A Christmas Story
For the Internet.

There was once a fat, spoilt rich child called William Tummywick. He was a right troublesome and demanding piece of work - nasty, some might say - who always managed to get what he wanted for Christmas and birthdays, even if it cost more than several hundred pounds!

He was not ashamed to ask for the most expensive bicycle with the most gears. Or the widest television. Or the remote controlled car with the largest engine! And his poor, foolish but wealthy parents would always surrender to William's demands in order to put an end to his whining and whinging.

This year, he got exactly what he wanted for Christmas as ever - a GamesMachine5.

"Why, mother! And father! This is the BEST Christmas present EVER!" shouted the little Tummywick boy, even though 'little' was perhaps not the cleverest way to describe the chocolate-filled and podgy child who most would agree is merely one packet of Monster Munch away from being categorised as morbidly obese.

"It's just what I said I wanted again and again and again!"

"A GamesMachine5! Wow!"

And with that, little William waddled his fat bottom upstairs to play with his new toy.


***************


Now, usually, that would be the last mummy and daddy would see of William until he got hungry for Christmas dinner at around 4.00pm - but today William reappeared downstairs only 20 minutes later!

"William ? Are you OK?" enquired his mother, suddenly worried that her pleasurable Christmas morning of brandy and sherry and peace in the kitchen would be ruined by having to entertain a hyperactive child she always secretly resented.

"Why aren't you playing with your new GamesMachine5?"

William looked sad.

"I did play with it, mummy. I've finished playing with it."

Mr Tummywick put down his pipe and fine imported whiskey in shock and dismay.

"FINISHED?! Already?! But you've only been playing with it for about half an hour!"

"I know" said William.

"Now I'm bored of it"

"Bored?! BORED?!" blustered Mr Tummywick, his whiskey-reddened cheeks turning a new and as-yet uncharted shade of crimson.

"But it's supposed to be the best thing ever! It certainly COST enough, what with the games you also demanded and the pre-ordered new rumbling controllers that aren't even out here until Spring of 2008 and required expensive custom ordering from Japan!"

"How can you POSSIBLY be bored of something that cost so much money?"

William shrugged. He didn't know. Everyone said it was supposed to be good. Everyone said the games were new and exciting.

None of the GamesMachine5 magazines or web sites had mentioned the fact that all of its games were old and boring remakes of products William got bored of by December 26 last year.

It would appear that this Christmas had foolishly been built upon foundations of lies.


***************


Meanwhile, over in the smoggy CheapStreets, little Timothy Hollingwood was hobbling his way slowly and breathlessly down the stairs. The cold weather and old house's lack of central heating was wreaking havoc with his bronchitis, but he was keen as ever to discover which single present he would be receiving this year.

It would have to go some to beat last year's present of a tennis ball!

Timothy also had polio and undiagnosed dyslexia, and his sad parents were so poor because of all the hospital bills they could only afford to buy Timothy a Teenee Console rather than the GamesMachine5 the rich children were all demanding.

Timothy's parents had bought the Teenee Console back in July, with the 170 pounds they inherited when Grandma Hollingwood passed away. She had cancer. It is probably hereditary.

The Teenee Console had been safely hidden in the loft for some six months, waiting for Timothy to unwrap on Christmas morning.

And boy, was Timothy happy with it!

"w... wow... it great" Timothy typed slowly and somewhat inaccurately into his text-to-speech synthesiser (his vocal chords were removed following a fish-bone-swallowing incident at the age of six), smiling in the lopsided way that his few remaining functional facial muscles would allow.

The debilitating muscle-wasting disease Timothy also suffered from made motor control difficult, so the Teenee Console's simple input mechanism made it easy for him to complete games by occasionally flicking his wrist - the only muscle movement he was capable of on one of his Bad Days.

By Christmas lunchtime he had already completed 500 mini games alone!

A crowd of local children were gathering at his front window, watching with amazement as Timothy completed hand-waving task after hand-waving task.

The small, sickly boy, who also had a mysterious hacking cough doctors were puzzled by, suddenly became amazingly popular and the talk of the town!


***************


But over in the Tummywick household, things were not going as foreseen.

Little William was so bored, so incredibly bored, so bored beyond bored with his GamesMachine5 that he decided to do the unthinkable - go outside!

His coat was a little small - he'd grown significantly since last venturing out of the front doors! - but he squeezed into it all the same, leaving the GamesMachine5 turned off and abandoned in his bedroom.

Kicking a stone - a stone he imagined was the combined face and testicles of a man in the magazine who falsely sang the praises of the useless GamesMachine5 - William walked down toward the cheaper houses at the bottom of the hill outside the safety of his ivory-fronted gated community.

What was that crowd? Why were several hundred dirty children gathered around the front windows of a dilapidated terraced cottage without even the simple comfort of double glazing?

"Let me see! Coming through!" William shouted, as he barged the thinner, poorer children out of the way with his burly frame.

Through the window he saw the unthinkable - a puny boy having FUN with a console that was NOT a GamesMachine5!

And the other children seemed to be entranced by this basic and sickeningly cheaper machine!

"That's NOTHING!" William shouted!

"Come back to my house and watch ME!"

"I've got a GamesMachine5!"

A few of the children shrugged. One of them sniggered.

"It was very expensive! So it MUST be good!" William added, indignant and welling up with tears, as the sniggering child laughed some more - and with greater volume!

"You! Why are you laughing?" demanded William of the sniggering and mocking child, in the tone of voice he usually saved for demanding his mother bring more tomato ketchup to bury his fish fingers beneath.

"Nobody buys GamesMachines any more," said the boy, with a sneer.

"They're not cool any more."

William was staggered. The GamesMachine5 certainly WAS cool - it had a cool advert on the television, an advert SO very cool that it was too cool to even show any games whatsoever! It was the coolest machine ever!

"But... but... it is cool! Come and see! Come and watch me play Resistance: Fall of Man!"

The lone snigger this time turned into a full chorus of laughter, as all of the children pointed at the spoilt fat kid then threw snowballs at him. At least two of the snowballs had stones inside and really hurt, while one was constructed of snow that had previously been soaked in urine. That one went in his face.

So the sad fat boy wandered off home to page through the endless menu screens of his GamesMachine5 to wonder if, perchance, one of the options masked something more interesting than screen format resolution options and slide shows of photographs.

But they didn't.


***************


So the moral of the story is that spoilt fat children are going to have a miserable Christmas trying to pretend they're enjoying Resistance: Fall of Man, whereas poor kids will be having fun with the family like they did before TV and MySpace and huffing aerosols was invented, playing games like Mario and Sonic and whatever other nonsense Wii fans kids themselves into thinking is good.

The end.


***************


PS:
This story is not actually based on UKR's belief system. Both kids should've actually asked their parents to put some money in a trust fund for them instead of wasting it on toys so they can afford to get on the housing ladder a couple of decades from now, rather than wasting money playing modern video games which contain less fun, colour and innovation than a Commodore 64 loading screen.

PPS:
William Tummywick became fatter and fatter and more and more demanding and unpopular, eventually committing suicide live on World of Warcraft after a failed attempt at losing his virginity to a prostitute at the age of 33.

PPPS:
Timothy Hollingwood's condition worsened. The hacking cough turned out to be the same lung cancer that struck down grandma. He spent the new year in hospital, where he developed bed sores and contracted MRSA in the wounds. His left leg was amputated in an attempt to stop the gangrenous infection spreading, but his blood has already become poisoned and despite several lengthy and painful transfusions, his liver and heart failed on January 2nd. The life support machine was switched off three days later with the approval of his parents, and Timothy passed away quietly in his sleep 16 hours later.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!

Apparently, this roaring success lead to a 20 percent increase in revenue for PS3 games. In one of the biggest Christmas shopping weeks.

Those of you who can't abide horrendous pro-Sony propaganda might want to skip the following shameful article, published in "industry magazine" MCV. It's particularly disappointing to see a trade magazine publishing quotes like this as news without questioning the facts.




Alan Duncan thinks that one game going in at 28 on the charts (Uncharted) constitutes a "rush" for PS3 games, and that Singstar not getting into the top 40 is a "great start". He is quite clearly suffering from delusions and ought to seek psychiatric help.




A 20% increase at Christmas and number 28 is not "soaring". Ask Nintendo what soaring means. Singstar not charting and Uncharted going in at 28 DOES NOT BODE WELL nor could it be considered "encouraging" for 2008. It is, in fact, a total disaster for PS3.

Most people slack off and let the quality slip a bit in Christmas party week. So did we. It's part of the good old UK tradition of stopping to care on about December 12. Here are the updates we did for elsewhere that stood above 'mediocre' but slightly below the required 'satisfactory' level.

This thing which totally enraged PS3 "fanboys" and sent them predictably berserk - mission accomplished.

This thing about Tomb Raider Underworld, because we are totally heterosexual for Lara Croft especially now she's in hi-res.

This thing about an iPod dock, because sometimes a man just has to write about iPod docks as it's still better than having a job that involves raw meat or shovels.

This thing about a mentally unstable loner's android companion.

This thing about Gemma Atkinson launching a bra range, because you can't not use (and we mean USE, repeatedly) pictures like this when they come along:

With Gemma and her bra - 10/10. Without Gemma and her bra - 6/10.

She is disappearing later and later into the TV schedules, on channels with higher and higher numbers. Hopefully she will soon "clock" the digital TV system and will appear on BBC1 in prime time.




FROM HIM, NOT US: "Spotted at 11:45pm on deep, deep digital. In fact it was on Nuts TV which I didn't know existed before tonight and appears to be staffed entirely by the people who were deemed too boring to be the faces of phone in scams. All of a sudden, slumming it on Channel 4 at 1:30am seems a thousand miles away."




"I couldn't remember if you'd actually asked for Emily Booth sightings but a quick search shows that you didn't and also that the general consensus in the comments appears to be that this sort of thing is deeply sad and singles you out as a disgusting loser. Well, who could say no to that now the actual taking-the-photo-and-resizing-it-in-photoshop work has been done?"

A while back we did a disappointing and incoherent round up of some SEGA coins, as used in SEGA arcades around the world. Well here's another one, from Xujiahui in Shanghai. We'd be lying if we said we'd always wondered what SEGA World coins from SEGA World in Xujiahui in Shanghai looked like, but let's just pretend to be all excited so there's something to smile about today.

It's a very hi-res photo, although there is a disappointingly large amount of table in shot. The submitter also sent in too many words to describe it, but that's to be expected of people for whom writing is still fun rather than a endless challenge to stop smashing your face into the keyboard from boredom.




FROM XUJIAHUI IN SHANGHAI: "Attached is a mighty high resolution image of a coin from Sega World in Xujiahui, Shanghai. I tried to take a picture at a lower resolution, but the coin is literally TOO AWESOME to be photographed at anything less than top-level. Notice that it says "For Amusement Only" on the coin: this is no ordinary coin, you can't go and buy socks with it, that's just not allowed. You are ONLY allowed to have fun with it. If you try to use it to pay for your dry cleaning or buy a book on physics maybe the coin turns into a spinning disc of death and you get eaten by a mad goat. I have no idea, I'm too scared to try. I'm going to take some pictures of the Sega World (along with Mario Kart GP shame) tomorrow, provided that I can get a girl to come with me. That way I'll look like less of a Paedophile taking pictures of small, sweaty children in a public place - Iun."

You know how different countries have different rules about how you're supposed to treat your women? Like, in Chile it's OK to keep them in boxes until you want dinner or sex?

Dubai would seem to be operating on an acceptably mild sexist level:




FROM DINO: "I'm not sure if this is funny or not but I thought it best to send it 'in' just to be on the safe side. I took the picture (digital photograph) at a shopping mall in Dubai - Dino."

We will leave you to decide which of the following things is "the good" and which one is "the bad."

Which one is the bad?




Is it this? The dreamy PAL box art which looks lovely and just like the Dreamcast box art we spent several years imagining appearing on Gamespress?




Or is this the bad thing, in which NiGHTS speaks and seems to have the voice of a small girl? It's NiGHTS and SEGA so we're not allowed to be negative. Not even in private or inside our heads.

This was sent in by a reader. Now, we're not experts on sick internet pornography terminology, but we're fairly sure this might be what certain sad individuals might refer to as "HOT UPSKIRT ACTION."

This was sent in by a reader. We're not sure what's going on at all.




This was sent in by a reader. We haven't gone painstakingly through a video frame by frame looking up the skirts of game characters since Cream The Rabbit made her appearance in Sonic Heroes.

It shows a remarkable amount of thought, care and design attention, for what is basically a really cheap bit of disposable plastic.




"I've included some pictures of a Sonic The Hedgehog air-freshener that I found in my loft."




"I remember badgering my dad to buy it from Halfords in 1992. I knew that once it stopped freshening the air, my dad would give it to me."




"The fucker lasted ages though. It still smells now. The only reason my dad gave it to me was because he was sick of the headaches the foul scent gave him every time he drove anywhere. It smells like a tramp's foreskin - Phorenzik."




Thank god for the detailed description. Writing four captions about the various sides of a plastic Sonic air freshener would've been rather challenging.

Here's a list of some of the other stuff we have done this week for the betterment of the internet. Some of it was lovingly crafted, some of it was hurriedly and uncaringly churned out to hit various targets.

See if you can tell which was which!

This thing about Condemned 2 which is quite an awful piece and one of the top ten things we're ashamed about having put on the internet.

This thing which was a factual update about energy production!

This thing about an iPhone PlayStation emulator which was quite boring, but fucking Engadget linked to it so it inadvertently took on some sort of major global importance for about 24 hours.

This thing which is a lazy review of the Xbox Live Video Store.

This thing in which we took great pleasure from slagging off PS3 on a site that's essentially 'about' PS3.

This thing about a widescreen projector, because you can't not use pictures like this when they come along:

We had fun, even if most other people were left just a bit bewildered as to why we're allowed to continue. 7/10.

Don't worry, Sony fans. This is clearly all part of that amazing ten-year plan everyone at Sony sketched out back in 2004. Well done. It's going brilliantly.

US HARDWARE SALES FOR NOVEMBER 2007

NDS: 1.53 MILLION
Wii: 981K
360: 770K
PSP: 567K
PS2: 496K
PS3: 466K

It's definitely OK that two toys, a PC in a noisy box, a handheld PS2 no one buys any games for and a seven-year-old console now aimed at the pre-school market is outselling PlayStation3. This was planned, no doubt about that.

It's like when we used to bother with the funny drawings.




Can someone please write about 1000 words on the "Best Games of 2007" and email it in next, so we don't have to bother doing that either.

Are you a bit confused about what a PS3 is actually FOR? We don't blame you, it's nothing like a traditional games machine - because it hasn't got any games.

Here's how Sony is trying to convince people to buy PS3. They're saying it's also an MP3 player and CD player and DVD player, plus you can put photos on it and use it like a big, ugly memory stick. Clearly some sort of apology is in order from all those that criticised this wonder-machine!




We have no idea where Sony's buying its DVD player from - ASDA's got loads for 15 quid. Oh wait, it's probably buying an over-priced Sony one.

WHAT YOU WILL ALSO NEED FOR YOUR PS3:

Optional Wii adaptor to play games (RRP £1,000,000)

Optional Xbox 360 adaptor to play games months/years earlier

Vibrating controllers (expected Spring 2008)

Patience

UPDATE!
A man called Chris made this. He almost certainly used something a bit more advanced than Paint.



The one for Wii will be a Wii beside a dusty copy of Zelda.

REVENGE IS SWEET! Remember all those shitty PlayStation ports we had to put up with on the Saturn? PAYBACK TIME IS NOW, thanks to PS3 getting a piss-poor and delayed version of The Orange Box crudely forced out in time to ruin Christmas for anyone that gets given it.

From IGN's review of The Orange Box on PS3:




It's a jerky mess, basically. Because PS3 suffers from the double shame of being rubbish AND hard to make games for. Hopefully nobody will buy this EA-produced mess - it will teach EA to not support the Dreamcast.

OTHER GAMES THAT ARE SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE ON PS3
Here's a list we've been working on, just in case you know anyone stupid enough to be contemplating buying a PS3 for Christmas.

Assassin's Creed - "...a mocking shadow of the Xbox 360 version"

Pro Evo 2008 - "Konami Digital Entertainment is aware that some players of PES2008 are experiencing 'stuttering' by their machine when playing on PS3"

The Orange Box - "The 360 version takes about three seconds to load your last checkpoint if you die. The PS3 version takes seventeen"

Splinter Cell: DA - "...even though the game is belittled so dramatically from a visual perspective, it still manages to run at a lower frame rate than the Xbox 360 version"

And so on.

In reverse order of STAGGERING SHAMELESSNESS we have:




Overclovers UK, generously chucking out a standard £179 Wii for £328.99 to make many a child's dream come true this Christmas - a dream that will be cruelly SHATTERED when daddy gets put in prison by the credit card company early next year.




Then there's quite a leap to this man. You have to respect him for trying, but suggesting you buy a Wii for £30,000 so you can "get in the papers" as the country's biggest idiot is PURE GOLD. At least he's not overcharging for postage - at only £1 he's making a loss on that.




And the winner! An Irish man selling a Wii for £1,000,000 on Buy It Now, or a much more reasonable £60,000 if you can wait and don't have to have it immediately. He is also using the "get in the papers" angle.

SOME OTHER ARSEHOLE:

£14,999 with half of that going to charity. The other half is going to a man in exchange for him posting you a Wii. At least he's not charging extra for postage.

Sports Pack? You mean a Wii and Wii Sports, the game all Wiis come with in the box for free for £179? But being sold for a massive profit by some shady web retailer?




This is making us incandescent with rage - and we couldn't give a toss about Wii. Imagine how bad some poor dad must be feeling, under pressure to deliver a Wii this Christmas, faced with this sort of shameful rip-off everywhere he turns. It's enough to trigger a festive suicide.




They're feeling bad about it. But are STILL DOING IT.

Contractual obligations require us to also do the whole words/picture/caption thing on several other "feeds" across the internet. Here are a few of the least low lowlights from the past week.

This thing about Ninja Gaiden 2, because it's the only game keeping us alive with hope right now.

This thing about an idea for an exciting new way to waste everyone's time that MTV had.

This thing about FIFA Street 3 of all things.

This thing about the Xbox Live Video Store, because it's easiest writing about things you already sort of know about.

This thing about Korean ladies displaying a bus, because you can't not use pictures like this when they come along:

A must try harder C+.

Problem is, five of those 84 games are the individual events from Wii Sports, nine are Wii Play and 70 are the mini games from Mario Party 8. If you're going to do this, you may as well list the individual components that make up each Wii to further boost its perceived eBay worth.




We really didn't want to get in a crazed WAR ON EBAY over all this business, but some of the shit going down over there deserves carpet bombing.




The biggest lie of all. Everyone knows that Wiis get played until the remote batteries go flat three days later, then get put in the cupboard under the stairs for the next person who lives in your house to throw away.

When the people of the Czech Republic talk about video games consoles, they don't blurt out "PlayStation" or "Nintendo" like it's still the early 1990s - they go for DREAMCAST!




HELLO FROM CZECH REPUBLIC: "Hello from Czech republic. I like to read UKR so I decided to send you pics from book I found in niece's hands. It shows many common life things include electronics in form of drawn pictures. The author of book had to be very distinguished as Dreamcast was choosed as example of true video game system (and not the Sony crap) which should be recognized by kids - Eso Rimmer."




Sadly they also like Macs.

Suddenly it all seems so much clearer:




Yes, now it all seems like a much fairer method of giving your money to some fuckwit in exchange for a piece of paper upon which he has written "YOU ARE A COMPLETE MORON" in childlike handwriting.

A man has 20 envelopes. He is eBaying them one by one. One of the envelopes contains a piece of paper with "Wii" written on it. If you get that envelope he will send you a Wii.

He won't just lie about it and have your money, he WILL send you a Wii. A man's eBay word is the strongest promise in the world.




Once again we find ourselves sobbing over the depravity of mankind. And it isn't even lunch time.

It's a Russian face mask from the 1950s, which reader "Shaun" found and suggested we do something with as, at a very long stretch, it could be said to be a small amount like Sonic The Hedgehog.




It's a blue hedgehog mask. It's on eBay at the moment. If you had the time and motivation, you could claim this was the original inspiration for Sonic.