And we're not ones to turn down fully-formed, VERY BITTER updates that only require the pressing of CONTROL+A, CONTROL+V then PUBLISH BLOG* to get on the internet.

How to get ahead in games development...
By "Ensign Huey"

Here are some tips on how to succeed in the games industry (after all you're special).

1. Ignore any advice given by gamers, despite their intuitive insight built upon several decades of actually playing games, your coke addled mind is "thinking outside the box" and doesn't need any extra help.

2. Have lengthy discussions about games review scores but always make sure that you score lower than your peers to get that critical edge (you also need to pout as you deliver your "definitive" score).

3. Dismiss frame rate problems out of hand because you've read in Heat that "nobody notices anyway".

4. When you invariably lose on your game during a huge press event, don't admit that you did testing on it. As rule, don't acknowledge games testing exists at all.

5. If you're a girl you can sleep your way to the top. Gaming needs more people that look pretty and there's nothing worse than having to work with someone who does their job properly.
NB: Be selective on your conquests; the last thing you want is one of the muppets blabbing about what a lousy shag you were to a reporter.

6. As shit hits the fan about a bug or a series of bugs that the testers that don't exist found but you ignored and then swathes of the gaming public encountered anyway, hide in the toilet and fill your nose with charlie. If it's an online bug; shrug and carry on nonchalantly thumbing through whatever (anybody who's important doesn't plays online anyway).

7. Don't hire anyone that knows more about games and/or has more talent than you, if you did it would only take people's attention away from your spiky and badly dyed blonde hair.

8. Treat artists and programmers like shit. They only make the games and are thus utterly expendable.

9. Belittle new game ideas put forward by your team. The public don't want fresh new games with a tangible sense of fun; they want the same banal and mediocre gaming fecal matter already available everywhere.

Remember, as long as you're alright that's all that matters. People will forget about GoldenEye Rogue Agent and the Eye Powers and the fact that you said it would be better than Halo 2. After all, if you weren't in the games industry you'd be the failure that everyone said you'd be. You showed them, oh yes.

*Actually we had to save it as raw text so the apostrophes came out OK, insert some "blockquotes" and spellcheck it. Which took about five minutes.

It's like FIFA 05 but with slightly better graphics. It's not as good as Pro Evolution Soccer 5.

Graphics 5/10
Sound 6/10
Playability 4/10
Overall 2/10

When people say something "made them want to cry" on the internet it's usually an exaggeration. Usually an exaggeration so the other people who read their livediaryblognal think they're all emotional and sensitive and reply with messages like "AAaaaWwwwww :((((" then possibly meet up for sex.

But this is not an exaggeration. There's a bit in Sonic Rush where Cream asks Blaze if they can be friends. It made us want to cry.



Yes, Cream. We would like that. We would like that very much. We would like it more than anything else in the world. More than you can possibly imagine. We wouldn't be any bother, we'd stay with you and sleep on your sofa and play with you all day, than tidy up after ourselves and go to bed at night. Every day. Forever. Oh god, if only it was possible.




It would never work out though. The last woman we got close to only ended up getting hurt (with a coat-hanger, then some scissors, then a saw but she lost consciousness halfway through that bit so then it would've stopped hurting). We know we will never be friends with Cream, which is the really painful part.




So we'll just fuck her mum, and leave her alone to dream her sweet innocent dreams.

By which we mean this is our last wankable picture of Sega's retrogame poster girl. We hope it keeps you going till Sega Ages: Gunstar Heroes comes out in February (click for larger image).



THIS is why Paris Hilton isn't selling any video games to us -- she's NOT A SPACE PRINCESS. She has clearly never been interviewed by Ulala, and we doubt she's even heard of the "Sega Joy Planet."

Just to prove that there's nothing to it, we had a "MAN ON THE GROUND" for yesterday's launch of Animal Crossing for DS.



Akihabara at launch, yesterday. Note the keen lack of people lined up fifty deep outside the game stores, owing to the fact that they ALL HAVE PREORDER SLIPS AND ARE STILL ASLEEP IN BED.

Anyway, on to our ZERO HOUR (give or take a day of pissing about) REVIEW!



We take it all back! It was all a clever trick by Shigs to lull us into a false sense of security! The new Animal Crossing only allows one house, and all four characters on the same cart are forced to cohabit. We quake in fear at the kind of gaming nightmare that this will inevitably lead to.

GIRL: What's that you're playing?
YOU: It's Animal Crossing.
GIRL: SQUEAL! Oh my god! It's adorable! What's that?
YOU: He runs the store. He's a tanuki.
GIRL: A what?
YOU: Never mind.
GIRL: Can I have a go?

What are you going to say? "No, piss off?" So you start hanging out and playing the game together. Then what? We give it a day and a half before you pick up the save file and find all your clothes gone and your ironic retro gaming items replaced with an aromatherapy lamp. She'll claim not to know anything about it, but later on you'll find your Starfox diorama buried behind the shops and the other animals suspiciously wearing all the shirts and hats that you drew willies and breasts on.

Animal Crossing thus joins the pantheon of games that teach children messages that we can relate to:

ANIMAL CROSSING: Fear comittment! Flee! Flee for your life!
DEAD OR ALIVE BEACH VOLLEYBALL: Women spend all the time pretending to feed each other strawberries and languish about in a quasi-bisexual way, then throw away all the expensive stuff you gave them on a spiteful whim
PROJECT RUB: Women are incapable of everything from swatting a bee to not dropping the car keys, and will blame you for it
GTA: Women will have sex with you in return for money

Please note that the online aspect of Animal Crossing DS can only be accessed if you already have someone's Friend Code and permission, making it completely useless as a grooming tool.

We know a man who went! "Doctor Vangtros" sent us this gonzo photo report from Xbox 360's launch event in the Mojave desert. It's quite good.



We loved it, because we could sit down with all the Sega games and Dead or Alive 4 and actually play them properly. It's not like at E3, where fat beardy men or short, dumpy, spotty, ugly, ginger women with hunchbacks and buck-teeth are soiling the controllers and headphones, rendering them undesirable for use.




Refreshingly, the event had some VERY NORMAL PEOPLE in attendance.




It was also great, because there was SO MUCH SPACE to relax and stretch our legs in.




Probably a bit too much space, really.




Definitely too much space. A whole desert was probably too big a location for it, to be honest. Maybe a trendy nightclub might be a better idea for the next one.




Organised fun! We hate organised fun. Being told to have fun and being given something to have fun with IS NOT FUN. It's like school or prison or an office training day where you have to be nice to all the people you hate.




Now THIS is fun! They had SLUTS on hand to entertain, though being as this was set in the arse-end of nowhere, they couldn't find high quality sluts (they can't get their sugar daddies to drive them further than a half hour out of town). So this is what we got.




Not that impressive. Oh well. Better luck next time.




There were some attractive girls thankfully. We met some of the PMS girls that were actually rather nice and pretty, though whereas the PMS girls were mostly 7/10s at best, the fact they really actually do play games made them 8-and-a-halves. We saw the ginger frag doll (US) walking around, but she's ugly so we ignored her.




There were also random hot girls who weren't PMS girls or sluts. They were friendly and gave us a faceplate that we'll probably Ebay later for heroin, or more beer for dad, because dad gets very very upset when he doesn't have beer.




We even spotted a scene of on-set lovemaking between two large people. It was such a sight that a man riding a child's bike just had to stop and stare.




It truly was an exciting event.




It was like Woodstock only about games. People will be talking about this event for minutes to come. It might possibly even be mentioned tomorrow before being forgotten forever.




Come back next week when we'll open up each page of the DOA4 calendar we won and have a pictorial on each pointlessly safe-for-work image (before selling it on Ebay).




Thanks to Microsoft for a thrilling event!

AND THANK YOU ANONYMOUS REPORTER DOCTOR VANGTROS!
You did a great job of taking photos of women from up close and with their consent, instead of from far away and secretly which is the best we've ever managed. More anonymous gonzo photography, please!

1) Dying alone

2) Dying in the presence of someone else

Or, this week's UK game chart. Sorry to do a chart update as they're always really dull, but this one's a bit interesting as it's about last week's two new Sega games -- Sonic Rush and Shadow The Motherfucking Fuckhog.



The CHART OF SHAME doesn't feature Sonic Rush, which came out on Nintendo DS last week and is the best 2D Sonic game since Sonic 2 (or even Sonic CD!). It's the perfect Sonic game -- 2D control with "3D elements" just like everyone said they wanted for Saturn, then like everyone said they wanted for Dreamcast. So Sega finally makes it, then no one bloody buys it! Ungrateful SCUM.

Look, the chart is huge and goes all the way down to number 40, but there's no Sonic Rush in it, even at the bottom. We checked lots of times, getting increasingly angry and upset with each reading -- BUT IT ISN'T THERE, just like daddy :(



That's a DISGRACE. Not many people bought Shadow The Hedgehog either as it only made it in at number 25, which is a shame because it's (a) by Sega and (b) not as bad as you think it is underneath. This is a dark day, even more darker than the normal days which are always dark anyway these days.



At least Sonic is taking it on the chin and not letting it spoil his fun. Incidentally, Sonic Rush really is extremely great. It's like a cross between Sonic 2 and SSX Tricky, with Sonic having to "trick to boost" by doing tricks on rails and in the air to power up his turbo gauge so he can GO EVEN FASTER! This really does make Sonic Rush the fastest Sonic game yet! Our Nintendogs are probably dead by now, but we don't care about them any more now Sonic's back.

As part of our whining that games don't have enough space princesses in any more (and to prove that we're not biased and that gangstas, "hood"ing up your games, pointless grit and lazy racial/sexual stereotyping aren't an exclusively western problem), let's take the UK:R time machine* back to 1986. Kunio / Renegade, the first time a game company looked at a project and deemed it to not have enough prostitutes or black muggers in to appeal to its target audience, and in the kind of crippling irony worthy of such a moment, it was actually a gang warfare game (practically unheard of in those days).



The first level. Completely normal looking station changed to piss-stained, grafitti-covered station. Schoolboy gangsters changed to black people in loud Hawaiian shirts.



The midway level. Schoolgirl gangsters changed to prostitutes and, er, black prostitutes.



The final level. White people with knives changed to........

So there you have it. Before you invest in a family pack of tissues ready for New Rainbow Islands, just keep in mind that this is ALL TAITO'S FAULT.

*nb: If there were really a UK:R time machine we wouldn't really use it to write rubbish about games not having space princesses in any more. We'd go back and play Time Traveller, which was by Sega and had a space princess in it.

And it is bad! A soft rock song about powerful women plays as some powerful women "dis" men and fight on strings while wisecracking. Women's issues seem to be mentioned. It's going to be awful. Probably even a capital AWFUL like the House of the Dead film.

But it starts off well:



Christie! Played by Holly Vallance. This is a good start.




Kasumi! Played by Devon Aoki. This is a good start.




Tina! Played by Jamie Pressley, who's well worth Googling for ten minutes before bed with Safe Search turned off. This is a very good start. This might even be a "trousers off, blinds closed" kind of movie!




Oh. They seem to be going for some kind of "girl buddy" movie feel...




...mixed in with soft porn.




And Tina even has her DoA Xtreme bikini. Which is good, as "Tina in Bikini (fighting/swimming)" would've been first on our list of things to put in the film, if we were writing the pitch.




There's a man :( Hopefully he's the pizza delivery guy who arrives just in time for a threes-up with Kasumi and Tina. He probably isn't a pizza delivery guy, though, as he looks like he can speak English and men who look like that don't tend to ride mopeds.




A bit in the woods. The makers will issue a press release saying someone famous from some B-list Hong Kong movie helped produce this sequence.




Holly Vallance again! Her off Neighbours and those phone ads, only this time fighting while a bit naked!!




The towel comes off. It'll be artistically shot, guaranteed.




ONE MILLION POUNDS says she never turns round. Hollywood builds us up then SMACKS US DOWN yet again.




Holly/Christie catches her bra as it falls from the sky. Again, it appears to be very artistically shot and not rude. Stupid arty shots.




Une homage de Beach Volleyball. Not as good as the one we did ages ago though.




More fighting. The trailer's only 1.22 long, and we're already bored and deciding it's a Bittorrent download/skip through film only.




Dead, please.

Microsoft needs to convince the "urban yoot" that Xbox 360 is cool, not wank its money away over the tits of some useless celebrity.



That said we still WOULD (go round her house to play Gotham 3 for a bit as long as she has an Xbox Live account).

OTHER THINGS THE POSH WHORE GOT GIVEN FOR FREE:

Xbox 1:



Gamecube:



Soul Calibur II:



A good seeing to:



And she got a PSP, but we can't find a photo of her holding it while looking like a vacuous slapper who deserves a smack in the face.

Sega are taking Taito to court over alledged simularities (read: complete identicalities) between Mushi King and Dino King, and we can't think of a decent headline. That's why we're going to send a free Nintendogs chia pet to the first person who can come up with one that makes us laugh out loud.

COMPETITION RULES

1) The webmaster's girlfriend is barred from entering
2) It's the chihuahua, so shut up
3) Jokes such as "Sega Vs Taito Millionaire Fighting," "Clash Of The Taito-ns" or absolutely ANYTHING TO DO WITH THAT FUCKING CGI THING FROM LORD OF THE RINGS will be dismissed out of hand
4) If it goes missing in the post, tough shit
5) Toy may be already opened and played with depending on how ratted we get between now and the winning entry; the grass you get in it will probably grow better when we've finished with it, though

And the winner is... Nintendo! Its forthcoming DS game Animal Crossing: Wild World is the best at doing sky by miles, thanks to the DS having a whole separate screen just for doing sky! Not even the mad Sega of the late-1990s would've gone that far.



It's like being young again and lying on the grass in the summer, listening to birds and aeroplanes and being happy about nothing. Just happy! That's why everyone says Shigeru Miyamoto is a genius, he knows it's all about having a really fucking good and big sky. We always knew the DS was a great idea, despite what we said on some internet messageboards when it was first revealed.

ANIMAL CROSSING ALSO PICKED UP THE FOLLOWING AWARDS AT YESTERDAY'S STAR-PACKED CEREMONY:

The Gay Pride Gayest Little Game Award

The Sugar Magazine Girl Gamer Award (4-8-year-old category)

The London Underground Most Embarrassing Game For a 32-Year-Old-Man To Be Seen Playing On The Train To Work In The Morning Award

What Paedophile? Magazine's 'Best For Grooming' Award