“In all honesty, Torontoist hasn’t had a lot of space in its brain for film this week—it’s been almost completely taken up with thoughts of Street Fighter IV, the latest (and long awaited) sequel in the premier fighting game series. With our head filled with thoughts of attempting to focus attack cancel Sakura’s super into her air juggle (don’t worry if that makes no sense) it’s entirely likely that there’s a similar group of people—lost in similar thoughts—that might accidentally wander into a movie theatre and purchase a ticket for Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.”

Street Fighter IV is flawed – I mostly agree with what David Sirlin has said, and I pretty much hated SSFIITHDR – but I can’t stop playing it!

“We were recently pleased to see Not Another Teen Movie playing on a basic cable channel recently, because we rather like that film: it’s easily the best of the genre-parody genre, because it’s knowing, not just randomly gross, and TV – split up by adverts, the swears cut out – always feels like the place where it’s most fun to watch these films. You know – you’re flicking channels and you find it midway through; you don’t really need to invest in it, just enjoy the jokes when you look up from your laptop or whatever. The point we’re making? That we’re looking forward to catching Fired Up – a cheerleader comedy starring Not Another Teen Movie’s antagonist Eric Christian Olsen – when it hits basic cable.”

Other films especially well suited for the basic cable, half-of-my-attention treatment include some of the Happy Madison output and pretty much every film produced in the 80s.

“On-rails shooters are a popular genre on the iPhone and iPod Touch. After all, they make sense in the context of the hardware, demanding little more interaction than tapping, and they’ve always been a tempting genre in the arcade setting, where prices are similarly low and the fun quick and disposable.

Then there’s the fact that my finger then obscures the screen for often crucial milliseconds. So although you’d think tapping at a screen would be easier than aiming and shooting with a plastic gun, I’ve found it harder. So with a game as reliant on accuracy and speed as Time Crisis, can the iPhone really be as good a platform for it as it would initially seem?”

No. No it is not.

In this article I talk about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

At the time, I was playing it a lot. I’ll admit that for some reason my addiction waned, and I know why – it’s because I’m a completionist. Any time I came up against a public quest (which rely on grouping with nearby players to complete) I’d want to do it (because they were normally great fun.) Of course, if there was no one about, I’d have to wait until some other players were (or else get into the un-fun situation of repeatedly failing it.)

As a result, with both of my characters – a Chosen and a Witch Hunter – I found myself at public quests absolutely no one was ever around for. So I just stopped playing. Next time I have some free time (rare as it is) I’ll go back to it, though – they’ve made a lot of changes since. Guess I’m just kind of worried about getting addicted to it again.

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“It sounds daft, but the reason I was attracted to play Trapped: Undead Infection was explicitly similar to the reason I didn’t think I was going to like it.

I haven’t been able to find any information online about Trapped: Undead Infection being originally sold for ordinary mobile phones, though. It’s possible that it was always intended for iPhone, but I’d swear if it wasn’t at least sold in Asia as a mobile title first, it was converted mid-way through development.”

It’s something to be said about the iPhone platform that at least it’s not drowning in quick-and-dirty mobile phone ports, at the very least.

“Okay, so you know by now that we often come to our conclusions on the films that we mention in this column after only watching the trailer, but I don’t think anyone is going to argue with us when we say that The International has quite easily the most boring trailer ever. There’s some kind of conspiracy involving a corrupt bank and Clive Owen and Naomi Watts have to solve it before you fall asleep!”

I moan about how bad the Rob Zombie remake of Halloween is in this article, too. It’s so bad I feel embarrassed to even be thinking about it.

This article – my first back on the job -was titled, quite simply, “Leipzig sucks”. It’s a very self indulgent article – after all, it’s almost entirely me complaining about how complicated it is to get to Leipzig, and then complaining about Leipzig (the town, which I notably call “little more than a train station between real places.”)

In fact, I don’t even mention the event until the very last paragraph, where the most interesting thing I can note is that there was an FM Towns Marty on site which was running a copy of Raiden.

There was a Vectrex too, I remember. That was quite fun too.

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This article amuses me! I try list all the postives I can think about Sony’s record with the PS3 – remember this was in November 2007 – and, roughly, can come up with one – their commitment to excellent independent games like Everyday Shooter on the PSN.

Well, in February 2009 I’m really not sure I can come with any more, and the negatives I go on to list – removing backwards compatibility, introducing a Dualshock 3, and so on – still sting.

Despite all that, I should really get myself a PS3 considering this month they’re releasing Flower and Noby Noby Boy, but the price still puts me off. If only Sony would finally be kind enough to give me one (hint.)

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“Like many other journalists, I do a fair amount of travelling. And like many other gamers, I have a secret addiction to getting achievements.

I shudder to think about how much that would cost in air travel, and I know that even as a jet setting journalist I’m not going to get to Nairobi or Buenos Ares any time soon. And there’s no way to cheat; you actually have to be in the airport for it to count (so I can’t get the souvenir for even my local airport without physically going there.)”

As a result of the souvenirs, I’m keeping Jetset on my iPod Touch even though I’d otherwise delete it. Achievements, eh?

Looking back at this column – which celebrates the release of Sin and Punishment on the Virtual Console – reminds me how long the Wii has been about already. And also the fact that they still haven’t released Mario’s Super Picross in North America, which is an abusively cruel thing for Nintendo to do.

Not that anyone really seems to care about the Virtual Console these days – to be honest I don’t even really remember what comes out from week to week now, as it’s usually some awful Sega game they’re putting out for no reason other than habit.

Intriguingly, at the end of this column I promise I’ll play through the Halo trilogy, because other than playing about six missions of the first Halo one afternoon in London, I’ve never really played them. Here I am nearly two years later and I still haven’t bothered.

Maybe one day.

(You can download the PDF of this issue at the Game Reactor website.)