No Fun Land

If anyone ever doubted the uselessness of the modern videogames media, consider this – when you're working in the specialist press, and your only job is to bring people news related to videogames, how shit must you be if you get scooped at reporting videogame news by the Metro?

But that's only passingly what I want to talk about today.

WoSland Game Of The Year 2005

You start to bargain with yourself, after a little while. "That one didn't count, I got killed stupidly on Mission 1 so it was just a practice", you say.

Then it's "Well, I was going to stop at 10 o'clock, but now it's five past and I've missed the start of the programme I was going to watch, so I might as well have 25 more minutes till the next one's on."

Less of a feature, more of a survey

I've been racking my brains for most of this afternoon, because it's too humid to do anything that involves physical movement. I've drawn a blank, so I figured I may as well ask the millions of readers of WoSland for help.

Can anyone think of a single really good shmup in the entire history of gaming that's ever been created by an English-speaking developer?

The Coin Dozer Gospel

Readers of a spiritual or elderly bent may be aware of the parable of the Deck Of Cards. (You can listen to a splendidly reverby take of Wink Martindale's definitive version by clicking this convenient link here.)

But you don't have to go back to the 1950s for a similarly instructive metaphor for the contemporary age. Because the iOS game Coin Dozer serves, if you don't want to carry around a bulky copy of Das Kapital, as a bible of the modern capitalist world. Shut up, it's not bollocks.

The ambassadors' reception (of lots of free games)

In all the hubbub about the 3DS price cut, little has been made of Nintendo's compensation package for "3DS Ambassadors", by which they'll all get 20 free Virtual Console titles, split equally between old NES and GBA games. Just a nice offer to make peace with people who might feel a bit ripped off, right?

The problem with the package, however, is that it might be a bit too good.

Panic on the streets of Kyoto

I get the feeling that Nintendo just don't understand what's happening to them any more. They're doing what they've always done, and what's made them swillions of dollars for the last half-decade, but the public just aren't biting this time. And now the gaming giant's nerve has cracked altogether.

Today's announcement that the company is to slash the trade price of the stumbling 3DS by a third, just four months after release, has taken everyone by surprise. But it really shouldn't have.

The turning tide

Admired WoSland acquaintance and slow reader John X has a piece today on the estimable Rock, Paper, Shotgun about gaming revenues. Obviously it's mostly focused on the PC and is therefore of limiSNNOOOORRRRRE.

Eh? What happened? Where am I? Oh yeah – the PC part of the story is of course epically uninteresting because it's about the PC, but there's a much more intriguing and zeitgeisty fact buried away in the passing.