2006: Quiz of the Year

Do you remember 2006? “Of course I do.” Ah, but do you? Do you really? Science has determined that there is only one way to find out: by taking our needlessly cynical end of year quiz. Microsoft charmingly ignored the original Xbox entirely in 2006. This left the Xbox 360 with: A lot to answer …

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OBE for SCi

It’s 2007 New Year Honours time, and there’s a new member of the games industry OBE gang, which currently counts among its members Argonaut founder Jez San (2002), Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux (2005) and former important man at Eidos Ian Livingstone (2006). It’s SW19’s Ms Jane Cavanagh, SCi founder and effectively the woman who put an …

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Arthur and the Invisibles

You probably know all about Atari’s money woes. Things took a turn for the worst around a year ago, prompting them sell a handful of studios and flog a few of their franchises, such as Stuntman and Driver. But rather than shut up shop for good they’re sticking to their guns, hoping to be back …

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It’s another games show

As executives try to find ways to make programmes for ever less money, ‘user-generated content’ is slowly turning television into the Internet but without the less rubbish bits. MTV Flux is leading this erosion of the already dubious quality of digital TV. And they’ve only gone and done a games programme. Up Up Down Down …

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Moderately positive chart news

Though EA still have the top two positions to themselves – albeit with Need for Speed Carbon moving back above FIFA 07 – and they’ve now spent more than half of the year at the top of chart, there is some positivity to be found. In the land of Wii, Zelda’s back up a place …

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Free Tingle

While we patiently wait for Nintendo of Europe to update the Stars catalogue with the ability to turn surplus Stars into Wii shopping channel points, Nintendo of Japan have decided to rub a couple of new Club Mario freebies in our faces. The first is a custom-made Wii remote battery cover featuring your Mii. From …

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Special fried price (part three)

Oh, Amazon. Your sales used to be so good. Just two Nintendo DS games reduced this year? That’s really pitiful. Even more so when one of these is the dire King Kong; the other isn’t even a game, it’s the DS Lite Browser for £14.87. Star Ocean and Makai Kingdom on PlayStation 2 – for …

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Return of the Qwak

You may remember that a few months ago we reported on one man’s mission to bring classic Amiga platformer Qwak to the Game Boy Advance. That man was Jamie Woodhouse – the sole designer and programmer of the original. With promises crushed by publishers – some of which wanted to totally re-skin the game – …

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Special fried price (part two)

Sod Boxing Day – pretty much all of the sales are now go, both online and across the cold high streets of England. Over at Game, Yakuza on PlayStation 2 is £9.98, bizarre music/RPG thing Steambot Chronicles is £14.98, X-Men III on DS is £7.98 – although we can’t remember if it’s any good or …

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The animals went in two-by-two

Hurrah! Hurrah! Not one but two new animal nurturing games are available on Nintendo DS today – Hamsterz (known as Hamsterz Life in the US) and My Animal Hospital In Africa. The latter is the first Nintendo DS game from Europress, whose last console game, from what we can ascertain, was that awful Smarties thing …

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50 Cent Bulletproof: G Unit Edition

What is up, vanilla faces? I’m Forty Nine Pence, the numero uno aficionado of the great rap luminary 50 Cent, or Good Sir Fiddy as his home lads say. Today I intend to proclaim the virtues of Fiddy’s new game, specifically G Unit Edition for the PSP. Now just let me doff my cap and …

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Novadrome

Carmageddon may have been sadistically violent but there was still a solid game under the blood stained exterior. This was mainly due to the way that races could be won in a number of ways – either by coming first, destroying the opposition or killing all the pedestrians (infamously turned into zombies for the console …

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Boy Wonder

Europe had to wait bloody AGES until the PlayStation 2 Sega AGES 2500 retro revamps made their way over here. When they finally did they were bundled together – which is a good thing – but some of the more interesting games (like Alien Syndrome and Panzer Dragoon) were missing. Which is a bad thing. …

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Sony try – and fail – to be positive

Because it’s nearly Christmas, let’s stop messing around and descend into open criticism of another website. It’s what Jesus would have wanted. MCV is a respected UK trade publication, but this news item about Sony expecting to sell 1 million PSPs really is quite a piece of work. The fact is that the PSP has …

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PDC World Championship Darts

There have been fully fledged darts games in the past – mostly on 8-bit tape-based formats such as the Spectrum – but we can only think of darts mini-games in recent times. Shenmue II had a cracking dart-based distraction, in which Ryo’s throwing hand shook in an alarming manner. With Shenmue III possibly never to …

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