Scott McFly

I believe the 3DS is essentially the DS2, so it's more of a successor than a variation. The Gameboy Advance had the original, SP and Micro variation and the DS has had original, Lite and DSi variations, with the XL basically for old people who can't see the screen, since the whole point of the DS is that it can fit in your pocket. But I'm certainly intrigued by the announcement, certainly looking forward to (hopefully) seeing it at E3.

At least with drinks there's a chance the girl will get so drunk she won't know what or who she's doing. But really, you've paid for a 360, a game, an Xbox Live subscription and then you want to use those things to pay a hot girl to play with you? Unless you've got some sort of extreme girl gamer fetish then it's pointless. But just watch the money roll in. I do like the "what happens in the Xbox Live chat and video is between you and her!" tease. Yeah, as if she's just gonna give you a virtual lapdance in the middle of a game.

Bet 2 - 20 on Villa. Doubler: City 2-0 Everton

Think I should have more than 26 there Baddar?

Heh, think I got that PM from them too. Had to spend a fiver or something on the Vegas games right?

Had 3 accas on with Blackpool letting me down on one and Kettering and Charlton another. Still got one in play though, Everton, Wigan and Arsenal - so I need them to win in the evening KO to cover my losses and win a little bit too. Was also tossing up between Arteta and Cahill for the Everton first goalscorer. Guess what I went for. >_< But yeah I think a lot of people will be glad Wigan scored right at the death. Cutting it fucking fine there.

The sale this weekend is The Longest Journey and Sanitarium both 50% off, so they're now $4.99 each, which is about £3.50 or thereabouts. Might get Sanitarium.

Bet 3 - 20 on Wigan Doubler: Stoke 1-2 Spurs

Yeah it's been freeware for a few years now. I got it on a cover DVD of Retro Gamer when I used to buy that before they went under and then resurfaced again. Still never finished it myself because I was getting stuck all over the place and my bro used a guide to finish it and said "...yeah, there's no way anyone can finish that without using a guide, you'd never think to do some of the stuff you have to do.". So that put me off a bit.

I was part of the first batch of people to sign up for the beta when it launched (September 2008 I think) and have been quite impressed. Sure it's not got a slick interface like Steam, but it's easy to use, you get a nice set of shelves where your game boxes sit once you've bought them and there's plenty of retroheads in the forums. Sometimes the prices are a little higher than Steam and elsewhere like Direct2Drive or whatever, and one of the disadvantages was the slim choice of games although obviously that's gotten better over time. I do like how you can vote for what games you want to see on the site and they do seem to take notice of them. But paying is easy, I just use Paypal. I believe some of the games use DOSBox in order to run properly on modern systems but it's been a while since I played any of the games I've bought on there so I'm not 100% sure. But if they do it all comes properly set up for you and I certainly don't remember having to do any mucking around with settings to get anything to work, it's pretty much just worked out the box as it were. I'm on XP though, so I can't comment on Vista or 7, but as I say the forums seem to be pretty steady so I'm sure there's plenty of info in there if you need any advice. EDIT: The one thing I would say as well is that they have a deal every weekend with certain games and run sales quite often so if you do sign up, I wouldn't go nuts straight away as by the time you get around to playing something you may well have gotten it cheaper in the meantime. The news archives will fill you in on what games have been in sales recently and therefore will be unlikely to be again any time soon.

More to the point, didn't West Ham just buy a fuckload of strikers? Or are some on loan?

Megson can't be on gardening leave can he? Surely if a replacement is appointed then tha gardening leave ends as the replacement is fulfilling the same job. I dunno... Anyway, Dowie might not be a bad appointment really...he does have experience at the foot of the Premier League with Palace and to an extent Newcastle last season. I still can't see them staying up though. There is nothing saying you can't have two managers, so I assume it is a way of avoiding having to pay a large severance package, I guess. I remember him saying it on a Goals On Sunday I think if that helps, but yeah that's the way I remember him explaining it. And it was after Coyle's appointment IIRC. As mentioned, it's probably better to just pay the guy in dribs and drabs of a salary rather than blow a lot of money on just paying off the contract.

I believe Gary Megson is still on "gardening leave" too and from what I gather that essentially means they are being paid to sit at home and therefore cannot take another job in the meantime. Lucky for Hull fans, otherwise they might've got him. >_> And I believe Dowie is only contracted to the end of the season. But to be honest I doubt he'll be able to do any better than Phil Brown could've done.

Seriously, can we just knight Jimmy Bullard and get it over with?

What the hell was Howard Webb playing at today? How the hell could he disallow that Kalinic goal for Blackburn for handball when Dawson barging him in the back caused him to handball it in the first place! And a couple of stonewall penalties he completely ignored. Dear oh dear, bit of an off day. Nice to see Pav score a couple again today though. Love the interview with Gareth Bale afterwards "you watch him in training, was it just a matter of time before he showed his true form?" Yeah, it was basically a matter of waiting for Harry to actually play the guy so that he can show his "true form".

People discussed it at my work the next day, and the feeling was that if you infringe and are penalised, arguably you have no right to halt the other team whilst you saunter back, prepare you defensive wall just how you want it and then let them take their free-kick. You've been penalised for breaking the rules in some way, the opposition should always have the benefit of taking their free-kick to suit them. If that means quickly, then quickly it is. It was a strange circumstance, but I definitely don't think it was wrong for them to do it. Except the referee was blocking Sol Campbell. And I thought generally the keeper should be allowed to get into position, considering he was returning the ball to the referee. I know this is a double post, but bah, it's a different point >_> The ref was in Campbell's way on another look at it, but he wouldn't have got near actually affecting the outcome as he was ambling back, and the quickness of the free-kick meant that at no point would he have got near the ball, irrelevant of the referee's position. As for the goalie, I guess that point is fair enough, but you don't give the ball up until your team get back into some semblance of position purely to stop things like this happening. It's why you get players standing in front of the ball stopping people taking quick free-kicks outside the area. Upon giving it back, he also should never have turned his back. We'll never know whether Campbell could've done anything about it as the ref was standing directly between him and the free kick. Besides the fact that standing in front of the ball or holding onto it to delay the restart is a yellow card offence, the free kick was indirect so standing in front of the ball would've been pointless anyway. A player shouldn't feel he has no choice other than to get booked to avoid the other team pulling the rug from under them. And I know Arsenal haven't been saints in the past either, but surely it's just good sportsmanship to wait for the keeper to return to the goal after returning the ball to you. It reminds me of that time from around 1995 I think when Man United were playing Ipswich, the ref was booking the Ipswich goalkeeper outside the box for something and Man United were allowed to just take the free kick and lob the ball over him as he was running back.

I'll second the Stake Gun from Painkiller. Might not be the most effective sometimes, but it's damn sure the most fun. I've always been a fan of the old-school Plasma Gun from Doom though. You can keep your BFG 9000's with their slow fire rate or your rocket launcher which will kill you if you're too close to the impact - for no-nonsense, rapid-fire, gonna plow right through you, it's the Plasma Gun. I'm probably forgetting a few though since I'd have to rack my brain through every game I've ever played with a gun in it. OHH!!! Fuck it, I've got it. Weapon of choice? PSI POWERS from Psi-Ops. That game was just so much damn fun. It never got old just playing god, standing back, picking up some helpless goon and leaving him floating in mid-air in front of you. You could shoot him and leave his bloody corpse still floating there. Nah, just slam him into a wall. Or hurl him into the distance. Or into an explosive barrel. Or into other people. You could just do what you fucking well pleased. Damn I need to dig out my Xbox and play that again...

:Shift:, Ragdoll Blast, Doom Resurrection, Ronnie O'Sullivan Snooker (if you like that sort of thing), Let's Golf, Flight Control, DoodleJump and Dr. Awesome. And I enjoyed Cluedo too, although it's nothing like the board game, more like a Phoenix Wright-style go from place to place and talk to people. And BannerFree's just one of those nice apps to have that might come in handy. I bought a ton of them when I first got mine, but haven't even played half of them, so my advice is don't go nuts because they're 59p or 99c or whatever, no point in buying stuff you won't play and even all the little costs add up. And I'd recommend sticking a few videos on there too, I've got a whole bunch of movies, wrestling and TV shows on mine and it's nice to have that third choice on there other than games and music.

Gotta be taking chances now, so no safe bet on Spurs for me... Bet 2 - 20 on Bolton Doubler: Birmingham 1-1 Everton

Okay so I'm just about to get stuck into this again, but am looking for a good skin to use. Any recommendations?

People discussed it at my work the next day, and the feeling was that if you infringe and are penalised, arguably you have no right to halt the other team whilst you saunter back, prepare you defensive wall just how you want it and then let them take their free-kick. You've been penalised for breaking the rules in some way, the opposition should always have the benefit of taking their free-kick to suit them. If that means quickly, then quickly it is. It was a strange circumstance, but I definitely don't think it was wrong for them to do it. Except the referee was blocking Sol Campbell. And I thought generally the keeper should be allowed to get into position, considering he was returning the ball to the referee.

Holy crap, the view count for that thread is coming up on 600,000.

Not really when you consider their injury history. And Brown's off at half time for just that

Holy shit, I mean I'll be buying it anyway, but if they're charging full price for it then they must know they have something absolutely phenomenal. And Valve have never developed anything for the PS3, so that's no surprise. EA might get another studio to port it though like they did with Orange Box.

I don't trust West Ham to beat Bolton, so... Bet 2 - 20 on Everton. Douber: Wolves 0-2 Man United