Brickman

It’s lower than what I’d give BB and I love the game

Phew! I can put down the flame thrower

I haven’t played the first one but the series seems to go up and down from what I’ve read. I enjoyed 2, 3 was boring and 4 I became obsessed with naval combat and enjoyed the pirate story line. I haven’t played any after that. I’d go a 6 or 7 on the Reed scale for 2 and 4.

Oh! Haven't seen that one. I've seen Christmas, Europe and Las Vegas. I'll have to check it out.

I’ll have to pay more attention next time. I don’t remember it

10. Definitely one of my favourite movies of all time. If people are looking for an easier entry point into Charlie Kaufman films, I think this is one of the easier ones. Michel Gondry did an excellent job directing this and bringing Charlie’s idea to life. An amazing cast and one of Jim Carrey’s best dramatic performances imo.

Yeah I’ve seen it and watch every few years at Christmas. Don’t remember the song in it though, guess my mind blocked out the song which scene is it in?

Yeah these were definitely available through video rental stores. That rental sticker in your picture was very common for independent rental stores here at the time. It is most likely that the majority of these were available at independent rental stores vs blockbuster imo. Don’t have any proof but from looking at those pictures they were mostly independent video stores. Video Ezy was a pretty big chain, but at the time probably weren’t as big, so they may have been happy to get some of these imports in.

haha literally me with Age of Empires 2! I played an online match one day and the first thing the guy says when we start is "I hope you aren't a noob" and I said "nah I'm not". He demolished in about 5 minutes and said "yeah you're a noob" and left . I had no idea the game could be played like that and couldn't work out how he did it. Only when I got older did I learn about pro level RTS and how the games can really be played (I still suck though ).

Edge of seventeen is a pretty good Stevie Knicks song. I went with 7. Never heard the other song. It sounded awful 2.

Wow pretty interesting stuff. I’m from Australia and never saw this stuff growing up or even had heard the Mega Drive called the Genesis until I was an adult. I checked a few pictures and it looks like they must have been mostly in video rental stores (video ezy) and also independent video rental stores. I saw a Frankston sticker which is only about 40mins from me. They could have been sold at Virgin megastore too like you mentioned. I was too young to remember those and I am guessing there was probably only one or two max in each city of Australia due to the small population.

Two games done, both for the GBA. Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace This was a really fun game and had a real SNES action platformer vibe to it. This game came out a few months after the GBA release but looks really nice. They spent a lot of time making this game look good. The music is mostly great with a nice 16bit vibe, but a few levels were lacking a little with interesting tunes. It has a good variety of levels, which each feeling a little different. The web mechanic works well and it’s fun to swing around and climb up walls. Where this game falls short a little is that there are only 7 levels, which felt way too short, and the combat feels a little clunky when you’re in close combat. They have quite a few action moves you can perform, but it feels a bit awkward at times and it shows that they probably rushed that part a little. I feel like this game really could have been so much more if they had spent more time with it, but they probably had to rush it out. Still a great game worth playing though despite a few shortcomings. 8/10 Super Puzzle Bobble It was a pretty fun puzzle game and it definitely had some really challenging levels. There are heaps of levels in this game, it divides up the alphabet into rows and you can choose your path as you move up each rank. I personally would have preferred that you could choose any letter, but the game also focuses on getting a high score, so I get why they did it the way they did. Graphics are nice and vibrant, but it isn’t very colour blind friendly. I really struggled with some of the colours and it cost me quite a few games, which was frustrating. Controls are tight and you can use the L & R buttons to get really precise with your shot. It does fall short in a few areas, which takes a bit of the enjoyment out of it. It doesn’t have a save function, which is really odd for a GBA game, so I had to leave my pocket in sleep mode while making my way through the campaign mode. There is one song, yeah ok it’s pretty catchy, but a few songs wouldn’t have hurt. If you’re really into Puzzle Bobble you’ll probably love it. Otherwise, most will probably play a few levels and move on to something else. 7/10

Agreed. I'm currently playing StarCraft for my backlog for the first time (besides when I gave up on the N64 version) and it's an incredible game but C&C, Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 1&2 are just as good as StarCraft. Also C&C came out a few years before StarCraft so Blizzard were able to expand on what did and didn't work for C&C. You will never go wrong with choosing either C&C or StarCraft. They're both amazing games

I use vgcollect to track my stuff. The majority of my games are Japanese with a small amount of English Switch and PC games. Gameboy (CIB)- 63 GBA (CIB) - 520 GC (CIB)- 279 (this is the complete Japanese retail set) PC Engine (CIB) - 214 Famicom (cart) - 237 Game & Watch - 2 3DS (CIB) - 215 N64 (CIB) - 124 Switch (CIB) - 85 Switch (Eng releases) - 15 PC (Big & small boxes) - 70 PC (Eng Big & small boxes) - 15 Vita (CIB) - 27 PSP (CIB) - 120 I don’t think it will happen this year but I would like to finish off the GBA set.

Ahhh ok, sorry totally misread your comment then Agreed.

Oh yeah for sure. I wasn’t talking about the games being posted, more an in general thing.

Yeah the flip side to my embrace the 10 is that we should probably embrace the 5 more. It is the middle of the road score, which a lot of games are. But when people see a 5 they think it is awful. For horror movies I go 4 or higher and the rest 5 or higher, but some people won't watch a movie unless it scores 8+. You miss a lot of good movies that way. I think it would probably be similar with games.

I don't rate games like that. I don't look at Dark Souls (definitely a 10 for me) and then compare how it sizes up against OoT (another 10 for me). Both are completely different games and get a 10 for a different reason. I recently played Beyond Good and Evil and gave it a 10. Is it better than Dark Souls? Nope. But it still deserves a 10 for its own reasons. If I love a game and think it deserves it why be afraid to give it a 10? It doesn't have to be perfect. If some features of it let the game down a little then I can knock some points off it. Don't fear the 10, embrace it!

I still haven’t played this. Might try it out for next years backlog. Some people are really weird about giving games a 10. It’s like they think it should be some mythical number only reserved for a few of the best of the best. Screw that, I say let those 10’s fly when they deserve it. A game doesn’t have to be 100% flawless to gain a 10. If you really love a game and it ticks all your boxes that is a 10 in my mind.

I still need to grab this one. I got the CRPG book and it’s amazing. Definitely recommend that one if you don’t have it.

I have around 150 vinyl but don't really collect it anymore because the prices are absolutely crazy now and new stuff is really expensive. It was great to collect for when you could find great stuff for $5-15 (or even better, people would just give it to you for free), but now it's too expensive for me to justify. I will buy some game vinyl every now and then, I especially like the Samus & Chill, Mario & Chill and Zelda & Chill remixes of classic songs. Otherwise, I just enjoy what I have, which covers most of the stuff I want to listen to on vinyl anyway. In terms of sound, it really depends on which CD you're comparing it to and which masters the CD's and vinyl's used. Some engineers were lazy and you can hear the sound peak on the CD version vs the vinyl version. If you get deep into the Beatles library then you have the whole mono vs stereo debate (I'm team mono). On the other hand, some companies were cheap and made crappy vinyl and it sounds awful compared to a CD. But if you have the exact same master of a CD and vinyl on the exact same setup with a good quality CD and vinyl, then I think most would struggle to hear any difference.

I totally forgot about this, thanks for the reminder! I'm going to download it tonight and start this weekend. I've been busy finishing off Halt and Catch Fire. I have a couple episodes to go but it has been a fantastic series but Season 4 is a bit all over the place so far. They made the right call to end the show at season 4.

Beat a game on any system from any genre. Another GBA game done (I feel like it's a GBA year for me this year). I beat Super Donkey Kong 3 (DKC 3) for the GBA. I was never really into this game on the SNES, it definitely is the weaker of the three imo. However I think I have grown to appreciate it a bit more after playing it again on the GBA. Let me just say that the GBA doesn't really do this game justice. The colour palette is weird in some levels because it is an earlier GBA game and there is music missing in sections of levels for some reason. Despite that, I think it is a pretty solid game and I have grown to appreciate it. There are some challenging levels and bosses and I do like the ability to save anywhere any time with the GBA version. I didn't really put much time into the mini games but they looked ok and not tacked on. I'm not a fan of the boat system but I get what they were trying to do, making it feel a bit more "open world" and give you the ability to move around a bit more freely than follow a set map. The order still goes 2, 1 , 3 for me, but I no longer loathe this game so that's a positive 7.5/10

8 for me. MJ songs are always timeless to me. Better songs in the catalog but this is still a great one.

Geez, spoiler alerts! just kidding. I've only played the GBA one and loved it and I have DK '94 which I need to play. But I can see how this series would wear thin after 2 or 3.