What do you get when you take two brutally honest Scottish video gamers, give them some games, and then ask them to review them on a freely downloadable internet programme? You get Consolevania: a show that’s been so popular online that the BBC saw fit to let them have a ten-minute slot on BBC Scotland to provide a late-night condensed version called videoGaiden. It was received very favourably, and several months ago the BBC announced to a joyous internet community that the programme would be returning for a second series.

However, one of the major criticisms of the first series was how short each episode was: ten minutes long. Needless to say, this made it difficult for the Scots who’re used to entertaining for a full 30 minutes to provide an experience that met the high level Consolevania set long ago. They managed it, but it was tight. The show would really have benefited from a bit more breathing room.

According to Andy, the BBC has heard these wishes. Yes, that’s right — the next series of videoGaiden will have a full 30-minute slot! It’s going to be just like having Consolevania in your living room. And if it carries on building momentum, we could be seeing it on the national BBC rather than just the localised Scottish version. Sure, it’s still available to the whole country if you’re on cable/Sky, but it’ll obviously fly under the radar for those not looking out for it.

And that’s what we need. We need something like videoGaiden to hit the mainstream, smack everybody in the face with its quality, and act as a wake-up call to those responsible for the trashy rubbish that video game TV has become since the days of GamesMaster. Want to see this happen? All you have to do is keep an eye on the TV schedule (or my blog) and make sure you tune in. Tell all your friends and family to do the same. If you have a disabled granny in a retirement home, set her TV to automatically switch over to videoGaiden. I want to see those ratings soar like eagles on pogo sticks.

If you’re unfortunate enough to have never seen Consolevania before, I suggest going over to the official website and grabbing the latest episode, which comes with a review of brand new Half-Life 2 mod The Ship. Alternatively, scope out YouTube for some choice clips such as this (review of Hitman: Blood Money).

If you live in the UK and have access to a credit card, now would be an extremely good time to head over to the GAME website. Since noon they’ve been unveiling a new DS offer every hour as part of their Nintendo 24 Hour Spectacular promotion, and at the time of writing there are 18 bargains to go. One offer every hour until midday tomorrow, with a limited supply for each. Once they’re gone they really are gone, as many people will bitterly discover when they see the page shown in the screengrab.

I’m not really in a position to be buying even more DS stuff so I’ve not been checking back every hour. I’ve had the odd peek though, and so far I’ve seen New Super Mario Bros and Animal Crossing being sold for £15 each, and black DS Lites going for £50 a time. I presume that there’s been lots of other games on offer for £15 too, so if you’re after something in particular you may want to have an all-nighter to make sure you don’t miss out.

Apparently the £50 DS Lites have appeared twice now, so there may be some more up for grabs before the end of the promotion. For those in the US, I do believe GAME will ship over there for a small fee, so if you want a black DS Lite before everybody else now is probably the best time to sort it out.

If you get anything fancy, let me know in a comment!

Update: 50 copies of Trauma Center just sold in under one minute; clearly some masterly refreshing will need to be undertaken to stand a chance against the hordes. Perhaps things will die down once the post-midnight hours roll around. Then again, probably not.

As those who’ve played Mario Kart DS know, Nintendo’s wifi system is not perfect. To play with other people, you need to know a 12 digit number that’s known as their “friend code”. Once you’ve added their friend code to your DS, you connect to the Nintendo Wifi network and set it to search for friends only. You then sit there while the system looks for any friends on your list who might be online, and if it finds any it’ll match you up with them.

Seems simple, right? Wrong. The fatal flaw in the system is that it’s just not fast enough. Exchanging such a long number is a real pain when you’re doing it in person (pen and paper time), and entering it into your DS is equally tiresome. And although the system usually manages to detect your friends instantly, it’ll hang for several minutes while it tries to find more players — even if you’ve got it set to only match you up with those on your friend list.

This means that what is an otherwise solid and easy-to-use system isn’t particularly pleasant to use. So when Nintendo let slip on a hidden official page (it was quickly pulled after being dugg) that the Wii is to feature the same friend code system, fans were naturally up in arms. Will a console that has the potential to offer the best multiplayer gaming ever be crippled with a terrible match making system?

The answer is no, but only if Nintendo learns from its mistakes with the DS. Although most people have had their Nintendo Wifi experiences with Mario Kart DS and it is indeed a pretty irritating system, the actual framework is completely solid. It’s only the implementation and interface that’s bad, and if this can be improved the Wii is likely to have excellent multiplayer gameplay.

For example, let’s imagine that you can force the game to start whenever you wish by initiating a “force start” vote. You press a button that indicates you wish to begin immediately, and if the other players agree by pressing the same button the game will start. No hanging around staring at an unusable screen while it tries to find non-existent friends, no hoping the other player(s) won’t leave due to boredom — it just begins.

Now let’s imagine that the friend list is actually given an interface. When trying to get a game going, your friend list appears on the screen with the online/offline status of your friends clearly indicated. If you don’t fancy playing with a particular friend, you simply press a certain button on their name and it’ll cross them out. Instead of shooting blind like on the DS, you’re back in control of exactly who you play with.

Really, the only problem with the friend code system is that it’s just not presented very well. The system itself is quick, efficient and stable, but little to no control is given to the players when it comes to the match making process. Even when you’ve got a specific friend in mind to play with and have them on your friend list, you haven’t got the ability to only play with that friend if some of your other friends (or his) happen to be online.

All that said, I haven’t a huge amount of experience with the Nintendo Wifi service, and many if not all of what I’ve just suggested may be available in other games. If this is the case, I’d really appreciate being told in a comment so I can put my mind to rest and look forward to the Wii’s multiplayer system without worry.

What do you guys think? Should Nintendo march on with their plans to continue developing the friend code system, or should they do something more akin to PC multiplayer where you’re placed into a lobby and choose a server from a list? Heck, they could feasibly do both, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’d personally by completely satisfied with a spruced-up version of the current system.

Oh, and yes, the GobLog is back! I moved host a while back and in the process wrecked the blog, leaving me in the unfortunate position of not being in the mood to fix it. It’s all repaired now though, and I’ve decided to ‘reboot’ the blog with a now exclusive focus on gaming as opposed to nothing in particular like before. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep the posts nice and frequent.

Eh? What’s that? There was a massive trade event last week called E3? Never heard of it. However, I just came across an excellent looking video of the upcoming flagship Mario title for the Wii, Mario Galaxy.

Although I saw a number of videos of Mario Galaxy during the aforementioned event, they all had really bad sound quality, and most only showed short parts of the demo. This doesn’t show it all, such as the massive Shadow of the Colossus-esque boss with the epic music, but it does demonstrate for a full five minutes.

So, check it out if you want five minutes of Mario Galaxy with pretty distinguishable sound, with the exception of the odd bit of banter in the background — not sure how they managed to get E3 so quiet! It really does look very nice, and the theme (planetoids in space) does have potential to be fantastic if done right, especially if some larger ones are featured. Some in the demo have blue atmospheres, you’ll notice.

It’s actually really refreshing to see how traditional this game looks. Although the Wiimote will no doubt open up some weird and wonderful tricks, if you pay attention you’ll notice that the level design is classic Mario 64 in parts, that a lot of the enemies are from the oldies, and even the stars have made a return instead of the shine sprites from Mario Sunshine. The moves also seem to be fairly traditional, instead of being based around a gizmo as in Mario Sunshine.

All in all, I’m very excited about this game.

What do you get when you stitch together IGN’s five New Super Mario Bros videos and then upload them to YouTube? Five minutes of New Super Mario Bros footage, of course! Although you might want to give it a miss if you wish to experience the game’s various scenery for the first time when you play it, it’s certainly a must-see for Mario enthusiasts.

This game refuses to ever stop looking awesome. It’s already gotten 9.5/10 from IGN, with a sub-score of 10/10 for gameplay; this could very well be the finest 2D Mario experience to date. If you want your face to be immediately dazzled off onto the ground, watch the video.

What surprises me is how smooth it all looks. Although in screenshot form the 2D/3D graphical mix looks a bit odd, in motion is looks truly smooth and the animation is beautiful. I can’t even begin to imagine how sweet it’ll look on my bright DS Lite screen once it hits the stores.

But seriously, this video is almost orgasmic to watch. The references to the past games are constant, ranging from subtleties such as the inclusion of the underground theme’s variation that was heard in Super Mario 64 but never again (as far as I’m aware) to the odd Yoshi’s Island sound effect. Hell, even the end of the course has those castles and flags from the original Super Mario Bros. They may as well just rename this Nostalgia Trip.

Not to say that it will all be mish-mashing of past Mario games, though. The general flow of the gameplay seems to be very unique, albeit clearly based upon the best of the oldies, and there is plenty of new material; if you were worried about having seen it all before, this video will probably change your mind — just wait until you see shell Mario!

Since my last blogging about New Super Mario Bros, quite a lot of new information has appeared. Edge Magazine seems to be doing monthly articles on the game at the moment, and so are many others. The most predominant addition as of late, however, is the new video on the official website.

Check it out — it’s on the left. Inside you will see that New Super Mario Bros will in fact include a lot of moves introduced in Mario 64, including wall rebounds, that flippy jump thing, and even arse stomps. They all seem to work surprisingly well in 2D; it’s surprisingly how well they translate over, as if Nintendo intended for them to eventually become so back when designing the N64’s 3D pioneer.

Also of note is this page full of scans, heartily stolen from Nintendo Power. There’s a whopping five pages of New Super Mario Bros coverage, it’s nicely presented, and it also contains quite a lot of hard information — definitely something to check out if you’re as enthused as I am about the upcoming potential classic.

I only have one thing to say: bring it on.

If you were born before 1995, the chances are that you experienced at least a few adventure games while growing up; you’ll also probably recall how enjoyable a number of them were, with their memorable characters, worlds and storylines. Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Broken Sword — you know what I mean.

Although the genre is largely a stale pile of rubbish that attempts to be overly serious nowadays, Telltale Games (which is also developing the upcoming Sam & Max Episodes) is attempting to keep the genre alive in the form of its “Bone”? series, based upon the comics of the same name. This is the second episode in what is to be a long stream of them, and it a traditional point ‘n’ click adventure game in every sense of the term. It’s not particularly knee-slappingly funny, but it doesn’t take itself very seriously either — something that really kills a lot of more recent adventure games for me, especially when every other genre out there does the whole seriousness thing so well.

Now, when the first episode came out last year, I was fairly disappointed: the lack of a massive budget certainly showed, and a lot of it looked flakey at best; in addition, the actual gameplay seemed very uninspired during the demo, with an almost infamous hornet chase sequence being the most notable example of inadequacy. The second episode is now upon us, and Telltale have evidently kept true to their word in listening to community feedback and amending issues; although I’ve only played the demo (which comes with a very fair amount of gameplay), it is definitely an improvement. Not brilliant, but an improvement.

The visuals are generally a lot more realised: the world feels more vibrant, there seem to be more polygons lavished upon the environment, and there are no lame sprites being used which stand out like sore thumbs as there were in the first episode. The gameplay also has a bit more of that classic feel to it, and I enjoyed having a good look around the world — which has plenty of interactive elements now, by the way — and listening to the main character’s reactions. The puzzle aspect is alright too, although there wasn’t that much of it in the demo.

Moving onto the sound: very good! The soundtrack (download for free) has some nice melodies to it, and it is well produced; the voice acting is also very stellar for the most part, although the girl that the main character seems intent on boning sounds like a preteen — that just doesn’t sit right with me. Despite the quality music, however, it’s used a little strangely at times: when you change scenes, the loop begins all over again, even if it’s the same piece of music. There is also one part where you go into a quiet area, and the same music is used but with a dodgy filter thrown over it which just seems completely pointless; I think I’d have preferred it if it were just quietened down.

Although the interface is very well thought out, and the 3D is smoothly blended with the point ‘n’ click, getting around the world is a bit cumbersome at times. At one point, I found myself having to go back and forth from one end to the other during a certain honey puzzle; this might be fine if you already know what to do, but having to put up with the main character’s slow movement speed while experimenting and working the puzzle out for yourself is downright irritating.

Because the camera follows you around in a fixed way, it’s not possible to just throw your mouse over to the other side of the scene and double-click on the exit to get there instantly as you could in older point ‘n’ click titles, meaning that you have to manually trapse across each screen, clicking on the ground to continue as the camera gradually reveals more and more. The whole game also generally moves a little slowly at times: in one particular area, you have to climb up a tree; when you do so, you’re treated to a short climbing animation. Now, this is great at first, but when you’re climbing up for the sixth time it starts to once again venture into irritation territory. Conversation bubbles could also vanish a little more quickly when you decide to skip them, such as when dialogue is caused to repeat by clicking on an object multiple times and you don’t want to hear it again.

Criticism aside, it is a very charming game, and I’m fairly certain that I’ll purchase the full version at some point once I’ve finished with the other games on my plate; at £7.50 for the entire episode (which clocks in at between four and five hours of gameplay, allegedly), I’d be daft not to. I highly recommend getting the demo and just giving it a try, as it really is a big improvement on the original. You can also catch up with the storyline very quickly thanks to a bunch of notes on the main menu about all of the characters, so don’t worry about being too confused despite having not played the original episode. I picked it up very quickly, anyway.

If you want to try out the 101mb demo, which can be upgraded to the full version without any extra downloading, point your clicker here. If you want to watch the trailer first, although there’s only so much excitement that can be put into a trailer for a slow paced adventure game, go here instead. For a catch-up video of the first Bone episode, this is what you want. Remember to make your thoughts on it known so that Telltale can work on ironing out flaws for the inevitable successor, which should be beginning production before long — if not already! I personally am looking forward to it, considering the progress that’s been made between the first two episodes. It can only get better, right?