Most embarrassingly discounted game of the month is...
Espionage bore 'em dead Metal Gear Solid 2! Which is being embarrassingly flogged off for £25 by mail order and staff turnover specialists Simply Games. You can't fool the kids. You can fool the reviewers (or at least get them to hype it to such an extent that to give the finished game anything less than 9/10 would make them look stupid), but you just can't fool the kids.

An image as proof, for the inevitable time in the future when the above link
stops working. This way we won't look like we got it wrong.

JOYSTICK JUNKIES UPDATE
This week's Joystick Junkies takes place at Hoxton's Obnoxoid Bar, featuring a bragging competition in which freelance journalists may openly boast about how many free Xboxes they have so far obtained by wanking off PR contacts and lying freely about doing regular work for The Guardian, Future Publishing and some web sites. Winner gets an Xbox.

From 9:30pm to 10:45pm one single girl will be standing nervously just inside the doors fending off approximately three inept sexual advances per minute, before her web designer boyfriend arrives to take her home and have really good sex with her for ages on the sofa. Music throughout the night will be provided by a pretty woman (married) who bought some record decks especially. Men without sufficient social skills may take respite in the safe arms of the Space Invaders machine, while attempting to get drunk enough to approach door-girl with an inept sexual advance of their own.

Get on the guest list for this week's event by emailing a 150 word review of a game you've never even heard of let alone fucking played, you smary, weasely, greasy-faced, cackling, freelancer arsehole, to: emilly_popkinwood@joystickjunkies.com

UNSPEAKABLY SHIT PHOTOSHOP JOKE OF THE WEEK FOR YOU TO EMAIL ROUND ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND CO-WORKERS LIKE YOU'RE SOME BIG FUCKING COMEDY GENIUS WHO ALWAYS FINDS EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET FIRST:

#3: Osama Bin Laden's head put onto some gay porn in
a clever and witty attack on his masculinity

Legal high of the week:
A packet of Lockets for breakfast, followed by three ibuprofen tablets and a cup of instant coffee made with three times the recommended amount of granules. Works for us. Makes the mornings blast by. Please, email us your own suggestions for getting all giggly at your desk. We'll share them here.

CHART ANALYSIS!
It's all go on the Dreamcast this week! Launch title Trickstyle plummets from 9th to 16th on its 98th week on the chart, while Rez makes a stunning re-entry at 12 to notch up its fifth week on the charts! Virtua Tennis versus Virtua Tennis 2! Wow! Please, email us if you know how many copies a week 90 Minutes is selling. We guess less than 10.

Is Fighting Vipers 2 new? Ahh, all those happy memories.
Apart from Rez. Piece of shit, that.

Other things that aren't funny any more. #3 The summer
It's too hot. Can't sleep. Sweating constantly. Smell. Need to wash clothes more often. Want to fight men. Want to touch girls. Please, God, end this suffering and make it winter again. Mmm, lovely coats.

Frozen in time!
When Sega sites give up. Numer Three: Segafan, frozen in time, around or about the end of 1999.

Sample quote: "At the moment Ecco, looks like a strong contender with Shenmue, for the most realistic looking game anywhere award. Look at the screenshots for yourself and you can see why. Ecco looks like a real dolphin, other fish look like real fish and rocks look like.... I think you get the picture. Ecco himself is made up of god knows how many polygons, and is animated with over 100 actions, (of what exactly?) and from some early footage I've seen, it runs at 60fps".

Shit things about the internet. #3: Hairy porn
Modern depilatory techniques are now so advanced that women can have all their below-neck body hair removed by an orbiting satellite at the flick of a switch, rendering photos of bushy overflow unneccessary, avoidable and downright rude. Girls, please, take care of yourselves. What if you were in a car accident, or chatted up by Duncan of pop group Blue? He wouldn't like it.

SUBmissions/DOMain
Mother, no! You have submitted! WE HAVE HAD SUBMISSIONS! The terse nature of last week's update spurred on a sensational FOUR readers to send us things! OK, only one was something thought up especially for us, but it's still nice to be in your minds.

Best by far is this Fujitsu-Siemens promotional photo archive piece of fun sent in by Simon Peckmore and his anonymous friend. See the amount of time he's put into this? Thought bubbles don't just create themselves in Photoshop, you know. It's also quite funny. "Well done", we said to Simon a few days ago via email. We hope he got it -- Excite mail doesn't seem to be working very well.

Secondly, we recieived an email containing this link from reader Chris Mayer. It seems to be more of a "web site" than an article, but here it is anyway. It seems to be a series of cases of mistaken identity involving the word "eggs" instead of the letter "x". Obviously a lot of work has gone into it. You've always got to admire that.

Thirdly... not really a submission, more of an anecdote, the like of which you may tell someone when you've used up all your good stories about actually funny or interesting things that have happened to you and have to resort to making things up. The email reads thus:
"Well, after you griping on the site that no-one sends you mail, I thought I'd share with you that I recently found a batch of SegaSports watches on sale in Newquay. I can't remember the shop, but buying one was my repentence for using a Sony discman while I was on holiday".

Thank you to this person for the above.

Meanwhile, Steve, who we have learnt quite a lot about from his posts on the forum if it's the same Steve we're thinking of, sent us this link, saying by way of explanation, "This is the story of Sarah and Brian. They have had a falling out. One which could send shock waves throughout not just Watford but the entire football league itself. I can hear the printers knocking out the ‘Brian Tindle Has A Dose’ t-shirts as we speak…!". Thank you Steve. Not about games, and it doesn't even work any more, but it's a start, and also a submission.

Here's an image we created ourselves to illustrate 'submitting' in a comedic way:

Thank you for caring. Submit to us and we'll put it up, just like what we've done here, in fact. SUBMIT!

But please don't send us links to things which will no longer be there by the time we come to upload them. Tangible email attachments only. God, you need spoonfeeding, the lot of you.

Game Talk!
This week's Hot Topic discussed by some men in a pub! You know, it's a lifestyle feature!
Week Three: The lack of games you'd actually want to buy on GameCube:

Paul: Um, Mario?
Ian C: Nah.
Ian W: Well... no.

UK Resistance -- The LIFESTYLE web site!

Richard Jacques update
We haven't heard from Richard for a while now. We're worried about him.

Fun with the Fujitsu-Siemens promotional photo archive!
The potential of these images is immense. It's like an unexploded universe of comedy captions just waiting to expand infinitely. Allow us to temporarily relieve the pressure: