who wouldn't even know how to take a dress off, this is surely not the game for me. But that’s fine, really. I’ve always got my birdwatching and trainspotting.

10 April 2026

Pokémon Legends: Z-A (2025)

It has become a little bit fashionable and a little bit too easy to attack Paris for being the French city to end all French cities. It’s true that I have been to Paris, even attempted to speak a bit of French, parlay some of the old Fran-say, only to be met with English in response. But hasn’t everyone?

I at least knew enough not to accidentally find myself in a restaurant eating pigeon, frog’s legs, or even pigeon’s legs for that matter. And for whatever faults Paris has, at least it can always claim one thing - it ain’t London.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A sees us return to the Kalos region, specifically Lumiose City, the Pokémon version of Paris. Similar in nature to how the first Legends spin-off title, Legends Arceus, was something of a reimagining of the fourth Generation of Pokémon games in the region Sinnoh, Z-A brings us back to the world of the sixth Generation of Pokémon, originally featuring in Pokémon X and Pokémon Y for 3DS. Did you get all that?

Pokémon had been done in 3D before then, on the Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii. If you really wanted to get into it, you could say that the fifth Generation of Pokémon, released late into the regular old DS’s life, had some 3D effects.

But the 3DS games are where the 3D Pokémon models first came to be in the mainline games, including the permanently-aloft Flying-type Pokémon, as well as the low effort animations that carried over to the Nintendo Switch era of Pokémon - a tiny little hop representing the Double Kick move, Bite attacks being animated with flying fists, and so on.

A few original sins committed in Kalos, then. But generally, the games were fine, just very easy to beat. Here’s an interesting one though - unlike its predecessor, Legends Z:A doesn’t take place in some sort of antiquated version of the Kalos region, before electricity and actual Pokéball technology came about. No, this is a present day rendering of the region, something like 5 years on from the timeline of when the original 3DS games released.

But here’s the even more interesting piece, not to mention the most divisive part of the whole game: the game is somewhat open-world, although open-city is really more accurate. You will be confined to one city for the entirety of your quest, a Pokémon pastiche of gay Paris, down to the landmark tower that is somehow visible from every window and horizon around.

You are wondering, “is there any way to leave the city, there must be, surely?” Actually, no. You are then wondering, “well, the city must be enormous, right?”... actually, no again on that one. You will be running around it quite a bit, but don’t expect it to take you a half-hour to get from one end of the game world to the other. You won’t be asking anyone “Où est la gare?”, let’s put it that way.

So where do you even catch Pokémon then? Well, there are designated Wild Zones all throughout Lumiose City. Simply step up, touch the translucent green barrier which repels even the strongest charging Pokémon and their attacks, and you will find yourself in parks, courtyards and clearings where wild Pokémon roam.

Typical, isn’t it? No sooner is there a bit of nice green space set up in your native city, than vicious dogs, birds and icebergs take up residence, ready to attack you at a moment’s notice.

Just like in Legends Arceus, it’s not just your Pokémon who may come under threat - some of the Pokémon, especially the large, red-eyed Alpha Pokémon, will come right after your player character and will knock you out if you ain’t careful. Paris and France in general does have good healthcare - and there are always Pokémon Centers just a brisk jog away - but it’s still no less spooky having the likes of Alpha Sharpedo chasing you down.

Coming back to the Kalos region does, fortunately, bring about a return of what is still Pokémon’s best gimmick: Mega Evolution. You can forget about your Gigantamaxes and your Terastallizing - Mega Evolution is where it’s at, giving old favourite Pokémon a breath of fresh air.

There are no outright new Pokémon added to the National Pokédex in this game, unlike Legends Arceus, but there are 27 new Mega Evolutions, for the likes of Gen 1 classics like Victreebel, Starmie and Dragonite, plus many other deserving Pokémon who didn’t get the Mega treatment the first time around. You will spend a bulk of the game’s story fighting Mega Evolved Pokémon who have gone rogue and need your help to calm them down again in fun, tense and somewhat janky battle situations.

Speaking of jank, and speaking also of collecting items in this supposed open-world, you won’t just be running around on the streets of not-Paris. You’ll be up on the rooftops as well, smashing enemy Arboks and Mareeps with Earthquakes - presumably the inhabitants in the buildings below just accept that they have to put up with the noise and property damage, if they want a Parisian postcode so badly.

You’ll be running parkour courses all around the city, going from rooftop-to-rooftop, collecting all kinds of loose items, TMs which teach your Pokémon new moves, and Colorful Screws that can be traded for permanent upgrades. Don’t be expecting parkour like Mirror’s Edge or Assassin’s Creed or anything - as I said, it’s janky - but it’s fun to explore. You won’t get loot fatigue in this one; you can while away hours just running after the next sparkle, and then the one after that.

The city does turn dodgy at night though, when the battlers come out. This is the other half of the game - once you’ve spent the day collecting Pokémon, loot and whatever else, you also have a Battle League to work your way through. The battle system has been overhauled to a more frantic, almost real-time system, which is pretty interesting and works well, even if it’s more of a button-masher.

You start the Battle League as quite literally a Z-lister, having to work your way up through the ranks, one letter at a time. It would have been fun to do this all the way, a proper journey to the top. However, early on in the game you get bumped up to Rank F, though at least the plot becomes meatier from there.

It’s a little bit like the old Gym Leader Battles in the regular mainline games, get through 8 more of them against major characters, and you become the top dog. There is online battling and online trading as well, some of which is actually necessary if you want to get everything possible.

In the end, the game is typical Pokémon fare of the last 10 or so years - quite fun, very enjoyable, but pretty lacking in ambition and amazement, and it’ll probably get a bit old before you do everything.

Loads of nonsense dialogue to sift through once again, not a hint of voice acting, with the same old graphics, and a Pokédex smaller even than that of Legends Arceus. That is unless you purchase a €30 threadbare DLC which was advertised before the game even released, to which anyone with sense would adopt a snooty French accent and exclaim: “non!”.

By the end, you’re left having had fun, but bemoaning the developers’ laziness and attitude. Picture the fanciest French chef west of Alsace, capable of making the finest Lièvre à la Royale, instead eschewing all his skills and slopping up the greasiest, most gut-rotting cheeseburgers known to man. Fine if he wants to do it his way, and still tasty, no doubt. Mais quel dommage…

3 April 2026

Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line (1990)

I see that someone thousands of miles away from me has won the EuroMillions. A hundred million quid, if you don’t mind. That lucky sod. They’ll probably end up being unnecessarily frugal with it too. Or worse than that, they won’t even give up their job.

Can you believe how many people say that they’d keep working if they scooped the big prize? Well, it’s easy to look all noble and hard-working by saying that, but talk is pretty cheap, isn’t it? Especially after you’ve won yourself a nine-figure bank account.

Even if you were a diligent little worker, happy to slave away at your desk for the rest of your young life (and in that case, why would you even play the lotto?), you cannot tell me that you’d hang on to your job just to have “something to do.”

The first little bit of nonsense that comes your way, whether that’s a snotty email or a pilchard colleague or a broken piece of software or a manager with no understanding, you’d be straight out that door. No ifs, no buts. The only thing uncertain is whether or not you decide to defecate on your boss’s desk before you say sayonara to your impoverished colleagues for the very last time.

We sometimes do a group Euromillions punt in work, I suppose you’d have to call it a syndicate although that puts us a bit uncomfortably close to being labelled as a crime organisation. I think the most we’ve ever won by doing this is €16, which would go on to be immediately reinvested, by which I mean immediately wasted.

I decided to be all boring and awkward and drop out of the syndicate altogether, although even saving this extra fiver per week hasn’t been a comfortable experience for me. After all, what if they bag a massive win and I’m the only one not part of it? I know, I know, they could be playing until the heat death of the sun and still not win the big prize. But still, what if they do?

I remember one of the first times I didn’t join in with them was a Friday before a Public Holiday Monday. It turned out that a not-insignificant amount of money, a few hundred thousand, had been won in a “Dublin newsagent”.

I was sweating bullets, constantly refreshing the news, just in case that was the ticket I could have been a part of. The odds of this were millimetric really, but you still get that primal fear. But since my colleagues all showed up for work again on Tuesday, they must not have won anything, unless they were terrific liars.

And as mean-spirited as it is, I was secretly thrilled. I’d have never heard the end of it. I would’ve missed out on about seventy grand – very tasty, perhaps not strong enough to finance gangland drug wars or whatever other hobby I would want to take up. But imagine I had missed out on the top prize?

Although I’d still moan about winning 70 million Euro, only to watch it being split seven ways. A mere ten million will not pay for both my castle and my yacht, you know. So I’d have to win the lottery again, on my own. What’s the odds on two major lottery wins?

Does buying two tickets double my chances of winning? Does buying a million tickets guarantee it? I can’t see why not. You have to spend money to make money, that’s what the richies tell us. You’d be a fool to defy them.

After getting that second lotto win, what do you do? I’ve told you before that I’d immediately buy a European castle. But what then? Could having millions really become passé? Would there be any fun in gambling again? Perhaps I could move towards being a professional gambler, and blow all my winnings just as quickly as I’d won them? A fool and his money is some party, or so they say.

Make no mistake, the lottery is a hell of a compelling ‘draw’, to give you a little lotto pun there. And having the lottery as a new minigame provided just one of the many, much-needed innovations for the first Dragon Quest sequel. The original DQ game wrote the book on JRPGs, while the third DQ game was one of the biggest releases of all time, at least in Japan.

So how would Dragon Quest II, the middle child, fare? Well, in a nutshell, DQ2 is certainly more expansive than the first game, but its still bite-sized nature and improvements make it a far more palatable prospect to play. Forgive the alliteration – from this title onwards, each Dragon Quest game has been subtitled with a wild alliterative title. In this game’s case, it’s Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line.

You’ll still want a guide all the way through this one of course, and save states as standard – you must never let yourself fall victim to enemy hoards, because remember, getting killed in battle means you lose half your gold, which is your most precious resource.

Designer Yuji Horii does this on purpose, as a fervent follower of fanciful flutters (that’s enough alliteration). He’s a big gambler, and he wants to make you think about the gamble of pressing forward into difficult caves and dungeons, at the risk of potentially losing half your money.

So using save-states and rewinds might spoil this fun somewhat. But what kind of a fool wouldn’t rig the gambling odds in their own favour if they could? You can also access a basic lottery game in DQ2 and cheat likewise. This will help you net yourself a vital Gold Card for discounts at shops, cutting your grinding time significantly – finally, a bit of customer appreciation. Don’t think of it as cheating, think of it as evening the odds.

And at least you’ve got other compadres to pick you up if you fall, because you now lead a party of not just one, but three blank slates. Yes, the grind still exists but at least you’re not a lone potato out there. Still, that does also mean you’ll be up against multiple enemies at once in the random encounters here, rather than just one at a time. This is actually a step-up from the first game, if you can believe that.

These days, you can play this game fully remade in HD-2D on modern consoles, along with the first game. It adds a lot to the original experience, including a new party member. Though, in keeping with my status as an ex-syndicate member, I played Dragon Quest II by dodgy means – the Super Famicom fan-translation of the game. This port, naturally, has nice updated music and graphics from the NES original, and it’s a tad easier.

And it matters greatly which Dragon Quest versions you play, let me tell you. Will you go MSX, SNES, SFC, NS, DS, 3DS, PS4, PS5? Trust me, this stuff is like knowing which fork goes with your lobster. Or after you’ve won the lotto, which key goes with your cocaine.

Talk about gambling, towards the end of the game you might as well put your faith in the good old three-legged rocking horse, the Sad Ken of the fold, because your chance of success become infinitesimal. The designers readily admit that they didn’t properly playtest the game’s last couple of dungeons as they simply didn’t have time, and it shows.

The odds are massively against you, and just like the first game you’re gonna want to be save-stating after every battle in case you lose some progress towards the Blaessed Staff of Anorakia or whatever item is on offer. It’s still a bit like DQ1 in that a battle can turn against you on a dime if you shall be that unlucky.

You can grind your characters down to the bone, get them the very best equipment, perfectly execute what threadbare strategy there is, but still lose everything if the computer decides it hates you. And gosh, it decides that often.

There was one instance where an enemy mob ambushed us, and killed both themselves and all three of us before we could move. Now, in video games, I always set the text speed to its Fastest, which in DQ2 means messages will fire at you like an automatic rifle.

Well, split-seconds into this particular battle, I was told that we’d all died and jolly bad luck, old chap, that’ll be half your gold and it’s back to a faraway inn for you. It must have been the quickest battle in RPG history. Quicker even than the instant win battles in EarthBound. Quite simply, I was speechless.

So is a guide advisable, then? Forget advisable, you’d be a fool not to. This is a game so esoteric and obtuse that I might as well be playing it in its original Japanese for all the sense it made to me. I’d have a better chance at reading my cat’s mind. “If you don’t know, then I’m not going to tell you,” that sort of thing.

Certainly the villagers won’t tell you. Vague hints maybe, but never “search this exact, nondescript spot in the corner of a tiny room for an invisible item that is literally the key to you winning the game” – they won’t help you out with that one, no matter what translation you play.

The Dragon Quest series would vastly improve as it went on, and if you’re desperate, or just desperately geeky, you can still get into Dragon Quest II – just about. And certainly the HD-2D remake is the way to go here. But beating this game the old-school way, without the aid of save states, the most handholdy walkthrough you can find and more than a few hours grinding? You’ll have a better chance at winning the lotto.

20 February 2026

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (2000)

So here’s your story prompt - you’re sat on the loo, taking care of business and picking your nose at the same time. Then it happens: a red alert warning pops up on your phone, positively screaming at you, informing you that an enormous meteor will impact Earth in three days’ time and the cataclysmic smash will engulf us all in a hellacious ball of fire.

It’s a good thing you were already sat on the throne, because this revelation has really got things moving for you down there. It’s no false alarm, either like they had in Hawaii a few years back either - this is a bona fide apocalypse you’ve got on your hands. What's your next step?

Me? I’d just stay right where I was. Why not? There’s nothing I can do about it, except die. So why not die with a bit of comfort? You’ve got three days to prepare. 72 hours, you can get around the world in that time. But you can’t prepare for a meteor to hit you. No, that’s the sort of thing that you need a few months to acquaint yourself with.

There's just so many things that need doing, when it comes down to it. The grass still needs cutting, for starters. And I've been putting off this haircut for quite a while. I've got a few major downloads ongoing. I never finished Final Fantasy 8. And when will I get time to complete that most vital pre-death task of all, clearing my internet search history?

Immediately after the red alert warning, you'd get people screaming and scrambling around, all in a panic. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the meteor-heart. No, in my daily life I don't really have the time or energy to get stressed, so I just don't bother with that. I'm much more likely to treat impending doom with passive acceptance.

To wit, I would most probably greet certain death by standing with my legs apart, putting my head down between them, and kissing my butt goodbye. Although if I had a bit of time, I'd stand up on the roof of my house, strip off naked, wave an enormous Ireland flag, and blare Darude - Sandstorm through my phone.

This phone would then be held in place by my bumcheeks as I turned and welcomed the meteor with my mooning and erotic dance moves. Can you picture that? Good, I’m glad. That’s the thing about death, see - you have to embrace it. Dance, dance against the dying of the light.

At no time in Majora’s Mask did it ever look likely that Link would take such a cavalier approach. Like us doomed humans, Link’s got an apocalypse to deal with in this game. But this one’s got personality - this isn’t a generic asteroid he’s up against. It’s a very angry, iconic moon that's causing all the aggro. Not to mention a very bratty Skull Kid, being forcibly controlled to do evil by the malevolent Majora’s Mask in question.

You might remember Skull Kid from the indomitably popular Ocarina of Time. In fact, you might remember a huge chunk of the characters and assets from that game as well. Released less than two years after Ocarina, Majora’s Mask was considered a stiff challenge to the Zelda development team: get a new Zelda game out in 18 months, by whatever means possible.

Of course, a lot of recycling of assets had to happen to get anywhere near that target. Gamers who were around at the time will remember just how often Ocarina was delayed, after all. It must also be said that, by the turn of the millennium, the Nintendo 64 was nearly out of tricks - results had to be produced fast.

This all led to Majora’s Mask being a much more self-contained game: you start in Clock Town, located in the dead-centre of the mysterious alternate dimension world of Termina. The game’s four dungeons are located in the four cardinal directions, and you've got to evict the bosses of each of these dungeons in 3 days, or it's a fiery grave for all.

That's not 3 real-life days, mind you. We’re talking about a matter of 54 minutes, 18 minutes per day, which is a pretty tall order. No matter, you can always use your Ocarina to time travel back to the beginning of the 3 day cycle. But as you might expect, everything reverts.

You will lose all the bombs and arrows on hand - slightly annoying, but easily and quickly rectified. You will keep your grubby mitts on key items, songs, and your money if you remember to speak to your banker first. That’s all fine.

The real kicker is that travelling back to the start of the three-day cycle will erase all dungeon progress if you haven't beaten the boss. Not to mention that this is a game all about side-quests, being in the right place at the right time.

There’s no such thing as half-done in Majora’s Mask - it’s either done or it ain’t. I suppose the same rules apply for any impending apocalypse - there’s no point doing half the laundry, or building half a nuclear bunker. You’re either all in, or you suffer the consequences.

That was the crux of Majora's Mask when it released in 2000, a time when the Nintendo 64 was just about clinging onto the generation by its fingernails, fingernails which the PS1 was teasingly running its shiny Doc Martens over, ready to stamp down on the N64 for good.

That’s really going back a while, but the game has had a few re-releases since: a GameCube version, with the same graphics, worse sound for whatever reason, but unfortunate sudden freezes and crashes - very unfortunate, actually, considering you can’t just easily save and quit in this game. Many a gamer’s long work through a Majora’s Mask sidequest has been wiped by the treacherous GameCube edition suddenly deciding not to play ball.

If you’re looking for improved graphics though, the 3DS version might just be for you. Released in 2015 following the immense success of Ocarina of Time's 3DS port, Majora hit the 3DS as well, another portable Zelda adventure on two screens.

Let’s talk about items, another important thing for Zelda games to get right. And Majora’s Mask never did a great job here as such: with the severe reduction of dungeons, the item variety suffers as well: the items of the four dungeons are, in order, the Bow and Arrows, the Fire Arrows, the Ice Arrows and the Light Arrows.

Isn't that great? Predictable dungeon items, with very limited use for the latter two. A whole six Bottles instead of four (seven on the 3DS), which tends to be one or two more than necessary anyway. 3 spaces on your item screen are reserved for trading items which serve little purpose to Link beyond satisfying a character’s needs - until you go back in time and erase your kind gesture from history anyway.

But your item buttons won’t be left barren, as one of Majora’s Mask’s primary gameplay changes comes to the rescue: the masks. 24 in all, with all kinds of varying effects. 3 of them are major masks, constantly used in transformation throughout the game: the Deku Mask, the Goron Mask and the Zora Mask, allowing Link to transmorph into each of these three species.

Other masks allow Link to be rendered invisible, to speak to Gibdos, and best of all, to run faster. However some masks are just about worthless, used only for heart pieces, of which there are a whopping 52 - still a series record.

The graphics and framerate on the 3DS version are at least a lot better than the overambitious N64 original, and that was even with the (mandatory) Expansion Pak backing it.

The 3DS version also gives sidequest hints, and details of their starting points and your current progress are made more accessible. A big improvement from the original, where you could either use a walkthrough, stalk everyone at every minute of the day, or wisely say “to hell with that” and beat the game with 7 hearts and no optional extras instead.

As you might have gathered, there is quite a bit of emphasis on the build-up to dungeons in this game. This is the same angle they later tried in Skyward Sword, and it didn’t work well there either. It becomes the kind of stuff that simply obstructs the player from having fun. You can compound that frustration by a thousand if you get caught short with the time and you have to play the Song of Time once more, erasing all your progress.

I've said it before, and indeed it should go without saying, but a Zelda game lives and dies by its dungeons. Don't hit me with your Breath of the Wild retort either - at least that game let you keep your sticks and cooking pot lids, until they broke. With only four dungeons to its name, and the repetitive faff involved in getting to them, I find it hard to have fun with Majora’s Mask.

It’s a shame, and this game has gone on to become a sacred cow. It really does have a fantastic, foreboding atmosphere, often crossing over into the surreal. As a fun distracting game, though, I’m afraid Majora’s Mask was doomed from the first tick of the clock.

13 February 2026

Super Mario Odyssey (2017)

You don’t need to take a trip to my long abandoned Instagram account (and there’s a few of them) to learn that I’m not the most fashionable dresser. Back in the day, I dressed like a scarecrow.

I’m very much a function over form kind of man, I just see clothes as social necessities. So long as it keeps the wind from tickling my privates, and I don’t embroil myself in any tricky-to-explain work disciplinaries or court cases, I’ll wear it.

I think one of the main reasons why I’m such a fashion disaster is that my “wardrobe” is essentially a shelf beside my bed with that week’s clothes folded on top of it, often two abreast, both towers dangerously teetering like a block of ghastly flats just ready to collapse.

Each morning, I grab some articles of clothing from the top of this pile, and the winning garments are whichever ones have the least obvious creases. That’s my ensemble for the day.

See, that’s the teeny-tiny drawback you get with your modern day IT jobs - since you’re no longer required to dress like a filing cabinet, just another shirt and slacks merchant, you’ve now got to put some thought into what you wear.

Don’t worry, I’m acutely aware that women have fifty times as much of this mental load to contend with every day. It’s not just the clothes choice, but they’ve got to get their hair and make-up spot on, and even then there’ll probably be some snake talking behind her back or making backhanded compliments to her face, sparking off a political fracas.

Of course, I could always go buy some more clothes to throw on the pile, rather than getting my usual six days out of boxer shorts; that’s frontwards, backwards, upside-down, and then the same three again but this time you turn them inside-out.

But isn’t clothes shopping such a pain? Well, it is if you’re me. I usually just buy it as I see it, rather than actually going and trying the clothes on. After all, any filthy urchins could have gotten their grime all over that nice shirt, and in today’s virus-conscious times one can never be too careful.

I also dislike using the changing rooms because of the mirrors in there. I don’t get along with them, or see eye-to-eye with them should I say. Perhaps my belly is to blame (perish the thought) but are they the most unflattering mirrors you’ve ever looked in or what?

And the lighting, God. It all means that buying jeans can be a right old gamble for me, especially when the cartel of apparel stores still don’t seem to agree on what size “Medium” actually is. And you can be quiet with your derisive snort there, because despite my oft-bloated belly, I’m still a medium somehow.

But when I find those special shirts, jeans and sheuxs that fit so well and successfully take on that difficult task of hiding my lovehandles, then I tend to stick with them for as long as I can.

Or failing that, I just run with the classic plain-white-tee-under-lumberjack-shirt combo. My friends (fellow fashionistas, naturally) have even taken to calling them ‘Burkey shirts’. People sometimes say my fashion sense is ten years behind? Mate, I’m five years ahead.

You take my favourite pair of black jeans as another example. The legs are actually too long, they’re like bloody flares, so they keep catching under my shoes and getting scuffed and all cut up. I can put up with this annoyance of course, because they look the business on me. These are the sacrifices one makes to be fashionable, you see.

I’ll tell you this, I wish I could change my clobber as often as the portly plumber does in Super Mario Odyssey, and still look as good as he does. I want to say first of all that I’ve been dying for a Super Mario Galaxy 3 for a frightening 15 years, or just 7 years prior to Odyssey coming out on Switch in 2017. I shall just have to make do with the upcoming Mario Galaxy movie, I suppose.

In any case, I was gumming for a new 3D Mario game. Especially since Mario 3D Land and World just didn’t really do it for me. I think a surprisingly big factor in the hype for me was the vocal song ‘Jump Up Super Star’, sung by series old-timer Pauline of all people. Well, I’m sure there was a real-life singer actually doing the signing, but next you’ll tell me The Gorillaz aren’t real.

In the run-up to the game’s release, on more than one occasion I’d be found driving my car, windows down, blaring that song as loudly as my cassette-tape auxiliary adaptor could carry it. Why, you ask? Why not? I’ve previously made an Instagram post about Mario Odyssey, saying quite simply that if this game doesn’t make you smile, then balls to you. You ain’t worth knowing.

I’ll admit that, apart from getting roped in by enchantress-turned-songstress-turned mayoress Pauline, the other thing majorly drawing me into the game was the new capture gimmick. Simply toss Mario’s cap onto a T-Rex, and now you’re the T-Rex. Or you’re the Cheep Cheep or you’re the Goomba or the RC Car or my favourite, the Wiggler-type bug that stretches across chasms like an accordion.

You’ll run into all kinds of capturable (if I can throw my cap on such a word) enemies and objects across 17 levels. Some of the objects and creatures you can transform into are a bit boring and functional, but most of them are a real thrill to discover. Who hasn’t wanted to become a Hammer Bro?

The goal is to rescue Princess Peach of course, who this time is being coerced into marriage by Bowser. That’s a wee bit problematic really, but it’s best not to think about it too much. To get around the world in your large, hat-shaped ship, you’ve got to collect Power Moons.

No, not Stars, you gotta get that bit right. Stars are last year’s buzz. I can tell you that there’s over 900 Moons to grab in this game, which definitely gets the mouth watering. Sure beats 120 Power Stars, or even Galaxy 2’s total of 242 Power Stars, clear out of the water.

But keep in mind, a lot of these lunar buggers are just found right out there in the open, or available to purchase in shops, strangely enough. On top of that, there’s hundreds of special Purple Coins to gather, a lot less like the torturous Purple Coins in Galaxy 1 and much more like the pleasant Musical Notes in Banjo Kazooie. Throw in bundles of bosses, great music, heaps of ingenuity and non-linearity and you’ve got another 3D Mario classic that will stand the test of time.

In true Nintendo fashion, getting to the end credits of the game is manageable enough, but it gets tougher and tougher if you want to get everything. You will probably stretch the controls as far as they can go, as you close in on 100%.

The game will even gently push you towards motion controls on more than one occasion, which you’ll want to avoid. Thankfully, I don’t believe there’s anything that your dainty little accelerometerised Joy-Con can do, that absolutely cannot be done on a manly, straight-laced controller. You just might find some of the moves harder to pull off.

None of it stopped me from 100%ing Odyssey, spending over 50 hours to do so and having tons of fun doing it, until finally the time came to hang the game up. There it is now, on my shelf, pristine, almost winking at me. It’s like your best suit - it almost seems to tell me that I can have the utmost confidence and faith in it, that anytime I choose to wear Super Mario Odyssey, we’ll make a sensational pairing. Why can’t everything else on my shelf be as appealing as this?

6 February 2026

Yoshi’s New Island (2014)

Call me unambitious, but I’m happiest in life when things are completely unchanging and I can settle down into the most monotonous of routines. In such a state, time passes pretty damn quickly, which some might find lamentable, but I say there’s nothing wrong with killing time and even wishing your life away.

After all, what are the two best things in modern life? Yes, eating great food and getting paid. And the more time you while away, the sooner lovely meals and nice paycheques come around.

It’s probably for this reason that I didn’t play Yoshi’s New Island on 3DS until just recently, the game having come out in 2014. But if we’re truly honest, it might just as well have come out in 1995 for the Super Nintendo because all I’m seeing here is a tired old imitation of the original Yoshi’s Island.

I may qualify all of this by saying that I adore the original Yoshi’s Island, so a lot of this may come across as cock-eyed nostalgia. That’s understandable if you think so, but I would at least argue from a position of strength that the graphics of the SNES original are timeless - crayon, pastels, beautiful spritework, lovely cartoon backgrounds and a barrel-load of psychedelic effects.

Yoshi’s New Island on the other hand, looked hideously dated the moment it came out. In fact, the graphics look absolutely boak. If you’re an avid 3DS player, I’m sure you never bother using the 3D slider for most games, but even the very small added pop that 3D gives to this game is too much - it’s nausea in three dimensions.

This is a game where you play as the green dinosaur Yoshi, set many years in the past, and the goal is to reunite Baby Mario, who sits permanently astride Yoshi, with Baby Luigi. You see, a stork was on its way to bring the newly born Mario Bros. to their parents, which is a little different to how our awkward old sex-ed classes portrayed the deed.

You will notice of course that this is the exact same story as Yoshi’s Island SNES; except here, there’s a slight twist, and the stork gets the wrong house or something. It completely undoes and undermines the heartfelt ending of the Super Nintendo game, which is rather annoying.

It gets worse. The game is such a retread of the original Yoshi’s Island that, if you have any knowledge of it, you already know what the next level is going to be. Everything in the game is so sadly predictable. Oh look, the third level is in a cave. Oh look, the second world introduces Koopa Troopas and has a Castle full of Boos. Oh, would you believe it, world five is the snow world.

Everything is just so much blander as well - when you get to the sixth world of six, there’s not even a cool warping sequence to Baby Bowser’s castle, like on the Super Nintendo - you just sort of go up a mountain and do some of the (surprise) lava and cave levels. I have previously slaughtered New Super Mario Bros. for always beating the same drum over and over again, but at least those games actually do offer something new, at least every now and again.

In Yoshi’s New Island, there are only really two new mechanics: at very few points in the game, you can fire either giant eggs or metal eggs, which moreorless do the same thing as each other in that they smash through materials that you couldn’t ordinarily get through.

And then there are vehicle transformations, which were always terrific fun in the SNES game, but of course New Island had to mess them up by trying something odd - the vehicle sequences are entirely separate to the regular levels, and worse than that, you’ve got to use the 3DS gyro sensor and move your handheld around in order to move through the sequence. I don’t know how a game could possibly mess up turning into a Yoshicopter, but they managed it.

You know what else they messed up? Actually, two very objectionable things, but I’ll start with the music. Oh me, oh my, what can I say about the music? How best to sum it up? Alright, have you ever played a kazoo? You sometimes get them in Christmas crackers or vending machines or the like. They are maybe fun for about 10 seconds, and then they become bloody annoying.

Well, someone in their infinite wisdom decided to make the kazoo the backbone of this game’s soundtrack, and the result is possibly the worst soundtrack you will have heard in a Nintendo game. Even the ancient old NES stuff is more palatable. It’s not just the music either, but the direction - it’s bad enough that the kazoo music and the same horrid theme plays everywhere, but there’s simply no variety to it. The most milquetoast, middling theme plays in the caves, the castles, even the boss fights.

Oh God, don’t get me started on the boss fights. That’s the other thing I was going to mention, another reason to laugh at the game. Every one of the six worlds has two castle stages, each with a boss at the end. That means 16 bosses, and in the SNES game, that meant 16 cool, unique bosses, their sprites warped this way and that by the powers of the Super FX 2 chip contained within the game’s cartridge.

In Yoshi’s New Island, Kamek the evil Magikoopa is the boss for eight of those castles, and the other eight - well, not a single one of them is a patch on the memorable bosses of Yoshi’s Island. There’ll be no travelling to the moon to take on the giant raven, I can tell you.

God, I hated this game. And I could instance a whole load of things I specifically hate. I hate the delay when Yoshi goes to throw an egg. I hate that no animation or sound effect occurs when you have no eggs, but try to throw one. I hate that the controls are delayed, almost unresponsive, meaning your brain will almost certainly move faster than the game’s controls, unless you are 5 years old in which case you are most probably the target audience for this game.

I hate that many of the collectables in every single level are hidden in invisible item balls and you have to jump everywhere like a fool to find them. I hate that they haven’t even drawn any art for each of the levels. I hate that all of the sound effects are a slapdash mishmash of Yoshi’s Island, but mostly Yoshi’s Story and Yoshi’s Island DS, including those tired old Yoshi voice effects that we’ve been hearing since 1997.

I hate that there are no more bonus levels and minigames when you finish a level. I hate that it takes Yoshi a second too long to get moving at full speed. I hate that the final boss is, for some reason, the adult Bowser travelling through space and time to fight you for some stupid reason.

Yeah, I hate the fact that I can drop a spoiler like that and nobody will even care. I hate this game, and I hate the fact that they think they can release bad mockeries of the original Yoshi’s Island. I may hate change as well, but anything’s better than this mundane mess. Change ain’t always a bad thing, guys - maybe something original next time, with graphics and music that don’t make me wanna hurl.

16 January 2026

Super Mario 3D World (2013)

I have come to the conclusion that I love cats. We aren’t entirely sure if cats are fully capable of love back, of course. Sometimes, you get this realisation that they're only there for food and warmth. In terms of reciprocal loving gestures, they’ll tend to bring you back the occasional dead bird or mouse. Great, just the snack you wanted, right?

But it's traditionally been difficult to explain the appeal of cats to some people - you have to own one, or otherwise have one in your life, to really know. But then that makes me sound like one of those ghastly parents who takes great pride in telling other people, "you don't understand, you don't have kids" when you ask them to explain why it's acceptable for little Jaxxson to puke all over your shoes.

But if there’s still some kind of bitter rivalry between cats and dogs, then don’t worry - I’m not down on dogs just because I love cats. I’ve got support for both sides. But do you ever notice that cat people don’t tend to bear much ill-will towards dogs?

And yet I find that this pet camaraderie rarely goes the other way; dog folks will say cats are evil, which they aren’t… mostly. Or they’ll say cats are smelly, when I guarantee you that dogs are smellier. Or they’ll find some other perceived negative trait to hit cats with.

Maybe it’s an introvert versus extravert thing, this whole cats versus dogs business? And if that’s the case, then it’s little wonder the cats have purred and nuzzled their way into a soft spot in my introverted heart.

Of course I can accept that there are some proper mangy, borderline feral felines masquerading as pets out there. In fact, there are likely millions of cats like that. But that’s where you show a bit of cleverness - just leave that particular cat at the shelter, instead of bringing it home and having it chew on your toes everyday.

Nah, even I’m not that heartless. And even if I tried to be, the cat would have none of it. The second I showed disdain for the cat, they’d be all rubbing up against me, giving me purrs like an eight-litre V12 engine, and those big old eyes like Puss in Boots. You know cats, it’s what they do.

I also believe, and we’re getting into some pseudo-science here, but I really think cats give off some chemical that makes you obsess over them and makes you feel the need to take care of them. Huff too much of that mysterious stuff though, and you’ll end up with toxoplasmosis, which is no bueno.

As long as you can avoid that though, you’ll find cats to be a beautiful companion. Now don’t worry, I don’t tend to go controversial in these pieces. Not all the time, at least. And I’m not going to make a rod for my own back here by suggesting that cats could threaten the title of Man’s Best Friend, a title long held by the doggies.

I’m just saying that, when a cat curls up on your lap, and has a little sleep there, you feel great. You feel like the chosen one. And you don’t dare move a muscle for fear of rousing the little ball of fluff. You kind of know, deep-down, that they’re strictly pragmatic creatures, and are most likely sitting on you solely because you’re a primo source of warmth. But what’s so wrong with a cute little symbiotic relationship like that?

Yes, cats are alright by me, and they should be alright with you too, provided one hasn’t scratched your face to bits or anything like that. And plainly, they’re alright with the Japanese as well; you will have seen the famous maneki-nekos, the beckoning cats, who adorn almost every shopfront in Japan, and Asian restaurants worldwide for that matter, all there to bring great luck and fortune, typically in the form of big-spending customers. Who says black cats are unlucky?

The cats are more yellow and pink than black in Super Mario 3D World, and for sure you’ll be seeing plenty of them here, as they’re the major new motif and power-up for this game. You’ll even be seeing piddly little Goombas adorning little cat-ears in this game. And I didn’t think anything could make cat-ears unsexy, well, I’ve been proven drastically wrong.

This is a direct sequel to Super Mario 3D Land on 3DS, which was a decent old game, though some might have preferred the raccoon theme that game had going on. Well, with this game releasing on home consoles, namely the Wii U and later the Switch, the floor was opened up to simultaneous local multiplayer for up to four players, which is mental fun - for a few minutes at least. Some issues do become apparent.

Really my main problem with this game, and this could very likely be me messing up, but it can often be difficult to tell where you're jumping, especially if the camera is pulled way back and you're making some terribly difficult jump in the background.

It makes you feel as if you've got absolutely no depth perception, as if you could only see through one eye. Maybe this is Nintendo's way of driving the cat theme even further home, because we all know that cats are never too far away from deciding to claw one of your eyes right out of their sockets - if you don’t believe me, you just try giving your own cat a bath and see what happens.

It doesn't matter too much, since you'll only lose a wee bit of progress when you fall off the level, and you'll have dozens if not hundreds of lives built up. But, as is usual for a Nintendo game, the main game may be easy on the whole, but 100%ing it is where the real work begins.

It does get a bit much though - you'll need to beat every single level with all five characters (the two plumber boys, the girl and Toad, plus an unlockable character) which is a bit extraneous, to say the least. We all wanted to see Peach in a cat costume, I know, but doing so in Mario Kart 8 is probably the better way to go.

You can forget about doing all this in a multiplayer setting, I’ll tell you that. Help is always nice, but having multiple characters onscreen quickly becomes difficult to follow. It was a cool idea and selling point, but I think that 2D Mario just suited same-time multiplayer a lot better. I don’t rate the multiplayer in Super Mario 3D World at all.

This is one of those games that originally released on Wii U, before getting a re-release on Switch to capitalise on the many millions of missed sales. Normally I would lash out with some rant against the Wii U here, but there wasn’t too much nonsense with this title.

It wasn’t held back by the Wii U, in fact it’s one of the most Wii U-ey games out there. And Super Mario 3D World is a fully-fledged Mario title, no matter what console you play on - though obviously the Switch remake is the way to go, with its nifty additional Bowser’s Fury sidegame, bringing some proper open-world gameplay to Mario.

The game keeps on going and going with unlockable worlds behind unlockable worlds, not to mention memorable musical themes and some fantastic level designs. The Nintendo Mario design magic is still present here, be in no doubt about that.

But this is one that you’re better off tackling alone, as it doesn’t take too kindly to big loud crowds and all the noise that goes with it. There you go, then; in Super Mario 3D World, Nintendo have created the purrfect cat game simulator. At least, until Stray came along.

9 January 2026

WarioWare: Smooth Moves (2007)

I’m fully aware that impressionable children may be reading this, so I hate to advocate mind-altering drugs here, but I just want to say that I am thankful to alcohol for many varied reasons. In general, all it’s ever done for me is make me shouty, belligerent, uninhibited, free-spending, giggly, light-headed and stupid. And for all of that, I’ll be forever grateful for its existence.

You see, I know you’ll find this hard to believe but I used to be a dreadful stick in the mud. If ever a moment passed when I wasn’t at the top of my mental game, I would feel embarrassed. Do you know what this left me as? An overly studious, financially conscious bore who wouldn’t have known what a girl was if one came up and… well, not sat on me, but you know what I mean.

Actually, not much has changed for me from Monday to Friday; I’m still Mr. Boring with double grey denim. Once Friday afternoon hits though, and I have a few uninterrupted sleeps ahead of me, that all changes.

Suddenly I’m on the double gins, ranting and raving like Ollie Reed, and it isn’t long before my bum is out. There used to be the mandatory traffic cone on my head as well, but that was more something from my student days and, as you can imagine, I’ve grown up a lot since then.

I know, I know. I really shouldn’t be making the case for lowering oneself into being a drunken, hollering idiot. But you can’t argue with the laughs inebriation can bring. There’s a lot to be said for crashing around drunkenly in shopping trollies, or getting up on your mate’s shoulders and having jousting matches with one another - especially if you’re only witnessing this as a safe-standing spectator.

Then there’s “Watch This’‘. I love Watch This; anytime someone comes out with Watch This, I’m standing to attention like a meerkat because it’s 100% guaranteed that something is about to go dreadfully wrong for that person. Their suicidal overconfidence will immediately come back to bite them, painfully.

If you call a Watch This, then you’ ae committed to whatever crazy plan you’ve just conjured up, and you must go through with it. You now have a audience. Whatever you do will backfire horrendously, and you’ll be left embarrassed, beetroot red, possibly even mangled, in front of everyone watching. Sounds great to me.

And even if you do end up getting carted off to the hospital with your leg pointing the wrong way, and your ankle gone so bulbous it’s in another postcode, then at least you’ll have another fabulous story for life. That’s assuming of course that you can even remember it. And having a repertoire of drunken stories to draw from really is invaluable to any raconteur.

You’ll want to leave your inhibitions at the door and maybe even pour yourself a preparatory drink or three before sticking on WarioWare: Smooth Moves for Nintendo Wii, this I can tell you.

This game was released in the very early stages of the console, when the Wii was moving like hotcakes and literally any game would have sold by the sackful. It was also a time when kids, adults and even your granny were amazed by what the Wii Remote could do, or as this game calls it, the Form Baton.

Of course, with hindsight we now know that the Wiimote wasn’t all that capable really, good for not much more than waggling around the place. But it was really new-wave thinking for us gaming plebs, a bit of motion control. The WarioWare games had become known for giving test-runs to all of Nintendo’s console gimmicks - the twisting and the touching on GBA and DS. God forbid you’d have to mash a button every now and then.

Even busting this game out at a party could cause you some initial embarrassment, given that the design, presentation and cutscenes are so wild, so insane, so quintessentially Japanese. You may find yourself apologising once or twice, especially when one of your social peers has a microgame that called for them to frantically wash a cow’s bum.

No hyperbole there, Cow Anus Washing (not the actual name) really is here, and it’s just one of the 200 or so 5-second microgames featured in Smooth Moves. Anything really does go in this game, and it’s almost impossible to explain WarioWare to a layperson - you just have to sit down and feel its madness for yourself.

Of course, the biggest flaw of these games is that you can pretty much be done with at least 85% of the game in about two hours. You wouldn’t want to have spent full whack on this game back in the day, that’s for sure. These days you can bag it for about a tenner, which is a lot more like it. After all, you don’t get two pints for a tenner anymore. I’m not so sure you’d even get a gin and tonic for a ten-spot these days.

Get this one out at a party with a nice few drinks and a Wii Remotes (with the strap, of course - safety first) and then stand back. You’ll get a great laugh, watching people do fast paced microgames using such elegant poses as The Umbrella, the Samurai, the Mohawk and the Big Cheese.

It quickly becomes the most ridiculous and therefore the most funny thing you ever saw. It probably won’t be long until someone falls over or smashes a glass or your TV or their collarbone, but that only adds to the laughter. It all adds up to what the Irish call ‘gas craic’, which can range from a sensible chuckle all the way up to forcible dismemberment.

It really is just the longevity that holds WW: SM back, but how do you even combat that? The microgames by their nature can’t last anymore than 5-10 seconds each, so even if you crammed a thousand of them in there, you’d be lucky to get three hours worth of gameplay, plus a few admittedly funny cutscenes. But that’s OK, I’ve had nights out and pub stints that have lasted less time than that, and they’ve been some of the best nights I’ve had.

It’s between this and the original WarioWare for title of best WarioWare game, I reckon. Treat Smooth Moves as that quirky liqueur you break out only every so often, just the right tonic for a guaranteed burst of fun and memories. With any luck, you’ll wake up the next day with your muscles feeling stiff, a slight headache nagging at you, and you’re wondering what on earth just happened.

2 January 2026

Advance Wars: Dual Strike (2005)

It’s a fantasy of most men to be this kind of swashbuckling, international man of leisure, finding ourselves in sunny climates all over the world, sipping martinis and Old Fashioneds, bedding a different dusky maiden every night and generally being a tanned lothario with an incredible amount of chest hair.

I’m sure it’s the same for women as well. Seeing all the girls together, a dozen or more, and embarking on a boozy holiday is a fearsome sight to behold. Individually though, women also want to be sat by the pool, Sex in the Beach in one hand, book in the other, their summer body well and truly achieved and newly bronzed, as the very hunky locals fawn over her.

I’m not sure I’ve got the courage for that kind of solo travel though, if I’m quite honest. It’s the eternal struggle of the self-conscious mind like mine: perfectly happy in my own company, but always fearing that doing things alone would be too weird.

Going to the cinema on one’s own always seems to be the one that splits the room here. I’ve never done it. I’m not sure I know anyone who’s done it. But I would never look down on folks who go and catch yet another Marvel movie on a Wednesday afternoon, sat alongside a load of bewildered pensioners.

Travelling alone though, that’s something I’ve barely done. I’ve spent a couple of weekends away by myself, but nothing further than the next county over, which is pretty much a stone’s throw. It’s not as if I was broadening my horizons or anything. In fact, people wondered if I was depressed. So I stopped that immediately and concluded that solo travel probably isn’t the preserve of a healthy mind.

You can imagine my surprise then, when my missus told me that she had travelled solo all the way to Hong Kong, before we were together. Call me a small-minded, little league yokel, which is essentially what I am, but I don’t think I could muster the bravery for travel like that.

A proper voyage into the unknown. No common language, a completely different culture. And let’s face it, I’m sure Hong Kong is generally safe, but a solo, white, female tourist is always a target. Meanwhile, I’d be shaking with fear on the plane over, I’d hide under a pile of coats for the duration and then I’d probably be dying to go home again.

That’s perhaps one rare instance where me and her differ. But one thing we can agree on, especially now that we’re together, is that travelling solo is one thing - but travelling abroad with each other is pretty damn nice.

Of course, hopefully one has the luxury of travelling with a partner who, you know, doesn’t hate them and doesn’t kick up rough at the first opportunity. Many’s a relationship has been blown to bits on a holiday, when both participants realise they can’t stand each other’s company. Get the right travel buddy though, and you can have a great time anywhere, even if the whole thing gets rained off and you have to spend the week cooped up indoors.

You just can’t beat a good pair. I’ve always said that. And that was the only avenue left open to the developers of Advance Wars: Dual Strike for the Nintendo DS, after the first two Advance Wars games became increasingly broken and unbalanced.

They had added new Commanding Officers to Advance Wars 2, alongside Super CO Powers, new music, a revamped campaign mode, better artstyle and more. It’s hard to push a game of this genre further, so the new gimmick this time is having the ability to control two COs at once, who you’ll swap between at your leisure.

For the unfamiliar, and as a quick debrief, Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy game where you build land, sea and air military units and try to blow your enemy’s ass off the map. Making the difference between factions is the playable COs, who each have their own traits, strengths, weaknesses, designs, and not to mention, their goofy personalities.

Bringing a second CO to the party allows for all kinds of overpowered combinations in battle, as well as opening up the use of the Tag Power, which is a bit like Double Jeopardy, where the scores can really change. Here, you can unleash all sorts of game-bending strategems, and even get a free turn.

I don’t know, imagine a game of chess where you could move twice in a row. Or even three times. And all your pawns become rooks and bishops. And you get to launch missiles at your opponent’s side of the board. That’s the kind of shenanigans we’re talking about here, so needless to say, it pretty much ends the game whenever you can get your hands on a Tag Power in this game.

Pain in the backside? I say no. I love it in fact. I secretly love a game that allows you to break it in two, or lets you get vastly overpowered in some way. And of course the reverse is true: when those powers are invoked against me, I don’t applaud. Instead I respond with severe weeping and gnashing of teeth. It’s not any fun unless I win, right?

But that’s not the only gimmick at play in AW:DS, we’ve got a whole other second screen to play on, thanks to the DS. The two COs can be split across a battle on two fronts, top screen and bottom screen. The top screen can also be a fully aerial battle, high in the sky. You can even send units from the bottom screen to the top.

This really is a game that’s properly jam-packed with content, from the amount of COs available, to the huge amount of War Room maps where you can try for a high score. There’s also Survival mode, with different challenges to overcome. There’s even a sort of real-time combat mode, which sounds like it should be a great change of pace, but in reality it’s just a bit of a confusing mess. Still, it’s there.

You’ve got the Campaign mode of course, the main one-player constituent of the game. There’s a bit of a rubbish plot about the evil Black Hole Army somehow coming from nowhere, again, and coming to power, again. They do this by sort of secretly harvesting energy from the land, turning it into a wasteland while no-one was looking. Heaven knows what the Geneva Convention would make of that.

One of the things I really dig about this game is that there’s a rudimentary level-up system for the COs, which will allow you to customise them with all sorts of Skills that augment their abilities even further. An army with impregnable defences that costs nothing and moonwalks through forests and mountains? It’s yours, if you want it.

Realistically, AW:DS took the series as far as it could go. It was difficult to get any more ridiculous than this game. But when they tried to dial everything back for the next instalment, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, I don’t think people were on board with that, either.

I say stick with Advance Wars: Dual Strike. This really is a game you can play forever and ever. Better than that, while the game didn’t have an online mode, it did of course carry a Versus mode, only one DS and game needed. And you know by now that the only thing better than a solo campaign is a sortie with a close companion.

26 December 2025

Mega Man 11 (2018)

I don’t know much about cars, but never mind taking advice from the petrolheads and gearheads because I’ve got the only bit of car advice you need - make your next car purchase an automatic.

You’ll probably want to make it an electric or hybrid motor too, and do your bit for the environment. If you can’t do that, then at least acquire a car that doesn’t completely cackle at the polar ice caps, like some vaudeville villain tying the dainty demure dame to the train tracks. If your car doesn’t run on tofu then somewhere, somehow, there’ll be a Green Party policy there to thwart you. I’m all for environmental concern, but I’d rather the holes go in the ozone layer than in my pocket, know what I mean?

You’ll be warned off buying an automatic by others for a few, easily dismissed reasons. Firstly, they usually cost you a bit more money if they go wrong. Well, there’s no “if” about cars going wrong. But anyway, automatic cars might be rarer here in Europe, but that’s quickly changing, and sales of automatics are far outpacing the manuals.

But that’s the trouble, really: the heartbreak caused by your car’s sad little engine light coming on is never far away. And by God, the inconvenience it causes. When you’ve got a stricken vehicle, whether manual or automatic, you just want the bloody thing fixed as soon as possible.

Therefore, provided your local mechanic isn’t too much of a villain (whether that’s a vaudeville villain, or just a plain old daylight robber) and the cost of repair isn’t more than the car itself, then you don’t really care what the bill says. You just want the bloody thing back on all four wheels again. So, let’s not worry ourselves about the costs.

The most laughable thing the doubters really hit you with is that, with an automatic, you will miss out on those pleasures of driving. What pleasures is that then? Changing gears?! That sort of stuff might sound nice if you were taking a Sunday drive in a beautiful 1960s Ferrari, with fashionable driving gloves on and no other people around you. Or if you were thrashing a race car around Spa or Silverstone.

But for your stop-start commute, or your daily trip to the shops, you’ve got to be kidding yourself if you think you actually enjoy the left-boot, left-hand workout of a manual car. Actually, that’s right-boot, right-hand workout to just about everyone in the world outside of Ireland, the UK, Australia and Japan - lefties lose again.

The benefits of an automatic might sound rather minor when written down, but not having to faff about with the gear-stick constantly as you slowly move through traffic is a godsend. Not to mention that you’ll never suffer that panic of stalling at the lights and having an obnoxious honker behind you, winding you up, leading you to panic as if the car will explode and you’ll fail all your exams if you don’t get that bloody engine started.

Still, manual gear changes are here to stay for a while yet. And in the long awaited, er, eleventh installment to the classic Mega Man series, gear changing has become a necessary step. That’s the gimmick this week you see: the little blue boy called Mega Man has now been given the ability to switch his internal cogs to either a Power Gear or a Speed Gear.

Well, that’s not as many gears as my old Volkswagen Polo, that’s for sure. But he’ll need these two gears as he makes his way through eight more humdrum platforming levels, with a final fortress waiting at the end of them. The Power Gear boosts the horsepower of his arm cannon, while the Speed Gear slows time down - just what you need for weaving in-and-out of other vehicles and machinery.

I won’t deny that the graphics are nice, but... I don’t know, when you bring a game series like this to the PS4, Switch and Xbox One, as a fully fledged retail game, it needs a bit more under the bonnet than this. That’s a bit unfair from me of course, because I’ve criticised Mega Man 9 and 10 for being too retro. But this is a Capcom developed game, in a much-beloved franchise, in 2018. There are standards.

The jury’s out on the music as well; some interesting techno-funk is present but there’s not much that will linger in the memory, sadly. And even with four difficulty settings, I find this one bloody hard, although I’ve never swallowed my pride and chosen Casual Mode - I’m a Mega Man legend, after all. Well, I’m lethal with the rewind button to reverse myself out of bad collisions, anyway.

I just wish more health powerups would appear during the level - Mega Man 11 would remind of the old NES days when there’d be too many graphics on the screen, the flickering would give you and Mega Man seizures, during which you could say goodbye to that health powerup.

Also, when you do die, and you will die many, many times, then what’s greatly annoying is that the checkpoints set you way, way back. I also feel it very important to mention that you can’t jump “through” the doors in this game, which is one of the finest Mega Man traditions. If I was submitting suggestions for the next patch or update, that one would be top of the list.

They’ve tried to do voice acting again as well, but this time they really went for it, no risible stuff here like they had in Mega Man 8. And again I’m being hypocritical, because although I castigated 8’s voice acting for making Mega Man into a girl, and I probably did the same thing to Mega Man X4. But Mega actually sounds a bit too old here. He’s meant to be a young boy, right? In my mind he is anyway. More Ash Ketchum than Sailor Moon, or Goku.

So that’s next-gen Mega Man, and we’re still waiting for Mega Man 12. 11 was a nice little experiment I guess, and on the whole, probably a good break away from the retro Mega Man stuff which was already threatening to get repetitive. But with average music, Robot Masters who don’t inspire, the usual short length, and a gear-change powerup gimmick that gets tiresome and isn’t really Mega Man, I’d say avoid this one like a manual car. At least this is a highly unusual Mega Man game in that it won’t cost you very much to own.

19 December 2025

R-Type Delta (1999)

One day at work, megabored, I decided to investigate the possibility of a career change. Naturally I started my search by researching the requirements to become a jet fighter pilot and bloody hell, the list was as long as your arm. It makes one wonder, do they want an air force or not?!

I mean it. Make the barrier for entry too high, and you’ll end up with nobody up there. The battle for air supremacy will be lost if you keep being picky. I’ve got more runner-up medals and participation trophies than you can imagine, so clearly I’m a pretty qualified guy. But these Air Force heavies, all they wanna do is exclude you.

First of all, you need to hold a Bachelor’s degree. Can you believe it, I actually meet that first requirement. I was pretty chuffed with that. I noticed a wee footnote after that, which mentioned something about it having to be a “competitive” grade, with “engineering or aeronautical disciplines preferred”. So I’ll perhaps have to do a bit of degree doctoring there, but that’s no issue.

Next, the physical requirements. OK, for the US Air Force, and since I’m not a US citizen I’d be ineligible anyway but let’s just pretend, then the height range I can fall into is 5’4 to 6’3, and I’m smack-bang in the middle of that. That’s the second hurdle, easily jumped. Does Commander Burkey sound good to you yet?

But then they had to go and spoil it all by including an eyesight requirement. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have perfect sight, merely near-perfect. Did you know that 20/20 isn’t perfect vision? Did you know that I never see 20s, not even in my bank account?

Yes, unfortunately I even need glasses to drive. Still, I usually don’t bother driving with them, particularly at night-time when nobody can see anything anyway. After all, it wasn’t vision, but clairvoyance, and a roadgoing sixth-sense, that got me through all those frosty mornings, when the windscreen would be fully frozen and I’d be driving through rush hour traffic looking through a small, melted circle in the middle of the ice. An ability like that has to count for something in the Air Force, right?

And I keep mentioning the Air Force in particular because if you fancy flying jets for the Navy, then you need to do water survival training, including getting into a terrifying contraption called a Helo Dunker. This thing simulates a downed chopper filling up with water. The point is to train you to save lives at sea. Sounds noble, but it’d probably be at this sticky point that I’d have to come clean to my commanding officer:

“Look mate, ah, commandant. Hate to cause a fuss or anything, but I can’t exactly swim, sir.” A look of incredulity, followed by a pucening of the face, and then...

“Whaaaat? The war is starting in three days! Didn’t you see that memo from the North Koreans?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know... like I say, hate to be a pain, but I don’t fancy water much.”

“You’re a dickhead, Burke.”

“Yes sir, you’re absolutely right sir.”

I’d be lucky to even get a dishonourable discharge. They’d probably just throw me into the water and have the burial-at-sea there and then. Get Jack Nicholson in to testify all kinds of lies about what happened. Which wouldn’t matter anyway, because Tom Cruise wouldn’t even bother defending my honour. I bet he’s great at the Helo Dunker too - he was a Top Gun, you know.

I keep mentioning the US military in particular as well, because the planes we have in the Irish Air Corps are Pilatus PC-9s and PC-12s, both of which you really need to see for yourself - they look like they could be outmaneuvered by the Wright brothers, and they ain’t exactly gonna look good coming in to land on an aircraft carrier.

Speaking of which, part of your flight training for the US Navy will indeed involve landing on a carrier. Sounds horribly frightening, but I can do it with no issue on Top Gun NES so what’s the trouble? I bet Tom Cruise is great at that too.

Still, I best not mention my Nintendo prowess to the austere commander, if I’m lucky enough to still have one by that stage. Quote or make reference to Top Gun once in Navy Flight School and you get fined. Do it three times and you’ll most likely become subject to a blanket party, Gomer Pyle style, and made to disappear.

Well, the upshot of all this is that I’m DQ’ed from active service. That’s before we get anywhere near the rest of the physical exams, where nul points on the beep test won’t do me much good anyway. That’s to say nothing of actually flying those beasts, and coping with G-forces - I can barely cope with driving down a hill too fast. As a result, I’m resigned to a life of merely pretending to be a fighter pilot instead of looking at spreadsheets.

Still, at least that opens up the R-Type games to me. Now here’s what you’d call a proper simulation: one hit and you are brown bread, and it doesn’t matter what supplementary training you’ve had. I wouldn’t call that a return on investment, would you? Years of training someone, and they die in one second?

Anyway, 2D games in the PlayStation and Nintendo era were quickly becoming gauche, in favour or polygons and textures that made you feel like your eyes are melting out of your sockets. R-Type Delta on PlayStation 1 went for a 2.5D approach, which works well - it is still functionally the same 2D-planed shooter, where it’s you and your super fragile spaceship against the aliens, and nobody is going to help you.

Where the Super Nintendo’s R-Type III gave you three different Force Devices (three differently coloured, detachable spaceguns with different lasers, essentially), Delta pushes the barrel out by giving you three different ships altogether, plus an unlockable one, giving you many different ways to play. There’s adjustable difficulty levels as well, not that Easy means Easy.

No, here “Easy” means “Earth has no chance” and “Hard” means “You’re dead, Earth is destroyed, your friends are toast and we’ve skinned your dog, too”. That said, the opening level is one of the best in gaming, in my opinion. Certainly in the shooting genre it stands out, even above R-Type III’s opener. It’s got great music, bundles of action and explosions galore.

That’s all well and good, but Stage 3 is where I tend to hit the wall. Quite literally, in this case - up to this point in the series, any brush with the wall spelled an embarrassing instadeath for your ship and the little ant-sized pilot inside. Delta lets you scrape your ship against the wall as often as you want, giving you nothing more than a playful dig in the arm, a kind of “ah, go on, we’ll let you away with that one” response.

But Stage 3 in R-Type Delta is the traditional series battleship level, where the entire stage environment is an enemy battleship, a walking quadruped tank in this case, that you’ll be destroying in multiple parts.

Drive your glass plane into this tank’s “walls”, which I tend to do many, many times in a row, and you’re gone. This leaves you sitting there for an uncomfortable half-second of deafening silence, bewildered, trying to determine what it was that totalled your ship this time. What I want to know is, how do you let something six times the size of a Metal Gear sneak up on you in the first place?

I hate to admit it, but Stage 5 out of 7 is as far as I’ve gotten, and that’s on Easy mode. I know I mentioned before about being able to see into the future as I drove my little car through the icy mornings. But I have to admit it, I had outside assistance.

I was helped along by beeps from opposition cars, as well as vague outlines of rude hand gestures. That demonstrates a real attention to detail, you know, something that would have served me well in the Air Force, I would have thought. R-Type Delta, however, demands just a little bit more than that.

Though it kicks me into the dirt every time I attempt to beat it, this is a game I’m particularly fond of, even if it reminds me of my (many) aviation inadequacies. But that’s why those guys rule the skies and probably bed a hundred women a night, while I must be content to sit down here on plain old Earth and get vaporised on my PS1. I bet Tom Cruise and the boys are no good at Microsoft Excel, though.

12 December 2025

Sonic Advance (2001)

The longer nights are rolling in, and you know what that means - the summer is over, and there’s no need for you to exercise anymore. No, wait, hang on this is exactly the time to start exercising - you need to get that summer body ready for next year.

Summer bods, eh? I’m very committed to avoiding that endeavour, each and every year. Like most right-minded people, I much prefer a heavy banquet to a heavy gym session. But motivation and ambition are funny, fleeting things. And every so often, you just get this burst of energy, prompting you to get out there to be all you can be.

I’ll be honest, always my primary motivation for exercise and weight loss is to look good naked. But you see, being a happily committed man as I am means that this type of motivation no longer exists - the competition is over.

But I can’t get to age 40 or 50 being a podgy pudding, now can I? So it’s back to the weight-loss regime for me, which means meticulous calorie counting, hiding my salivation over other people’s pizza, refusing any birthday or wedding cake that may come my way. And most heart-breaking of all, transitioning from full cans of baked beans to mere half cans.

You could probably do most of your weight-loss through calorie reduction alone, especially if you’re around the age of 18. Get too long in the chubby tooth like me though, and your metabolism begins to make noises standing up and wakes up with random pains.

So, it may be that I have to supplement my latest and greatest weight-loss regime with a spot of exercise as well. And since I regard all weight machines as deathtraps, any free weights as killing instruments, and pull-up bars as a surefire way to literally bring down the house, it’ll have to be cardio.

I know that any gym-bros reading this are probably furiously shaking their head now at the mention of cardio, and I also recognise that there is an absolutely miniscule overlap of gym-bros and retro game enthusiasts. But cardio always does beautifully for me. Running is the only form of exercise I’m halfway good at, and on the right day, I even somewhat enjoy it.

Sneerers among you might point out that I prefer running because it costs nothing, unless you count the cost of a decent pair of running shoes. But guess what, I outrun the creditors there as well: I’ve employed the same set of running shoes since I started running in 2014, and I haven’t once thought about swapping them out.

These particular shoes never once hurt my feet, they’re durable as hell, great in all weather, they provide me with a turbo speed-boost if I really concentrate hard enough, and they even give me an extra inch or two in height. They’re fantastic, and with a headstart like that, I was up and… running.

When you kick off a fitness buzz like this, you need to form a plan. You could just get out there and haul your arse around the local field of course, but you could collapse in a pile of stitches and sweat pretty damn quickly this way.

On top of that, generally you’re not going to know what you’re doing, and without any idea on how to progress, you’re far more likely to give it all up. But I promise you that this will be the last of my know-it-all gym veteran act. God, do gym bros get angry or what?!

Anyway, enter the Couch to 5k, the beginner running plan for any fat potato looking to make a difference in their lives. 9 weeks, three runs a week, 5 kilometres the target and a lollipop to treat yourself with at the end. And I have to say, with minimal melodrama, the Couch to 5K has changed my life.

I can never get over how perfectly judged each week of activity is, each run taking just about everything out of you, yet leaving just enough in you that you could throw on an extra minute or two if you really had to.

But no, no, leave that for the next run, and just bask for now in the shining light of your athletic triumph. Mind you, I never felt any of those “endorphins” they always talk about, or that runner’s high thing. What a load of nonsense that is, eh? Forget about feeling high, I’m actually bent extremely low, trying to catch my lung before it falls out, hallucinating and gasping for the coldest air I can get.

Still, the C25K marked a profound change in my life. See, I used to think that my body could not do exercise, and that was that. That I just wasn’t built to run. Some people are born deaf, some people are born colour-blind, some people cannot whistle. Some can't learn languages or do maths. And I can’t do exercise.

But it’s quite unbelievable how this beginner’s running program changed my fortunes. I can now call myself a runner, an athlete, something I would have considered quite unbelievable previously. And it confers a certain status. You are now part of a special club, you can give the knowing nod to other passing runners, and delight in getting out of their way. How cool is that?

I’ll tell you another runner whose status has changed shall I, and that’s Sonic the Hedgehog, if you hadn’t guessed. And it was a pretty incredible transformation in fortune when he began to crop up on Nintendo consoles. Poor Sonic, one of the kings of 90s gaming, was now having to swallow his pride, look weak in front of everyone, and finally go to work for the big bully, Nintendo.

Sonic Advance for the Game Boy Advance was one of the earliest appearances of Sonic on Nintendo consoles, although given that this was so long ago, back in 2001, perhaps we should be more tactful and not mention this awkward time in Sonic’s life. Instead, better to just clock the game for what it is - a better than average GBA platformer.

That sounds like a real damning with faint praise moment, but remember that Sonic 4 and many of the 3D titles are way below that average. Indeed, I think Sonic Advance will be better than you remember, if you give it a go these days. And yet it seemed to become forgettable, never to be held up as a genuinely great Sonic game, not that there are many of them anyway. I wonder why that is?

I reckon a lot of it is down to the music and sound, capabilities which the GBA is notoriously lacking on - not much in the tank at all. If I’m honest, whenever I think of bad GBA sound, my first thought runs to the Sonic Advance games. It all sounds less than 8-bit at times. This is a bit of a cardinal sin in Sonic’s world, and in the runner’s world too - even if your run goes badly, you ought to at least ensure that the soundtrack is banging.

Still, I’m not going to write Sonic Advance off for that. In fact, I’d kill for a few more games in Advance’s ilk these days, especially if Sonic Mania 2 never comes out. The level design is pretty decent really, and it takes some of the right cues from the best Sonic game of all, Sonic 3 & Knuckles - two acts per zone, different music in each act, that type of thing.

You've even got three additional selectable characters - Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and they all play differently. The challenge is alright, the levels are varied, there’s a 4-player multiplayer mode, there’s even a Tiny Chao Garden although it’s pretty damn basic.

There's a lot more to this game than meets the eye, even if the gaming press at the time dismissed it as an unholy matrimony of Nintendo and Sega, and cared for little more beyond that. I’d actually call Sonic Advance an underrated game, just like running in the rain is an underrated bit of fun. Don’t overdo either of them though - if the cold weather doesn’t make you vom, super Sonic speed definitely will.

17 October 2025

Pokémon You Simply Gotta Use (Part 8)

As we make more headway through the Gold and Silver part of our irreverent Pokémon review, we finish off some babies. No, wait, that sounds far too violent. Rather, we take a nature-themed turn and see how a cotton plant, a sunflower and a fake tree hold up in battle; and finally, Pokémon gets an honest-to-God green frog as part of its lineup. Which is great and all, but when are getting a quokka Pokémon?

Cleffa

If you’re going to have baby Pokémon, it’s probably best to model them on Pokémon that are already cute. After all, you couldn't have Mewtwo’s coolness being compromised by a gormless looking baby form, now could you? It’s a bit like being ordered by your mother to look after your highly embarrassing, butt-ugly little brother. Pokémon like Clefairy, already noted for their cuteness within the Pokémon universe, are ripe for baby forms. But where do you draw the line? From the very beginning, Clefairy was able to win those creepy baby pageants by itself. So is there really a point in Cleffa’s existence?

Igglybuff

Even more unnecessary than Cleffa, this ugly wee puffball might as well not exist. Jigglypuff is fine by herself, and she can always evolve into Wigglytuff to be taken at least a little more seriously in battle. But this hideous looking mess was ill-advised from the start. Honestly, the big eyes are acceptable on a slightly bigger balloon like Jigglypuff. On the other hand, Iggly looks like some godawful anime mascot that's been run over by a truck. Kill it.

Togepi

Notable for being the Pokémon that Misty always carried around in the anime, when production of the TV series was still in the midst of Generation 1. I'm conscious of the fact that the characters in Pokémon never age, so to express my wish to be held close to Misty's chest probably wouldn't go down very well, hence I'll not express it. Still, it excited new players to be given a Togepi egg of their own in Pokémon Gold & Silver. Pokémon Eggs, wow. Something to carry around, just like Misty! Maybe this Togepi of hers would turn out to be a super powerful Pokémon in the games, right? But no, it emerged with Charm. And Growl. And not many useful moves after that. But the good news is that Togepi actually had an evolution up its sleeve as well, in the form of...

Togetic

It might just be me, but I don't see any kind of cuteness coming out of this thing. In fact, I think it looks a bit ghastly. On top of that, it's still not able to battle very well. It can be a good Pokémon to dump Fly on, and it did demonstrate the Happiness mechanic of evolution to us, if you were clever enough not to use Golbat. But you’re best off just leaving Togepi as an egg, and having him waddle along behind you in the Generation 4 Johto remakes. Trainers of the opposite sex may then take a little more positive interest in you, the hapless trainer, instead of trying to knock your pets unconscious and steal half your money.

Xatu

Now this is more like it. A regal looking quetzal bird from Central America the Ruins of Alph with psychic powers and eyes on its chest. The fact that it can’t do much in battle will just have to be left to one side – Xatu is the kind of bird that supervillains might keep on hand, if they found Persian to be just a little too cliché. Its name was probably chosen so that there would be a Pokémon beginning with ‘X’. Understandable really – many fine pub quizzes were made on the strength of such things.

Ampharos

For an embarrassingly long time, and even considering the clear visual similarities between them, I never knew that Ampharos was the final evolution of Mareep and Flaaffy. I think it was due to the fact that I base potential Pokémon evolution on their cries instead of their looks, because I am a wormbrain. I do hope Ampharos will forgive my ignorance, because he's a big powerful Electric wrassler, the type that makes you sit up and take notice. He blots his copybook somewhat by falling physically ill in Pokémon Gold and Silver though, preventing the player from battling Gym Leader Jasmine until he's given medicine to recover. This tedious task of finding and administering the medicine, of course, falls on the player. To Jasmine, I say this - if you can't look after your hulking electro-beasts, then you shouldn't be allowed to have any.

Bellossom

An evolution of a different kind: instead of turning the unfortuanate-looking Gloom into the top-heavy Vileplume, you can shed the Poison type from the evolutionary line altogether and go with the pure Grass-type Bellossom instead. I do like the idea of it resembling a Hawaiian hula dancer, but I think I’d rather stick with Vileplume, even if it does reek a bit. Personally, I’d much prefer an Irish Dancing Pokémon. You know, one that isn't Hitmonlee. Bellossom is otherwise notable for its appearance in the Smash Bros. games, where it immediately tries to put opponents to sleep. Thanks for losing me several games of Smash, you little green swine.

Azumarill

Christ. Cutesy, Pikachu-esque clones are rife in later Generations, starting with this guy’s pre-evolution, Marill. Marill was that little blue Water Pokémon that followed Tracey around in the Orange Island section of the anime. Remember Tracey? Well, you probably would rather forget him - he was doomed from the start for having the audacity to oust Brock from the proceedings for a while. That said, I'm ever hopeful that Brock at least managed to defy the million-to-one odds against him, and got his endaway with the chesty Professor Ivy. A “Pokémon Watcher” was Tracey, which meant he just drew pictures of Pokémon. AI art probably put an end to him, though Tracey could have lasted a lot longer - the anime producers allegedly wanted to actually replace Brock with Tracey permanently, in case the guardians of political correctness kicked up fuss over Brock being a racial stereotype as Pokémon’s popularity continued to soar. Bloody hell! Luckily, this was all realised to be a stupid fear, and Tracey was summarily consigned to the shadows. And, as he dropped into obscurity, so too did Azumarill and his pre-evolutions.

Sudowoodo

Mind-numbing anecdote time once again. Have you ever found yourself suffering through a game with foreign language text, because you were just that desperate to play it? It’s a tall order for a text-heavy Pokémon game, let me tell you. But it didn't stop my best childhood friend and I from trying to get through Pokémon on a dodgy 99-in-1 Game Boy Color cart that he had acquired somewhere, one that possessed Pokémon Gold as the flagship title, at least a year before it hit Europe. Remember those wonderful pirate carts? We couldn’t believe that it was actually Pokémon Gold on there and not some pirate effort called Pokémon Beige. These days, big games are usually given a worldwide release, but back then, you really would have to wait ages. So we suffered through the text as best as we could. The language? It was English letters, not Japanese, but every word appeared to be gibberish. It was like the text went through the old Babelfish website from Japanese to Magyar to Flatulence to Swahili to Whale to Vulgar Latin to English. Changing ‘POTION’ to ‘POTIO’ and ‘SCRATCH’ to ‘PUNCH’ were the strongest translations the game possessed, put it that way. Anyway, where all this spiel is going is that it was Sudowoodo who finally made us give up our joint endeavour to get through the game. Once you beat Whitney in the Goldenrod City Gym, you’ll find your path blocked by a shaking Sudowoodo. We tried just about everything to move the damned tree out of our way, but nothing worked. Turns out you've to get a SquirtBottle from the nearby florists and drown him, something that seemed to have eluded us totally. So there ended our Pokémon journey – for that day, at least. But as much as I want to hate Sudowoodo for hampering our progress, as much as I want to dismiss him as being an obnoxious roadblock, I just can’t. He’s just a funky, brain-damaged little rock, who desperately wants to be a tree. Let’s cut the guy a break.

Politoed

I suppose Politoed was deemed to be a necessary Pokémon design, since Poliwrath had already evolved twice, weighed 119 pounds, and was still being classified as a tadpole. Plus we needed a frog Pokémon, because frogs are great fun. But you need to trade a Poliwhirl holding the rare King's Rock to bag a Politoed, and who the hell is gonna do that when you can use the King's Rock to get Slowking instead? Stick with the fat tadpole and use some of its Fighting moves instead. And talk about an obscure Pokémon, rarely seen and very hard to get. Has any in-game trainer ever used a Politoed? Actually, I hear it picked up the Drizzle Ability, which makes it rain on command. This makes Politoed's use in competitive battle skyrocket, apparently. But since competitive Pokémon battling frightens me greatly, I still can't really advocate using this fella. Sorry.

Jumpluff

Yeah, if I had to pick only a maximum of 6 monsters to protect me from being mugged by scurrilous Pokémon trainers for half my money and all my dignity, I don't think I'd elect to use a goddam cotton plant. You could have Jumpluff use Status-inducing moves with its high Speed, but don't ever try to attack anyone - not with those stats. Actually, you're gonna be laughed at for using Jumpluff anyway, so why not go the whole hog and use embarrassing moves as well?

Aipom

Look at him, just look at Aipom - cheeky monkey or what? The poor kid's not much for battling, or for anything really, but it's a spaced out purple monkey with a large Alfalfa fringe and a hand for a tail. If you’re a studious notetaker, you could highlight pretty much all of that last sentence and mark it as important stuff to remember. Anyway, if you have any kind of heart that isn't fully blackened, you'll let Aipom on your team and engineer it so that he wins you a battle, at least once. You can throw him back to the trees after that, guilt-free - he'll still be beaming with delight.

Sunflora

I'm no Pokémon statistician (even if I can recite every last word on Bulbapedia verbatim) but I'm pretty sure Sunkern is deemed the worst Pokémon in history ever. So Sunflora had an awful lot to do to spare the evolution line's blushes. It failed, of course, and failed badly - it's as slow as a Snorlax fer Chrissakes. And boring as a cake without candles, for that matter. Here's a hint, dumdum: don't bring bloody sunflowers into battle when you can bring fire breathing dragons and horned behemoths to fight to the death instead. Actually, there's your homework until next time: write that mantra out one hundred times.

To Be Continued!

Mario Tennis (2000)

OK fine, I can admit it - I always had tennis down as a game for wetties. It was all a bit too European for my taste, and I'm aware that sounds absolutely ridiculous coming from someone with a strong interest in Formula 1. But what I mean is, I never thought testosterone was at an all-time high whenever Wimbledon rolled into town… that town being the English town of Wimbledon.

Well, I don't think you could blame me for my preconceptions. Tennis is all a bit hoity-toity and posh, isn’t it? You see, it's the type of party that would never have me, so I have to console myself by scorning them, and telling myself that I would never be like them, as if they were the ones losing out.

You ever tried a bit of tennis though? Bloody hell, talk about a workout. You can forget about tennis elbow, that’s just the first of the ailments you’ll get. Tennis is all about stop-start sprinting, back and forth, possibly for hours on end.

This type of thing will tire you out and properly injure you in a hurry, and even if you did have the stamina to actually get to the ball, which has just been whizzed at you at 100 miles per hour, that’s only the first part of the job. You then need to have the strength to whack the ball back with a similar level of force, if you’re going to achieve your goal and put your opponent on their arse.

I played once against someone who does a bit of tennis coaching, someone who was 20 years my senior I should embarrassingly add, and, well… if you know anything about fashion, then you could probably picture the colour-clash with a pained grimace; my ruddy-red face constantly sinking into the freshly cut green baize, beaten once again.

It turns out that my rock-bottom cardiovascular fitness, twinned with my pipe-cleaning bingo wings, aren’t really physical attributes that cut it out on the court. “New balls, please!” I roared, and I needed them, because I had just been completely emasculated by the girls on the next court.

Damn though man, 100mph serves. Never mind those dopey windfarms and turbines they build out at sea for generating energy. What’s the point of those? Nobody lives in the sea, so nobody gets the benefit. You should just get some tennis players in, have them serve aces all day - and there you go, there’s your wind energy.

It’s this kind of scientific innovation and thinking that really ought to make me a bajillionaire by now, and better than that, it should soon bag me a seat at Wimbledon. Do you think I could sit alongside the King, if I solved the energy crisis? And do they allow hoodies and tracksuits in?

I had to give up tennis in the end. Well, I say ‘give up’, I had never really taken it up, since I didn't know the rules and I didn’t have anything like the body type required to play. I can’t be alone in this though - in what other sport do you score fifteen goals, then thirty goals, which gets cut back to forty goals, and then you start dropping a deuce?

It's no wonder you need Hawkeye and technology like that, because nobody knows what’s going on out there whenever Federer and Murray and Sampras and those other big boys take to the court. Actually, I think most of those are retired by now?

I don’t know much about the history of the sport either, though I do know you can make a hell of a lot of money out there, if your cute little body is up to it. Although, if you're very unlucky, you could quite literally be playing a game all day and all night, and your ankles, elbows, and - yes - your balls will be all battered and bruised.

It’s also worth noting that tennis is a sport where men and women can both compete to a very high level, and both sexes are watched by millions. I don’t think I would cut much ice down at the women's courts either, though. I imagine Venus and Serena Williams would be opening the jars if we lived together, let’s just say.

Once again, it’s one of those sports that’s much better to watch than it is to play (fatties like me say this about every sport). And from there, we can conclude that it’s better to play it as a video game than to merely watch it on TV. And if you can allow me to go a further step, it is always better to play Mario sports games over regular sports games.

Mario Tennis N64 is quite a notable game, after all. While it boasts quite good gameplay to this day, a variety of courts, colourful graphics, plenty of charm, and a surprisingly good soundtrack, its most notable claim is that it introduced Waluigi to the world.

That’s quite a legacy, and I couldn’t imagine a weird, uncouth bloke like Waluigi going down too well in the tennis paddocks, could you? All of the chaps would be writing very cross letters indeed to their local snides, instructing them to remove this lanky ruffian from the tennis clubs at once and revoke his membership forthwith.

I have to say, I am surprised at how playable Mario Tennis remains to this day. There's obviously been quite a few tennis games since then with moustaches the cover, and I don't mean old Björn Borg’s moustache either.

One thing that the latter Mario Tennis games will never have over the N64 original is the level of immersion that this game offers. What I mean by that is, if you manage to play a full game or set or match or whatever, using that beastly N64 control stick, well, that's about as close to the pain and rigours of tennis as you can get in your living room.

I particularly like the trick courts you can spend time on. It's a bit less monotonous than just smashing aces at Luigi and playing doubles against genuinely interesting characters like Boo and, strangely enough, Donkey Kong Jr. You’ll get some good replay value out of the challenges there.

But I would have to say, really, that the only tennis video games even worth playing nowadays are those that let you do a bit of motion control, namely the likes of Mario Tennis Aces on Switch, and the never-bettered Wii Sports Tennis. There's nothing like immersing yourself into the game so much that you dislocate your elbow playing it, or smash your TV up.

But you can't go far wrong with Mario Tennis 64, especially if you can get a bit of multiplayer going. I'll put it to you this way, there's a whole load of other tennis games on the Nintendo 64, but without exception, they are so bad that they'll have you throwing your air-racquet in frustration and squealing, "you cannot be serious!"

I'd tell you to show this one some love, but doesn't that mean "zero" in tennis? A bit like giving the 'OK' hand gesture to an insane French chef, who instead interprets it as "nul", meaning zero. Mario Tennis is anything but zero, in fact I'd say it's ‘Advantage Mario’ as far as tennis games go. You only need one Mario Tennis game in your life though, because they’re mostly all the same - bit of a racket if you ask me.

3 October 2025

Pokémon Pinball (1999)

Honestly though, I’ve always been a pretty placid type of guy. There have been a few occasions when I’ve lost the run of myself, of course, and not just after a healthy fill of drink. But mostly, I have always regarded losing one's temper as something that a grown adult shouldn’t do. At least, you shouldn’t throw tantrums at other people, people who are generally doing their best for you.

I would say that inanimate objects are fair game for bearing the brunt of your anger, though. So the next time you bang your leg on the table, or your computer is breaking your heart, then do feel free to slap it or boot it into oblivion. And if anyone complains, just tell them Burkey told you it was OK.

This brings me neatly onto the idea of game frustration, and venting your anger when you lose. This is one of those things that makes games so deliciously unique - and it doesn’t matter if we're on about computer games, card games or board games - when it all goes wrong and you're the victim of a perceived injustice, you’re going to feel the blood pressure begin to rise.

You need to express your displeasure, immediately and violently. And if there are no puppies nearby for you to kick, then you’ll have to make do with launching the Monopoly board in the air, or making an absolute scene at the poker table and getting forcibly ejected from the premises.

You don’t get that from other entertainment mediums, do you? You don’t tear books apart and chew through the pages if the ending didn’t live up to your expectations or if there was a tricky paragraph. And even if you hate a film with every fibre of your being, or you just find it an aggravatingly average waste of time, you’re hardly going to shout at your wife and tell your cat to naff off once the credits roll, now are you?

Hence, my supposedly calm, anger-free demeanour can quickly disappear when playing certain games that push my buttons the wrong way. Perhaps you too have tales of gaming frustration, and if so, I’d love to hear them. For me, gaming anger can often come about from a game that’s almost unbelievably hard.

Take the time I once put the Wii Remote in my mouth and bit down hard, while I was failing miserably at Donkey Kong Country Returns. It was quite similar to Shaun of the Dead sinking his gnashers into the phone when he couldn’t get the restaurant reservation.

Then there’s those times when you're a victim of cruel luck, and I’m definitely thinking of Mario Party here, although any game with a Random Number God can conspire against you at the worst possible time.

In the case of Mario Party, the rigged AI aggravated me, losing at certain minigames infuriated me; and when I tried to use the palm of my hand to rotate the Control Stick, only to rip open a massive blister in my hand, I chanced across a new emotion that was the most intense mixture of anger and pain. It went way beyond angst. It was almost the opposite of nirvana.

But I’ll tell you about my most visceral display of dissatisfaction with a game, and it’s a story that I very kindly shared with my friends, only for them to repay me by never letting me live it down. Believe it or not, the game in question was an old Championship Manager game, predecessor to Football Manager.

Bet you didn’t expect that, did you? Old Burkey, playing a popular football game? But of course, you know the real reason why. At the heart of it, Championship Manager and Football Manager really just interactive spreadsheet simulators - and I’m a sucker for a spreadsheet.

Anyway I digress, I was a much younger boy playing CM on the PC, so this was before I had any inkling that a game like this could be scripted against me in any way. Nowadays it’s a running joke among fans of the game, and everyone knows that games like FIFA can sometimes play themselves out like the most predictable tragedy of all time.

Suddenly, simple passes of the ball become bomb-diffusing exercises gone badly wrong, and even if your player did get through on goal, his carefully measured shot on target would threaten nothing, except any low flying ducks that happened to be flying overhead.

A similar type of dastardly scripting takes place in CM/FM games, as the millions of loyal fans well know. Fans will also know that hearing about someone else’s FM savegame is as excruciating and tedious as it gets, so I’ll simplify it by saying that my team were merely plodding along in the league, not doing great, but we came to a decisive, important, must-win match.

Now, there’s a notorious, hated mechanic in these games where you can have 25 shots on target and 90% of the possession, complete domination in other words, and still your team won’t score. Then, lo and behold, their 40-year-old journeyman gets his first goal this century, in the very last minute of the game. Guess what happened to me?

But you mightn’t guess what I did next. It was clear to me that slapping the keyboard wouldn’t do it this time. I’d already tried that before, to no avail. Seizing the disc and watching it go nuclear in the microwave would have taken too much time. There was only one recourse left.

The disgust in me rose, almost physically, like bile and vomit accelerating towards launch. And finally, I could contain it no longer. I summoned as much mouth strength as I could, and spat an enormous greener all over the screen.

I didn’t regret it either. Actually, when the spit began to streak down the screen, leaving a slightly rainbow-coloured trail on the CRT monitor, which could have been beautiful were it not the most disgusting thing I’d ever done.

I can’t really remember what I did next, but I imagine I sheepishly cleaned away the saliva bomb, and finally uninstalled the game for my own sanity. Or maybe I did what everyone else does in this situation, and reloaded my save so I could change the course of history. Who knows?

Visceral stuff, eh? Thankfully, I can tell you that I’m a reformed man. I just go mute and non-communicative these days when a game is getting the better of me. And the last game I remember really making me exert my frustration in a most frightening physical manner is Pokémon Pinball for Game Boy Color.

A frustrating Pokémon game, eh? Who’d have thunk it? I’m not a fan of pinball anyway, especially when the blasted table conspires against you. And God, does Pokémon Pinball conspire against you.

You don’t just see it either, you will actually feel the computer AI strike back, thanks to this game’s rumble-enabled cartridge. That’s one AAA battery to feel miserable - not a great trade. I will say that the game’s rumble is pretty meaty, it’ll shake your whole Game Boy something fierce when Pikachu, down there in the gullies, is called into action to electrify your ball back into play.

Pokémon Pinball is a game from the days when Pokémon spinoffs were just starting and would never, ever stop. The goal here, of course, is to catch all 151 Pokémon of the time, just like it is in every bloody game. If they'd released a Pokémon fax machine software, you still would’ve had to track down all 151 on it somehow.

You’ll catch and evolve Pokémon in this game by slamming your Pokéball-themed ball bearing into several nooks and crannies across two different tables, Red Table and Blue Table. Everything is Pokémon-themed on the table, and it really tries to follow the original Pokémon games a little too closely, even letting you “travel” to different game locations like Viridian Forest and Mount Moon, to catch different sets of Pokémon.

The best part of Pokémon Pinball are the Boss Minigames, little two-minute long sideshows that culminate in a cool battle against Mewtwo for mega points. To even get anywhere near these minigames takes a heap of patience, practice and positive luck.

That means you’ll have to walk the pinball tightrope again and again. And 99% of the time, this will see you sending your ball down the chute with no chance of return, and the game will make no apology for its physics either - it’ll only give you a mocking jingle to remind you of your failure.

On several occasions, this all got too much for me, and I had to take out my pent-up anger on something. Fortunately, I resisted the urge and didn't throw my Game Boy as a projectile - too often - but instead, I was raining blows down onto the screen, proper hammer blows, pulling back at the last second obviously so as not to smash the screen. But still, what kind of a monster punches a Game Boy?

This is the kind of deranged nutter that Pokémon Pinball was turning me into, so eventually I took the decision to shelve this game for good, in case one day I really did snap.

It’s a pity, because I did derive some enjoyment from Pokémon Pinball on certain occasions. It’s obviously well made, not just a cheap spinoff. But you don’t keep putting your hand into the fire to punish yourself, do you? Unless of course it's a small enough flame that a fury-induced spitbomb could extinguish - in that case, I’m your guy.

26 September 2025

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)

I always said that if I won the lottery, I wouldn’t be overly extravagant about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m gonna spend my millions, because there’s nothing I hate when there’s a massive EuroMillions win, €190 million squids in the bank, but the winners are boring. It’s always Mary (73) and Joe (75) and they say the money won’t change them, and they’ll still work every day on the farm, and all that rubbish.

What?! Joe, this is your big chance. You know your heart hasn’t got much pump left. Get out there to Vegas, and throw thousands of dollars on every spin of the roulette table. Keep the drinks and drugs coming, and even if you blow through a hundred thousand in a night, you’ve got zillions left in reserve.

And you Mary, it’s time you put your feet up - not on some old stove, but on a sun lounger over in Bali. An influencer in her seventies? It could happen, and it could be you.

You could ramp up your online shopping habits a hundred-fold, and have new packages and parcels arriving every single day without fail, give you something to look forward to that isn't cleaning. You might even replace Joe with a squad of chiselled hunks. And, of course, it’ll be margheritas morning, noon and night.

That’s a lifestyle change that even I’d hard to match. I’m terribly frugal, you see, and I love nothing more than watching the numbers go up. If I had one hundred million quid go into my account, and there was some kind of real-time interest counter where I could quite literally see the money working for me, I think I would watch it 18 hours a day.

This wouldn’t leave me much time for frivolities. I’d probably look up some kind of Super Premium Diamond Gold VIP ticket for all of the Formula 1 Grands Prix, including travel. I’d give the missus a few mill of course, I’m not that miserly. But above anything else, I’d immediately go out and buy a European castle.

Could you imagine having a castle all to yourself? Well, before getting into it, it’d need to have a few modern conveniences installed. Electricity would be nice. Sanitation, probably worth considering. A games room certainly, and obviously dungeons and hanging chambers for my enemies.

I’ll need it staffed as well - no problem when you’ve got a near infinite wage budget. But the problem, as always, is getting the right staff. You can keep your butlers and your servants - I’m after a batman. Several batmen actually, who exude excellence, can fix everything and inspire 110% confidence, all the time. One could be my cordon-bleu cook. The next, my chauffeur. Another, my sexual mentor. Oh yes, I’d be well looked after.

Just imagine the warm feeling of coming home blind-drunk to your castle, trying to get through the hedge maze, with a real possibility of dogs jumping through the bushes at you, Resident Evil style. You would have to be dead careful not to set off any of the deathly booby traps. In your drunken state, you'll need to steer clear of your lava chambers. And which of the 50 master bedrooms will you fall into and sleep in tonight?

Yes, how wonderful it would be. But a big luxurious castle is plainly not good enough for Alucard, main character of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Ever the lazy teenager (well, lazy tricentenarian, but you know what I mean), Alucard had been busy having a very long sleep of several years.

However, Alucard’s estranged father, who so happens to be Count Dracula, is terrorising the world again from his humongous castle, dubbed Castlevania. It’s up to Alucard to commit patricide and destroy the castle to put an end to his father’s madness.

You will have heard of the term Metroidvania. I remember being bitter that Castlevania had found a way to piggyback off Metroid’s unique genre. That was until I played Symphony of the Night for myself, years after its release. I had to download the game of course, as a physical, UK copy of SOTN is as rare as hen’s teeth.

Honestly, if you want a primo copy, it's definitely north of 400 bones. Not exactly chicken feed, know what I mean? Maybe one day, when I get that long-awaited lotto win. But for now, it’s a wee bit out of my price range.

Still, what I played on the PSN was a masterpiece. Symphony of the Night went against conventional wisdom of the time, that every game had to be made up of horribly blocky polygons. Instead it delivered graphics that are luscious even to this day. The spritework in this game is Walk Like An Egyptian-era Susanna Hoffs, probably my favourite 2D graphics ever.

Even better than that is the music. It’s yet another triumph for female game composers - for my money, my lottery money even, this game contains one of the best soundtracks in all of gaming. Step into the castle’s library section and you could be forgiven for thinking that you’re listening Bach.

Then you head to the classic Castlevania clock tower, and the electric guitar gets shredding. One overused track aside, the score is incredible. It creates such a wonderful atmosphere, putting the game firmly alongside Super Metroid in the ambience stakes.

The castle is enormous as well. As Alucard, you’ll be jumping, falling, swinging swords, equipping armour, battling horror-inspired enemies, using items, even turning into a dog, a bat or mist… and you’ll do this across hundreds of distinct rooms. It certainly dwarves Super Metroid in size, any Metroid game in fact.

And just when you think you’ve got to the end, you visit an upside-down carbon copy of the castle. There’s not much plot left at this point, unfortunately, so the Inverted Castle can be a bit of busywork by this stage. But still, just like that, the game’s size doubles.

I’ve got to reserve a note for the voice acting. It’s not as if the game is as story-based as Konami’s other PlayStation 1 masterpiece, Metal Gear Solid. But there are occasional scenes in this game with enchantingly hammy acting. I imagine this was a dry-run before the madness of Metal Gear’s story.

I love Alucard’s deep, baritone voice, and it was a pity that this was changed in subsequent releases. But then, when you have a high-pitched, almost incredulous Count Dracula shouting about a man being a miserable little pile of secrets, perhaps this change was for the best… No, I won’t have that: if you’re going to play Symphony of the Night, stick to the original, with its shoddy acting. It’s a lot more charming.

Alucard caps off one of the best games of all time by leaving the castle in ruins. Pity really, because I was eyeing up that castle for myself, after my eventual lotto win. Still, it would have been a bit of a wretch to move into my new castle, only to find that Frankenstein’s Monster, Medusa, the Grim Reaper and Beelzebub and many more monsters were all there waiting for me. Maybe Alucard, quite literally, is the batman I’ve been looking for.

19 September 2025

Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1996)

The question was put to me recently: why has there been nothing new and exciting in the PC Real-Time Strategy genre? And I think I might have the answer: it's not that there are no new innovations, that gamers have grown tired of the genre, that MOBAs have taken over, or even that people are doing the unthinkable and leaving their PCs behind in favour of consoles.

No, I reckon the reason for this is simple: our taste in RTS games is much like our taste in music. There's a lot of wonderful music out there, an overwhelming amount perhaps. Hence, we pick our favourite genre, artists and songs in our teenage years. And then we stick with them for life.

No, think about it. When’s the last time you actually sought out new music? We all complain about modern music, feeling we're way behind on what’s current. We resent just about everything they play in pubs and clubs these days. Hence we find radio stations that play the "oldies", and we get shocked and appalled when they start playing something from the 2000s.

Well news flash mate, this is exactly what happened to your dad, except replace 2000s with 1970s. And it happened to his dad as well, back in the 40s and 50s. We find our musical comfort zone, and we don't dare transgress from it. And whatever musical genre this represents for you, you can guarantee that artists of your taste aren’t troubling any of the charts in this day and age.

Actually, there’s another news flash for you: nobody cares about the music charts nowadays. There hardly exists the concept of a Number 1 anymore. Of course there is a huge amount of obscure music and bands out there that match your preferred genre, and the likes of Spotify and YouTube could help you do just that. But let’s be real, you stick to what you know.

It's that eternal wisdom from Grandpa Simpson: "Now what I’m ‘with’, isn’t ‘it’. And what's ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to yooouuu..." Or, if you want another piece of grandparental wisdom which may back up my point, there’s the time we introduced my elderly grandmother to Spotify.

We invited her to pick a song, any song she wished to hear. She immediately asked for a Nat King Cole number - what else? And as Nat began crooning around our front room, she was amazed, and made the observation, "God, they'll never sell a record with that!" with a pleased surprise.

Actually, she was sort of wrong on that one - I've actually bought records in the last 10 years. Many of us have been doing just that. In fact, I’ve bought more vinyl than I ever bought CDs or - god forbid - paid download music. But those records I bought weren't anything close to modern music, I can promise you that.

This is what has happened in the Real-Time Strategy world also. We find a few of those strategy games that we enjoy early on, and we stick with them rigidly for life. A decent RTS game is, after all, almost infinite in depth.

You can play on an essentially infinite number of maps, using an infinite number of strategies. No two game sessions are truly alike. There are metagames and winning strategies, of course, that top players must adhere to. And there are only so many units and factions to use. But the scope of these games is immense; entire treatises could be written on the subject of a popular RTS.

Perhaps this is why RTS games are no longer big sellers - we gamers only need a few of them to set us up for life. It may be a turn-based game, but I have never looked beyond Civilization II - other gamers out there are jolly content with Civilization IV or V, and they won’t need another one as long as they live. And. while I haven’t checked this, I understand that whoever is ranked the best player of Starcraft in South Korea gets to become Prime Minister of the country.

As for the Age of Empires series, Age of Empires IV received critical acclaim, and great sales - two things which Age of Empires III slightly missed the mark on. The reason why, of course, is that Age of Empires II has proved to be timeless, and it’s the one that does the best numbers to this day - in terms of sales, concurrent players, number of mods and expansions, you name it.

But what of Command & Conquer? The groundbreaking first game in the series was a childhood favourite of mine, and so too was its sequel, Red Alert. Released a year after the original, Red Alert was way ahead of its time, as all great RTS games are. As you load up the game, the famous Hell March theme blares, against the backdrop of that wonderful green Westwood Studios logo, followed by the words "proudly presents" - no truer words - you could not fail to be hyped up by this game.

And yet in my mind, this title has actually been superceded by a game I discovered later in life, but still in my teen years - the direct sequel, Red Alert 2. And I suppose the reason that Red Alert 1 fell off the throne is that this game is just that bit too primitive. Ahead of its time, sure, as I mentioned. But still from the stone age of RTS AI, where the only real quality of life improvements over the first Command & Conquer game are the presence of a skirmish mode for random battles against the CPU.

It was interesting that Westwood Studios, or more accurately a team in Electronic Arts who were probably being watched like hawks, developed a remastered version of C&C and C&C: Red Alert for Steam. It was cool to hear some revamped music by the musical genius himself, Frank Klepacki. Plus there were some other quality of life improvements such as the ability to queue buildings and units. But ultimately, Red Alert 1 is a bit too old and it belongs in the past, though I hate to say it.

I'll still load up Red Alert every so often and spin around in it though, because it's just an iconic game- it introduced us to unforgettable moments, like getting attacked by Giant Ants, or having your units melted by Tesla Coils. I love the sound of Tesla Coils in the morning, don't you? And Tanya was an unforgettable unit, with even more memorable soundbites.

Red Alert 1 is certainly a more serious game than its follow-ups - it’s still preposterous of course, but when a fairly convincing Josef Stalin is talking directly to you in the war room, giving you that infamous quote about one death being a tragedy and a million deaths being a statistic, it’s nothing if not immersive.

The music is amazing, there are a boatload of missions across both the Allied and Soviet campaigns, and for more fun, this game spawned not one but two expansion packs, plus unique ports to the PlayStation 1. It included a Map Creator, and budding hackers and modders could easily change many properties of the game in a tool as simple as Notepad.

It is funny to watch the hapless AI though, in all their 1996 crude glory, getting all of their pathfinding completely wrong. Incidentally, though this game’s winning strategy usually involves building up a deathball of tanks, don't think you can just point them at your enemy and you've won, because there's no such thing as grouping in Red Alert 1. This means you'll see your whole platoon of tanks take the longest route in the world towards the enemy, all single file and driving all over the place, like a bad day on Spaghetti Junction.

Still, if you're playing against an AI, you will always win in the end - once you’ve weathered the initial assault they throw at you, they sort of sit in their base doing nothing. Sometimes they build their base in such a haphazard manner that their units literally can’t get out, so you can come and pick them off however you chose. If you’re up against a human foe meanwhile, the tank rush is obviously the way to go.

But the bigger challenge, as we've mentioned, is actually finding foes to play against in this day and age. They're still out there of course, and they probably always will be. But they're gonna be much better than you, after all these years, and much better equipped to deal with your assaults.

So you'll probably just stick to AI battles and the interesting Campaign mode, right the way up to fighting the Giant Ants in the hidden missions. Except you won't, really, because if you're properly in the mood for some PC RTS, sure, you’re probably gonna go for the old reliables - but not THAT old. Red Alert is that classic vinyl record, maybe fun to spin every once in a while, but you really are better off trying something new.

12 September 2025

Kirby’s Dream Course (1995)

I know you all think of me as a sporting God, and I can’t deny that. But golf is the one big cheese jolly boy’s club that they’ve never allowed me into. A good walk spoiled? Maybe that’s golf for regular people. But for me, it doesn’t just spoil my walk. My whole day, week, millennium, goes down the drain. I’m telling you, I have never been so angry at anything in my whole life than I have been at golf.

Taking inspiration from Happy Gilmore, and probably many others like him, I was able to launch my pitchers and putters farther than I could hit the bloody ball with them. I have been told that I once almost took out a groundsman with my flung sand wedge. You had to watch your heads when Burkey took to the course; I wasn’t shouting “Fore!” to warn people of beautifully struck balls, put it that way.

Actually, truth be told, I’ve never played a full round of golf on a regulation size course. Do you honestly think they’d have me? Pitch and putt and Crazy Golf are about my limit. And since I can’t pitch a golf ball off the ground without smacking my own shins first, what makes you think I could properly use a driver?

Hit the thing 350 yards down the fairway? Around the trees and hills? Are you mad?! Well, maybe I was mad, because I recently went to a driving range, optimistic and upbeat (like many millions of naïve would-be golfers) that I was going to succeed at this most manly endeavour.

I confidently strode to the enclosed cubicle and took one of about 900 balls from my full-to-bursting bucket. My eyes narrowed to slits, and my heartbeat slowed right down as I sharply exhaled, focusing fully on the task at hand. A sudden hush enveloped the driving range, almost as if the dew-laden dusk was beginning to swallow the noise around me.

All eyes were on me, and the range was at my mercy. No problem. With a commanding grip of my rented driver in one hand, I heroically placed the first lucky ball down onto the tee and adjusted my gait. Like all the great golfing pros, I took some practice swings, but did I really need them?

I knew, almost from the moment I gripped the driver and cast a momentary look at the balls I would be striking, I knew that each one I blessed with my club would run that gorgeous pantheon between pace, power and placement. Therefore I had nothing to worry about, as I finally stepped into position, arched my shoulders, pulled my rippling arms back and followed through.

In truth, I already knew what was going to happen next. But I was still fairly surprised when I smashed the ball full force, only for it to rebound off the ceiling and nearly brain-damage three or four players alongside me. With any luck, the other players would have just heard me perform a minor miracle; seemingly hitting a ball seven times in a single stroke.

The next ball I hit thankfully did cross the threshold and made it to the grass, but only just; I hammered the damn thing with all my might (which is considerable, please believe me). I was expecting to hear that wonderful, dull ‘thunk’ sound that true golfers live for. It’s the sound that confirms that you haven’t just shanked the thing in front of everybody and made yourself look like a pilchard.

Shanked it I did, and a pilchard I looked, as Ball #2 sort of miserably dribbled over the edge. Never destined to hit any of the targets hundreds of yards away, and certainly not set to trouble the sleep of any budding professionals alongside me. I need hardly tell you that Ball #3, #4, #5, #6 and #8 suffered the same fate – I accidentally dropped #7 off the edge before I could hit it, where it ended up going a yard or two further than my previous efforts.

For just a fleeting few seconds before I started though, I thought that this would finally be the turning point where I could pick up a golf club and hit a ball, without the ball going haywire, my temper going haywire, or my playing partner going haywire. Alas, it’s like that Talking Heads song – same as it ever was.

When my massive bucket ran out of balls, I was unique among the rest of the players in that I was actually relieved, feeling lucky to have gotten out of there with my life and most of my face left intact.

As for the other players, now left dead or dying in various contorted states, I can only say that they knew the risks when I took the driver in my hand and they came within 100 metres of me. Golf is a dangerous game, didn’t you know? I could only go home defeated and deflated once again, knowing that the gentlemanly game was forever going to elude me.

But my silly knack for optimism was once again renewed when I heard of Kirby’s Dream Course, a Kirby golf game for the Super Nintendo and re-released for the SNES Classic, featuring the little pink blob himself as your golf ball. And no visible golf clubs to throw into the skies either, which was important for me.

In my language, the word ‘golf’ means face-smashingly difficult – but the word ‘Kirby’ means incredibly easy, so surely I could get to grips with this one. Surely I could plough on through this game, and end up with a scorecard that didn’t resemble basketball scores. How hard could it really be?

Need I even ask? Obviously, I found this game about as easy to deal with as wearing those silly golf jumpers. At least when I get onto the pitch-and -putt course or play Crazy Golf against the missus, maybe one out of every twenty strokes of mine is a peach.

It’s those rare, fleeting diamonds in the rough (little golf pun for you there) that root the golfing addiction in your head that keeps you coming back for more, just to see if you can recapture that magic more consistently.

But I can’t say I ever once felt in control of Kirby’s Dream Course, nor did I ever get a real handle on what to do. More to the point however, I know I’m not alone in this. This is not a well made game. It has a steep difficulty curve, which is fine, but just when you think you have it figured out, the rules change and suddenly you’re left looking foolish.

The best is when you run out of strokes, which happens depressingly quickly, and then Kirby gets tired and calls it a day. It’s Game Over, you have wasted your time and money, and you will never be seen on this particular course again. Which, come to think of it, probably makes it the most realistic golfing simulator of all time, at least as far as I’m concerned.

But have you stopped to consider that sitting down and playing golf on your old Super Nintendo is a bit, shall we say, depressing? A work colleague once told me of their college days spent playing 8-player Tiger Woods PGA for PlayStation 2 with seven pals. They’d sit and wait patiently for their turn, probably wearing their golf jumpers. And I’m not saying whether they did or didn’t practice their golf swings in between turns.

Just hearing the depressing image of this made me want to take up a hard drug habit that very night, or go and gamble my life savings at the casino - anything to redress that equilibrium and bring some fun back to my life. Listen, the Golf game on Wii Sports ensured that you will never have to touch another golf game ever again.

Until then, I think I’d genuinely have more fun going out there slicing balls and throwing my golf sticks at low-flying birds. I couldn’t stand a realistic golf sim like Tiger Woods PGA, let alone a spiteful, short-lived dash of colour with Kirby bolted onto the front.

But I may be writing Kirby’s Dream Course off too soon. You see, a Super Nintendo cartridge is a far larger object than a golf ball. If I were to swing a Callaway driver at the cartridge with all my might, which I would sorely love to, surely even I, the world’s worst golfer, could get it further than three feet…?

5 September 2025

Theme Park (1994)

Ever the go-getter, my interest was piqued by a recent newspaper ad I saw, looking to hire a new manager for a theme park. I thought I’d apply - why not? I had nothing to lose, and nothing but time in my unemployment. In any case, I was still waiting to hear back on second interviews for several lion-taming roles – I had to do something with my college degree, after all.

And wouldn’t you know it, the Theme Park CEO, Mr. Wildthroat, got back to me almost straightaway with a call to interview. I thought I’d mosey on over, see what was occurring. I was determined to impress Mr. Wildthroat, because I thought running a theme park would be a great laugh. Also, I was on my final warning with the unemployment office.

“Here’s the suss, Burkey,” the heavy-set, leather-tanned man in the three-piece double-breasted ivory suit said, as he took me into his office and gave me a strong, two-armed handshake, his gold bullion dancing and jangling all about. “We need you to build us a theme park.”

“It sounds very good, Mr. Wildthroat sir. And I think I can do it. I’ve been on loads of roller coasters, and my favourite is the teacups. I can handle children too, give them a few slaps even,” I countered, ready to explain the finer details on my CV - especially my weaknesses. Employers loved asking about weaknesses, and I had lots of them that I was prepared to talk about for days on end.

“Not really an option I’m afraid, Burkey. too many sensitive parents about nowadays. In the old days, oh yes, you could smack the children around and make them buy the plasters from you. But it ain’t really the done thing anymore. And please, call me Archie. Shall we step outside?”

I was thrilled to be hired of course, though I began to smell a rat when Archie brought me out to a massive plot of land where there was a crumbling gate, a short concrete path, acres of grass and not much else.

“Do you… do you own all this land, Archie?” I quivered. His eyes narrowed.

“There’s nobody around to claim it. Do you understand me? There’s nobody around to claim it.”

“Yes Archie,” I lied, nodding sagely. I didn’t want to rock the boat, so I thought it best to keep quiet about the whole thing. It was this kind of sharp thinking that had gotten me to this stage in my career.

“Listen, I’m giving you two hundred grand to build a theme park for us. Get the punters in, a load of snotty kids really, but they’re loaded, some of ‘em. They need a friendly face waiting to fleece them. Overload the cheap, off-brand soda with ice. Make the burgers more fat than beef. Pump rainwater into the ice creams, that sort of thing. Can you do it?”

I sort of thought that this was an impossible task, since I remember reading that the best roller coasters in the world cost millions to create, a bit more than two-hundred thou. But that’s what I was hired to do. No way was I gonna let Archie down.

“Yeah Archie. I can do it. You leave it to me,” I said. Then I quickly whipped around behind me to see who said that, who could possibly have told such a brazen lie on my behalf. He fixed me a smile from ear to ear.

“Goody gumdrops. Look, you won’t be alone. I know you’re a bit of an amateur at this, so we’ll get an advisor in to help you. He’ll set you up on the Sega machine. He knows what it’s all about. Never stops reminding you actually, so maybe do yourself a favour and listen to him, because I certainly don’t. I’m just the guy with the dosh.”

“Well, take it easy Burkey, but remember – if you lose my money, the sea is no distance. Keep that in mind Burkey, the sea is no distance.” With that, Archie stepped into an armoured car and hunkered down in the back seat so that I couldn’t see him anymore.

I waved him off, then turned to our new kingdom, in the United Kingdom as it happened. Archie was keen for me to get the park gates open quick, but I always liked a bit of time to get myself settled in. So I arrived at my new ground floor office, stuck some circus music on, and had my usual mid-morning nap.

I needn’t have bothered getting comfy though, because this advisor guy was all over me, telling me about ticket prices and how we needed to build rides and shops and hire staff. Crikey, I thought, that all sounds a bit urgent. But there was a minivan full of kids out there, circling the park endlessly, so it was probably time I gave them something to shout about.

But wow, inflation or what? That 200k Archie gave me didn’t go far at all. I’m not much of an “ideas man”, so I didn’t have many ideas for theme park attractions beyond a bouncy castle, a treehouse, and a wooden outhouse that nobody used. After that, I needed to bring in some researchers to come up with ideas for exciting, innovative new things to build, like burger shops. But their big brains were costing us a fortune.

After a few months in, the math wasn’t mathing. That’s what I said to the lads when they came to me looking for a pay-rise. What? In this economy? That’s what Archie had told me to say, if the staff started acting up. Actually, he said he used to have them buried - I presume he meant “buried under a load of work.”

Well anyway, all my greedy workers went on strike, but no hassle. I thought me and the advisor could just run the place ourselves. But then, boy, things really started going wrong. We had no cleaners, and those feral children took full advantage of this; they started throwing their wrappers and cups everywhere. They even started vomiting all over the place, particularly in my designated rip-off zones, where we sold the highest amounts of sludgy coffee and balloons filled with carbon-dioxide.

God, the place stank, but that was OK - I thought smelliness and sliminess were always surefire winners with kids. But by now, all the smiles, even the malevolent ones, had disappeared from their faces. And there was no-one there to put the smiles back, my park’s entertainers having gone on strike. They even took their juggling balls and balloon animals with them.

It was the loss of the mechanics that was most keenly felt, in my opinion. Actually, that was moreso the opinion of the investigative team after the Ferris wheel blew up and the roller coaster sort of “unzipped itself”, to use a scientific expression. I did not tell them about the many, many go-karts I purposely shot into the wall by strategically deleting parts of the track.

Well, why complicate their investigation? Anyway, no harm in it. “Have a bit of fun while you’re there, old son, enjoy yourself,” Archie had told me. “But see if you can’t knock the place out for a bit of profit at the end of the year.”

Yes, the end of the year, when the inspectors came and gave their valuation of the park. But not before handing out the Theme Park awards - I won Most Expensive Park and Most Rustic Park. After that, it was time to value the park and get it ready for auction.

Well, knock me down with a feather, but it seemed that the evaluators couldn’t do maths either. According to them, our park was worth less now than when it was just an empty plot of land. Not only that, but inflation was spinning out of control, and I wasn’t talking about those sulphuric balloons we were selling.

This led to a slightly bad day when Archie called me in a raging panic. “Have you done my money, Burkey? If you haven’t turned a profit by next year, mate, you’ll be at the bottom of that log flume with an axe in your face”. It sounded like a threat, but he hung up before I could get any of my pre-prepared excuses in.

But what could I do? My Sega system was lagging like crazy, once all that litter accumulated and the grass, flowers and weeds were growing like wildfire. I suppose it would have been better to try the DOS or SNES or DS systems to build my park, but what did I know about technology?

We were also completely out of money; no matter how much I rigged the Hook-A-Duck and Shooting Range games, it wasn’t coming in fast enough. Only when it was too late did I recall Archie’s bit of advice to me: “Never go into business without cheating, Burkey. You can’t make money without cheats.”

I didn’t forget everything he told me, though. So when I saw Archie’s gold-plated Rolls-Royce thundering up the road one day, and I knew that it would on me to tell him that we’d just declared bankruptcy, I knew my fate was sealed.

I’d had some great fun with the whole Theme Park game; loads of variety, a bit of strategy, a nice sense of progression, and lots of strange music and sounds. But now, it was all over. I had blown it. Nothing else for it - I pulled open the window, steeled myself, had one last think about how building that monorail was probably a stupid idea. And then I jumped. Thankfully, it wasn’t a long way down.

29 August 2025

Donkey Konga (2004)

Time passes all too quickly. I was just looking back on a pretty miserable 2020, the bad old lockdown days. I have to say, it's pretty impressive that my family and I were stuck under the same roof for several months and we never ended up killing each other.

Now, it’s true to say that I didn't have it as bad as others; there were four of us living in the house and we all generally kept to ourselves anyway - until strangely hostile lunchtimes and dinnertimes came around. No wonder I moved out as soon as I could.

Apart from that, I got my first taste of working from home, and I have done my best to hang on to this privilege ever since. I would have preferred an indefinite furlough until my retirement age of course, but I suppose a bit of work from home means I can only turn into half a couch-potato.

And it’s important to have a bit of structure at home, because it kept me adhered to some sort of weekly routine. Otherwise I would have spent more and more time conked out in bed, until I eventually metamorphed into an enormous, barely mobile, Kafka-esque slug.

When you’re on the work from home buzz, it’s important to squeeze some exercise into your packed schedule as well. In the lockdown days, my daily step count went right down, which you and I both know to be a disaster. And I wasn't going out there to run or walk - the government kept mentioning something about social distancing, not that it stopped other fools from going out there and potentially breathing the virus all over me.

Back at my parents' house, I used to have an exercise bike and a treadmill out in the shed. I know, I was surprised I had them as well. It could get pretty dark and miserable out there, though, so I flirted with the idea of lugging one of the exercise apparatuses indoors so I could use it in, say, my room.

But I never did, and what’s more, I already knew that that would have shattered the lockdown harmony and get the family all hating each other because, if you didn't know, parents can hear any noise coming out of your room amplified by 100 times the decibels.

Hence, even with parents as deaf as mine, exercise machines in my bedroom simply couldn't work. The moment my squeaky treadmill would crank into gear and I'd start bouncing my size 10s off it, my parents would be on me at once, incessantly shouting up the stairs. They never hear your (even-louder) call back either, meaning it wouldn't be long before they'd be rushing in to stop me like they're the Secret Service.

It was this parental selective hearing that finished Donkey Konga for me. This is one of those GameCube games that I vividly recall buying, even as far back as 2004. And more than that, I really remember wondering what the hell I was even doing, going up to the counter with that ridiculous big box and the DK Bongos contained within. It wasn't as if I was gonna be able to use those ridiculous plastic DK Bongos for anything else.

I'm not sure if I need to clarify this, but Donkey Konga is a rhythm game. Remember in the mid 2000s how Guitar Hero took the world by absolute storm? Well, Donkey Konga is nothing like that. For starters, Guitar Hero has you holding a plastic Gibson electric guitar, which is embarrassing but in an oddly pleasant way. It looks a lot cooler than these big brown bongos, let’s say. Guitar playing requires a little bit more finesse than hammering down on some bongos, know what I mean?

But also, Guitar Hero and Rock Band proved a lot more popular because they had some all-time classics in there, as well as a few mad tunes that you mightn't have heard of at the time, like the notoriously difficult Through the Fire and Flames. But the trouble with Donkey Konga, rather like Wii Music, the tracklist is severely antiquated.

I'd love to just paste the whole list of songs here, because believe me, they would speak for themselves. But suffice to say, All The Small Things is probably the newest track on there, and if you've ever wanted to drum and clap along to Happy Birthday, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and, ah, Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G-Minor… then here's your chance.

That's where it all hairy - the clapping. As hairy as a gorilla, even. In the first place, clapping along to a song isn't all that fun. It's okay when the tempo is slow, but try mashing your hands together like a lunatic to 99 Red Balloons, and you'll see it gets very tiresome, very fast. Secondly, you really wouldn't believe how loudly even a single hand clap travels through a house. Beware - your walls might be a lot thinner than you think.

That's my abiding memory of Donkey Konga - finally dispensing with some of my teenage self-consciousness, booting up the game in a moment of both weakness and madness, and giving the game a chance by clapping along to Earth, Wind and Fire, only to be shouted at and told to keep the noise down.

To cut down on the clapping, I resorted to just tapping the DK Bongos' faux-metal ring, which was close enough to the microphone that registers your clapping. Tapping instead of clapping - still stupid, but a lot less stupid than giving yourself a round of applause while Donkey Kong gurns and makes silly faces onscreen.

I never played the Multiplayer mode in this game, obviously. Well, I didn't have a car at the time, so how would I even transport something like that to a friend’s house without being seen? And those Bongos, they’re not exactly something you bust out at a social gathering either. How could I ever live that one down?

That was the end of Donkey Konga in my house, although not the last time I'd be reminded of it. In fact, I probably lay eyes on those DK Bongos every day of my life. I don’t know why, because they are bloody worthless. So much so that the retro game shop I did some work for refused to take them in anymore.

To be fair, they also refused Guitar Hero guitars and the Super Scope. The reason for this was space, of course, but also their sheer abundance, and also they probably didn’t want to carry too much mortifying stock on their shelves. Donkey Konga was followed up by two sequels, which I’ll never play which have long since fallen into obscurity - and I mean obscure, even by my standards. Lockdown? Work from home? I wouldn’t even play this game in solitary confinement.

22 August 2025