My Retro Purchases in January 2019

OK there wont be any pictures on this post and it probably wont be the best edited post, it also could be the last post for a little bit as my Laptop has broken, so consider this post a possible bye bye for now.

OK so I try to make good decisions when it comes to retro purchasing and I try not to take that big a  risk with things but this month I think I have kind of been a little more reckless and not made as good decisions in some cases.

My Retro purchasing didnt start until the 7th of the month when I Spent £19 on a box of stuff and as I was buying it I kind of knew that it arguably was not worth it. So what did I get in the box well I got a PS One with a genuine power supply and TV lead but no joypad, A none functioning PS2 , 2 official ps2 memory cards, two ps2 TV leads, a brand new ethernet cable and a generic dual analog usb pc pad. They were completly honest that the PS2 didnt even turn on and thats exactly what I wanted at that moment in time, I was less looking for something retro and more looking for a project to occupy me and give me a puzzle to work out to be honest. The big problem was that the puzzle took me like 15 minutes to sort out , basically it was all down to loose connections and it was a quick fix. Once I sorted it out and turned it on Ifound out that it had the little bonus of having a really good condition disc copy of Burnout Revenge inside it.  I had thought that if the PS1 didn't work then I would remove its cd drive and transplant it into a chipped PS1 I own which has a really iffy CD lens which semi works semi doesnt, in the end though the PS1 worked perfectly even playing a really really scratched disc I put in it effortlessly so I didn't feel I should take anything out of it or mess with it.

On the 9th I managed to grab a cart of ChessMaster for the gameboy for £1 , not the most thrilling game but always good to get a gameboy cart.

On the 10th I got a black official N64 pad  for 50pence, and a playstation power lead for 50pence from a charity shop. I guess that lead can now go with that PS2 I repaired.  

 I then didnt grab anything until the 17th when I got a Wii with all the wires, 2 official wii-motes, 2 official nunchucks, a wii+ add on , wi sports, wii sports resort, Super monkey ball banana blitz, Ratatouille, my fitness coach, family trainer, tiger woods 09 , deal or no deal (all games are boxed with manuals) and a loose disc for wii play for £30 from a charity. Really not sure if I should have grabbed it , dont really need it but I guess it has helped a charity make some money and it never hurts to have some spare Wii-motes.

On the 19th I spent £20 on loose pal SNES carts of Super Mario World and Super Mario All starts and boxed complete copies of Ballz and Thunderblade for the Megadrive. It is kind of pleasant to see that you can get basic Mario Platformers at the moment without having to break the bank.

On the 25th I got a boxed N64 Transfer pack, and loose carts for World Cup 98, NFL Quarterback club 98 and Rugrats treasure hunt for the N64 for £8, the part I was happiest with was getting the boxed transfer pack. I guess this is because I have only ever seen them either loose or boxed in with Pokemon Stadium.

Finally on the 31st this very day I got the GameCube Rogue leader preview disc which I wanted as it was a game exclusive disc only for people that pre-orderd the full game, the best thing about it is that it contains the entire original Star Wars Arcade game for you to play it on your gamecube. I spent a little much on this as it was £15 but I really really wanted it.

So I spent £94 on retro video games this month , I am not entirely happy with what I got as I think I kind of brought a few things I didn't really need just in order to have things to tinker with. I dont feel too bad about it though.

Why You should read Go Set a Watcman

So over the last week I have read the book Go Set a Watchman which for those who dont know is a novel written by Harper Lee which was published in 2015. Harper Lee's first book To Kill a Mocking Bird is considerd an american classic and is something which has been taught for its literary merits in various countries over the years, not only was it conciderd a stone cold classic it was also turned in to a very well considerd movie. With to Kill a Mocking Birds central character Atticus Finch sort of going on to be considerd as a role model with almost perfect morals in an in perfect world.

Go Set a Watchman was initially promoted and sold by its publisher as a sequel To Kill a Mocking Bird but it is now more widely accepted as being a sort of first draft of the famous novel. There was some degree of outcry after people had read the book as it basically showed you diffrent characters from the original book in a diffrent light, I however think that this book works as a perfect sequel and I would strongly recomend that people read it, in fact I would go on to strongly recomend that certain people read it in particular and read it now.

At first I didnt get why the book had the title that it has, sure it sort of has the same sort of words and rhythem to it when said aloud as To Kill a Mocking Bird but the reason it has its title is that the title is taken from the bible Isaiah 21:6: "For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.". OK I will be heading into slight spoiler territory from here so if you just want my oppinion on the book then it is an absolute master piece go and read it. For those of you who dont mind a sprinkle of spoileridge and want to know a little more read on. Well you know how I said that Atticus Finch was a sort of morally perfect man? Well this is the view his daughter Jean Louise Finch AKA Scout has of him as well both in To Kill a Mocking Bird and initially in this book, he is the ''Watchman'' in the town of Maycomb, watching over all that happens and trying to keep jusitce and truth on top.

This book is for me at least about what happens when you realise that somone you looked up to, someone who you saw as a moral beacon does or says something which seriously makes you question your view of them. In this particular instance it deals with a young adult woman who learns that her Father does not quiet stand up to the high moral pedastool that she has placed him on. She learns that there are things she does not agree with him on, and things she thinks she knows better about than he does. I think the book serves as a moral lesson that at some point you need to stand on your own two feet, and think for yourself even if this means you have to disagree with people you love and look up to, you cant be a real adult until you step out stand in the sun and say this is what I think and this is whar I believe to be true instead of always looking to somone else you consider more intelgent or more moral to lead the way for you. You need to learn to voice your own oppinions but do it in a respectable way. For me this book was a well written story which held an even deeper lesson and I think it should be read by anyone who is trying to become a fully fledged indivudal. If I worked for a college or universtiy in an English department id slap this book on a sylabus so fast because I think its something young people need to read, because even at my age I know its had an effect on me and I can only dream the effect this would have had if I had read it during a crucial turning point in my younger days, real literature should do more than tell a story it should move you right in the core of you heart and soul.

An Overwatch Conspiracy was Ellie real?

RIP Mean Gene Okerlund

It was just the other night that I was watching a DVD of Survivor Series, in this DVD Hulk Hogan lost the belt to the UnderTaker. Awile after this Mean Gene Okerlund went down in to the catacombs to interview thr new Champion the UnderTaker. Throught the whole DVD I was pretty much sat going to my daughter oh this is The Mountie, this is the Beserker and going on to give her mini histories of each individual including things such as how long there careers went on, what there highlights were. Then like the very next day I was reading through stuff on the internet and I was very sad to learn that good old  'Mean' Gene Okerlund had passed away.

WWE posted the news of Okerlund's death on their official website but no cause of death has been given as yet, Mean Gene was 76. The man had a career within the wrestling industry which spanned over five decades, I dont think I would be wrong in saying that within the wrestling industry Mean Gene was one of the finest ever interviewers and presenters. Yes the wrestlers have always done a great job in providing entertainment but people like Mene Gene were always there to add a layer of polish and professionalism to procedings, if it wasnt for Mene Gene then the WWF/WWE would not have been as enjoyable as it was for kids like me, if it hadnt been for the work of those around the ring in none wrestling roles such as Mene Gene, Gorilla Monsoon, Bobby the Brain and various others then we all proberbly would have been a lot quicker to realise that what we were essentially watching was a bunch of oily men performing pantomime slap fighting. Mean Gene made not only mine but so many other peoples childhoods just that little bit more magical.

Mean Gene was Born Eugene Arthur Okerlund on the 19th of December in 1942 in Sisseton, South Dakota. Originally he started out as a radio broadcast journalist before becoming an interviewer forthe AWA (American Wrestling Association). When Vince McMahon began purchsaing the territories in the mid-'80s, he ended up being Okerlunds new employer. As an announcer Mean Gene  would turn out to be one of McMahon's most valuable employees. Mean Gene would stay with the WWF for nine years as their top interviewer, and was also the host of various WWF shows. In a world full of cartoon wrestlers Okerlund was the perfect touch of class brought to procedings, and his presence would be much appreciated on shows such as Prime Time Wrestling and he would appear in some capacity at pretty much every major PPV, he even sang the national anthem at the first WrestleMania. Stupidly WCW failed to offer Okerlund a new contract and so he was snapped up by the WCW in 1993, something which I think really helped lend the WCW as a company a real sense of legitimacy.

Okerlund would return to WWE at WrestleMania X-Seven for the 'Gimmick Battle Royal' following the WWE's purchase of WCW, he was given a contract from there on and would sparodically appear, in 2006, he was very rightly inducted into the WWE's Hall of Fame.

Rest in Peace Mr Okerlund you will be very much missed

My Review of The Evil Dead and how I first experianced it

So yesterday I posted a link to my YouTube video on the film White Zombie, so I am back today talking once again about Zombies but a diffrent kind of Zombie and a diffrent kind of film. Anyways back when I was a kid in the United Kingdom there were quiet a few films that were banned. These were called the Video nasties and were films which were criticised for their violent content by the press, social commentators and various religious organisations.

Following a moral campaign led by Mary Whitehouse and the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association films began to be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. A list of 72 films was released films that the police would cease from video rental shops and which it would essentially be illegal to sell or rent. The Evil Dead didnt stay on the list long but when it was released it had content cut out of it, infact you couldnt get the whole film complete free of cuts until the year 2000. The DPP72 is something I have talked about many times before in the past on both this blog and on my previous blog before the site which hosted it closed down, I guess this is because censorship is something that I have always been quiet passionate about but it wasnt until now that I decided that I wanted to make a YouTube Video on one of the DPP72 films. The reason I wanted to make a video about The Evil Dead is because I felt like I had something slightly novel to say about the film and about my experiance originally watching it, you know that with the internet and YouTube there are so many users that pretty much every single film, song and book in existance must have been talked about a million diffrent times, by a whole bunch of diffrent people and because of this sometimes you feel like why should I talk about it? What do I have to offer on the subject that no one else does, and this is why I often feel happier talking about what a game or film means to me, about how I came upon it and how it affected my life instead of just reviewing it because after all anyone can review an item but not everyone will have experianced it in the same way.

Ok so if you have watched my YouTube video then you will have noticed that the footage I am talking over in it is all over the place, for a start the picture is of an incredably low quality but beyond that it jumps from color to black and white, the picture suddenly brakes into moments of static , there are foreign sub titles on the screen at points, well there is a reason for this and that is because the first time I saw the Evil Dead it was on a VHS cassette which had all of these issues a poor quality picture , foreign subtitles the whole shebang so I figured that I would mess with this footage to try and recreate for you the sort of feeling I had while originally wathing this film. Sure it wont be exactly what I watched as a youngster but I have tried to recreate the experiance at least in a short form to try and give people an idea of what watching this film back in that point of time would have been like for me.

The film was brought to my house one night by a childhood friend of mine who had borrowed it from his Sister.. It was a pirate VHS tape with the name of the film written on it in pen and it felt sort of both special and naughty to be wathing it , hey I was only like 14 at the time and the shoddy quality gave the film a sort of even more scary vibe it felt like this little bit of ghoulish horror which had been dug up from somewere and passed from hand to hand, it was scratchy and rough around the edges and somehow this actually added to the whole experience. You would think all of the issues put me off but no actually they kind of drew me into the film and made watching it feel like an event.

At the time I appreciated the film on one level but on watching it again and again I have noticed more things about it for one I think the film is full of fantastic camera work, the evil in the film is given this amazing sense of presence via the movement of the camera. I could talk about this film all day but I would rather people watch my Video after all I put a lot of work into it, so consider this me saying pretty please.... Oh and by the way have a happy New Year.

My YouTube Review of White Zombie