Wow. I’ve not updated for ages. No real reason, just life getting in the way of the internet.

A big update will be here in the coming weeks, I’m going to try and bring the whole site together more rather than the blog feeling separate. There’ll be a bit of a new look, too.

Anyway, in the meantime Marvel Versus Capcom 3 has come out, it’s ridiculous and it’s very fun indeed. Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition is just over a week away and with an eye to all that, I’ve picked up a Hauppage HD PVR.

At the weekend I got my video editing hat on for the first time in ages and put together this combo video.

There’s nothing hugely unique or gamebreaking in there. It’s mostly just to give an idea of how the team I’ve chosen (Wesker, X-23 and Amaterasu) work together. I hope you like it.

Ahead of their insanely long upcoming tour and their upcoming album, “Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will.” Mogwai have released a new track in order to get me hype. You can get hype too. Listen to it below.

Rano Pano by jeemer

Download the track by right clicking here and choosing Save Link As / Save Target As.

Mogwai’s upcoming tour dates follow, I’ll be at the Grand Ole Opry gig as well as the Edinburgh one;

01-26 Stirling, Scotland – Tolbooth
01-27 Paisley, Scotland – Paisley Town Hall
01-28 Perth, Scotland – Perth Theatre
01-29 Aberdeen, Scotland – The Lemon Tree
01-30 Glasgow, Scotland – Grand Ole Opry
02-02 Tokyo, Japan – TBA
02-13 Belfast, Northern Ireland – Mandela Hall
02-14 Galway, Ireland – The Live Lounge
02-15 Dublin, Ireland – Olympia Theatre
02-17 Bournemouth, England – O2 Academy
02-18 Cardiff, Wales – Cardiff University
02-19 Bristol, England – O2 Academy
02-20 Leeds, England – O2 Academy
02-21 Edinburgh, Scotland – Picture House
02-23 Oxford, England – The Regal
02-24 Birmingham, England – Birmingham Institute
02-25 London, England – Brixton O2 Academy
02-26 Manchester, England – Manchester Academy
02-27 Gateshead, England – The Sage
03-06 Frankfurt, Germany – Mousonturm
03-07 Munich, Germany – Backstage
03-08 Vienna, Austria – WuK
03-09 Bologna, Italy – Estragon
03-10 Milan, Italy – Alcatraz
03-11 Zurich, Switzerland – Rote Fabrik
03-13 Luxembourg, Luxembourg – Den Atelier
03-14 Cologne, Germany – Stollwerck
03-15 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso
03-17 Paris, France – Trianon
03-18 Lille, France – Aeronef
03-19 Strasbourg, France – La Laiterie
03-20 Lyon, France – Transbordeur
03-21 Nice, France – Theatre Lino Ventura
03-22 Toulouse, France – Le Bikini
03-24 Bordeaux, France – Rockschool Barbey
03-25 Caen, France – BBC
03-26 Brussels, Belgium – AB
03-28 Hamburg, Germany – Gruenspan
03-29 Berlin, Germany – Postbahnhof
03-30 Copenhagen, Denmark – Vega
03-31 Aarhus, Denmark – Voxhall
04-01 Gothenburg, Sweden – Tradgarn
04-02 Oslo, Norway – Rockefeller
04-03 Stockholm, Sweden – Debaser Medis
04-05 Helsinki, Finland – Tavastia
04-19 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
04-20 Philadelphia, PA – Starlight Ballroom
04-21-22 New York, NY – Webster Hall
04-23 Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club
04-25 Montreal, Quebec – Olympia Theater
04-26 Toronto, Ontario – Phoenix Concert Theatre
04-27 Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Smalls Theatre
04-28 Detroit, MI – St. Andrews Hall
04-29 Chicago, IL – Metro
04-30 Omaha, NE – Slowdown
05-02 Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater
05-03 Salt Late City, UT – In the Venue
05-05 Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom
05-06 Vancouver, British Columbia – Commodore Ballroom
05-07 Seattle, WA – Showbox at the Market
05-09 San Francisco, CA – Regency Ballroom
05-10 Los Angeles, CA – Mayan Theater
05-11 Solana Beach, CA – Belly Up Tavern
05-13 Albuquerque, NM – Sunshine Theatre
05-15 Dallas, TX – Granada Theatre
05-16 Austin, TX – Stubbs Waller Creek
05-17 Houston, TX – Warehouse Live
05-19 Birmingham, AL – Workplay Theater
05-20 Atlanta, GA – Center Stage

SoCal Regionals just took place at the weekend. Anyone who is a big fan of Akuma is about to want to make little baby Tokidos.

Not only did Tokido come from Japan to enter SCR, not only did he enter under the handle “Tokido Murder Face”, but he did the most awesomely awesome thing in the history of awesome.

I’m not even going to try and explain it. Check out the video below:

So hype. I’m not going to get into how he placed in the end, because the video of finals day is further down. But he basically just won the whole tourney by doing that. He was later quoted as saying “I know how to get down with Americans.”

I always followed Momochi over Tokido, but Momochi seems to be having a crisis of character nowadays, playing Ken for a while and apparently now dropping him too. Looks like Tokido is the man to carry the Akuma flag now, and damn he’s doing it with style.

If you want to watch the final day of SCR, there’s a whole 2hrs and 45 mins of it right here;

I’m not going to post the results in case you dont want the full spoilers. Enjoy.

On Facebook this afternoon I found out that Kronenberg 1664 have started working on a new advertising campaign about how they produce a “slow” beer with a “slow” taste.

Load of pish really, but the plus side is what their marketing folk alledgedly got up to;

On October 4th 2010, we took Lemmy and his band Motörhead to a French bar. Here, inspired by the laid back atmosphere and a slow, cold Kronenbourg 1664, they played their legendary manic song, The Ace of Spades, at half the normal speed.

Here’s the mp3 of the full song;

Ace of Spades (Slow Version) – Lemmy and Motorhead

You can grab a copy of the mp3 of the track by right clicking the link and choosing save target as / save link as.

You can also just click on the link and it should play through your browser.

They’ve put out a new ad with the new song, which I’ve included as well below;

I rarely watch tv nowadays, but when when I was cooking dinner last night an advert came on that caught my eye.

Normally if I’m watching tv I’ll go out of my way to mute the telly or change channels when the adverts come on, but this was one I was glad that I caught.

I know a bunch of my friends don’t watch tv at all, so I thought I’d share this.

Pretty well done indeed. The only thing I dread is how far we are away from remakes of Conan with a digitally rendered young Arnold, or new Die Hard movies with a young Willis. Yikes.

I’d like to begin by stating that all I’ve been taking is my antibiotics, ibuprofen and paracetamol. I promise!

Ok, so at the start i was on this big galleon sailing the seas and there was lots of fog and ocean spray. I was out on the deck staring out at the sea with someone who I was once on work experience with, years ago. Can’t even remember his name.

Soon enough we got to the shore, and apparently the shore was at the bottom of my road. With a nearby hotel right on the beach. In reality the bottom of my road is at the promenade, right beside the sea. In my dream though there was no road, just the beach.

Atacama Desert, important reference image.

From there it went to me being part of a group of people all wearing paintball gear and playing laserquest on the beach, but the beach went out much further and had crates and ships strewn over it, like the Atacama Desert level in Battlefield BC2.

I’m not sure who most of the group were, since everyone was wearing masks, except for one of the people in our group. He was this athletic movie star looking dark haired dude whose body was unusually wide at the arms/thighs/torso.

Later on in the dream he took off his shirt and it turned out he was insanely ripped to ridiculous proportions, like something right out a comic book.

At that point I somehow realised he was an alternate universe version of superman, but he had this plastic circle protruding from his chest where his heart should be and it was filled with purple liquid. At some point during the “battle” this got damaged somehow, became cracked and started leaking.

While I was playing laserquest I started realising that a bunch of peoples guitars (Mic, Suz, Tam) were randomly strewn about on the sand, but i couldnt see them anywhere.

A short while after that I ended up back on the ship out at sea. Helen Mirren was there chatting up superman, and tending to the weird plastic circle thing in his chest.

Then i woke up. Just a normal dream.

I’m in a new job, which has so far been going awesome apart from me coming down with all sorts of crap and my body falling apart and me having to take 3 sick days, which is totally not-me. But in the lead-up to starting my new job I hammered a few movies. So I’ve done a quick writeup of my thoughts on ten of em.

Splice

First up is Splice. Splice is a little creature feature from the director of Cube and Nothing. Two movies I really like!

The idea is that a team of scientists, headed by Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are working on creating new breeds of animal by mashing together the DNA of existing creatures.

Eventually curiosity gets the better of Elsa (Polley) and she decides to splice in some human DNA. This is where the story really begins and their creation, Dren is born. Things go from good to bad pretty quickly from there and I don’t want to go too heavily into what happens from that point.

I was hoping this was going to be a great little film, since I’m a big horror fan, and really into body horror which this kindof is.

The problem with this movie is that you don’t cate about any of the characters. Even Dren is completely impossible to empathise with. Normally in a film like this you’ll have some sort of feelings about the creature in question, but this movie just left me feeling ambivalent.

I love cronenbergs body horror films, and I think if this had been handled properly it wouldn’t have been far from the feel of one. For me though, it wasn’t handled well. I was pretty disappointed with it and I can’t understand how it seems to be getting good reviews everywhere. I give it two stars.

The A-Team

Everyone knows the score here, the famous tv show about a group of military specialists incarcerated for a crime they didn’t commit. After breaking free from jail they become mercenaries, freely available for hire if you can find them but always fighting on the side of the good guys.

The problem with remaking the A team is that the characters have become so ingrained into everyones memories that they’re damn hard to replace.

Additionally, you cant just draft in the original actors – not only because the series is 30 years old but particularly since George Peppard who played Hannibal died in 1994.

After seeing the movie though, I’d have to say they’ve done pretty damn well… They got it at least half right. Sharlto Copley as Murdoch and Bradley Cooper as Face were inspired, and it’s worth watching just for them. Copley has the right amount of loveable lunatic going on, and Brad Cooper pulls off one of the most charismatic roles ever. Any time he was smiling, I was smiling.

It’s not going to be the best movie this year, and it’s hardly deep, but if you’re an action movie fan you owe it to yourself to see it. Preferably with a beer. 3.5 stars.

The Expendables

The Expendables is one of those movies that as soon as you hear the pitch you expect it to be stuck in development hell.

The whole idea behind the expendables was that all of the best known action heroes of the last quarter century will be united for a massive action romp.

Some of the stars include Stallone (also on directing duty) Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, and also a quick turn from Bruce willis and Arnold Schwarznegger.

This actually turned out better than I thought it would be. Aside from the fact that the character are more or less two dimensional and the plot is fairly nonexistent.

It’s a cheesy, violent and pretty fun love letter to action movies of the 80s. 3 stars.

Fatbelly

Fatbelly is a new documentary about the hugely infamous Mark Chopper Read. Chopper made a name for himself in the 70s and 80s by being a hard bastard.

Portrayed by Eric bana relatively early on in his career, Chopper made money the way that Omar in The Wire makes money. He robbed drug dealers and gangsters for it.

Fatbelly gives an overview of choppers life, from when he was a little kid right up to modern day.

It’s not particularly funny (if you’ve seen the brief interviews with chopper on the special edition chopper DVD, or read any of his books, you’ll know he has a sick sense of humour which can be pretty effective) but it is pretty in-depth, and worth a watch for any big fan of chopper. 3.5 stars.

Prince of Persia

I really don’t have all that much to say about this. I mean I could go on about how Prince of Persia was one of the first games I remember truly loving, back on the Atari ST… But that kinda seems like a moot point.

The game was remade, and ended up with a couple of sequels and now a movie with Jake Gyllenhaal playing the lead.

Basically imagine if they made Aladdin the movie, but tried to make it “kewl” – that’s pretty much this film. Unfortunately the characters, script, cinematography… Nothing quite measures up to the Pirates of the Caribbean films, films based on a theme-park ride. And I’m not even a massive fan of those films.

However, I still watched it all the way through because if you chuck a couple of sword fights in a movie I’ll sit and watch it like a right eejit. It’s just turn-your-brain-off popcorny entertainment. 2.5 stars.

South African actor Sharlto Copley (he plays Wikus, the “fokkin prawns” guy in district 9 and is also an inspired bit of casting as Murdoch in the new A-Team movie) briefly mentioned Street Fighter 2 in a recent interview with Empire Magazine.

Check it out:

Click the image below for a scan of the full page – It’s a bit blurry cause I took it with my phone.

Copleys imdb link is – http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1663205/

Season’s Beatings went ahead last weekend, October 15th to 17th. Teamspooky streamed the event, and it was bloody brilliant.

Aside from the quality of the stream itself, there were some incredibly hype matches, and the level of play was very high.

Spooky has now uploaded a ton of the matches from the stream to a new youtube account that was created especially for the event. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/user/SeasonsBeatingsGDLK and feel the hype!

In the end Taiwan’s Gamerbee took 1st place for Super Street Fighter IV.

Some of the results including SSFIV are below, straight from Ghaleon;

SSFIV (412 entrants, Top 8 payout)
1. GamerBee (Adon)
2. Momochi (Ken, Akuma)
3. EG Justin Wong (Makato, Rufus, Cammy, Balrog)
4. Arturo “Sabin” Sanchez (Dhalsim, Rose)
5. EMP Sanford Kelly (Sagat, C. Viper)
5. Mike Ross (E. Honda)
7. EMP Dieminion (Guile)
7. FYC MarlinPie (Cammy)

Marvel (DC, $20 entry, $3,000 pot bonus, long format, 85 entrants)

1. EMP IFCYipes
2. Chris Schmidt
3. EMP Xecutioner
4. Neo
5. Demon Hyo
5. Harry Potter
7. EMP Sanford Kelly
7. EG Justin Wong

Super Turbo (Arcade $50 entry, Top 5 payout, long format – 26 entrants)
1. Daigo (Boxer, Dictator)
2. Frank (Roy Bisel) (O. Sagat, Boxer)
3. Arturo Sanchez (Dhalsim)
4. MarzGotti (Guile, O. Guile)
5. Ghaleon (O. Sagat)
5. EG Justin Wong (O. Sagat)

3rd Strike (Arcade, 21 Teams)
1. Team EG Unstoppable – EG Justin (CH), Nica KO (YA), Issei (YU)
2. Team SB:R – Henry Cen (HU), Ghaleon (RY), Momochi (YU)
3. Team Texas – EG Marn (YU), Buktooth (KE), Fubarduck (CH)

The only downside of the stream as a UK viewer was the hour and a half of Choco Blanka. Seemed a bit overkill. Actually, in saying that, Blanka is also possibly my least favourite character to watch.

Anyways, the whole competition was that FI-YA and I’ll be pencilling it into my diary for next year. Just get Yipes more time on the mic!

Replay, an arcade/retro/video game expo is coming to Blackpool on the 6th/7th of November. And to top it off the organisers have been spreading the word that they’re going to be running a SSFIV tournament on the Saturday, and a Tekken tourney on the Sunday!

Apparently lots of the manc heads from neoempire are going to come along, so I’m going to head down and have a pop as well.

On top of that, the creator of IK+ is going to be there! There is a competition on to see if you can beat the creators of both IK+ and Sensible Soccer. I don’t have a chance in hell of winning at IK+, because I’ve not played it for 15 years or so. But damn I love that game, and it was probably the first “fighting” game that I ever really loved.

I’m interested to see what other retro stuff will be going on, and I’m going to try and get some video and pics taken too.

R3PLAY (pronounced “Replay”) is a brand new show celebrating four decades of gaming history. Presented in association with Retro Gamer and gamesTM magazines, this unique event will offer gamers of all ages the chance to experience gaming systems from the 1970s to present day. R3PLAY will take place at The Norbreck Castle in Blackpool on 6/7 November 2010 – the final weekend of this year’s famous Illuminations.

More than 300 systems will be available at R3PLAY comprising the finest possible selection of consoles, coin-ops and computers from all over the globe (with all machines set to free-play). Visitors will have the opportunity to take part in prize gaming competitions, listen to Q&A sessions with guest speakers, participate in workshops, view galleries of video game artwork, win fantastic raffle prizes, tender bids in a special auction and much, much more! Ticket holders will also be able to purchase games, systems, accessories and memorabilia via a number of specialist seller stands.

R3PLAY is dedicated to the celebration and preservation of the “3 C’s”:

• CONSOLES: Ranging from the humble Atari 2600, through the SEGA vs Nintendo console wars of the 1990s, to the all-conquering behemoths that are the PS3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. Video game consoles from all corners of the world will be showcased at R3PLAY allowing visitors to play on rare and obscure machines they may never see again!
• COIN-OPS: Arcade and Pinball Machines have captured the nation’s imagination since the first mass-produced classics of the 70s and 80s. R3PLAY not only looks at the retro classics, but thanks to the support of leading arcade communities, there will be plenty on offer for the new generation of arcade gamers, too.
• COMPUTERS: The UK was a world leader in 80s computing and R3PLAY will celebrate the diverse history of Acorn, Amstrad and Sinclair, as well as their international competitors such as Commodore and Atari. Furthermore, fans of PC-based gaming will be able to enjoy both the very latest releases, in addition to classics such as Commander Keen, Descent and the original network version of Doom (Deathmatch anyone?). The National Museum of Computing will also be on hand, raising awareness of computing history in the UK.

Adult ticket prices are £12 for single-day entry and £20 for a weekend ticket, with reductions for children and families.

Find out more at http://www.r3play.info/