FLips

The show was OK. A B-PPV that didn’t come close to overdelivering in any sense. Obnoxious crowd and that awful chant they do after every single two count might make them my least favourite crowd of all time. Had me begging for WHAT and TWOOOO chants by the end.

Looks like Houchen is going to win Tees Valley. Seems to have lost a lot of his large majority though which is promising. Still a nightmare though.

It's neck and neck between Labour and the Tories here in Teesside, both polling at 47% each. The Green candidate dropped out last minute and the Lib Dem candidate basically doesn't exist so as usual it's a two horse race. I can't say overall I'm thrilled with Keir Starmer or Labour as a whole but with no alternatives and looking like it could go either way, I voted Labour. Our current mayor is Ben Houchen who is the real-life nephew of Keith Houchen (the footballer, not ours) and despite being born and raised in the area has done his best since 2016 to put it in the ground. He's an arsehole who a quick google search will make his failures and corruption very clear. None funnier though than this line from the 2024 Tees Valley Election Wikipedia page. I hope with all my heart he gets demolished.

I never played Croc 2 until years and years later, I think through emulation. With most games of that era that tried to transition from tank controls to Mario 64 controls, it was pretty badly done if I remember rightly. Swang way too far in the other direction and was a bit of a loose mess.

My PS1 came yesterday and the seller was nice enough to send a couple of chipped games that he didn't advertise as part of the bundle, South Park and Croc: Legend of The Gobbos, along with the advertised TOCA World Tour Cars and Official Multi-tap which are both legit. I already had Croc in my collection. It's a fantastic game for an early years 3D platformer and if it controlled a little smoother I think might be spoken about in the same breaths as Crash and Spyro quality wise. In terms of people naming PS1 mascots though I think he's deservedly already in the conversation. Cute character, catchy music and lovely bright graphics make up a decent package from the creators of the original Starwing, Argonaut Games. At my request a while back, my crafts-crazy wife made me a little crochet Croc which, if I say so myself, is perfect. She also made me an Ono-Michio from the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games and Mr Drippy from the first Ni-No-Kuni game. I did request a Psygnosis Owl but she's yet to make that after discovering how to make socks. South Park is a first person shooter, which like the other South Park games on the PS1 (Chef's Luv Shack and South Park Rally) are real stinkers. That's not to say I didn't get my money's worth at the time though as I was South Park mad as a kid, as most my age were during the boom. I had a room full of plushes, figures, keyrings, and other bits. I remember playing this one on a wet november night with my mate after school. We played this, watched The Worst Witch and then went to the local hall that used to do an after-school club with footy and a tuck shop and that. Even for a PS1 FPS it's rough though. Riddled with fog, sluggish mechanics and what very well could be the most annoying enemy in a game ever with the turkeys. They're the most common enemy and they come at you in swarms gobbling, but it's like the sound team never capped the volume so you get high pitched turkey swarm noises relentlessly. You can upgrade your snowballs by pissing on it and throw farting Terrence and Philip dolls though, so 10 year old me couldn't get enough. I did some extensive testing on some of my own games too and everything seems to be running spot on. Much faster and full of energy than the replacement launch 100X model I had and so far hasn't had any issues reading and playing discs. It also plays NTSC games in colour without the need to use that Scart cable I had to buy for the 100X so all in all really happy with it. I've never played TOCA so might give that a go at some point but for now it's relegated to the pile under our bed. My SNES Super Scope came today too and I gave that a go during my lunch. It's a strange thing that I'm not sure there is a comfortable way to hold. It takes 6 AA batteries! The smaller scope attaches diagonally to the side of the gun and has one of those small circle inside of a big circle gimmicks for more precision aiming. I played 15 minutes and my shoulder and neck were knacking. It seems accurate though and I was aware when I bought it that it would be a thing I'd rarely play and just wanted to experience. I'll give it a better go at some point as I also want to pick up the weird rail gun shooter Yoshi's Safari for it.

1 sausage and 7 tomatoes is a tough ratio.

The covers are night and day aren't they? The PAL cover is awful in it's own right.

Fun coincidence actually. I was watching @Big Bully Busick’s Youtube channel and he picks a game up and says “what on earth is that”. I knew what it was straight away. It’s the Japanese copy of Mr Moskeeto! It’s definitely a fetish thing.

My mate just sent me this. AI doing wrestler themes from prompts. The AJ Styles and Hulk Hogan ones have sent me to another dimension. Bad laughing at them.

I thought Braun was great when he was feuding with Roman but just like Ryback before him, once they stopped pushing him and he wasn’t doing squashes and main event brawls he was exposed as pretty useless. You can’t just have a guy his size be a regular roster spot or you go from Kane to Albert really fast.

Orioles and Mariners have been a pleasure to watch this season. Orioles are good fun with a great atmosphere but the Mariners are starting to show a little bit more character than usual. It's been an odd season for us so far though as it feels like every team we've played so far signed one of our players during the off-season. The game against Atlanta today was ace. Opened with Jarred Kelenic explaining how he's grown as a person since he played for us and did an interview crying his eyes out because he accidentally broke his foot kicking a bin and ended with us walking them off in the bottom of the 9th. You love to see it.

My mate is a big PS2 collector and so over the last few weeks I've been playing some stuff with him. I can't remember if I already mentioned it in here but we finished the PS2 Altered Beast which isn't anywhere near as bad as people say, but I also wouldn't go as far as to say it's good. It's a very solid, right down the middle 5/10. There are some decent boss fights and the as someone who isn't a fan of the genre I don't find the combat any less monotonous than something like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. That being said, the fact you have to watch the human to beast transition every single time is a nightmare because the game encourages a lot of transforming. Like how Metal Gear Solid games are 30% gameplay and 70% cutscenes, this was the same ratio in gameplay to transforming. We also played Castlevania: Lament of Innocence which is chronologically the first game in the Castlevania story and is about the origins of Dracula and the Vampire Killer Whip. The gameplay is what it is but it's the overall package that worked well here. Really good soundtrack, interesting puzzle elements and hammy voice acting all made it a good laugh to play through and the solid if unspectacular gameplay held our attention long enough. We started Castlevania: Curse of Darkness over the weekend and while Lament had a central hub and areas you could play and go back to in any order, this one is more like Symphony of The Night where it's one big connected world. The music is jammin' but I was underwhelmed with the gameplay so far as there are a lot of areas with nothing in them and it doesn't have the atmosphere to pull it off like Symphony does. We 100%'d the Pamela Anderson quicktime event shooter/rhythm game VIP which took a couple of hours and we didn't stop laughing through the whole thing. I'm not going to lie to you and say it's a good game in any way but I think he got it for a tenner and if you're looking for a way to pass a couple of hours and piss yourself laughing at how amazingly bad it all is then this is the game for you. Another game in the lineup is Mr Moskeeto which is absolutely bonkers. The game opens with some pro-mosquito propaganda and then has you play as one terrorising a Japanese family. Each level is a family member in a room and you have to suck a specific amount of blood from them. They follow a routine and you have to pick your spot to zoom in and start sucking. If they see you it starts a david vs goliath fight where you have to fly around them and hit their "relaxation points" to calm them down. The whole thing is a bit unsettling. The daughter of the family is 17 and there's a level where she's in the bath with the top of her tits above water and straight away my mate went "wonder where the weak spot is in this level" and right enough it has you suck the blood out of a 17 year old Japanese schoolgirls tit. Other stages have you bite gross areas like between toes or on the lip and it's all just a bit much. He has the usual lot of WWE games. We tried Smackdown vs Raw vs ECW 2009 and the original Smackdown vs Raw in that order. 2009 has an old school feel still but it's right on the cusp of when they were moving to a more simulated style. Slower pace, analogue stick controls and borderline boring mechanics. We got a bit of fun out of the roster and our Sandman vs Marcus Cor Von match was a laugh but we quickly stuck the original Smackdown vs Raw on and that was way way better. Nostalgia right off the bat with the 2000s playlist full of enjoyable shite like Breaking Benjamin and Powerman5000, a gyrating Sable and Torrie Wilson on all the menus and a roster that is an absolute blast. The gameplay was fast paced similar to HCTP and other games before it and we had an absolute riot on it. I can't remember how good the ones between this and 09 were but my brain is telling me this was the last proper good one. I don't remember any of them as much as I remember putting this one on and being blasted by EVERYTHINGSFALLINGAPART as soon as it loads. Good times. Outside of the PS2 I've been playing the original Fallout before and after work which I've always been a big fan of since first playing it back during the 2012 London Olympics (at home as a viewer, not as a participant). It's very much required that you save-scum your way through it as you'll find yourself in deep shit a lot. I love the graphics though, always found this 90s/00s pre-rendered style really nice and I wish we saw more games now that had it. Got good memories of this one outside of the olympics too as when me and my wife first started dating, the first night she stayed over at mine I made us bacon sarnies and we played this the next morning. When she saw I was playing it again she made us bacon sarnies and sat with me, the wee cutie. During work I've been playing Fallout New Vegas (the benefits of working from home) and that's been good fun as well. I wasn't surprised to see it show up in @RedRooster's favourite games thread as I've always held the opinion this is the best one. This, what must be my 3rd or 4th playthrough, hasn't changed that opinion either. It's janky in places but the characters and places and joys of exploring the wasteland were never matched. I do want to give Fallout 4 another chance though as I didn't think much after playing it at launch. And lastly the three of us (me, my mate with the PS2 and my wife) have all been playing Fallout 76 again. It's perfectly fine as an online with your mates game but it leaves a lot to be desired as a Fallout game even with all the updates it's had. The usual issues that bog down MMORPGs are all in this, including old favourites carry weights filled with junk, no way to do main missions as a team so having to do them seperately at the same time, and forgoing exciting unique encounters to instead have repeatable public events. Is what it is, we're having fun but not as much fun as if Fallout 76 was single player we feel.

I don't do anything outside of here. I've said it before but I'm a UKFF exclusive haha. I did do the Twitch thing during lockdown and back in my late teens I used to write for a couple of websites/magazines but like with most things in my life I never pursued it fully. You're not the first person on here to ask me about doing stuff outside of the forum and I'd love to say one day I will but I'm sure I'll always find an excuse!

Yeah CEX fluctuates up and down with retro. Some things they price high but still around Ebay average, but some other things you'll find for beans. You'll find CEX has a better range of rarities than dedicated stores sometimes because a lot of the time the person selling it just wants quick cash and indy shops don't have the money to just chuck around. My town has 2 CEXs a minute's walk apart and they get decent stuff in. One had an Atari Lynx the other week, the other had an Amiga mini. When me and the wife were clearing out some of our more decorative items like Amiibos and the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy edition we sold them at CEX because they offer a decent price. --- On a side note I ordered a knockoff repro cart of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse from AliExpress today. It's not something I'm particularly thrilled about but I settled on the fact I'd never own the real thing as the PAL-A version sells for hundreds and thousands. I did have a bid on a region free repro of it on Ebay the other day that ended up going for £78 and then got relisted because the buyer never followed through. I shouldn't have bid on it at all really as I knew AliExpress had something similar for £15 and upon close inspection it's the exact same cart. Saved myself a lot of money there. Apparently it works by pressing the reset button to change regions so assuming it works as advertised then it should run 100% like the real thing as it's all on original hardware. In the mail also is a Nintendo Super Scope and game that I'm excited to play. The game itself doesn't look outstanding but I've only ever known one person own one of these when I was a kid. Weirdly the same house where I first experienced DOOM on PC which his older brother had, and also I was round there once and his older brother called us both in to watch him fight Psycho Mantis on Metal Gear Solid. A lot of good gaming memories round there, but we used to just use the Super Scope as a bazooka when we were playing with toys (that Fisher Price castle with all the knights and catapults and stuff!). I also (someone please stop me doing this) bought yet another PS1. The model 100X I got as a stand-in a couple of month ago has been more trouble than it was worth. First having to get a dedicated cable to play chipped games in colour, and even with a laser swap it picks and chooses what games it wants to load. I just bit the bullet and bought a 9002 model which aside from a missing gameshark port has all the bells and whistles my beloved 7502 model had. Comes with an official multi-tap too so if I find two more friends I'll be laughing.

Just had a quick look (I’m meant to be working) and as someone who also scours CEX and retro stores at any chance it seems right up my alley! Will watch properly later, nice one.