Out of the ones we played, anyway.

1. NINJA GAIDEN
If you didn’t “get it”, we pity you. If you didn’t play past the second level, we pity you and the idiot children you will raise. There are another 14 levels, each exponentially amazing, each offering more impressive enemies and environments. To play it that far requires thought, cunning, skill and BALLS OF STEEL. Ninja Gaiden’s proud majesty brings a lump to our throat. It’s hard, but easy once you’ve mastered it. The combat is perfect, the atmosphere unequalled, the bosses phenomenal masterpieces, the Xbox Live “entire new game” download inspirational. We normally get bored after three levels of most games — all of Ninja Gaiden was completed three times. For fun. Fantastic.

2. OUTRUN2
We fear this is the last, great Sega game that’ll ever be made. Surely new-Sega/Sammy won’t sanction the pumping of vast amounts of cash into Yu Suzuki’s staggering arcade follies, instead we’ll see safe, steady Sega franchises that are updated in a timely and pre-Christmas fashion. Just. Like. E. A. A beautiful driving feel that perfectly combines car handling with track design, it’s all Sega ever was in one wonderful game. Typing this is making us cry. Please don’t let it be over! We don’t know what we’d do with ourselves.

3. PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 4
We can’t think of a better one-on-one video game*. If you’re bent and don’t like football it’s still great, thanks to fast, precise controls that let you master the basics within minutes. We resisted playing Pro Evo right up until this version came out for Xbox — we now realise the error of our ways, but sadly, can’t get those Pro Evo-free years of our life back. Don’t make the same mistakes we did.

4. GRADIUS V
Top (that’s top-down and occasionally side-on) developer Treasure’s fiery-phoenix reworking of Konami’s age-old shooter series stunned us with its harsh-but-fair play and dynamic new look. A phenomenal improvement on the miserable Gradius IV, this takes the mighty Silvergun and Ikaruga stylings and squeezes them perfectly into PlayStation2. It’s the best shooter since whenever Ikaruga came out on Dreamcast!

5. BURNOUT 3
Here’s the thing about Burnout 3. When we first sat down and played it, we were stunned. Proper blown away. We spent three whole days doing nothing but playing Burnout 3, enthusing about the speed, look and excitement of it all. We loved it! We then went off and wrote a review of it and gave it 10/10 (thankfully no one has noticed this). But then, a few days later, after the excitement of getting a game out of EA had subsided, we went back to it and were bored shitless by the “no skill required” bouncing-off-the-sides play and ultra-repetitive crash nonsense that lay behind its glam look. How did it trick us?! We’ll never know. OutRun2 is the better driving experience, but Burnout 3 cheated us into giving it a better score with its fireworks. We feel quite stupid about this.

6. FLATOUT
A straightforward racer but with an irresistable slidy off-road feel that makes us think happy Sega thoughts. Its passenger-flinging mini games and online play took the biscuit. It was just a very nice little game and was cheap to buy new. There’s no punchline. It’s great.

THE SHIT LIST
Watching our poor old PlayStation2 clunk and whirr its way through the way-too-demanding GTA San Andreas was an embarrassment — as was the game’s pathetic “gangsta” style. Halo 2’s great if you like team games (we don’t) and haven’t already played Halo 1 (we have). The disappointment of seeing a Nintendo DS for the first time was so crushing it felt like we were having a heart attack. That’ll do. The therapist says we should try to be more positive about things.

*Apart from maybe Virtua Tennis, but we really ought to start trying to get over the whole Dreamcast thing.

Days regain some sort of coherent structure.

No more getting drunk at 10:30am to help the day whizz past.

Going from eight meals a day back to three.

Less chance of developing Type 2 diabetes.

New jumpers to show off.

Leaving the house again! Exciting! Have they built any new buildings since we were last outside?!

Nice break from all that wanking.

Comparing new MP3 players with everyone.

Going back on savoury food.

The feeling that you should be doing something MORE with your life is replaced by the more familiar feeling that you should, in fact, be doing LESS.

eBaying Christmas games for drugs money.

Spending all day posting on internet forums feels slightly more socially acceptable on January 4 than it does on December 25.

We did a huge Christmas story for the Christmas of 2004. If you’re reading this archive page in June 2009, it was just after OutRun2 came out for the poorly-remembered Dreamcast 2. Hence the theme. The story works on many levels — as do all our updates — but was primarily written because long, ill-conceived and rambling homages to A Christmas Carol are what Christmas is all about. Next year we’re doing one set in the future about Splinter Cell. See you then.

We wrote 500 words of horrendous, hateful-yet-cathartic bile about Eidos’ rap game Get On Da Mic, then deleted it — because a picture speaks 500 words:

We also wrote a massive and borderline racist caption aggressively querying how intelligent business people can have meetings where words like “bling”, “ride” and “cribs” are suggested as names for menu options, but in the interests of maybe having to talk to someone from Eidos again and maintaining a working professional relationship, decided against using that too. See? We can make proper grown-up decisions if need be!

MP3 BLOG LAUNCHED!
But you can still listen to us sighing with despair after reading Get on da Mic’s press release.

Download: Us sighing with despair (47k)

Life-long Sega fan Steve, 43, sent us this drawing of what he imagines a woman to be like naked:

He’s quite close! We actually found this sick (or amazing, depending on who we’re talking to and which persona we’re using) CG porn archive while searching for Dead or Alive fan fiction.

…to all the girls who continue to wear short skirts even though it’s amazingly cold. You make having a shower before leaving the house seem worthwhile.

And a big thanks to the promotional image archives of the world for making not going outside such an entertaining option.

The latest satirical video game joke is obviously to do with PSP’s battery life and/or size. This will be funny. It must be, because we keep seeing it in web forums where people other than us say LOL and ROFL afterwards. And, as we all know, people in web forums are the arbiters of comedy taste!

We got this picture off Google, but it doesn’t really say “stupid, pointless white elephant” enough to satisfy our anti-Sony standpoint:

It’s also set in someone’s lounge, which doesn’t look like a corporate Sony setting. Also, it isn’t very funny.

Can you help? We need pictures of people carrying large, square objects that can subsequently – and hilariously! – be labelled “PSP Battery”. The traffic we’ll generate from this will be immense. And we might even get on b3ta!!! Email us your photo findings.

…which means it’s still not OK to tell girls that you like playing video games. We all need to get hobbies for adults that involve lawnmowers.

Every year, thousands of lonely people have rubbish Christmases because they don’t drink enough. To avoid this, read the list below and ensure that AT LEAST two glasses of the following are inside you at all times over the festive period. This way you won’t mind being alone so much.

Beers

Spirits (whiskey, gin etc)

Wine

Alcopops

Fortified wines (port, sherry)

Liqueurs

Stay happy. Stay drunk.

So far, we’ve identified an incredible FOUR different levels that yesterday’s Yuji Naka/Manics update works on. It really amazes us sometimes just how much like The Onion we are! These are the levels:

LEVEL 1: It’s a satire on the western media’s puzzling obsession with everything Famitsu ever says, even if it’s something obviously stupid.

LEVEL 2: It’s a satire on the generally banal contents of Japanese games magazines.

LEVEL 3: It’s a satire on the way Japanese developers always namecheck British bands as their ‘influences’ for soundtracks.

LEVEL 4: It’s a stupid and straightforward joke about Yuji Naka having odd musical tastes for a Japanese man.

See? It’s clever, which means it can get away without being funny — like Rory Bremner. If you’ve identified any additional levels the update below successfully operates on, please email them in.