Yes, I’m one of those people that has never played D&D but is now wanting to give it a go. Because, hey, it’s apparently ‘cool’ now! But wait a minute, let’s take a step back. There are obviously armies of people that will say it has always been extremely cool, and there is a very strong argument for the fact that mainstream media bringing D&D to the forefront again is not necessarily ‘cool’. D&D started off on the edge. It was a form of entertainment that was breaking ground and making enemies at the same time. The ‘satanic panic’ was at a peak in the late 70s and early 80s and D ..read more

I’ve always been a fan of Street Fighter 2. Ever since I first played it in an arcade and was totally wowed by the graphics, the music, the sound effects and the one-on-one action. It was just a game that totally hit the zeitgeist of the gaming community and pulled us back into the arcades at a time when home consoles were becoming huge. I was subsequently of course also wowed by the seemingly near arcade perfect port of Street Fighter 2 on the Super Nintendo too!  As games go it really is one of the most iconic arcade games out there. I’m sure Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, S ..read more

I know it sounds like a clickbait-y headline, but I love this video. I’m probably months behind, and loads of people will have seen it, but I’ve only just come across this video. I’ve never really been hugely into the Mortal Kombat series but I’ve always known they have gruesome fatalities, and obviously this latest version has souped up fatalities. Perhaps you wouldn’t want young kids watching this montage of all the fatalities in the game but personally I think it is entertaining, fascinating, cringeworthy, funny in places and just downright impressive. Not only are the graphics and animatio ..read more

As mentioned in a previous post, I’m forever daydreaming about what I would splash my cash on if I had a financial windfall. It’s just one of my hobbies I guess, making lists of rare or expensive things I would like to deck out my retrocade with. No harm in dreaming is there? Who knows, it may happen one day, whether via a lottery win, beating the odds in Las Vegas, winning on Online Casino Bonus Code sites or perhaps discovering lost treasure using One Eyed Willy’s map, but even if it doesn’t I’m perfectly happy just daydreaming about it. In fact that’s possibly the biggest part of the fun! T ..read more

My memory is that one of the TV ads said that “Micro Machines have the power to move”. That was one of the straplines wasn’t it? Well this book, “Micro But Many: An Unofficial Micro Machines Collection” certainly moved me when I opened it up. It really is a thing of beauty. Kudos to Tim Smith the man behind the book for making such a great visual repository of a classic toy. One of the enthralling things about Micro Machines was that they were so small and there were so many of them. This made them highly collectible. But for those of who never had an extensive collection, or who have lost ..read more

I’ve wanted to do a video/stop motion GIF for a while now but I just hadn’t decided what to do it on. I was scanning round my office and my eyes fell on my Man-E-Faces figure and it just seemed like a no brainer. Simple movement, restricted behind the helmet, perfect. I just had to add the motion blur and bob’s your uncle. For those interested I made this in Photoshop. Firstly I took photos of the head turning at eight different points between each head. In order to keep the figure steady I actually had him squeezed into a Bullseye ‘Bully’ tankard. I had one master layer with the Man-E-Faces ..read more

Growing up, my family was quite into board games. I have lots of happy memories playing Monopoly, Cluedo and Trivial Pursuits regularly with my mum, dad and brothers. They were probably the games we played the most often. But then there was a second rung of board games that would also often get played including Risk, The Game of Life, Mousetrap etc. The majority of these were bought when I was too young to remember them being added to the mix, but there was one, slightly newer, game that I remember choosing myself in a toy shop or Argos catalogue… Go For Broke. Or rather, “Go For Broke!” Perha ..read more