Logo changed

So I was browsing the internet on Monday trying to find some inspiration for the logo and I went onto Deviant to have a look there. I found this great image of a girl in a penguin suit by Linistic that I thought would be perfect and he was happy to let me use it. Yay!

Messed about with the layout a little bit and found a font that I thought suited the image.

Anyway - I hope you like it. :)

Now - back to playing some more games.

ttfn

Trying out a new layout

So I am trying out a new layout. Messed about with the template a bit and created a sidebar on either side of the main text. This is the first time I have ever tried changing a blog template so please let me know if something is not working. However - from what we can tell it seems to be working ok in both Explorer and Firefox at the moment.

The colours are also a bit different but these will probably change a bit again once I create a graphic to go at the top of the page. Not too sure what to create yet, but I'm sure I will come up with something. I guess it should be something penguin and game related. ;) Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Anyway - the graphic is not urgent so it will probably have to wait for a creative weekend. I guess I will have to get the sketch pad out!

ttfn

Nintendo goes... To the Beach

Geekini! Now here is a good reason to get fit before summer. All the girls on the beach will think it's stupid and ugly, and all the guys will secretly love it.



I want one :)

ttfn

Nintendo goes... Cufflink

Flickr is a great place for pictures of all things weird and wonderful, and I have a habit of browsing the place for completely random things just for a bit of fun.

Just did a search for Nintendo cufflinks and these are some of what I found:

NES Cartridge Cufflinks by Acletras

NES Cufflinks by MrQuint15

Gameboy Cufflinks by Figerrific

Mushroom Cufflinks by Jula Julz

Triforce Cufflinks by Acletras

I know these are not Nintendo but I thought I'd throw them in anyway as they are pretty good. :)

Saturn Cufflinks by Figerrific

Pac Man Cufflinks by Artistic Flair

Also did a search on Google and found a couple more really cool ones:

Gameboy Cufflinks

Wii Controller Cufflinks

Retro Nintendo Cufflinks

ttfn

T-shirts (part 1)

So we're still trying out Kororinpa. We've been playing a bit in 2 player mode and are now trying to unlock a few more balls and also the secrets that you only get in 1 player mode.

Anyway - I thought I'd make Steven pose in some of his games t-shirts this morning. Not too sure how much he was loving the experience but hey - he's well trained. :)

As you can see there's a is a Lego Star Wars theme running through these. I for some reason keep buying them for him whenever I see a new one and I'll keep doing it until he tells me to stop. lol A couple of them are in the wash at the moment so he'll have to do another modelling session for me at a later time.

Decission made...

Kororinpa it is!

Other half finally decided on which game to start with. He pretends that a little bit of thinking went into him picking Kororinpa but I'm not so sure. Funny how it just happened to be the first one on the list... :) Anyway - Wii is powered up, game has been loaded and we're about to start.

Been a while since we tried this game out last time so I can't really remember it all that well. Have a feeling it wasn't one of our favourite games but it will be fun to have another go.

I'll post my "new" first impressions in a bit.

ttfn

Attacking the list...

So it's finally the weekened and we can do some gaming. Yay!

It's weird really 'cause in work yesterday I was thinking to myself that this week had flown and that I could have used a few more hours to finished off some of the things I am working on. However - when I look at the game consoles collecting dust next to the telly I feel that it has been so long since I've played that I'm not sure that my opposing thumbs are going to be working at their usual speed. And that would in a way be like spitting at evolution. You did know that is the REAL reason for opposing thumbs right?

Anyway - we sent a long list of all our Wii, Gamecube and Xbox games to http://www.gamepeople.co.uk and asked them which ones they wanted us to review as a couple and this is what they sent us back:

Wii:
Kororinpa
Link's Crossbow Training
Rayman Raving Rabbids
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz

Xbox:
Left 4 Dead

Gamecube:
Pikmin
Pikmin 2
Chibi-Robo!
TimeSplitters2

I have to say that I'm really looking forward to playing some of the older ones again. Been wanting to do it for ages and this is just the kick of the backside that we needed. The ones that I'm looking forward to the most are probably the Gamecube games like the 2 Pikmin ones and Chibi-Robo. Ah - the amount of fun you can have running around as a little robot cleaning the floor with a toothbrush. Chibi-Robo is also one of the games that I mainly played on my own last time and that I actually finished! :) Will be fun to play it again with my other half in our usual "taking turns" way that we tend to play in. A lot of games in this household tend to never get a chance to show us their end credits. This is mainly due to the "too many choices, not enough hours" syndrome rather than the "this game is not very good" syndrome.

We are still not 100% sure which game to start with but we'll probably pick something that is short and quick so we can get writing pretty quickly. Probably one of the Wii options but we'll see.

Anyway - I'll post an update later on once we have actually gotten started on something. :)

ttfn

So here I am...

Felt like making a blog today and thought - hey, why not? :)

So here I am feeling the urge to write something about "girls who game". We are supposed to be the rare species but we all know that this is NOT the case. Don't we? Plenty of girls love to play games however - I just don't know any! lol At least not outside the online world of "strangers".

So how did I get into gaming? I can't really remember (it get's like that at my age). I know that I've always loved puzzles, board and card games. I also remember going shopping with my parents and they bought me a handheld games console! It was orange and it was a Donkey Kong game. I even remember the store, how it looked and they way the display was set out. Yes - it did make a HUGE impression on me (and changed my life from then onwards) but to be perfectly honest the shop hasn't changed all that much since then. Anyway - that was it. I've been hooked ever since. I remember buying other similar games whenever I came across them. My parents were never all that into them. However my mum always said that she heard this weird "beep beep noise" whenever dad disappeared to the toilet and the batteries never seemed to last long either... hmmm...

Around the same time as I got the Donkey Kong game we also bought our first proper console (must have been early 80s). I can't remember the name of it at the moment but I'm sure it'll come to me at some point. It had a keyboard built into it and it had removable game cartridges. I think the first game we bought must have been PacMan. Omg! Hours of fun.

A lot later on I got my first computer and tried out a few PC games. Don't remember ever really getting totally hooked on anything. Most games that people recommended were shooting games and I've just never been all that into that style (mainly because I'm rubbish at them). I remember my uncle lending me Wolfenstein. It was probably the first 3D game I played and it used to scare me half to death whenever I opened a door and a big guy shot at me... I would love to say that I'm a much more "confident" gamer these days but fact is I still jump whenever someone jumps/shouts/shoots at me in any games... and yes - I also still try to look around corners by just moving my head. I guess I'll never learn. Ah well.

Several years later I met my other half or as he would like me to say - my better half (yeah right! We all know girls rule!). He introduced me to a different style of games. Adventure games! That was it. I had found my niche. Hours and hours was spent playing classics like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, Grim Fandango etc etc. Thank God for LucasArts! I've played loads of games in the same style over the years and I still look out for adventure games whenever I hear of any. Unfortunately it is getting really hard to get your hands on a good one these days. It seems that most recent point-and-click games are in the style of "need to open door", "need to find key", "just walked past key"... not much brainpower is really needed to solve this puzzle. I'm not saying that should at the same obscure level as some of the MonkeyIsland games, but a little bit of searching/thinking/combining wouldn't hurt. And btw - what's not obvious about having to combine a rubber chicken with a pulley? Jeez!

My other half had been into computers from about the day he was born or something like that. I like to call it a natural born geek. He had of course been playing games for years and probably thought I was a bit of an amateur. His chosen console at that time was the N64 and the chosen game was Goldeneye. I never really got the point of that game being a first person shooter and all, but apparently it looked great (or so I was told). I remember us buying our first game together - 1080 Snowboarding. We bought that right after we moved into our house and I think we probably spent more time playing that than decorating. Actually not much has change over these last 11 years! Omg - I need to get a life. :)

We've bought a couple of console since the N64. A PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, Gameboy Advanced, DS Lite, Gamecube, Xbox 360 and a Wii. Can't remember in which order but I think that's all of them. Never really been a huge fan of Sony (hence no PS3) but my heart skips a bit whenever my eyes catches the lovely letters that make up the word Nintendo. Not sure if it's because they were my first love or maybe just because they make the best consoles ever! In my humble opinion of course. ;) My favourite console game series is of course Zelda. Doesn't get much better than running around as Link even if Navi can get on your nerves a bit...

I would make a list of all the games we own (we tend never to get rid of any for some strange reason) but I just don't think I could cope with seeing how much money we have actually spent on this. I suppose to geeky people like us we could just call it an investment? lol

I've also had a spell of online gaming. Other half started playing this weird online game with gnomes, orces and elves etc. Not my cup of tea at all, it couldn't really sound more dull! Then one of our friends who had also started playing it said he had his own pet and he could train it! Now that kinda sounded a bit more fun so I let myself get talked into trying it out. Fast forward about a year and a half and I gave up playing WoW. Everything in between those two points is kind of a blur when I think back. It should now be mentioned that I have a "slightly" (yeah right!) addictive nature when it comes to gaming. I don't think I have EVER spent that many hours on any game before or since, and part of me hopes I never will. Before WoW I had no idea that a game could be quite so addictive. And I rocked at being a Warlock (even if I have to say so myself). However - one day I just hit a point where I thought that I needed to go cold turkey or my life would be lived online. Haven't dared to go back to it since. This was about 2 1/2 years ago and I still feel the urge to play it every now and then if I read a game review of it or see a character that looked similar to my Ellana. I have since spent a good few hours in City of Heroes. This is another great game and the people who play there seem to be slightly more mature than the gang who hangs out in Ironforge begging for money. I'll probably return to CoH again as I seem to have the ability to walk away from that a bit easier when I need to.

However - at the moment I'm hooked on playing console games and this is actually what I wanted to waffle on about in here.

My other/better half has been reading games reviews for a number of years now, both printed and online. His been following the Gamepeople http://www.gamepeople.co.uk/ for while and they game him the opportunity to do a review of Lego Batman. How cool is that! We are big fans of the Lego Games for the Wii. With him being a proper geek since forever and therefore being into StarWars (not sure that there's actually a scientific link between the two but hey) and me being Danish (and I guess therefore into Lego?). Anyway - we really enjoy the Lego Batman game and you can read his review of it here. The Gamepeople guys seemed really happy with it and have given us the opportunity to write some more stuff for them. Since we pretty much always play as a couple we will also do our reviews from a couples point of view. This does not necesarily mean that it has to be co-op/multiplayer, but there does have to be at least some sort of enjoyment for the person who's just watching or as I like to call it - is guiding.

Anyway - we're hoping to start attacking the list of games they wanted us to review over the next few days, so I'll keep you posted as we get started on it. :)