This article was certainly for European readers, as it’s one long cuss of Sony for crippling the backwards compatibility of the PS3 in Europe. As this was written (literally) on the day they announced they were ripping out the hardware emulation, it’s a bit more doom and gloom than it could have been, but the final compatibility list is hardly reassuring (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – Noticeable Issues, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty – Doesn’t Work, etc.)

I don’t think they’ve ripped out hardware emulation for North Americans yet, have they? Which is a good thing, as I suppose I’ll have to rush out and get a PS3 before they do. If I can be bothered, which isn’t, currently, looking too likely. Anyway! You can download this issue as a PDF from the Game Reactor website.

Game Reactor has had a redesign, and has turned from one of the best looking magazines out there (that I can’t understand a single word of) into, um, an even better looking magazine (that I still can’t understand a single word of.)

In the new redesign, too, they’ve actually managed to make the picture of me that accompanies my article even bigger than ever (if you download the PDF you’ll see it’s massive.)

This article is largely one long cuss. I cuss the PS3 for not having any decent launch titles, and then I cuss Nintendo for the absurdly shoddy state of the Wii Virtual Console, specifically in Europe, where the games are all crippled with 50hz conversions, but also worldwide, noting the inability to download games from other regions and just how (in general) overpriced it is.

Admittedly, I do have some rather kind words for Xbox Live Arcade, as the online scoreboards can turn any old game into something compulsive, not to mention the often excellent original content. If they could only get up to speed and release more than one game a week!

Goodness! What on earth could this article be about?

Well, it’s about the Wii and PS3 launches! Because I wasn’t about to stand outside in the pouring rain with food poisoning (the PS3 launch) or get up early on a Sunday morning (the Wii launch) and only get the GamesIndustry.biz articles out if it, no sir.

It’s funny to think now, actually, how easy it is to get a PS3 and how badly the launch basically backfired for everyone (that includes Sony, not just the re-sellers.) I’m rather glad I didn’t get caught up in the madness; $2000 profit sounded too good to be true. I suppose a fair number of folks still made out like gangbusters, though.

The issue is available as a PDF at the Game Reactor website, and you know, this might actually be the last piece of work I had to archive! I should celebrate somehow. I do suppose the website will get a lot quieter now, too. Oh well.

A pretty unusual piece, this (um, having said that, though, all of my Game Reactor articles are pretty unusual, one way or another) in that it’s actually more of an interview with a screenwriter than it is an opinion column about games.

But! The screenwriter in question happens to be the excellent JT Petty, director of Sandman (who I had also interviewed for Twitch Film, you may remember) who is interesting specifically because he’s written several of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell games. Despite quite clearly not being Tom Clancy.

For shame, Tom Clancy. For shame.

Anyway, you know the drill: the article is available as a PDF from Game Reactor’s website.

I have absolutely no idea what the title of this article translates as, but whatever it is, this article is a nice little primer on Second Life, as by September last yer I’d been embedded in the world for a couple of months.

Naturally, all I do is slag it off for being completely rubbish.

It is amusing to me that I haven’t logged in once since finishing my Letters from the Metaverse column for GameSetWatch, because the Second Life hype machine has only got bigger and bigger, with the “game” being regularly discussed on TV chat shows and the like.

I guess I find this funny because despite all the hype, as far as I can see, Second Life hasn’t made any of the improvements that are required for it to sustain the interest (I’m sure that 90% of the “residents” logged in a few times, got bored and left) or even give me the urge to log back in.

The Lindens have started going open source with it, though, which means it might pull through eventually, but I’m certainly not holding my breath for it.

Oh, and the article is available as a PDF from Game Reactor’s website, as per usual.

Right, well, it’s the first day of the second week of 2007, so it’s probably time to get back into the habit of posting sort-of but not-really daily posts here as I still haven’t run out of work I need to archive for posterity on this site.

This is yet another utterly rambling article, but as it’s an opinion column I suppose I get away with it; my mind drifts from the war in Iraq to the summer lull in games releases, how much I seem to love Capcom (I spent this summer playing Killer 7, Resident Evil 4 and Megaman Legends, without ever really thinking about how they were all Capcom titles) and finally a short bit about TOSE, which was supposed to attribute the article that Brandon Sheffield did about them but (in the published version) didn’t. Oh well.

If you particularly want to read it (in its native Danish, natch) you can download a PDF at Game Reactor’s website.

What a lovely cover for a lovely game, eh? Well, this is, as you might expect from the date, an article about E3. The title in English was “Beware the Quiet ones”, and as such I spend most of it discussing how loud and bombastic both the PS3 and Wii were compared to the Xbox 360, and how, in the end, the only machine with a game which truly blew my away was on the 360 (the excellent Dead Rising, of course.)

Rather a fair thought, really. The Xbox 360′s online aspects blow away both the PS3 and the Wii, and I have more of an urge, absurdly, to go back and play Gears of War again than I do to start playing even Twilight Princess. Some people might argue my tastes have changed, or something, but I think that’s a load of pants. Microsoft might just, you know, have actually got it right this generation. I don’t doubt that the Wii is going to carve its own (very secure) niche, however.

Or, in English, “The Difference between Wii and Wheee!”

Written roughly around about the time everyone was reacting to the OMG CRAZY name of the new Nintendo console, I stand out by declaring I’m not going to have an opinion (in my opinion column, of all places) and am “waiting to see the games, not names.” I then go on to cuss Red Steel for looking like a depressingly boring FPS (I was way ahead of the curve, here, it seems) and rant and rave about how awesome Outrun 2006: Coast to Coast is (it really is, you know) before briefly chatting about the “Blue Sky in Games” campaign. Never so much a campaign as it was this one isolated blog post that everyone got excited about, I still agree with them anyway.

As always, you can download a PDF of this issue at the Game Reactor website.

The second article I’ve written that references “The Game” (see my earlier piece on London Game Week 2004) this is a rather random opinion column, roughly based around the idea of viruses and memes; the idea that The Game is a very pure sort of meme somehow forms the basis of a discussion of Michael Jackson’s involvement with Sonic 3 and Introversion winning McNally Grand Prize in the 7th Annual Independent Games Festival Main Competition for Darwinia.

I’m pretty sure I wrote this piece very late at night, and even now reading it I have pretty much no idea what I’m on about. Still, I wrote a sidebar that I found personally very amusing; though I have no idea how well the humour translates.

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

A lovely cover featuring what might be Game Reactor editor Thomas Tanggaard‘s favourite game, Shadow of the Colossus, my article in the magazine (In English, “Your (Game) Quest is Over”) was actually conceived around one of my recent favourite games , Ninja 5-0 (also known as Ninja Cop in Europe). The piece is actually about Game Quest Direct, the company that forces reprints of these kind of hidden classics and then, while they don’t give them away, they still charge far less than speculators on eBay. In a way they do a good thing; anything that pisses off collectors I can’t complain about. As the article states, it’s ridiculous that I can walk into any record store and buy a CD of an album released in 1971 but I’d have trouble finding any game more than 6 months old in an Electronics Boutique; the sooner the games companies realise it might make sense to sell their games for as long as possible (not just in the month of December) the better.

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