Spee

I think there's a greater sense of satisfaction in building a team up from nothing to a player on the world stage than in starting at the top.

South Park; Family Guy is too limited in its scope and humour, and too reliant on anecdotes (e.g. "like this one time..."); that is not to say it doesn't have its moments, but for all South Park's profanity and irreverent humour, it still has something more to 'say' and has for the most part got stronger as it's gone on.

How good is the Xbox version of that? I've heard good things about it; is it similar in essence to the original one from way back when?

Do many people on here actually play as small teams? It's not a criticism of ones who don't, I just personally find it more enjoyable to play with less-fancied sides; for example, I have a game with Braintree Town at the moment. I managed to get to the 3rd Round of the FA Cup (no mean feat considering we're in the Blue Square South; you start in the 2nd Qualifying Round) but lost 5-1 to Derby. Still, the shared gate receipts from that game alone will keep my team in the black for about 3 seasons alone at this level.

Luton could survive, especially if Bournemouth and Rotherham are deducted points as well. It means Bury are unlikely to go down in any case.

I want to see how it turns out on the Wii.

I think us beating Leeds at Elland Road was/is a better result personally.

Have to admit I'm really surprised Zelda didn't even make the top 100...

This might go off on a tangent but at the same time it's also (paradoxically) relevant to the thread: Most of the marketing for the Wii that I've seen has been in the 25-49 bracket, much like the DS. Even games like Mario Party 8 have had adverts with older teenagers and families playing it. I don't see the problem with that, and it makes a lot of sense commercially speaking for Nintendo. I think some people seem to forget that Nintendo is, to all intents and purposes, a business in only one sector of the market. It cannot be propped up unlike Sony and Microsoft's gaming division (both of which to the best of my recollection are making heavy losses in their respective divisions); it has to make a profit. This is the principle reason why the Wii is 'underpowered' -- some of the components are a few years old as it's obviously cheaper for them to be made and to program games for. As it is, Nintendo tried their best to aim for the so-called 'hardcore' market with the N64 and the Gamecube; the N64 had obvious limitations (cartridge over CD-ROMs, which precipitated a lack of 3rd party support). I don't seem to recall many people weeping into their buckets when Sony took advantage of the situation (through savvy marketing, 3rd party support and errors on the part of their competitors) and made gaming cool; people bought the console in numbers not seen since the days of the all-conquering NES. I'm willing to wager that a lot of the buyers had never bought a console before but were lured by the vast library of relatively cheap games and by gaming's new-found status. There were quite a lot of casual games on the PS1, Dance Dance Revolution and other bemani games being the principle ones that I can think of at this time. Basically, the PS1 had something for everyone, and no-one complained. Nintendo made a number of mistakes with the Gamecube. Retrospectively, Hiroshi Yamauchi still being in charge of the company was one of them; he was by all accounts long in the tooth and bereft of ideas. He claimed sometime during that generation that gaming as a pastime was going to become less popular. He had no vision of the future or how to steer Nintendo in the right direction at that point; they used another proprietary format, not to save on costs but because they were overly cautious of piracy; couple that with a terrible and paltry set of launch games, lacklustre iterations of their 2 main console franchises (Super Mario Sunshine and more notably The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker, which divided opinion and underperformed). There was also a continued lack of 3rd party support; the Gamecube either missed out completely on the big series or got spin-offs and remakes, Resident Evil 4 being an exception, but even that was later ported with extras to the PS2. What I'm trying to say is whilst they might still have made a profit on both of those generations, they were out-thought and out-fought, firstly by Sony and then by both Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo had too much pride to give up on the home console business and they needed a new approach -- a "blue ocean strategy" as the new president Satoru Iwata might have put it. To him this meant differentiating from its competitors and trying to recover one-time fans and bring in ones nobody had ever really tried to target before. The DS was at first meant to be the 3rd pillar -- more of an experiment than anything else. After a slow start, it started to gain a following and is trouncing the PSP for a variety of obvious reasons. To that effect, Nintendo surmized that the strategy could also work with the Wii. Many were predicting it would be doom and gloom for them but it simply hasn't been the case. To my mind, Nintendo will have had all of its major franchises in some form or another on the Wii in the first 18 months of release (Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii, The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess & Metroid Prime 3: Corruption), whilst simultaneously encouraging the returning 3rd parties, both lured by the lack of expense to program for and the growing install base to license their games for the Virtual Console (a veritable cash cow) and bring original 'IPs'* to the Wii. The latter has seen mixed results so far but should improve as time goes on. There is little for people to complain about to be quite honest. People have call launch titles 'tech demos' on pretty much all of the consoles released in the last 2 generations to one degree or another. People call the Wii gimmicky, but if it was a gimmick, sales would've dropped long ago. People call the Wii Remote gimmicky or games that support the Wii Remote have tacked on controls, but I wonder if people have actually played any games on the Wii sometimes. Every man and his dog knows Wii Fit will sell like hot cakes, but it would be wrong to assume that their focus has shifted entirely to making casual games, At the moment there is a good mix of both, as it should be. That Sony and moreover Microsoft are attempting to follow in Nintendo's footsteps is no bad thing in my view. If people can still enjoy games with decent storylines and many hours of deep gameplay, then they should sneer when others buy consoles and don't have time to play such games. After all, that's where the money lies and in theory the more people buy games and consoles then the more support the industry will have, internally and externally. Whilst Tyler Bleszinski makes valid points, one can't help but feel that he's a bit behind the times. As good as Gears Of War was, it didn't really introduce new players, did it? Part of me feels if it was up to him, we'd be playing on the Playstation 4 and the 3rd Xbox console with exactly the same titles and genres, with the only advance being the visuals, not innovation, gameplay or fousing on making the games more fun. I'm not biased particularly towards Nintendo (I have a PS2, a 360 and a Wii), but in the same breath I feel that the industry needs a Nintendo if it is to truly stand alongside TV, films, books and other entertainment media without snobbery from said industries. As I said before, no-one should delude themselves into thinking Nintendo has abandoned the hardcore, but at the end of the day they need to be profitable: that is their main concern, not kowtowing to the demands of all and sundry. The games are coming and will continue to do so. *I actually hate the use of the term 'intellectual property' in this way; hypocritically on any gaming forum or blogsite you go on, people clamor for original titles but at the same time either don't support them on release or come to expect too much of them.

Nugent's off to Portsmouth tomorrow for £6m. That's roughly £1.1m for us!

Spee's Shambles, as ever: 1. Jussi Jaaskelainen 2. Leighton Baines 3. Olof Mellberg 4. Sylvain Distin 5. Kolo Touré 6. David Bentley 7. Owen Hargreaves 8. Cristiano Ronaldo © 9. Tim Cahill 10. Carlos Tevez 11. Fernando Torres Subs: 12. Antti Niemi 13. Andre Bikey 14. Scott Parker 15. Mark Viduka

The Longest Journey -- a 40-hour+ adventure game that is interesting and exciting throughout. If you liked Fahrenheit with its heavy emphasis on story, you'll love that.

I'd love to hear your reasons as to why it would make sense. The PES series has had no appearance on a Nintendo home console before, the ISS series did see action on the N64/GC though. The DS version could get the ball rolling on Nintendo cooperation but I don't see it happening. The Wiimote isn't really designed for a football game and I can't think how you'd motion it for football actions, penalties maybe. Plus you'd figure they'd see how EA fair with FIFA before they start thinking of doing something for the Wii. Why it would make sense? Simple -- the Wii is the hottest console ticket right now, and money talks -- obviously KCET will make buckets with such a wide range of foramts to release PES7 on anyway; games like this are designed to reach a wide a market of consoles as possible. I'm well aware that the series under its current name hasn't been on a home Nintendo console, much to my chagrin (indeed, only with the release of PES6 on the DS a few months after the other formats did the series grace any Nintendo machine).

The 360 for definite. All the games I'd know you'd like to play when they come out with the (temporary?) exception of Metal Gear Solid 4 are on the 360; Most of the decent and highly anticipated FPS games, single and multi-player are on it (Huxley, Halo 3, BioShock to name a few); Resident Evil 5 will be on it, as will Grand Theft Auto IV with exclusive downloadable content that ought to add a lot to the game; some upcoming ones that I know for a fact will interest you are Pro Evolution Soccer 7 (hopefully Konami will actually let you edit the players and fake team names this time, not that I have the 360 version of Pro Evo 6), WWE: SmackDown! vs RAW 2008, Virtua Fighter 5, Half-Life 2: Orange Box, Army Of Two and Assassin's Creed. As for ones that are already out now, there's Halo 1/2, Dead Rising, Gears Of War, Command & Conquer 3, Brian Lara International Cricket 2007, Crackdown, Tony Hawk's Project 8 and last but not least, Sid Meier's Pirates! As of now there is no reason at all to recommend the PS3 over the 360, except that it's wireless out of the box, whereas the 360 comes with an ethernet cable but I think you can use pretty much any wireless router with it; also a 12-month Gold subscription is around £40, but you can download demos of 360 and arcade games without paying anything. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong though. Gamestation offers some pretty good deals on the 360 from what I can remember. The PS3 is obviously bound to come down in price sometime, but most of the games coming up for that will be on the 360 anyway; I don't think HD comes into the equation just yet -- 360 games look perfectly good on normal TVs.

Ben Futcher (who's expected to sign later this week -- 6'7" centre back), Chris Day (think he used to play for Sheffield Wednesday), John Murphy (winger/striker, did well for Macclesfield last season) and probably many ex or current Lincoln players due to the Keith Alexander connection.

McShambles -- not like I'll actually be online much until August or later though; still, it's there for you all to add or not.

Wii: (I'm hoping against hope that all of Nintendo's 'Big 3' make it before Christmas!) Super Mario Galaxy Super Smash Bros. Brawl No More Heroes Metroid Prime 3: Corruption MySims Guitar Hero III NiGHTS: Journey Into Dreams Dewy's Adventure The Adventures Of Zak & Wiki Mario & Sonic At The Olympics DS: (Most of which will be out in the U.S. only this year, but which can be picked up cheaper and a lot sooner than here.) Chibi Robo: Park Patrol Dragon Quest IX Final Fantasy Tactics A2 Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings Luminous Arc Nanostray 2 Sonic Rush Adventure The Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass Top Gear: Downforce Ultimate Card Games Xbox 360: Alan Wake BioShock Blue Dragon Eternal Sonata Grand Theft Auto IV Lost Odyssey Mass Effect Pro Evolution Soccer 7 (Providing you can actually edit!) Too Human Two Worlds Xbox 360 Live Arcade: Bomberman Live! Butterfly Garden Every Extend Extra Extreme Exit HoopWorld Ikaruga N+ Schizoid Streets Of Rage 2 Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix I don't think there are any PS2 games I know of still to be released that whet my appetite -- might be wrong though; the PS3 will still be out of my grasp, as I'm sure it still will be to most people...seems like most of the highly anticipated games will be out next year in any case for it.

I'd love to hear your reasons as to why it would make sense. The PES series has had no appearance on a Nintendo home console before, the ISS series did see action on the N64/GC though. The DS version could get the ball rolling on Nintendo cooperation but I don't see it happening. The Wiimote isn't really designed for a football game and I can't think how you'd motion it for football actions, penalties maybe. Plus you'd figure they'd see how EA fair with FIFA before they start thinking of doing something for the Wii.

We'll most likely lose aat home to Carlisle, but that would be tempered slightly be a Leeds loss.

Premiership Winners: Manchester United Runner-Up: Chelsea Champions League: Spurs & Liverpool UEFA Cup: Portsmouth, Arsenal & Aston Villa Relegated: Derby, Fulham & Wigan Championship Winners: Wolves Promoted: Cardiff Play-Offs: Charlton Athletic, Burnley, Southampton & Leicester Relegated: Coventry, QPR & Bristol City League One Winners: Nottingham Forest Promoted: Luton Play-Offs: Carlisle, Swansea, Walsall & Southend Relegated: Leyton Orient, Bournemouth, Northampton Town & Gillingham League Two Winners: Peterborough Promoted: Shrewsbury & Rochdale Play-Offs: Rotherham, Dagenham & Redbridge, Stockport & Grimsby Relegated: Accrington Stanley & Macclesfield As for us (Bury), I predict at this moment in time a comfortable mid-table finish in the early teens.