Nuts In March
Third month of the year. We’re a quarter of the way through. Soon be Christmas... Look. We’re sorry, mum. Can we come home, now?

Not you again.

It’s been a strange month, here at what we will call – for want of an entirely non-loathsome expression – ‘Rodent Towers’. Curious portents. Dark rumblings. Inexplicable, muffled voices coming from downstairs in the small hours when you know no-one else is in – and it can’t be burglars because the security light hasn’t come on.

Actually, no. It hasn’t. It’s been alright, really. Bit of snow. Quite cold. Lots of playing games. Eating. Drinking. Oh, and vigorous, uncompromising fucking.

Games, then.

To say that February has been a bit of a bumper, ‘watershed’ month for gaming would be cheap, ugly lies. But we’ve had fun – mostly with alcohol, childish sweets and the likess of Resident Evil 4 on the coughing-up-blood-but-refusing-to-shuffle-off Gamecube. Hence the double-penetration review which was originally meant as a sort of second-opinion/balance thing but which ended up as a big, sweaty love-in.

Fun times though, folks. We’ll get first glimpses of the next-generation consoles we can’t afford at that Electronic Show The Third thing in May. And, of course, in the coming month, Nintendo will release their lovely, plasticky silver ‘DS’.

Which is why we’ve got a review of Lumines on the PSP.

Further ch-ch-ch-ch-changes afoot, too. Tweaks and nips and twiddles, mostly. Biggest thrill, though: the archived stuff should be activated sometime in the next few weeks so you’ll be able to read the things what we wrote before back in The Day of 2003 and 2004.

Stroll on, you beautiful bastards.

Sickboy, Editor - March 2005

A note from somebody else

Okay, so we're getting into our stride a bit now. Lots more to come. This month we are, incidentally, switching servers and that might cause a few drop-outs. Really, really sorry in advance. So cram in all that reading now.

Remember that bit of controversy last month? Some shit about PSP v DS? I dunno, sort of passed me by, umm, yes. Anyhoo - we're delighted to see that Sony are working hard to do a splendidly piss-poor job of launching the machine in the US and Europe: stock shortages, reliability holes, weird pricing and an idiotic approach to the whole UMD Movies thing.

At the same time, Nintendo have been brilliant - the DS launch in the UK has been supreme. The brave price-point and the blanket exposure has built a real momentum behind their machine. We're pleased because this contrast between the ham-fisted Sony and the impressive Nintendo gives the DS a chance to overcome it's technical frailties and reach a wide user base beyond the 30-seconds-in-a-store maelstrom.

The DS is going to need this opportunity - one independant retailer, owner of several UK stores, mentioned last week that he has taken 30 pre-orders for the Nintendo machine. He was very pleased with this number, but then he revealed that he's taken almost 200 pre-orders for the PSP. And that's without a price, or even any clue when he will be able to fulfill those pre-orders.

Game on indeed...

All the best,

Koworld