I do enjoy a good argument. Whether it be about music, TV, football or whether it is acceptable to where Trackies to the shops I have an opinion about it. I believe that it is hugely important as human beings to be able to give across our thoughts and opinions in the form of a valid argument. Lots of people I have come into contact with across the years have hated my stubbornness and fiery temper when it comes to my opinions. Girlfriends have hated me, friends have hated me, many many people have hated me if I'm honest. luckily today I found a way of channelling my need to argue and debate into one weekly topic.
I have been asked by a website to write them a weekly article reviewing some form of media. Be it a video game, film or TV program I just need to make it different and entertaining. It doesn't even need to be a new release. I was struggling to think about how I would lay the articles out to make them separate enough from what my usual work looks like when it hit me. Quite literally. I was looking through some cupboards at home trying to find some DVD to write about when a load of magazines fell out of an overhead cupboard and smacked me on the forehead. As I sat on the floor I skimmed through the mags all over the floor expecting them to be an old collection of pornography. I was surprised to discover that they were something even better. PC Zone.
If you never play computer games you may as well stop reading now (this is why I have printed these articles in a separate blog). Still here? Good. In the mid nineties PC gaming was absolutely huge. They were faster and more accessible than their console equivalents and actually had games made specifically for them rather than just copies of Xbox games like you get nowadays. I was a huge PC gamer. Mainly because my parents wouldn't splash out to buy me a console so I had to wait for my sister to buy a Snes but also because of one magazine. PC Zone. If you ever read a magazine about games it is generally written by technological whizzkids who assume you know all the jargon about computers and have no social life. In short they are a bit up themselves and shit. PC Zone was different. Headed by a bunch of pissed up writers in their mid twenties (including one Charlie Brooker) they spent most of their time swearing about how shit some games were. Many reviews went completely off topic as they got bored of playing the game and the magazine was as much about comedy as it was gaming.
Sitting on my floor flicking through the pages I realised that it was some of these people who made me want to be a writer in the first place. The magazine was banned from shops twice (for including a level of the game Doom which contained nudity and for a Charlie Brooker cartoon featuring a zoo where children are encourage to maim animals in a satire of Tomb Raider) and was more like a Loaded or FHM than any kind of serious games magazine. This suited me perfectly because after years of trying to pretend otherwise I can finally admit that I am shit at computer games. I don't know what it is about me; maybe I just can't handle all those coloured buttons but I am just not very good. Over the past few years I have been absolutely thrashed on multiplayer versions of Call of Duty, Fifa (every year), and every strategy game known to man. When I was a kid I would get beaten at Goldeneye by everyone I knew. When we played games like Resident Evil or Gears of War and you had to pass the remote to the next person when you died my go's generally lasted about 6-16 seconds. Games I have completed like Grand theft Auto 4, Max Payne 2 and Half Life 2 have always been in medium mode at max (I can never face hard mode). Even games where you cannot die like Monkey Island I would get stuck and have to look at a walkthrough. Being shit at games but still enjoying them gave me a sort of connection with PC Zone that I never had with any other type of gaming medium which seems to consist of 15 year old boys being the best at absolutely everything under the sun.
After 17 years the magazine shut down as consoles took over from PC's and the Internet took over from magazines altogether. However PC Zone is a piece of my childhood and adolescence that shaped me and today they repaid me my £3.99 per month by giving me inspiration about what to do for my first article.
Every month in PC Zone they had something called a supertest. This basically involved all the writers playing 5 games from a certain category (driving games, strategy games etc) and then getting absolutely hammered whilst arguing over which is best. This was genius for two different reasons. One it was very very funny. And two instead of the normal sorts of review where you got one single persons opinion on a game, here you got 5 people arguing for and against which led to a more balanced view being presented.
So this was what I wanted to do. Essentially I wanted to sit in a room with a lot of alcohol and argue with my peers about some completely pointless topic before handing the results over to my editor. I wouldn't write solely about computer games but about the topics that matter. Whats the best TV show on at the moment? Is the PS3 really better than the XBox? What's the best superhero film that doesn't feature a bat in it? And is Sonic cooler than Mario? These are the questions that the public want answering. And me and my crack team of drunk angry people will attempt to answer them each week. But which to do first?
So the girl I'm seeing at the moment has never seen Star Wars. Not a single one of them. She doesn't hate them it's just never happened for her. I have never had the opportunity to watch the original Star Wars trilogy with someone who has never seen them. And I want a certain question answered. When I watch the trilogy now I get a chill through my body as lines from my childhood are dispensed with glee. I sit up like a 12 year old seeing his first pair of tits and giggle like a schoolgirl when Leia kisses Luke (urrrgh!). But is this just because Star Wars is a piece of nostalgia from my childhood or is it actually as amazing as we all say it is. In short
IS STAR WARS STILL AS AMAZING NOW AS IT WAS WHEN WE WERE KIDS?
Of course I needed more than just me and Abbey and I knew exactly who to ask. Cammy fucking hates Star Wars with a passion. She doesn't hate Sci Fi; she is a big fan of The X Files and Doctor Who but she just hates Han, Chewie and the rest of them. She is the perfect Yin to my Yang. Making up the board are my old work colleague Ryan who was actually a child when Star Wars originally came out at the cinema (he is 46 now) and Luke; my friends 18 year old brother who is possibly the only person to have watched Star Wars from episode 1-6 in chronological order as they came out being 11 years old when Revenge of the Sith was released. So we sat in my front room ready to solve the first of my big questions. A crate of beer, 3 Star Wars fans of varying ages, a hater and a newbie, ready to watch and bitch about the worlds greatest ever franchise (fuck off Harry Potter fans)
If you have any ideas about what you think I should argue over next then please let me know via
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