Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I want to talk to you if I may about something very serious. Something that has always annoyed me and continues to annoy me now. Teenage Mutant NINJA Turtles. The “Ninja” part is very important. This is the story of a little boy and his eyes being opened to the larger world. When he realised you can have great meaning and significance in something that on the surface appears to be only very small.

21 years ago I was introduced to Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael. Four characters that still mean a lot to me now. The year was 1998 and I was just a small boy. Transformers had come and gone. But even now the voice of Peter Cullen and Optimus Prime bring back fond memories, and always puts a smile on my face (I am fortunate I can share this with my son, and my daughter when she is a little bigger). But that was 1985, I needed something new, something fresh.
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Due to friends with good contacts and one of the best Transformer websites  http://www.transformertoys.co.uk I was privileged to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at a special FDA screening at the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square on Friday 12th June. I would have reviewed it sooner but this was an invite only screening and there was a blackout on mentioning it in public until today.

The film was more of the same, the stuff that made the first film awesome is all here and the weak points from the first film are all still here. I’m not going to go into much detail here but there will be some mild spoilers but nothing you probably couldn’t have guessed but don’t read on if you really don’t wanna know.

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Does exactly what it says on the box

That is the simple title of this board game. I saw that and thought that’s enough for me and bought it. Anything to do with Zombies, or fills my need to be Bruce Campbell is a sure fire winner. The concept is simple, like every zombie apocalypse you have ever seen you are a survivor, and if you want to stay that way you need to get out of the city before it is completely overrun.

So every turn you have to evade the on coming zombie horde, plan your escape, and thwart the other survivors. What more could you want? Read the rest of this entry »

I finished reading Bret Hitman Hart’s autobiography today.  As expected of The Excellence of Execution, it was excellent.  This book is full of so many great little stories that seem crazy but somehow all too believable. I’m probably too biased in favour of Bret to know if it’s him hyping himself when he talks of other wrestlers congratulating him on his work as a wrestler but from what I saw in my youth and in his DVD boxset, I can’t see why they wouldn’t.  I really recommend it to anyone interested in what life at the bottom and at the top of Wrestling used to be like.  His tours of all over the world make for excellent reading in a similar way to Chris Jericho’s book which may be more entertaining than this but lacked the amazing drama that went on during Bret’s career (no offense Chris, you are still my favourite wrestler of this generation and wrote a great book).  Anyway, you should know that this book is Highly recommended for anyone that grew up watching wrestling in the 80s or 90s.

As a child of the 80s, it was an amazing read for me as Bret was always one of my favourites. Read the rest of this entry »

Street Fighter IV is an awesome fighting game, easier and more recognizable to SFII fans than SFIII but still done so that a skilled player can destroy a noob faster than you can load a fight if you don’t do the install…

Anyway this isn’t about how good it is, or even the few things in it that aren’t so good, I’ll do a proper review later but there’s something annoying me much more than I have to rage about.

The Ken/Akuma Fighter IV Pheonom.

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The other night I sat down and watched “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”.

Mini Review
Not a bad film, but not great. John C. Reilly is always funny, but Apatow takes the comedy too far. Would have been much better if they had stoped most jokes one line earlier.

This made me think. Most of my favourite films are either comedy, or have something funny at their core. But while they are playful, and sometimes hilarious they have a seriousness and a substance that I find mostly missing from current films. Read the rest of this entry »

We are still finding our feet here at BGR central command, but something I know is that we are enjoying our selfs. The blog is coming along nicely, so we are ready to try new things.

So the second phase of BGR is about to begin. We don’t only want to write a collaborative blog (though it is fun), we want to try out new things. We each have great ideas for fun projects bubbling away in our heads, and now we might just give them a go.

Nikobe has already started with a great idea that I really like, but I will let him explain that one. I have just started playing with my own idea, and it is already coming along nicely. Its going to take some time to make, then style. But it means I can get some practice in a new language (PHP) and get my head around the concepts in the CodeIgniter project. But so far, so good.

I will be explaining my idea very soon. Hopefully when I have something I can show, but even if I don’t I will put up what its all about, the decisions made, and what’s going to happen next.

I have been a fan of Luc Besson for a long time now, ever since I first saw “Léon” so many years a go. He is also responsible for the best value I have ever had at the cinema, watching “The Fifth Element” for just £1 can not be beaten in my view (as well as it being one of my favorite Sci-Fi films).

Unfortunately I have managed to miss all three “Transporter” films at the cinema, but I have certainly enjoyed them at home. I was initially sceptical about Jason Statham in this role having only previously seen him in “Lock, Stock, and two smoking barrels”. But how wrong can you be? he has proved himself again and again (especially in “Crank” that I have only just seen, but will be seeing the next one when its released). He combines excellent skill, with humor and fantastic acting. Making him always a joy to watch. So the stage is set. You have some great cast, a great writer/director team, and an established character that is quiet flexible in what can be done. Does he manage to pull it off?

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What can I say about the genesis of “Red Dwarf”?

In a strange way I am not at all surprised. I did not have very high hopes for this “series” and in a way they managed to hit the nail exactly where I thought they would. That is not to say there were not things to like.

It is just unfortunate that it fell so flat after so much hype. In case you have not seen it I wrote an article on my expectations for the new show a while back that caused some discussion.

If you intend to see the series please stop reading now. Go and watch it and make up your own mind. There might be spoilers in here, and I would not like you to hear it from me before you have seen it for yourself.

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If you don’t know me, I am a huge Dragonball fan, I have an army of Goku toys (stopped keeping a count around the 50 mark) and have watched all of Dragonball/Dragonball Z and even GT numerous times. I am a biased hard-core fan I freely admit it. I went into this movie expecting it to be a terrible adaptation but was hoping it would at least be an entertaining action film. Sadly my low hopes were shattered…

Not so detailed spoiler – It is crap

Now I am going to go into detail so you don’t have to watch it. Don’t read on if you don’t want spoilers but if you go you’re in for the ultimate spoil. Your precious time and money. Really you shouldn’t pay to see this. It’s nonsensical crap.

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Does a shrinking economy mean less game time?

The grim reality is upon us. The economy is shrinking and that means we all have to think about tightening our belts a little. With any luck we will all be able to keep our jobs, but we feel the pressure to cut back on what we are spending. Spend on more important things, or save some money (I’m no good at that). But what does that mean for our gaming habits?

I know for one I am seriously reconsidering my game purchases. The most recent game I got was “Street Fighter IV” (can’t believe one of the others guys have not put up a review.. I might have to stick up my own twisted view on it if they don’t soon!).

I have to hand it to the guy at “Game Station”. He was pleasant (not the normal grumpy guy who seems to hate working in these shops.. how and why do they fill those jobs?) and he was knowledgeable. A real fan, and it was nice to see. He also pulled an excellent piece of “up selling” on me. I am usually immune, but this was “Street Fighter”. Read the rest of this entry »

This week the tinterweb has been alight with news of the new Shuffle from Apple. You have to hand it to Apple, they certainly think outside of the box. The new shuffle is tiny, but its much more notable for its lack of controls. They have been moved onto the headphone cable, so they are always in easy reach.

But all is not as it appears, this is not about giving there customers a new way to interact with the player. This is about making a grab for the after sales headphone market. I think Apple are setting a dangerous precedent, and should not be allowed to muscle in on a market where there obvious intention is to drive up prices and exclude competitors they don’t happen to like. Read the rest of this entry »

I throughly recommend you read this book

As I have already mentioned I am not one for reading books (although I wish I was), there are so many books I would like to read but just can’t do it. But I do enjoy listening to audio books, so as long as I can find the book I want read aloud I can “read” it and thoroughly enjoy it. So I got a wonderful surprise this week when I was browsing one of my favourite sites (BoingBoing) and I came across this. A fan reading of “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”.

Written by Cory Doctorow in 2003 under a Creative Commons license. So anyone is free to make a recording of the book, and even give it away as Cory does on his own site. Cory himself is a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) as well as contributor to BoingBoing, and a prolific writer on many subjects. Read the rest of this entry »

The Internet is bound by unspoken rules you have to learn and follow so you can play nice with all the other web kiddies out there. These rules make you “polite” and “sociable” in this free space, where in actual fact you could to anything you want. But of course you run the risk of be ignore or booted from what ever it is you are doing.

No one likes the idiot who runs around SHOUTING at everyone, or someone who won’t shut up when you are trying to play Quake. Most of the time the rules are obvious, as long as you are not being annoying or upsetting someone then its OK.

But sometimes a new technology comes along that is a little different. Something that looks a feels like it is something you know, but there is something else to it that does not make immediate sense. Read the rest of this entry »

Street Fighter IV is out and I am loving it. I have no doubt the others will put a great review of it and I am looking forward to what they have to say. But with Street Fighter coming back into my life after a long absence it has made me realise 3 things:

1. The computer is a cheating git, pulling off moves you have no way of doing yourself. Proof
2. I was once good at this game, now I am nothing but a noob
3. Cammy remains the best character

Chun-Li and Ryu get all the attention but for me (and most fans I know) Cammy is always the stand out favorite. Maybe its because I am British, maybe its because she is a complete psycho. But she at least has a back story and some characters traits that make her a little more than the 2 dimensional Chun-li. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always enjoyed anime about big robots, I haven’t watched as many as some people *cough* (sideswipe) but I was very limited in what I could find before I had the Internet (yes there was a time before the Internet).

One of the first series I watched on VHS…yes VHS was “Kishin Heidan” a alternative timeline based story about Germans and giant robots, it was very good and had some great steampunk style giant robots who fought aliens who fell from the sky in weird egg shapes (sounds a bit crazy but was well done).

I then watched “Gundam Wing” one of the many iterations of the massively popular Gundam series. I could devote a whole post to Gundam but I need to get to the point of the post and that’s Macross.

I’d somehow missed Macross in all its forms, I knew it existed but for some reason had ignored/missed it which was probably down to not having any way to buy copies of it and the seasons tended to be quite long.

Macross like Gundam re-appears every now and again in a new updated form but unlike Gundam which reinvents and changes the universe in which its set Macross sets all its series within one universe and each series just takes a different time period to be set in.

Now if you completely new to Macross and want to watch the amazing new series “Macross Frontier” I’d recommend you watch the below in the order shown, I’ve marked which series are required (you’d be better off watching these as your enjoyment of later series would be effected without them) and which are optional. Feel free to disagree but this is the order I watched them in and is only my opinion.

To start off I’d highly recommend watching

Macross: Do you remember love? – A film version of the main events from the original TV series (called “Super Dimension Fortress Macross” which was later badly edited into Robotech). You could watch the entire series but it is quite long and I think the film is enough. The film itself is really nice and surprisingly holds up very well despite its age (was made in 1984). Without watching this or the series as a whole you’d find allot of future events a bit confusing (you’d be like “why is that farmer a giant?” etc).

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