Nick Thorpe

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Retro Gamer Presents: The Greatest Retro Games Of All Time on the shelves, surrounded by an Anti-Anxiety Journal, Viz, and five copies of Sainsbury’s Magazine.

Found a Retro Gamer bookazine on the shelves at Sainsbury’s. The company we keep: Sainsbury’s Magazine, an anxiety management journal, and Viz.

I'm gutted to have missed that live - 2008 was the only Summer of Sonic event I couldn't attend.

YouTube video by Savaged Regime Sonic 2 SMS/GG - Underground Zone (Remix)

Also there had to be some Sonic, so here's a Sonic CD-style remix of some Sonic 2 Master System music.

YouTube video by Luke Jansen Zero Wing "Natols" Stage 1 Remix

Here's a more recent favourite, going away from the guitar stuff you'd expect from me

YouTube video by OverClocked ReMix: Video Game Music Community OC ReMix #1323: Space Harrier 'Limitless Skies' [Theme] by CarboHydroM

I remembered this one from about 20 years ago and had to look it up because I'd forgotten the name!

That’s certainly a way to describe it.

Now hang on just a darn minute! When people elect an MP, they don’t expect to be represented by a mindless automaton that only acts according to its programming. I’m not sure why though, as this actually describes the behaviour of most backbenchers pretty accurately.

141 and two thirds chance it goes well.

Hoping for the best for you

A ginger kid (me) stands on a slightly stony beach with bits of seaweed strewn about. It's a clear, sunny day and there are other kids on the beach (one is half in-shot), but all that ginger kid wants to do is play Tetris.

Scanning old family photos, I came across something quite funny that I had to post. Here I am on the beach at Jaywick during a holiday, about nine years old, and I'm absolutely refusing to engage with the sand in favour of a "brick game" handheld. Who'd have guessed at my future choice of career?

Kelsey Grammer is a confirmed Trump supporter, but Frasier Crane as a character? The season 2 episode "The Candidate" definitively establishes both Frasier and Niles as being on the left, with Martin's TV advert for the right-wing candidate Holden Thorpe triggering the episode's central conflict.

A drawing of Sanae Kochiya from Touhou in a bedroom surrounded by Sega memorabilia. She's lying on her side and playing Saturn Bomberman.

I don't think I posted this by itself. It's Sanae but she really likes Sega

tbh this piece didn't do nearly as well on other social medias as I thought it should have, so it'd be nice if that was different on bluesky

#art #touhou #sega

The wall of a chip shop, featuring various images "celebrating" the UK. These include images of Little Britain and Celebrity Juice, a Brexit 52/48, various royals, red buses, a black cab, a cup of tea, people clad head to toe in Burberry and more.

Every so often I see a hollow nostalgia post, and I think about what used to be on the wall of a local chip shop.

An Action Pad SG for the Sega Mega Drive. The controller layout is similar to that of the SNES, with A, B and C around the top of the face button diamond, X on the bottom and Y and Z as shoulder buttons.

That was one of the two pads I got when I was given my Mega Drive in 1997! I liked its d-pad feel and button layout way more than that of the other controller, the Action Pad SG, so I used it as my P1 controller right up until I bought an ex-rental copy of Street Fighter II and needed six buttons.

Oh, and karate nights. I couldn't go home once the kids class was over because dad was training, so I'd inevitably wander down to the arcade machines. I didn't have money though, so I'd hope that someone had left a credit in one of the games, or just watch the attract modes looping over and over.

Mum bought me Atari 2600 Pac-Man for £1 from the market, and I loved it because I'd never seen the arcade game. Playing Block Buster on the Watara Supervision at my friend Isaac's house. Late in the decade, hanging around the console demo units at Virgin for way too long in the summer holidays.

A few hours left on this free bundle for a good cause. - items.gog.com/freedomtobuy...

"Content is King" used to be the Imagine Publishing motto, to the point that our archive server was actually called Content King. (Our main server was called Skynet, which was just asking for trouble.)

advertise your account with a gif:

The 11,000 mile round trip doesn't really work with the events I've already booked for 22nd/23rd August :(

A PAL rental copy of Jumping Flash. Rather than the standard black disc label used by most rental games, this uses a pink design with diagonal stripes indicating its purpose.

I have a huge amount of love for Jumping Flash! There's just something about that experimental approach to 3D platforming that I love, plus the worlds are so abstract and the soundtrack is brilliant. I've bought multiple copies, including a weird early rental disc, just because I like it so much.

Dang, if only I could be there. My username is literally a Dreamcast model number.

Damn, I probably should have written that novel. Maybe there’s still time…?

Oh damn! Must remember to bring something to doodle on if I ever get to interview him again.

A screenshot of a Facebook post I made on 31st October 2011. It says "Everyone might well be capable of writing a novel, but most people will write novels with titles like "THE MAN WHOSE BALLS FUCKIN' EXPLODE ALL THE TIME!". Whether or not this behaviour is to be encouraged is up to you."

Realised I don't have many memories of my time at shitty 2010-2011 job that don't relate to that job, so I did some digging to see if there was anything I was missing. There wasn't, but I sure did find some prime examples of the posts I used to make.

It’s also the weird tint your vision gets for a while after looking at exclusively red light for so long. Not painful, no headaches, just odd. Still love my Virtual Boy though.

When I got to secondary school in 1998, one of our computer rooms still looked like this.

Vi please

oh no