Happy 25th UK Bithday SEGA Megadrive

So one of my favourite consoles of all time the good old Sega Megadrive or as my friends in America would call it the Sega Genesis has just turned 25, now if your my age this is guaranteed to make you feel old.

Yes for those who want to nitpick the Mega Drive was originally released in Japan on October 29, 1988. It took a bit of time for it to arrive here on our shores though first it hit Japan then it launched in North America, as the Sega Genesis, on April 14, 1989. For us in the UK (and Europe) well we had to wait around two years for the console to be released here. The golden date for us here however was November the 30th 1990.

Now I could celebrate this fact by talking about Sega themselves there place in the market, the way in which they chose to aggressively market there console the cheap shots they took at Nintendo or the birth of there mascot Sonic the Hedgehog but instead I might as well talk about the one thing which is the most important when it comes to a console and that is the games.

Now me talking about the Megadrive is not a new thing at all, in fact two times I nearly found myself getting paid to review Megadrive games, the first time I wrote and submitted a review of a favourite of mine Alien Storm, when this fell through I was so proud of the review that I did not want it to go to waste and so I posted this review online as my first ever blog post on my old blog. After this I began to write more reviews and to even make YouTube Videos.

This is my Video Review of Buck Rogers Countdown to Doomsday. Now this might seem a basic game and it is seldom one of the top ten games to be mentioned by people when the genesis but it is one of my top ten games which is a very good showing for it when you consider that I own over 200 megadrive cartridges.

When people talk about the MegaDrive then they will mention Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, Mortal Kombat and while they are great games the fact is that the machine had a much wider more diverse library than that this was one of the things that made it the awesome machine it is. Who would believe that there would be a game where you played the part of Michael Jackson dancing criminal and zombies and such literally to death? Well it happened and what's more than that maybe beyond or even because of all the silliness it is one of the most awesome games going.

I could include links to all of the reviews I did, or I could do a top ten Megadrive games that you must own but the truth of that matter is that even if I was to sit and make a top ten list one day I would look back at it and decide that it was in the wrong order that I had missed games off of it and I would literally tear it up and start again, you see that's the thing about the Sega Megadrive there is a whole host of good games for it all of which will appeal to different people that is the beauty of the machine. Instead I will leave things here and see if anyone else wants to leave a message in the comments sharing the name of a game they like or a memory they have which is related to Sega's 16bit Blast Processing machine.

This Months retro Video Game purchases:November 2015

OK so it is that time of the month again, the time when one month is pretty much over and a new one is about to begin, so its is once again time look at the retro purchases I have made. The honest truth is this is going to be a very short list/post. One of the reasons I haven't really gotten much is that I have been trying to sort Christmas out, then there is the fact that with Black Friday and other related sales I have tended to focus on newer games just because that is where the savings have really been. In general I tend to find myself going through stages of extreme retro purchasing ignoring the modern gaming world and then periods where I reconnect with nowadays games, still back to the retro purchases.

On November the 3rd I got Evil twin cypriens chronicles for playstation 2 complete for £1.50 and Jurassic Park Operation Genesis for PC for £1.50. This is about the 4th time I own Jurassic Park Operation Genesis on PC now, its a good game but I obviously don't need it this many times its just one of those games that I know fetches a decent little amount so I keep my eyes peeled for it (it goes for anywhere from £15 to £35 for the PC Version on sites like ebay which is quiet a lot for an old PC game. These both came from a charity shop which I just tend to check whenever I am walking past it.

On Friday November the 6th I got The Incredable Hulk for Wii boxed but with no manual for £3 and Namco Museum remix for the wii complete for £4 from my local Granger Games. I have heard a lot of good things about hulk but its been like £15 every time ive ran in to a copy in the past, the lack of a manual is a touch annoying but oh well, I guess this is something I need to get used to seeing as nowdays your lucky to even get a scrap of paper with the basic controls written on it when it comes to modern games.

On Friday November the 13th I grabbed a copy of Mario Slam Basketball for the DS Complete for £8 from an indie shop.I have played it quiet a bit in the past and really wanted to own it and this is the cheapest Ive seen it for so was quite happy to make the plunge.

My last retro purchase was on Monday November the 16th I purchased Crimson skies high road to revenge complete for Xbox for 50pence and Zathura complete for xbox for 50pence.

As you can see this slim list was hardly worth a blog post. In the same period of time I have and this is of the top of my head purchased Fallout 4 for Xbox One for £35, Transformers Devastation for Xbox One for £19.99, Disney Infinity 3 with starwars figures for Wii U for £21.50, The walking Dead the escapists for £10, Shovel Knight for PS4 for £10, Freedom Wars for Vita for £10, Chibi Robo 3DS for £10 all new and then a bunch of second hand titles as well Batman Arkham knight for Xbox one for £12.75, Dragon Ball Xenoverse for Xbox one for £15.75, BloodBorne for PS4 for £15.75, Tearaway unfolded for £15. Most of this was due to black friday and lead up to black Friday sales at various different places.

So not a good month for Retro but a decent month for spending on gaming in general.

The WWE hall of fame Inductions for 2004 and 2005

So the last time I looked at the WWE Hall of Fame I went over its first 4 years, which was around the first 22 people or so to enter it. I also talked about how there was not an actual physical hall and how the WWE had considered making one and had special items in storage and I also said that the whole idea would be pretty much forgotten and not mentioned until 2004. So I am pack today to take it from there and talk some more about it.

So to recap or just bring someone up to speed who is reading this without having read my prior post on the matter the WWE Hall of Fame is basically a list of professional wrestling personalities who are being honoured for there contribution to the world of WWE, people who they personally feel have had a major impact on the WWE brand and company.

Well Vince McMahon decided to bring it back in 2004 and he brought it back in a big way. It was televised and went on to be released on DVD. This was a real turning point for the hall of fame in my opinion, now it was more than just a list or an event tagged on to another event, it is here that it became something in its own right.

The 2004 Hall of Fame ceremony runs around the three hours mark on DVD and apparently people who attended it have claimed this is a trimmed version and that the actual ceremony ran for far longer. It doesn't feel as long as it is though, its a nice look at the stars who are being celebrated and a chance to see them get the respect they deserve.

Those added to the Hall of Fame list in 2004 were Jesse "The Body" Ventura, Greg "The Hammer" Valentine, "Magnificent" Don Muraco, "Big" John Studd, Junkyard Dog, "Superstar" Billy Graham, Sgt. Slaughter, Tito Santana, Harley Race, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, and Pete Rose. It is great to hear what those who were still alive had to say about there careers and about being put in the hall of fame. In the case of "Big John Studd and Junkyard Dog, family members accepted the awards on their behalf as they were being inducted after they had already passed on.

The camera doesn't just sit on them though, sure you will see shots of them talking and giving there acceptance speeches but the camera also pans and shows you who is in the audience, and in the audience you will notice younger still active wrestlers (at that point) wrestlers who were most likely inspired by some of the people on the stage to enter the squared circle.

This is also the point where people I really felt I knew were beginning to be added, sure I knew Jesse Ventura more for his work on the mic than for his wrestling but this was the first time when I didn't have to really stop and think who people were, Id seen or heard all of them on events like wrestlemania. Greg Valentine I had seen both as a solo wrestler and with the Honky Tonk man as a tag team called  rhythm and blues. Tito Santana as well I had seen on his own and with Rick the Model Martel as the fast high energy tag team Strike Force. As a kid I absolutely hated Bobby the Brain but as I have gotten older I realise just how much of my enjoyment of the WWF/WWE came down to this man. It was his motor mouth speech his on the spot insults, he knew how to get the kind of heat on a regular basis that most people in the world of wrestling would dream of striking once or twice in there career.  With the exception of the celebrity inductee I would find it hard to really argue that any of these men didn't deserve there spot.


The 2005 Hall of Fame can best be described as the one where a whole bunch of the people responsible for making the first wrestlemania the huge event that it was as good as it was get inducted. Literally every single person inducted this year was involved in the first ever Wrestlemania.

Hulk Hogan (Terry Bollea),"Rowdy" Roddy Piper (Roderick Toombs),"Cowboy" Bob Orton and "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff who all featured in the main event bout of Wrestlemania. On top of this Jimmy Hart, Nikolai Volkoff(Josip Peruzovic), and The Iron Sheik (Khosrow Vaziri) who were all involved in other matches at wrestlemania were inducted. Now I dont think I need to tell anyone who Hulk Hogan is, he is the wrestler that even people who dont know or care about wrestling know of. The WWE might have removed him from the hall of fame since this because of the recent controversy around him but they will never get people to forget him. I was never that in to Hogan though, sure I enjoyed some of his matches but he was too squeaky clean, all of the say your prayers and take your vitamins stuff and that big weight lifting body just didn't appeal to me. Now Piper that was a guy who was one of my Heroes, he had a believable body but more than that he had the mouth and the will to win at whatever the cost, I respected him as a Villain but when he started to become a hero well he was my hero an anti hero, a hero who didn't care if he had to fight dirty and take it to the villains with all of the same dirty tricks they would pull.

I didn't see the first wrestlemania when it happened as I was about 4 at the time but I did get my hands on a Video Tape of it and the next few wrestlemanias when I started watching all of the main events which was around the time of Wrestlemania 3, so I really knew what all of these guys had done for the world of wrestling and wouldn't question any of there inductions. The 2005 Hall of Fame can also be got on DVD.

Well for now I will leave it here, next time I will pick this up by continuing to work my way through the years, but I also plan to at some point take a look at my pick of the top 10 Wrestlers who are not in the hall and who I really believe should be by now.

I like to be confused by a Game, to be made to engage the old grey matter.

I was at one stage going to review Fallout 4, after all I did get it a day before most people and got a good few hours in to it before a lot of people had even started cuing for it but the truth is the glowing reviews for it started shooting through the door straight away. To this degree I could say that pretty much everything that could be said about the game has been said. If you enjoy your typical Bethesda RPG style game Fallout 3, Oblivion, Skyrim then your going to like Fallout 4 as it is more of the same.

There have been improvements though for one a sort of minecraft light build your own settlements mode has been added, the amount of customisation options in general has really increased, you can change that much about your guns and armour that at first its a little daunting but it ends up being one of the things I like the most about it. The building is not as straight forward as it could be mainly because there doesn't seem to be much in the way of a tutorial to it, you just kind of have to dick around and find out how to do everything yourself sometimes quite frustratingly, but once you know what your doing its really fun and you can find yourself spending far too long messing around building and scavenging for parts to build. Ok that's it that's as much as I am going to get into the game review wise if you need a score then 9.5...

The main thing Fallout 4 has done though is make me confused in a good way. You see and I will try my best not to overly spoiler things here but there are lots of diffrent in game factions some of which essentially want you to help them rule the world/ work for them. Now you can as I have done kind of work for everyone a little bit and just use them all to get as much gear and experience as possible, but you can kind of get the feeling that things are building up to the point where you will be forced to make a choice. Now at first it might seem like there is a clear cut bad guy or bad organisation but the deeper you go the more you learn that pretty much every single faction is a sort of shade of grey, they all seem to have there own good points but have also done bad things or believe in things which if your anything like me you will disagree with. It has got so to the point that I cant force myself to jump in hole heartidly with anyone group that I am doing as many unimportant submissions as possible waiting for some kind of sign telling me what I should do... Ultimately its just a video game and it doesnt matter who I do or do not support, who I kill or do not kill but yet when I have that pad in my hand and characters are asking me questions I seem to forget that, I seem to almost feel like I am in that world. Is this the first game that has done this to me? No. Is bethasda the first or only studio to manage this? Again No. BioWare have had me confused in much the same way with Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect.

Lots of new and pretty big name games seem to have come out recently but obviously most people cant afford all of them, so I found myself sort of trying my best to pick and choose which game, there was Halo 5, Forza 6, Rise of the Tomb raider, yet I think I made the right choice. Now obviously there is some personal bias here but I really don't think that Halo 5 would have grabbed hold of me in quiet this way, Tomb Raider however maybe. I say that because I absolutely loved the last Tomb Raider and the way it made you see Lara Croft at the start of it all the way it made you take part and help shape her in to the hero we all know and love. I don't know maybe I am just getting old and expecting a bit more from my media, but I would like to be able to think as well as put my finger on the trigger.

Should we just stop with the whole Found Footage thing?

So with an Episode of Doctor Who having just tried to do an episode in a found footage style this has made me think about the whole idea of found footage again, basically it makes me ask the question, should we just stop with the whole Found Footage thing? Now I am not claiming that it was the first ever found footage based film but The Blair Witch Project is the first one I can really remember. I remember it more for its advertising campaign and the way they tried to use the advertising and the internet to blur the lines between fiction and reality. I first saw it on a pirate VHS cassette my brother lent me, I had heard bits and pieces about it and have to admit that I was a little confused if it was supposed to be fact or fiction, heck I was a teenage and more likely to believe what I was told or read without really challenging it. The day after this my friends all decided to have an impromptu night out camping in the middle of nowhere, we literally all grabbed whatever camping gear we had, got some drinks and walked till we found some land that didn't seem to be clearly owned or checked by anyone and we set up camp. I didn't really find Blair Witch scary as a film but out there the next night in the middle of nowhere with trees around me well I guess this showed me it must have affected me to some degree as I was turning at the slightest sound of a twig snapping. I remember my friends taking the piss in a jovial manner ribbing me about being scared and then a week or so latter most of them came up to me and said something on the lines of ''Shit me, If I had watched the Blair Witch the day before camping in the middle of nowhere you'd never have got my ass out there.''

I still think Blair Witch is decent yet I have found all of the Paranormal Activity films as dull as dish water, maybe it is the fact I am older and more cynical or that the trick has already been done once and I am not going to be fooled again. Yet sometimes I will be happily fooled, I will watch Penn and Teller perform magic tricks and love every second of it knowing fully well that what they are doing are tricks, that they are fooling me. So why would I be happy to let one thing fool me and enjoy every second of it and yet shrug at another form of entertainment which wants me to embrace it and go along with its tricks? The truth is I don't know.

Yet I have enjoyed some found footage style movies, Diary of the Dead for example which is George Romero's attempt to combine his Zombie films with the idea of found footage. It follows all of Romero's standard Zombie rules, so If a zombie bites you or if you die in any way, that's it your going to become one of them, then there is the fact that you can only kill the undead by destroy their brains. The basic premise of the film is that a survivor has pieced together footage from the first night that the dead came back to life. Maybe I enjoyed this because it was a combination between a Romero Zombie film and a found footage flick. It also in typical Romero style seemed to be commenting on the world, all of Romero's films seem to have some point a sort of political agenda Dawn of the Dead is often talked about as being a comment on American Commercialism and in this way Diary of the Dead seems to talk about how we are all so used to viewing the world through technology now days instead of with our own eyes, and about how the media presents things. I think its a very clever film which has its faults but I also think that it is this Romero factor which makes me enjoy the film and hold it up as something other than just another found footage flick.

So I guess the answer to the question should we just stop with the whole Found Footage thing is that no but the idea of found footage on its own is not enough. Blair Witch worked for me because of all of the websites and rumour mills and all of the work around the film, that was as much of a gimmick as the style of the film itself at the time, the same can be said of Diary of the Dead it was the found footage in combination with the zombies and social commentary of George Romero. The Doctor Who episode had a lot going for it, some decent ideas a good looking monster, a creepy twist at the end and some great acting from Peter Capaldi but they didn't pull it off it just came across as a bit of a mess. I would defiantly give another found footage film a try but if it wants to get a rave review from me then it has to do something worthwhile because the found footage gimmick alone is not enough any-more, its no longer fresh and it is in fact very overused.

The Warhammer figures I got today, what they mean to me and there connection in my mind to Video Games.

One of the reasons I collect so many video games is because it takes me back to a certain time frame, a certain period of my life a period in which things were easier, things made more sense and less was expected of you. I guess this makes them a bit of a safety blanket. The same is also true of comics, Horror films and Wrestling. Thats not to say that they are the only things which connect me to my younger self in fact today I went and got a Wimpy's hamburger meal and a large Banana milk shake with my fiancée because I hadn't had a Wimpys in so long I just wanted to. On the way home I went in to a charity shop and saw this Citadel case with a £25 price tag on it. I looked at it opened it, considered it and thought that I didn't really want to spend that much on it (not that I didn't think it wasn't worth that much I just didn't want to spend that at this point in time). I turned and started to walk towards the shops door when I heard the Manageress say to the lady on the till that she was going to mark that big black box down latter that afternoon, so I turned around and asked her what she was going to mark it down to. When she said £15 I instantly said, if you do it now then I will buy it. So this is how I ended up buying it.

For me Games Workshop and Citadel miniatures connect to video games, not because they are both a form of gaming, or because they are both about taking part in another world. Yes they both might be a form of escapism but I connect them together because of school activity day. You see back in my Comprehensive school days once a year we would get to do something ''fun'' once a day. Now schools idea of fun and my idea of fun did not always equal the same thing, you see yes we could go swimming or go to the Cinema and I did the first year, but the problem is that you were there doing these things with the same collection of pricks you had to put up with for every darn school day.
Not only that but you often had to get your parents to pay for these trips, so you had to get your parents to pay for you to go to the cinema , to be surrounded by lots of kids, some of them you liked, some of them you didn't care about and some of them you hated with a passion when you could instead just go with your friends at the weekend and not have to put up with the idiots.  My second year of Comprehensive I decided just to claim that I had a bad stomach and just not bother with the whole thing, to stay off school. There was only one stay in school no money needed option and that was to sit in the hall and watch Videos, one after another all day in silence, videos which would be picked by a teacher and would most likely be some old PG family stuff that you would usually only watch at that age if you were laid on the TV ill and didn't have the will power to change the channel.

When it came to the third year though well a group of us approached a Teacher a mathematics teacher who happened to hold a Doctorate in Physics and who also happened to be a brilliant guy. We asked him if we could possibly use one of the big labs and play Warhammer and Warhammer 4000 games and also if we could set up some of the lab TV's on wheels with our consoles brought in from home. He agreed to let us use a lab and to remain in the lab and work on his paperwork so that we were supervised and the school couldn't complain. So we pushed tables together and had giant multi person battles, while also having street fighter 2 winner stays on tournaments, and bouts of Bomberman and NBA Jam. This didn't cost us a penny and was much more fun than any organised trip. Some might say we could have done this at someone's house but this was much cooler because no one would have a table as big as the one we made by pushing lab tables together or let this many kids in there house. This became an option every year for the rest of the time I was at school and this was the choice I made every year. There were some epic multi way Warhammer battles some with friends who have now moved far away and who I no longer get to see, with multiple armies of figures we had all collected painted and poured all of our time and effort in to.These figures remind me of these times in the exact same way the games do. Even if I never ever play with them, I am going to glue them together, paint them and form my own army again, I already have a few others I have picked up from here and there. I will enjoy getting my troops ready again for the battle that will never be, and with every glued arm and every stroke of the brush I will be saluting my friends from the past and all of the time we spent togther

On my soap box: Snoopers Charter and the Events in Paris

Just thinking about the Snoopers charter the UK Governments plan to basically look at everything its citizens do on the internet all the time.Stopping and breaking this down, in my house alone there is me, my dad and my daughter, sometimes my fiancée or various friends will pop around and they bring there phones or laptops and use the same connection.... For a start this is a lot of data when you think about it, this kind of stuff 365 days a year is a lot to go through and its only one home, how many houses are there out there with internet, with how many people per houses having access to that connection? My connection is secure and password protected but plenty are not, you now have connections in café's restaurants, on buses . You can get a pay as you go phone and connect to the internet without ever giving away your name, then you can ride a bus and connect to the wifi and post to your hearts content, all this charter will do is annoy normal people, because if you want to plan something crazy or be an ass hole then your not likely to do it in your home on a secure connection using your real name in your underpants. Its like banning secure encryption. Does anyone really think that's going to work? Did we have WinZip and the like back in World War 2? Did we have messages being pinged back and forwards through email? Yet we still had secrets, we still had coded transmissions we had old fashioned encryption codes, if you nutter the new methods people will just go back to the old.

The terrible events in Paris will of course be used to try and push the above through and to push that it needs to be done as soon as possible and as thoroughly as possible. Thats not the only thing that these events will be used for, you can bet your ass that neo Nazi groups, Britain First, UKIP and all sorts of people will crawl from under the woodwork trying to use this to promote some ideological call to arms. Do I feel anger and venom towards the people who did this? You bet your ass I do. It is important to remember though that anyone can take an idea and make it either the most wonderful or terrible of things.. There will always be idiots who use some form of belief to justify sick things just as there will be idiots who use tragedy to push there own particular agenda, this very fact is a sad unfortunate truth I hope one day will change. A facebook post from Stephen King kind of sums up my thoughts on this matter ''Hating all Muslims for what happened in Paris is like hating all Christians because of the gay-hating Westboro Baptist Church.'' I was raised a Christian I may not really be one anymore but I would hate to through my past affiliation or my skin colour be compared to the people who have protested at soldiers funerals to those who have promoted violence against people on the basis of there sexuality as this simple is nothing close to who or what I am. In this way there must be so many people right now just sat there absolutely torn apart by the fact that people are not only seeing them as being exactly the same as these terrorists who have committed these acts but by the fact that some of these people wish them ill because of these events which were nothing to do with them

 Now I am just a blog writer, a writer who mainly concentrates on horror films, video games and wrestling yet here I am trying to think about and come to terms with world events not only in my head but here on this very blog knowing that some will agree with me and that yet some people will claim I am naive or stupid or simply don't understand everything enough to give a proper comment on it. Add on top of this the added 1984 style worry that big brother is now watching, that when you write something online the government may snoop on you and that if they dont agree with your assessment of the situation then in the future they could choose to question you on it or try to in some way use it against you, this just saps power away from people and puts it firmly into the hands of the state. I am not a religious man in the slightest so I don't have any book to fall back on ironically at this moment I find myself falling back on the words of a Jedi Master a leader of a fictional sort of philosophy/religion yet even with the source of these words being fiction I think they ring more true than most will realise  “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”. It may seem like a scary time and in some ways it is but the worst thing any of us can do is to give in to fear and to hate.

Ash Versus Evil Dead Episode 1 and 2 Review

I have been meaning to do this ever since the night I watched it. That night was the 1st of November. The first episode of the TV series Ash Versus Evil Dead aired on Starz a TV channel which as far as I know is exclusive to America, we certainly don't get it in England. It aired on Halloween but I had to wait till the following day to scratch around online to find a copy. The ridiculous thing was that if it had been available on a British channel I would have looked at getting that channel, or if it had been put on British Netflix Id have subscribed for a few months long enough to watch the whole first season as it went up, heck I would have even spent like £1 an episode renting it if the option was available to me, but as it stands I basically had to pirate it, which is not good when I want to support the series as I am a big big fan of Bruce Campbell, on the off chance he ever see's this.... Bruce I will buy the series on Blue Ray as soon as someone see's fit to release it on this side of the ocean and hey I already have pretty much all of the things staring you that can be got here on DVD.

OK so basically the story is this after spending thirty years hiding out as in a trailer park working in a sort of  Target/Wallmart kind of shop  Ash gets high with a hippy chick and unleashes the Deadites (for those new to this who havent seen the film think sort of Demon Zombie creatures) by reading from the Necronomicon Ex Mortis (the book of the dead, a book full of spells and passages made from human flesh and inked in blood). So do you need to have seen the film for this all to make sense? Not really its enough to know that Ash was a sort of hero, a killer of these creatures who has beaten them in the past but basically decided he wanted a quiet life. If you enjoy this though and haven't seen the films then trust me its going to make you want to see them..

I think most of the people watching this though are going to be the die hard fans like me, who saw these films, have watched them again and again, studied more or less every moment of them and then have begged and begged for more. The thing is that everyone has been asking about an Evil Dead 4 for so long that we had pretty much given up hope that we would ever get it especially with the fact that Sam Raimi is now a multi-billion-dollar grossing director, we all had kind of figured that he would be doing big budget A list movies and wouldn't want to return to a series of films that was started at the beginning of his journey, but return he has to direct the first episode and to get the ball rolling. People wanted more Evil Dead because they wanted more Ash and if you want more Ash then this is exactly what you get here. Ash is the same blow hard try hard screw up but yet somehow overcome the odds guy he has always been.

El Jefe The First Episode certainly has the right mix of horror and silly. It also manages to give you a big old dose of Bruce Campbell at his finest while still introducing a host of new characters and getting you intrested in them. I am really looking forward to seeing how the series progresses and I am very happy to hear that it has already had the green light for a second series. If you enjoy either a mix of horror and laughs or just think Bruce Campbell is an awesome actor then I strongly advise you to watch out for this show and give it a whirl as I personally think it is awesome.

Some people were worried that the show might fall on its ass after the first episode with the fact that the first one was the only one being directed by Sam Raimi but having watched episode two, “Bait” I am not only pleasently suprised at its quality I am also very positive about the fate of the show. It has its advanateges over the pilot. For one , all the exposition is done with, everything has been set up, all of the characters are in place so it has more freedom just to go for the laughs and for the gore.

Originally when I heard Starz was producing Ash Versus Evil Dead as a half-hour show I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't an hour long thing however the pacing on this episode seemed to be great not to spoil to much but it opens with Ash and Pablo having to deal with a deadite and then goes on to a dinner with there friend and her mother who may or may not be another deadite. There are some awesome one liners just as quotable as anything from the movies.

I wont say anymore just seriouly check out this show

On my soap box: Game Shop sales assistants

Ok so I wont be the first to post about this and I am darn sure I wont be the last but right now I want to talk about the opinions of staff who sell video games, the stuff you hear them say and cringe and how they will at times will seem to actively try to sell someone the wrong machine or wrong game and what I feel they should be doing.

Now I am currently working in retail and in all honesty I am dealing with products I don't know very much about so if someone doesn't know something about a product due to the fact they haven't used it/played with it then I am not going to give them too hard a time as long as they don't try to fake it and make wildly untruthful claims, I also do understand the fact that certain machines or games will have a higher profit attached to them so employees may be encouraged to try and up-sell certain things however some people do it in such a way and to such a degree that they just come across as total and utter piss weasels. I guess I should clarify what the wrong game or system is, the wrong game or system is a game or system that is wrong for the person who is purchasing it. So for example if someone told me they hated RPG games I wouldn't try to persuade them to get a Final Fantasy title, if however someone told me they wanted something that was like Resident Evil but wasn't a part of that Franchise I would recommend them The Evil Within. Right and Wrong depends upon the individual, you have to listen to what they want and then try your best to match product to person.

Speaking of The Evil Within I was in a CEX store when someone took a copy of it up to the counter it was pretty darn cheap like £10 and the guy behind the counter physically groaned and then asked the customer ''are you really going to buy this shit?'' This wasn't the end of it, the sales advisor literally went on and on about his own dislike for the game which was a mix of both criticism and made up rubbish. For one he claimed that the game was only four hours long and controlled so badly that the guy would be brining it back the following day either completed or out of frustration. Now I haven't finished it In fact I am only 4 hours in to it myself but it feels like I have only just scratched the surface with a quick search on various websites telling me its an around 15 to 20 hour game. In the end he persuaded the customer to instead spend £22 on Resident Evil Revelations 2 (interestingly both games have more or less the same Metacritic score). Some people might see this as a success as he sold him a higher priced product but then I never see a sales assistant groaning at a consumer and either lying or making stuff up with no real idea of the truth as a positive thing

It is I feel important here to point out that I own a PS4, Xbox One and a Wii U and that my love for them is pretty balanced, all of them have titles I really enjoy for example on my Wii U I love Pikmin 3, where as I find myself hammering Rare Replay and Dead Rising 3 on the Xbox One and then will very happily jump on to the PS4 and really enjoy a bit of Drive Club or Little big Planet 3. If I was to sell someone a console out of these three I would ask them questions, questions which would asses the type of games they like, what they feel they need or want out of a system and then take it from there, maybe if I was ordered to mention certain things I would say them but ultimately I would want the person to leave with the right product for them after all a happy customer is a customer who comes back and shops again. If you enjoy your choice of console your going to buy more games for it.

I have seen people ask about the Wii U at my semi local game shops this includes two games and a Granger games and you know when asked about it all they tend to say is ''yeah its OK if you want to play Mario but other than that its rubbish compared to a PS4/Xbox One'' Now if I was asked about the Wii U as a friend of mine who had been a big GameCube fan did then I would sell it with a whole range of facts, I would give you a whole pile of both positive and negatives. To start with the positive its fully backwards compatible and with a wii-Mote and nunchuck you can play literally all the wii games on it as well as your Wii U games. The games if brought on disc are played directly off the disc with no installation needed, meaning that unless you plan on buying games digitally there is very little need to worry about storage space, If you do want to digitally buy games there is a massive back catalogue of games from old systems available. Also you don't have to pay to play online. As for weaknesses well it has less raw power than the other systems, less third party support, the online side of things although free is very simplistic compared to its competitors.

I don't think a sales assistant in any field should ever be there to try and push and bully people in to believing what they believe the key to the title is the word assistant. You are there to assist someone with there shopping, your there to offer what knowledge you have and to try to give them the information and tools so that they can make a good decision which places there own needs and desires first and foremost. Maybe some people just get in to it because they enjoy games and really want to be games reviewers and see pushing there own opinions as the next best thing, or maybe some people are just in it because its a job and really don't care about the people they serve in there day to day role?

Wresting News: Rollins Injured, Survivor Series tournament winner to get the WWE gold.

Ok so I didnt intend to be talking about wrestling again so soon, I intended to put a game review or a horror review in before this, not to mention I missed my Games I have complete this month thread largly because the only thing I completed was Forza 5 and most people proberbly did that years ago but then ESPN went and broke the news on Twitter that WWE's top titleholder Seth Rollins suffered tears to his ACL/MCL/medial meniscus while performing at the WWE Live Event in Dublin, Ireland. Now this is when I have to admit that I think the guy is a dick. First I think he is overrated as far as talent goes, then there is the fact that his girlfriend Zahra Schreiber is a racist nut-job and he publicly defended her racism online (on social media) racism which saw her fired, yet his part in it, saying that what she was saying was OK was ignored with seemingly no slap on the wrist for him. The truth is I was never much of a fan of the Shield, Rollins has a face you want to punch repeatedly, Roman Reigns has all of the charisma of a lawn chair, the only one of the three of them I ever really liked at all was Dean Ambrose.

I think Ambrose on his own with the right push could be something truly special, maybe its because I see flashes of Piper, Brian Pillman and Jake the Snake but still I digress. As a direct result of Rollins injury Survivor Series will host a tournament of some kind the winner of which will be crowned the new WWE World Heavyweight Champion.

So far they have not announce which Superstars will be participating in this event. I think however it is safe to say that the current number one contender, Roman Reigns, will be involved. In fact I have a sneaking hunch that he will win it and then when Rollins gets back there will be a whole thing about how you might have won the belt but you never beat me Reigns and Rollins main event in the closest main event to his return.

The ending aside though I think this kind of vacant title event could be a really good idea, there are so many routes to go down in terms of who to involve and how to decide the victor and even without letting them win it letting certain wrestlers put on a really good showing and get a certain degree through proceedings could really help give a few people much needed pushes.

WWE NEWS: Jimmy Superfly Snuka's first day in court

Around about the beginning of September I wrote a post talking about a few controversial things which had happened around the world of the WWE, one of them was that the SuperFly Jimmy Snuka had been arrested On September the 1st 2015 In connection to the death of Nancy Argentino his girlfriend 32 years before on the night of 10 May 1983. Well this post is a bit of an update on that situation.On the 2nd of November Jimmy Snuka was officially arraigned on charges of involuntary manslaughter and third degree murder in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh County Court.

Now I had been reading here and there for awhile that more or less since his arrest Snuka age 72 had been claiming to have various issues relating to his memory, and I had theorised that perhaps this was a way to try and claim he was unfit to face charges. Yes I am thinking this purely on the basis of when he has started saying it and I had no proof when I would raise the possibility of this to friend but this seemed to be one of the very first things raised in the case. Snuka claimed to be suffering from some form of early-onset dementia as well as complications from post-concussion syndrome.

If this is true then it would mean that he began to develop these symptoms over seven years ago, as early-onset basically refers to before 65 years old in this kind of case. The Judge (Kelly Banach) asked some standard questions which are usually used in order to determine if someone is mentally competent to stand trial and apparently Snuka didn't even know what day of the week it was or what city he was in. According to Snuka’s lawyer (Robert Kirwan) Snuka has good days and bad days and this response had come on a good day. Now this is a hard situation to argue about because there is onyl one person who really knows what its like inside Snuka's mind and that's Snuka, his brain might really be damaged and swiss cheesed or he could just be faking it, I am pretty sure his family would think I am a heartless arsehole for even suggesting that he is lying but equally if he did kill there daughter/ sister etcetera then Nancy Argentino's family wont want to see him escape justice due to his age/issues. Its also important to remember that Snuka has wrestled as recently as the 11th of May 2014, when he teamed up with The Patriot to defeat the team of Brodie Williams and Mr. TA at a Big Time Wrestling event, so now he cant remember the day of the week but just over a year ago he was competing as a sports entertainer.

There are also other important things to mention one is that the judge has issued a gag order on the participants as well as the Argentino family as he does not want the trial to essentially end up being judged via the press, which is understandable. Also the judge has added that If the case does go to trial with Snuka deemed as being mentally competent, Snuka's lawer is pushing for an out-of-county jury, so that they are dealing with the facts instead of hear say and such.

Its hard to know what to think at the moment. I hate to be a prick but being able to perform as a wrestler/sports entertainer one minute and then next claiming that your not mentally competent when you find yourself up for a murder trial seems a little too coincidental.I guess we will all just have to see how this plays out.