Why do we love Tekken so much? Well, we interviewed ourselves to find out why.

After we got hold of some delicious, illegal drugs, heretofore referred to as "hanky-panky", we shortly realized that Tekken is THE BEST SERIES EVER and we really love it. Yes, we do! We met ourselves in an Econo Lodge off a dimly-lit dirt road to find out why:

Us: Hello. That is a nice tie you have on there.

Us: Thanks. We found it in a trashcan outside Subway. We were lucky enough to get our delicious meatball sub AND a snazzy tie!

Us: Is that so?

Us: Yes. We cannot afford proper clothes. We have a deep fondness for Maddog 20/20 and Thunderbird, and of course, the "hanky-panky". *Winks at us* Can't get enough of that Thunderbird!

Us: So, ourselves, WHY do you love Tekken so much? Are you secretly working for Kutaragi?

Us: Why yes, of course.

Us: Really?

Us: No, we lie, because we have an addiction to cheap fortified wine. *Drinks more Thunderbird*

Us: Certainly there must be SOME reason why you love it so much. The graphics? The music? The fact that it's always been PlayStation exclusive?

Us: Yes to all! Virtua Fighter is t3h sUxoRZ! ^o^

Us: Wow. We sure admire your enthusiasm. So how long have we been a PS3 owner?

Us: Why, since launch day! And we also use the DualShock 3 as a sex toy.

Us: Speaking of sex... We've always been... smitten for ourselves...

Us: Yes indeed...we have... and we can't hold back our feelings any longer...

Us: Oh...

Us: Oh..!

Us: Oh yes...

Us: Oh yes...!

Us: Oh yes!

Us: OH YES!!

Us: Oh...oh...oh yes! OH YES! OH YESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE


And that's why we love Tekken so much.

Labels: GONZO, LIES, PR DISASTER

Certainly you all remember Nintendogs. Right? We went all crazy about it back when everyone else was going crazy about it, but in the end it was found to be not as compelling as we had hoped, and unable to tear us away from our routine of napping at inappropriate times and being much too greedy when it comes to torrenting files over the internet (example: the entire NTSC/U Sega Saturn library-- too bad our Saturn is lying in pieces on the floor from a failed modchipping attempt).

Labels: GONZO, LIES

This doesn't make us quite so sad. In fact, it goes some way toward making up for Nintendo's lies about the Mega Drive that still hurt and bleed.




From "a rather disappointing ride at a recent fireworks festival".

Labels: GONZO

Need some SEGA news? Simply pop up to Shoreditch and visit the SEGA NEWS FOOD AND WINE SHOP. What more does a man need than SEGA NEWS, FOOD and some WINE?




THE FUNCTIONAL EMAIL: "Hi. Don't know if you've had this before, but here's a picture of a newsagent near Shoreditch that has the word SEGA in its name. Cheers, Andy"

Thanks, Andy. Thanks for saving us the LIVING HELL of going to Shoreditch and walking among the 1000s of art students with asymmetric hair and huge, ironic, white sunglasses and taking the photo ourselves.

Labels: GONZO

Deeply unsettling or just a bit of harmless fun? It's time for another exciting walk along the UKR tightrope of taste and decency!




If closely analysing a child's toy for signs of primary and secondary sexual organs is wrong, we don't want to be right.




These photos were submitted by a reader. It is not us that has the plastic toy armpit fetish.




And one with the flash, just in case using the flash shows up any additional detail, like, say, nipples.




And a close-up with the flash, just in case this shows up any nipples. It would appear Eidos has vetoed nipples :(




Still no nipples. Not even the outline of a bra. This is rubbish.




Nice toe definition.

Labels: GONZO

These are the weird things Sonic has been spotted doing recently. We've been saving some of these for nearly a year, although, looking at them now, it wasn't particularly worthwhile.




Sonic was spotted fronting a back street karaoke bar in Japan.




"Hey, this is from a health food store window in London, Ontario, in Canada. You guys rejected my request on Xbox Live but you must get a lot anyways. But I'll let you know once I get my Live account up and running again. Hope you like the pic."




This is Sonic, spotted breakdancing at the French 'Micromania Game Show'. It will be taken off YouTube by the time you read this, as that's what always happens.






These are of Sonic, spotted endorsing a Meccano rip-off building contest in Stockholm! Thanks for the photos, man from Stockholm.




Some nice Sonic graffiti, upon which a heartless vandal has drawn on a very small penis.




This final photo of Sonic and his bitches concludes today's list of weird things Sonic has been spotted doing recently. Chicks are hot for animals that are into Meccano and breakdancing, apparently.

Labels: GONZO

Here's an email we got, including hi-res digital photos and well labeled captions for each picture. It also included a scene-setting introductory paragraph. It is the exact kind of email that makes updating the site more fun - ie, it makes updating the site take only two minutes.

THE SCENE-SETTING INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH:
"Just to add to the SEGA isn't dead theme, thought I'd send you pics of an even bigger SEGA place in Okayama, Joypolis. Just think! It'll look like SEGA is in the middle of its glory days or something if there are two whole updates about it."




"Look how big it is! It has arcades, bowling and karaoke, all with Sonic! (best to ignore a large part of it is restaurants). Look at the red archway you drive under to the parking area! It says Joyful Town! And if you look closely at the Joypolis sign it says..."




"...Legend of SEGA! Don't know what Dendo for Amusement means though."




"Look! Sonic is everywhere! Big signs on the wall! Small signs on the street! Sonic Karaoke promises hip hop, reggae, soul, rock, jazz and techno. Even better, inside they had the best version of OutRun possible..."




"...it's four cars next to each other, with two steering wheels so you can play with a friend if you have one. There are cameras in your car which show your faces up on the screen, but as you can tell, only one weird looking guy was playing it by himself."




"I actually played this with a 'girl' and it is great. The control switches every so often so it's exciting, and later you can laugh about how much fun it was while touching her arm to associate good feelings with you in her mind. Finally they had..."




"...SEGA Driving School! Although if the standard of driving is anything to go by it just teaches you to pull out in front of cars while deliberately not looking in their direction and pretending you haven't seen them."

Labels: GONZO

It's that tie again, only this time provided at the sort of photo quality and resolution usually reserved for pictures of the mimsys of 16-year-old East European girls in arty porn:




The photo came with a story to do with it being a mate of a mate's mate's wedding and a mate's mate was wearing it and it all happened in Japan. We only speed-read the email, as it was sent in by a man called Colin.

Labels: GONZO

And it belongs to Assassin's Creed creative director Patrice Desilets. That's him on the right. Patrice is a man's name in French bits of the world, apparently.




Of particular note is his facial expression. He knows he's not really supposed to be in this photo of Ubisoft's Jade Raymond. Everyone likes Ubisoft's Jade Raymond and he's being careful not to get in the way of any important bits of her body.




Here's a close-up of that beard. The trimming is perfection! Anyone who's ever experimented with facial hair will know that the neckline is several hours of work alone, and the uniformity of length is nothing short of a masterpiece. We can only hope he's being this meticulous in his work on Assassin's Creed!




And this is her, Ubisoft's Jade Raymond, the one everyone likes. Frankly, textbook chin-down-shoulders-back-look-and-smile up or not, we're still not convinced video game development is the right place for a woman to be, regardless of how many WOMEN GAMERS IN GAMES conferences Aleks Krotoski has organised in her flat this month. They literally just don't really understand games.

JERRY'S FINAL THOUGHTS:
Still, as long as Ubisoft manages to get acres of press coverage by shoving poor Jade in front of every game journalist's Casio Exilim while pretending it's doing it for "equality" rather than "here's a pretty girl from our office you can talk to about texture maps," it'll be worth it.

OTHER PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE REASONS TO NOT LIKE UBISOFT:

It releases the same squad-based game only with a different name at least five times a year, triggering a Pavlovian reaction in us that makes us turn off everything electrical in the house upon hearing the phrase "Tom Clancy's...".

Being MADE to review Splinter Cell because no one ever wants to review Splinter Cell because Splinter Cell is boring, too hard and rubbish, and only liked by weirdos who pay fat prostitutes to sandpaper their cocks in dungeons at the weekend while they let out the tears of pain away from the wife and kids.

It has announced a Wii game called Horsez 2 and if that isn't a sign that another video game crash is no more than six months away, we don't know what is.

Labels: GONZO

A Sonic tie. Not only is it a boring photo of something boring, it's also blurred and you can only see part of the back of it. Sheer banal genius:




Tomorrow: the underneath of someone's Mega Drive power supply.

Labels: GONZO

Apparently, according to an email we got from an actual German (he yielded to our superiority by speaking the Queen's English) German politicians want to ban video gaming.

This is probably a wild, sweeping exaggeration, but we can't be bothered researching things at the best of times and especially not when they're in German.

And also because it has resulted in photos like this appearing on the anti-ban site GAMING IS NOT A CRIME:




He is a typical German video gamer, apparently.




The campaign wants to highlight the "real gamers" of Germany and show that not everyone who plays games is a sick, anti-social weirdo. We have obviously focussed on the ones that do look like sick, anti-social weirdos for comic effect.




It's nice to know that German hardcore gamers sometimes look exactly how you'd imagine them to




SAYS THE GERMAN: "We are doing an online-petition, because they want to ban videogames in Germany! The government thinks that every gamer is a potential psychopathkiller. So we ask people to register and upload their picture. Even if the Tommys don't care about Germans being f*cked by the government, you still have to do a little newsflash about the site. Why? Because it is sponsored by segaON and consists of totally embarrassing pix like these. It is a comedy goldmine!"




This is what happens to a country when David Hasselhoff is considered a positive role model.




There are also women on it. German women, but they still have all the right bits for doing stuff with/to and some are quite passable.




It's a shame Germany hasn't got a Frag Dolls.

THE SITE'S INTRO, PUT THROUGH BABEL FISH, AS ANYTHING PUT THROUGH BABEL FISH IS INSTANTLY AMAZINGLY FUNNY:
"Gaming has many faces - and one of it is yours. Show it: Your picture loads high and shows operational readiness level! Support our on-line initiative, in order to show the public that players are completely normal humans from all social classes and not part of a dark fringe group. We reject the overall condemnation of PC and video games in the connection of acts of violence, which ignores social and personal bad states of the authors unjustified. Players stand together - for their hobby, for appropriate protection of children and young people and against material force."

THAT WASN'T FUNNY ENOUGH, SO WE TRANSLATED THAT INTO FRENCH, THEN BACK INTO ENGLISH:
"The play has many faces - and one of him is with you. Show it: Your image charges the high one and shows the operational level of promptitude! Support our initiative on line, in order to prove to the public which the players are human the completion normal of all the social classes and not part of a dark group of fringe. Us kids the total judgment of the PC and the video games in the connection of the acts of violence, which is unaware of bad the social and personal states unjustified authors. The players are held together - for their pastime, for suitable protection of the children and the young people and against the material force."

THAT WAS A BIT BETTER. GOOD LUCK, GERMANY.

Labels: GONZO

Here's some of the crap we've got in recently. If you sent it, by "crap" we mean "little works of genius we're very grateful to receive".




This is a flyer being circulated by someone called Alan who's trying to sell a PS3 in a university. That's his phone number. We're not entirely sure about the legality of putting someone's phone number on a web site read by lunatics, but are prepared to risk being implicated in Alan's death for a minor laugh.




A sign saying "Wii ROX" made out of unsold PS3s. Hopefully this photo was arranged specifically for us, and hasn't just been stolen off an internet forum.




Self explanatory.




What Ken Kutaragi did next. Again, hopefully this was made just for us and wasn't stuck on Gaming-Age and featured on Kotaku three weeks ago. We've not been keeping up on gaming news recently, thanks to post-traumatic stress brought about by the WAR.




This image was definitley made for us. No one else would have it.




This is awesome and deserves its own update, rather than being hidden away down here. Sorry about that, person what done it.




This is probably a war reference we don't get, as all we really know about WWII is that the Japanese did very bad things, which is why Granddad never drives Hondas or buys Sony products to this very day.




A PS3 "not sold out in the slightest" sign from Russia! Even out there no one cares for the evil capitalist machine. Interesting to note that in Russia PS3 costs 2-1.990p. Right. That's your lot. We have cleaned up our desktop quite significantly.

Labels: GONZO

See what SEGA thought the future would look like in 1993, thanks to a Japan-living-in reader called Rudie. He's embarrassed us quite severely by putting in the sort of effort we haven't put in since 1999.




"Here are more pictures of things that say SEGA. Near my place in southern Tokyo there are two arcades both called SEGA HI-TECH LAND."




"This is the entrance to one. You can taste the future. And you know it will be great because it says SEGA!"




"There was one person on the arcade portion, which means it was more active than American arcades. Everyone else was by the UFO Catchers and Pachinko machines on the other side. The clerk didn't mind when I got pictures of the empty VF5 machines."




"This mat states that the 23rd of every month is SEGA day. That makes Japan automatically better than every other country on Earth."




"The back entrance to the other arcade. I don't know what else to say."




"This is the front entrance."




"Look at all those empty machines! That just means there's no waiting to have fun at SEGA Hi-Tech Land."




"The best part is at the arcade they have free wetnaps that remind you about SEGA day! See two SEGA Arcades within walking distance of each other. They are still open which means someone out there still cares about fun."




This should be our new logo.

Labels: GONZO

And by 'model' we mean plastic thing. And by plastic thing we mean 'toy'. And by porn we mean... 'porn' albeit in a strangely unsettling fashion.




We didn't take these photos.




There is a story behind them, a story NOT involving us.




A man who works at a game shop got the toys, opened one, took some photos and sent them in. His initial email pointed out that he thought the toy looked like Emily Booth, which was the 'angle' he suggested we use.




We didn't say it was a funny story.




Then he took some with the flash on.




We're not sure if he did that as a joke or seriously to give us a better look.




It was a good idea though.




The end (of society).

Labels: GONZO

There are some good bargains to be had out there:




The UK's finest MILF, yours for only ten quid in Woolworths. Oh, and PS3 IS SHIT and it's unlikely anyone has pre-ordered one today, just to keep you updated.

Labels: GONZO

Once again we have confirmed ourselves as the number one conduit for the weirdos of the world:




"Hi UKR. I wasn't allowed to dye my dog blue but I did get away with sticking SEGA tattoos on her. I think you'll agree, they're better than Stuart's dog. My dog looks happy to be wearing SEGA things and even sat still while I was putting them on. And she has her tongue out and is offering a paw.

"The only bit of skin was on her belly which is a bit close to her vagina. Sorry about that. I tried to get pictures of not her vagina that much, but it's still clearly visible. I'll see what I can do to my cat next. And I'll still try and dye the dog blue one day! Gretta."




Tomorrow we expect nothing less than photos of a cow's brain smeared over a road in a vague approximation of the SEGA logo.




Anything but dog vaginas, please.

Labels: GONZO

This is Stuart's dog and Sonic hat. These photos arrived less than six hours after yesterday's initial appeal. He clearly already had a dog to hand. You could never grow a dog in six hours.

Hopefully when we ask women to send in photos of their tits with "I LOVE UKR" written over them in fake blood like they've cut it into themselves the results will be equally swift and compliant.




A great photo, but the dog should've been roused to a sitting position, by offering a treat or a pat or saying that it's din-dins or walkies time. It's not really joining in. It should also be giving a paw for a bonus. Still, it's a nice doggy. Oh yes it is. Oh yes you are. Oh yessy yessy doggy doggy. Good boy. GOOD BOY.




Still, it's a photo of a dog wearing a Sonic The Hedgehog hat. It's definitely an internet first. And probably also a last.




He even made his cat join in. This looks quite cruel.

BEHIND THE SCENES 'MAKING OF' COMMENTARY FROM STUART:
"The dog is called Blue, and my cat is actually called Sonic (I named him after the good Sonic games, and not the wank ones of late). I'm sure you'll agree that the dog pictures are vastly overshadowed by the ones of the cat. The cat fucking hated wearing the hat, and he almost shat himself every time I put it on him. Lucky for him I managed to get the required shots well within 4 hours."




Of course it could just be Sonic wearing a cat costume on his lower body.




Stupid cat. Cats are so stupid they can't even get things off their heads.

Labels: GONZO

A man has spotted a "Sonic hat" in the window of Forbidden Planet in Aberdeen. If you hurry it might still be there. We expect a fierce bidding war to break out, along with a scuffle that ends up on the local news.

All we ask for in bringing you this information is that the successful buyer sends us a photo of the Sonic hat on a dog's head. Sunglasses optional.




"Hi, I found this Sonic hat in the window of Forbidden Planet in Aberdeen. I thought you might like it so i took a picture. Unfortunately I do not deal in 'Credits' of any sort, so I could not ask how much it was or which Orc the owner bought it off. It also appears that the hat would go over your eyes, possibly giving you some kind of Sonic vision!"

Labels: GONZO

"I found a whole shelf of these languishing on a shelf in Fulbourn Tesco (just outside Cambridge)"




BUY ONE NOW! Or wait another week and get one from the skip.

Labels: GONZO

Odd what you get emailed some days.




It's also odd what passes as valid content to put on the internet some days.

Labels: GONZO

The bodies of the dead are piled high, broken and twisted. Imagine the stench of rotting fur. We will pray for their families and loved ones. Blessed are the fallen, for they lead the way so that we could live.




These sad scenes are repeated in UFO catcher machines across mainland Europe. We must never forget this senseless waste.

Labels: GONZO

A man saw this in Japan. Like all good men he took a photo of it for us to put on the internet:




"Dear UKR, there is a Sega arcade in Shibuya that has this bizarro Sega-made foot massage machine called Ashipuri. You insert your money, stick your feet in, select the part of foot you want massaged and then enjoy five minutes of bliss, making it better value for money than the Dreamcast version of Dynamite Cop. Kind of. Also I think it plays some sort of Sonic music but I'm not sure as the arcade was quite loud."




This is where it says SEGA on it.




And this is how hot the Japanese are for stupid talking mascots.

Labels: GONZO

So yes, everyone's been to Japan and taken photos of lots of SEGA Worlds. Well done you and your three grand holidays. Here are some of your Japan snaps, including, incredibly, one of some cosplaying girls a reader claims to have "chatted up".


#1: A PHOTO OF DOBUITA STREET FROM SHENMUE

"Here's something I'll regret sending to you, although I at least had the good grace and sense to Paint Shop Pro Ryo over my pasty white torso. This is a photo of Dobuita Street from SHENMUE. Taken at 1600x1200 as that's the only sane resolution to take pics at. Although, if my pics from 8 years ago are anything to go by, I used to say that about pics taken in 640x480 and they look shit and are blocky and low detail now. Anyway. Tom's hotdog stand would be about opposite that Yakuza wagon that's just about to disappear me. That silver bag contains a Yokosuka jacket that I haven't worn once as it has dragons and shit on it and makes me look like some kind of gang member and has hung in my lovely wardrobe ever since.




"No pics of Akihabara as the SHAME of even being present there means it's strictly a brisk walk down the street with head DOWN until it's time to duck into one of the 2nd hand game shops to update your list to see who's selling what game for 100 yen less than the other guys. Stopping to take a photo would involve so many eyes being rolled at you that even the Japs that camp outside gaming stores for three days to catch a glimpse of some idol or other would look down at you in pity and disgust. So no way. I don't know how the other guy managed it. Must have been Nyarth. Or an American. I do have some school girl pics but she's six and no I'd probably better not.


#2: A PHOTO OF A SEGA CRANE MACHINE IN KAWAGUCHIKO

"I know it's not a Sega World but it:

a) has Sega in it
b) is a big photo
c) has a (kind of) video attached

"It was in Kawaguchiko - yet another crane machine but this time someone has dared to put Disney crap inside it. Played a nice selection of Sonic themes though. Couldn't be bothered to film it in action, so just put the camera on the bench - it was too hot to piss about."




We nearly didn't use this photo as the photographer seems to be wearing cropped trousers and a sleeveless t-shirt, as is clearly visible in the reflection:




However, the original photo's a WHOPPING 2448 x 3264 pixels in resolution, so we pretty much had to use it seeing as it stopped the Hotmail servers responding to all of Europe for the two hours it took to download.




He did indeed attach a sort-of-movie in which you can hear the machine playing a decent rendition of the Starlight Zone theme. This is top quality reader interaction, especially over the festive holiday period when people usually don't give a shit.


#3 A LOAD MORE FROM SIMON '777' STALLWOOD

Simon went to Japan in January of 2002. He embarrassingly didn't have a digital camera in 2002, so these are primitive 'scans' of the photographic plates he made of his trip:




"It's the same arcade in Electric city near the subway entrance that everyone likes to take pictures of, but from a different angle!"




"The famous Sega Joypolis, there were pictures on the Saturn game "Sonic Jam" of Sonic and Tails near this building. The Joypolis is located on Decks Beach in real life. This is coming up to the entrance in the photo."




"When I came to the Joypolis early one morning, it was shut so I took a walk round part of the beach. This picture shows the Joypolis from the other side of the beach."




"This is the front of the Joypolis guide book."




"While in Electric City (near Club Sega) a nice Japanese women gave me this flyer. I don't believe there is a real place called Sonic Cafe, I bet it's just some web site somewhere, but it's nice to imagine."




"It's the other side of the flyer."




"Leaving the Joypolis, and its time to cool down. What better way then beer/spirit/sake/cigarette vending machines out in the street!"


#4 SEGA GIGO, AKIHABARA

"Really good as they had all the arcade versions of Virtual On you could ever imagine. Which was obviously great."





#5 CLUB SEGA AND SOME GIRLS!

Our fifth entrant, and the obvious winner, sent us one very boring photo of Club SEGA from far away, plus two photos of girls he claims to have spoken to and stood quite near with their implied consent.








Happy holidays. Come back tomorrow when we'll have what will be 2007's most boring update about the time we went to find a closed SEGA World in London that had been turned into a newsagent. All you could see was the old sign. We took 100 photos of it. It's boring, but relevant.

Labels: GONZO

A rival SEGA arcade photographer has risen to yesterday's not-challenge pictorial update and sent us a stupidly high-resolution (2304 x 3072!) photo of the Tokyo Akihabara Club SEGA.

He says: "By the way, the Sega World in Nara was rubbish. The ground level was only crane machines and the upper level was pachinko. And some strange shooter where you had to pay money for each bullet".




Seeing as all our readers seem to have been to Japan at some point or another, this probably isn't news to most of you. You probably all have similar photos, in among your pictures of boring temples you thought you should waste a day going to see and those stupid trees with flowers on they have over there. And one you took of your dinner one night. And a train. And a blurry one of some schoolgirls you tried to take without anyone seeing.




Has anyone else got any photos of Japanese SEGA Worlds? Or, more importantly, a camera that can take photos in a higher resolution than 2304 x 3072? What we'd really like is an email containing both, plus a criticism of the Akihabara Club SEGA for balance. Or just 125 pics of schoolgirls as it's Christmas.

Labels: GONZO

This is a simple pictorial update for people who are in diabetic comas from over-exposure to Cadbury Celebrations, and can now only manage to disinterestedly observe colourful images projected in front of their faces:




Nice, but we get irrationally angry at seeing the photos today's cameras output. There's just no need for a photo to be 2288 x 1712 pixels big. Not even in porn.

Labels: GONZO

And we thought this was a VERY BAD IDEA, until we read to the bit about it only being plastic poo. That's probably OK and not against any laws. Especially in Spain. Good on you, crazy Europeans. Here's how it works:

Sponsor a Poo and send it (with a personal note) to Sony
By El Alcalde de Tomelloso and Cubitorah

Are we men or mice?

Are you tired of abuse?

Gamerah is, and we have decided to do something about it. We are going to show Sony that in Europe there is no humiliation without response. We are going to show them that we are not an unimportant third-rate market. A pound of flesh.

Delays, higher prices, sloppy translations, harassment of import stores, and, even worse, cheekiness. What does Gamerah say to all this? Gamerah says: NO! And the way we propose to let the evildoers at Sony know is very simple: by sponsoring plastic poos which we will send to Sony's higher echelons in Spain in one or many boxes.

Imagine: you are angry with Sony since the delay, or since they cancelled your order at play-asia, or even since the death of Dreamcast, like some resentful Sega fans in our staff. Anyway: your patience has run out. What can you do? Very simple.

1. Send us an email to apadrinaunacaca@gamerah.com. Include your nickname and your comment/complaint to Sony (one line). Just one grievance per poo, although you can send as many poos as you like.

2. We will reply to you with a bank account number and an identification number.

3. Transfer 4 euro and include the identification number on the transfer's subject. This way we will know it is you.

4. We will attach your message to one of the fake excrements and put it, along with your nickname, in the box we will send to Sony's Spanish headquarters. Of course, we will also include a petition asking them to forward the poos to their bosses in Japan.

Some examples of what you might write:

Tonio87: For the HDMi cable.
Pacotazo: For killing Lik-Sang.
Pepoto: For having no typographical criteria.

Here is an example of what they will look like. Imagine Phil Harrison's face! Hohoho!



The rubber band is provisional.

Just remember: no direct insults or death threats. Be subtle, as in our examples. We know you can do it.

THANKS, SPANISH JURY
Gamerah are the people who made the fake Horoshi Yamauchi interview a while back, so they'll probably go through with it as well.

Labels: GONZO

In Osaka, apparently. The writing says that the 23rd of each month is SEGA Day.




THE SEGA DOORMAT IN A VARIETY OF RESOLUTIONS:

640x480

800x600

1024x768

1152x864

1280x960

1280x720

1280x768

Original - 2592x1944

Labels: GONZO

The SEGA Park in Bournemouth is now a "Leisure Exchange" which is like an arcade, only emptier and worse. A roving reporter took us some photos of the inside and was even kind enough to write some captions for us. We can now take the rest of the day off to stare blankly at a screen and line up our icons, because if the icons aren't lined up properly...

THE REPORTER'S INTRODUCTION:
"The place has gone from being a testing site for every single new Sega arcade machine to a large empty room with no people and even less machines... oh, and a big area dedicated to 'gambling'"




"This used to be where it said SEGA PARK in big blue letters. Now it says... well, this. And there's a big silver AMUSEMENTS sign above the door, just in case people are too thick to work out what a Leisure Exchange is. On the plus side though, the Quasar's quite good - nice and big, with loads of good places to hide"




"Sonic's still in the windows despite the place no longer being a proper Sega Park, probably because they're waiting for some chavs to smash them with a brick so they can claim for new Sonic-free glass on the insurance"




"The view from the front door. This place used to be CRAMMED with machines - really interesting ones. Now, there's a huge gap in the middle (like, HUGE) and all the machines have been pushed against the walls. There's a sole pool table at the back, which the chavs use mostly for sitting on"




"The newest machine the place has, besides Virtua Striker 4 and House Of The Dead 4 (both of which we're surprised even appeared in this tired old place) is this WCCF card game. No one ever plays it. But then, there's never anyone in here. To be fair though, having this and OutRun 2 SP is vaguely impressive... it's just a shame all the other machines have been lost in the process"




"These people are playing Virtua Tennis 2. There are two VT2 machines in the arcade, but one's got a shit screen that's all purple and warped. It used to have several sit-down beat-'em-up cabinets (Tekken 4, SVC Chaos, Soul Calibur II) but they're all gone now. In their place is a Sonic Blast Man punching machine. Bleugh"

AND THAT'S IT
Had we written this we would've included some sort of narrative structure about the day and probably lied about there being tramps cooking up smack in the toilets. Still, it's not bad for a free update. Thanks!

Labels: GONZO, HISTORY

Let's just get all of these out of the way in one batch. Then we can move on. To the next batch.




This is of a Sonic The Hedgehog napkin.




And just in case the first photo wasn't good enough, the sender sent in an additional second photo. Because the one thing we all really need is a spare photo of some Sonic The Hedgehog napkins.




This is a fake Sonic badge someone found at a craft fair. SEGA's lawyers need to crack down on this shit, to stop churches funding their roof repairs via illegally produced merchandise.




Someone's business card. She is called Annie Sega! If you married her, your name would be... oh no, that's not how it works.




What the sender described as "Sonic boots" but it frankly could be anything.




Sonic endorsing fireworks.




A Sonic car.




Really rubbish SEGA graffiti. "My friend and I saw this on our way home from school the other day. He took the picture on his telephone. I thought it might be evidence of some guerrilla advertising from SEGA! Notice the lack of crotch on sonic and the penis to his right".




This is a scan of newspaper comic 'Striker' that someone's been sitting on for "four or five" years. It shows a SEGA Saturn advert in the paper the girls are holding. It's amazing what people see and keep.



And this is an Indesit washing machine manual that features a logo that looks a bit like the Dreamcast swirl. That's all for today.

Labels: GONZO

Here's a photograph. Can you work out what's SEGA about it? There's definitely something a bit SEGA about it!




Is it the spires? The car? The blue sky?




No, it's not this bit.




It's not this bit.




Nor is it this bit.




Or this.




It's THIS bit! They sort of copied Sonic and blacked him up a bit to make him their tyre-repairing mascot. How well did you do?

Labels: GONZO

Words cannot... there's nothing you can... it's not possible to express... you simply can't... no one could ever...




He was bored enough to send it. We were bored enough to upload it. You're bored enough to be looking at it. The sooner AIDS or North Korea or cancer puts us all out of our miseries the better.

Labels: GONZO

It's of Sonic The Hedgehog on stage at a fashion show accompanied by a woman that looks like 80s freakshow entertainer Su Pollard:




He appears to be wearing a huge prosthetic vagina.




Inevitably, there's now a clip of it happening on YouTube.

Labels: GONZO

Is it time to die yet?




So old. So tired. Ready to sleep now.

Labels: GONZO

This is the back of a man's sister's chair. He says the design looks a bit like Dr Robotnik, although she insists it's meant to be flowers.




Beat that.

Labels: GONZO

This is a photo of a sign in the car park at SEGA Europe. Someone's being a parking space nazi. You can see some interesting uses of capital letters.



This out-bores our update about the SEGA Park carpet by some 25 percent. We're sorry about this for many reasons. Has anyone got a less interesting SEGA photograph than this?

Labels: GONZO

You can see his little heart breaking, as he mentally weighs up the pros of eating sweets and playing games all day against the cons of being popular.



No free things or parties for you, Porky Piggywinkle. Best you can hope for is to get in the top 1000 of something on Xbox Live.

Labels: GONZO

This exciting idea for an update started about two months ago, when a man said he'd seen the word "SEGA" sprayed on a wall beside a railway line somewhere in Essex.

He said he'd take us a photo. Usually people say they'll do things like that but never bother, so we forgot about it and thought he'd never bother. But he bothered!




Then, just when we'd forgotten about it, someone else sent us the below collection of links to photos of other SEGA graffiti spotted around the world. So we got a proper update that Kotaku will probably steal and link to, and all we had to do was resize a few photos. Thanks everyone!














The graffiti-spotter also found a hi-res version of the Sonic anti-fascism logo, for all you Sonic/SEGA fans who may be attending anti-fascism rallies at some point in the future.

A 'SHOUT OUT' TO WHERE THEY ALL CAME FROM:

Here

Here

Here

Here

And from someone's Flickr account here

Maybe if all the locations of the photos are plotted on a world map a clue appears as to SEGA's return to the hardware market! It could be Dreamcast 2 viral marketing!!

Labels: GONZO

It was a good day for emails. We got two about sex drugs, two MySpace friend requests (more bloody men) and an amazing FIVE containing weird SEGA-related photographs.

Here they are all at once, as the harsh truth is that none are quite good enough to make it into individual updates. But together they are stronger.










This is the 'Sonic and Tails Spinner'. We have no idea what it is or how it's supposed to be a game. Here's what the photographer had to say about it:

"The spinner was made Sonic Adventure era as there's a picture of the robot with the bird what's inside of him on the right of the base. I'd lost interest by then though and some 7 year olds were watching me with a view to steal my phone, so I didn't get a picture. Note how Sonic appears to be either bumming or fisting tails. Maybe that's why it broke? The worst part is it's about 5 minutes away from where I work and will no doubt be in there on payday, spunking money away like there's no tomorrow."




This is an anti-nazi parade and they have an actual Sonic banner made up. Sonic stands for freedom!

"I found this picture in an article about the protest of a German anti-fascistic rganisation called 'Antifa'. They were protesting against the fact that neo-nazis want to buy the untenanted hotel shown in this picture to establish a nazi meeting point there. I don't know why they painted Sonic on their banner."




Sticking with the German-language territories, this is the SEGABAR. We presume it's a bar - the only information the sender provided was that it's "probably the roughest fleshpot in Salzburg". We always knew that if SEGA did fleshpots in Salzburg, they'd probably be the roughest fleshpots in Salzburg.




It's an exciting cardboard box! It appears to be a SEGA Mark III box of games box. The sender seemed very excited about having it in his possession.
















SEGA World Shanghai.

"I was in a large shopping centre in Xu Jia Hui Shanghai and noticed a rather large 'Sega World' logo on top of a machine as I went up the escalator. It looked rather dirty so I figured it was some throw-back machine from the early 90s. Upon further investigation I discovered a fully functioning Sega World, complete with OutRun2, House of the Dead and a whole load of other things. The people were loving it. Despite the lack of interest in OutRun2 the other games were getting a lot of play time. It must be one of the only places in Shanghai where you can play games legitimately without them being copies..."

Labels: GONZO

It's a box that says Sonic on it that someone thought we'd like to see. They took the photo on holiday and probably wish they'd saved the money and stayed at home watching telly if this was the highlight of the trip.

There's no way Kotaku is going to link to this :(




Maybe if it was an official SEGA cardboard box we'd be a bit more enthusiastic.

SOME FAN FICTION ABOUT A CARDBOARD BOX

THE BOX OF JOY
By Michael Zorg

Who's this in this box? Why, it's Cream The Rabbit!

"Hello, big strong man. Do you want to get into the box with me?"

"Yes"

"I'm naked apart from my little orange shoes"

"Good"

We get in the box and a workman comes along, tapes up the box and puts it in a truck. The truck drives to Monaco and the journey goes really quickly because we're having sex all the time.

In Monaco there's a big house there which we're allowed to have for free and live in together forever with no one else ever talking to us. It's got satellite TV with all the sport and porn channels, and no internet or telephone.

The end.

Labels: GONZO

Just when you thought you couldn't get more bored of our incredibly dull series of updates about closed SEGA Worlds, a man goes and sends us a photograph of the carpet in SEGA World Southampton.

Who would've thought that one day we'd become the sort of web site that uploads photographs of carpets like it's news?




It's an ideal carpet for lying down on in the dark, as when you roll over to sob into the floor you'd see Sonic and maybe feel a bit happier about the way things have turned out.

***UPDATE***
The carpet was made by Grosvenor Carpets and it's actually called SEGA Park, not SEGA World.


SOME CARPET-INSPIRED FAN FICTION WE'VE JUST WRITTEN:

SONIC GETS A CARPETING
By Michael Zorg

"Oh, do we HAVE to?" moaned Sonic, as Amy dragged him through the car park of Carpet Megastore.

"Yes, Sonic, we DO" said Amy, firmly, tugging his hand and quickening her walk.

"You've worn them all out with your constant spinning"

It was a Saturday afternoon, and Sonic was thinking he'd rather be anywhere than shopping for carpets. Not only shopping for carpets, but shopping for carpets with Amy. Amy loved shopping for carpets, heck, Amy loved shopping for anything!

Last Saturday it was ring holders, the Saturday before it was emerald stands, the Saturday before that was... something Sonic really wasn't interested in and also considered a waste of time buying.

This Saturday was carpets.

Sonic trudged along behind Amy, occasionally pretending he had an opinion on a carpet before being told it wasn't good enough and they had to carry on looking. Perhaps, later, they may have to go to another carpet store to see more carpets, said Amy, such was the lack of a suitable carpet in this shop that contained 1000 carpets.

Sonic, unusually for him, was dragging his feet and walking slowly. So slowly, in fact, that Amy had wandered off ahead of him separating the two of them.

"Hey Sonic!"

It was Cream!

"Oh, er, hey Cream!" said Sonic, nervously glancing around to make sure Amy wasn't about. "How are you?"

"Oh, you know, bored of shopping for carpets. Mum made me come, she says the one in my bedroom is all worn out because I'm always spinning on it. How I hate shopping for carpets!"

"Yeah, carpets are stupid!" said Sonic, after once again checking that Amy wasn't within earshot.

"No, wait! Come and see what I've found!" Cream said, her eyes suddenly widening and, unbeknownst to Sonic, weeing herself slightly from being so excited.

Before he could protest, Cream grabbed Sonic by the hand and ran very fast - almost as fast as Sonic himself! - through the carpet store into a dark, deserted aisle.

"Look!"

Cream pointed to an old cylinder of carpet. It was grey with a blue design. It was dusty, and had probably lain there untouched since about 1992.

"The design, Sonic, look at the design!!"

Cream pulled Sonic roughly toward the carpet rack, and punched the old carpet to remove some of the dust. Sonic sneezed, waved the dust from the air and peered at the carpet.

"It's... it's ME!"

"Yes, Sonic! You're so famous and cool they made a carpet after you!"

Sonic couldn't believe his eyes. They had made a carpet after him! Probably in 1992, when he was the most famous because of Sonic 2 on the Mega Drive.

"Wow!" said Sonic, grabbing the frayed end of the carpet and yanking it hard to unfurl a fresh, clean and dust free section. "It's as good as new!"

"Yes, and so soft!" said Cream, as she unfurled loads more carpet, until carpet was covering the entire width of the aisle!

Cream stroked the carpet, then lay down on it. She rolled over onto her tummy, letting her little orange dress ride up to reveal her white knickers.

"Come here, Sonic!"

Sonic looked around nervously.

"Come on! It's all soft and like new!" giggled Cream, slipping off her orange shoes and lying back on the carpet, playfully kissing the woven Sonic image on the carpet and smiling up at the real Sonic standing there in front of her.

Sonic looked around nervously again, before smiling - with attitude! - and rolling up beside Cream on the lovely soft carpet.

"It's so soft, isn't it?" said Cream, gently, stroking the carpet and gradually moving her hand toward Sonic, then stroking Sonic's arm.

Sonic looked at Cream. "Yes, Cream, it's very soft and I..."

"SONIC!"

It was Amy.

"What the HELL are you doing with HER?!"

"Oh, Amy! It's, er, I can..." stuttered Sonic.

"I'm going home!" squealed Amy in a very angry voice indeed.

Amy then turned around and started to run at full speed - but she was so angry she didn't look where she was going and hit her head on a metal carpet rail.

Amy fell on the ground. You could tell she was dead immediately, because of the brain and stuff that had come out.

"Oh well" said Sonic.

"Oh well" said Cream.

Sonic grabbed the carpet cutting tool and cut off a length of the Sonic carpet, rolled Amy's body up in it and put it in a big trolley. They paid for the carpet - it was cheap because it was so old - and then Sonic and Cream drove in Amy's car to some cliffs and threw the carpet-wrapped body off into the sea, where it sank to the bottom and was never found.

They then went home and had sex on the threadbare carpet in Sonic's house, but they didn't notice that the carpet was threadbare because sex is better and more fun than carpets.

The end.

Labels: GONZO

We've been sent photos of the inside of SEGA World Sydney, back during the short period it was open and seemed like maybe being financially viable.

It looks like they had too much space to put everything in, and as if the whole place was designed by the BBC special effects department in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada. In 1981.

In short, it looks rubbish.




It's a nice sign. We'd be tempted in by that. Before you scroll down, be warned that this is by far the highlight of the photos. If you're sensitive about having your dreams about SEGA palaces crushed, don't scroll down.




The quality of these photos isn't good enough to tell if that's a real person or a model of a person. Stupid 2001 cameras and their abysmal pixel counts. Either way, it's a rubbish sign that looks like it belongs in the 1940s not a cutting-edge SEGA amusement/dream-making facility.




This is rubbish. It's like a Soviet Union children zoo. That's not fun. And it's dirty. The poor kids.




This is the family. Dad's taking the photos and mentally totting up how much money he's wasted on this amazingly disappointing day out.




Not really that exciting.




Not really that exciting.




We know people got more excitied about rubbish things back in the 'old days' before all the cool stuff we have now was invented, but this was only made in the late 1990s. Even in the late 1990s we wouldn't have got excited about a big plastic tube standing on an unconvincing sci-fi floor.




As disappointing as the SEGA AGES series.




So this is why no one goes to arcades any more, and why SEGA Worlds are being replaced by more branches of Starbucks the world over. We now stand for the complete annihilation of these miserable hell holes.

Labels: GONZO

So we went and investigated it! The sign looked like it had where it says 'SEGA' covered up with a sticker, so it might've been a closed, abandoned SEGA World facility, with lots of classic games in that everyone's forgotten about! This could be a lost tomb, sealed forever in 1998 and therefore with everything in mint condition and probably set to freeplay!




It's worrying that the 'SEGA' bit seems to have been covered up.




It's definitely been covered up, hasn't it? It would be some coincidence for a piece of paper exactly that size to randomly attach itself to that sign in that specific place, wouldn't it?




Sadly, to get to SEGA World, you have to walk down the sort of underpass that we usually associate with buying heavily-cut drugs from tramps or having our laptop stolen. This might explain why the sign has been papered over and why it looks like it might be closed and abandoned. What lies down the underpass of DOOM? Is it really a SEGA World? Is it still open? Or is it closed? Or has it been turned into a McDonalds or a Starbucks like every other available retail space?




It's a boring shopping center. There is no SEGA World in Sydney any more. That was a waste of everyone's time. We looked for ages. Nothing.

THEN, JUST NOW, THREE WEEKS LATER AND AS IF BY COINCIDENCE!
We got an email from this bloke who saw a second closed SEGA World in Shanghai. What is happening to the world? :(




All the while, Apple is opening *more* iPod hellholes. The end times really are upon us.

Labels: GONZO

It's called a Mu-Bot and it looks like a baby! This could be the only way we ever get to have something like a baby, seeing as you can buy it from the shops and it doesn't require making a woman like you and think she wants to have sex with you and be friends with you for at least nine months first.



We'll call ours Katie, and pretend it's a little girl. But if Katie doesn't grow out of listening to iPods we'll beat little Katie until she fucking learns. This is what we've learned about how children work from reading news on the internet.




BAD KATIE. KATIE MUST STAY IN HER ROOM. KATIE WILL NOT HAVE ANY DINNER UNTIL SHE STOPS LIKING iPODS. KATIE WILL GET SHAKEN AND HIT UNTIL THE COUNCIL TAKES KATIE AWAY. OH NO. POOR KATIE. WHAT HAVE WE DONE? WE WILL CRY ON YOUR BIRTHDAY AND WONDER WHERE YOU ARE.

Labels: GONZO

A man saw Sonic badly painted on an ice cream van, and like one of daddy's bravest and most favourite little soldiers he got out his camera, or phone, or one of those new 'cameraphone' hybrids that probably also has MP3 ringtones, and took a photo of it just for us and you.

This is it!



Then, like a very very GOOD BOY, he actually wrote some fan fiction based on his encounter! This is awesome. More people should send us photos and the subsequent fan fiction they inspire. Textbook reader submission. A+

CREAM SCREAMS FOR ICE CREAM

By Matt Smith

"Look! It's Sonic!" shouts the innocent six-year-old girl. "Sonic and ice cream!"

Off she runs towards the blue hedgehog's arms, blissfully unaware of the approaching danger while mummy's back is turned. She can hear the sweet synthpop beats of Green Hill Zone playing in her mind. "Do do do do do do do do doooo. Do do do, Do do do, Dooo Dooo!"

But it's not over-priced, no-brand-name ice cream she's going to get. It's far, far worse than that.

"Can I have a Cornetto?" she asks the evil, evil man.

"Why certainly little girl." The evil man replies as he goes to his freezer.

"Oh what a shame", he says. "I am afraid they are all gone."

The little girl looks down at her little orange shoes and sobs.

"But if you come into my van I am sure we can find something together!" the evil man replies.

Without thinking she smiles and says "OK!"

The man opens the door. She climbs inside and at first everything seems normal. "Why don't you have a look inside the freezer?" The man suggests with a rather large grin on his face below his circular glasses and orange moustache.

The little girl is feeling uneasy. She begins to realise her mistake. She slowly walks over to the freezer and takes a look inside...

'What is this?' She thinks to herself. 'It looks like robot parts and...'

"NO!" She screams!

"MUHAHAHAHA!" The man laughs as he rips off his fake apron and hat.

"It's... It's... YOU!"

"That's right!" He bellows. "It's me, Dr Robotnik! And you have fallen right into my trap, Cream!"

"What do you want!" She shouts.

"Why, a hostage of course! With you in my clutches I know Sonic will bring the Chaos Emeralds to me!"

"You're crazy Robotnik!" Cream cries. "Sonic's gonna rescue me and stop you once and for all!"

"MUHAHAHAHA! We'll see about that!" he shouts. And with that he handcuffs her to the freezer, starts the engine and speeds off far away into the distance, his evil theme tune music menacingly playing through the ice cream van's speakers.

TO BE CONTINUED?
By this, we mean please write some stuff about Cream getting raped and then starting to enjoy it and then getting covered in spunk (ours, not your lumpy old muck) in the comments section.

Labels: GONZO

It's the stuff we've been sent. At least, it's the remaining dregs - anything we get sent that's really good we do a proper update with and pretend we found it ourselves.

SOME BODGE-JOB MEGA DRIVE PRICK WANKER
"Some fool did this. I suspect it is useless as both a guitar and a Mega Drive. Cunt."





BLOKE DOING A WEIRD DANCE TO THE JSR SOUNDTRACK
Bloke doing a weird dance to the JSR soundtrack


SOME SORT OF BIZARRE PSONE/MEGA DRIVE HYBRID THING ON A RUSSIAN WEB SITE
"Don't know if you'll have seen this already but i found some sort of bizarre psone/megadrive hybrid thing on a Russian website, looks weird."





HOOKER MADE GOOD
"Looks like it paid off for some of those hookers you featured last year - whilst doing some E3 'research', I happened across this pic of the winner at the launch of her new booth babe career, posing with a couple of runners-up with breasts deemed big enough to be adorned with the title of some other Sony shite."

"And would, I s'pose."





EA'S GENESIS PAD
"Found a bizarre thing in Toymaster in Dublin... backwater that it is. Not a SEGA logo anywhere on it. Down with that kind of thing."





DAMIAN BUTT IS A 'CUNT'
"You seen Cunt's Corner? There's a fucking super nasty thread on there for Damian Butt. Nothing to do with me, but I do hate the cunt and like the idea of him being ridiculed in front of the industry."


A POSSIBLY INTERESTING FACT:
"Sonic is an enzyme now!"
http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/MolDev/factor/shh.htm


SEGA WILL MAKE US ALL LIVE FOREVER
SEGA WILL MAKE US ALL LIVE FOREVER!!!!

"Looks like I'll need that pension after all :("


A DOG WEARING A SONIC T-SHIRT
"This is not my dog"





JUST A PICTURE OF WEMBLEY THAT WE HOPE WASN'T STOLEN FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE:





A FEW THINGS FROM JAPAN
"A few things from Japan for you as I'm leaving for England on Saturday..."

"First up is a packet of "Sonic the Hedgehog Tissues" I found in a Sega Center in Tokyo, the small text under "Sonic" reads:

I'll never look back, I've got no regrets
'Cause time doesn't wait for me
I choose to go my own way

"Which is interestingly the most sense you can actually make of anything written in English in Japan..."





"Second is nothing more than something I found quite strange, no pictures because I didn't have my camera at the time. In Sega Centers in Japan Sonic & Amy Rose are used for very few things, maybe signage outside the building occasionally, but more often that not they can be seen directing people to the toilets. Notice that like many diagrams for male/female toilets, they have the standard blue/pink colour scheme."

"That's right, though Sonic may have begun as a gaming character, Amy Rose was introduced purely to allow for all manner of toilet related sign creation!"

"That's it. Sorry it wasn't much and if it's been sent into you guys before."


CUT-PRICE HOMESTAR
"Was out wandering around one the not-so-cool shopping places in Tokyo today, and found your SEGA Homestar effort for half of what you paid for it... HALF! 16,500 yen! 79 quid! You got bummed my friends."

"Want another one?"





A HAMSTER PLAYING VF
"No idea of the origin of this one. But I bet old hammie would kick my arse at VF!"





EA 'PULLS A SONY'
"I saw this and only one word came to mind: 'Irony'"

"EA Mobile claims the market is flooded with bad games"

That's everything. Thanks for joining in, everyone.

Labels: GONZO

For ONLY 1.99! It's amazing, the local chemist once again shows that it's the greatest breed of shop. Having already proved it's worth over the last eight years with a steady and never-ending stock of powerful Valium pills and industrial strength lubricants we didn't think it could be any better. We were wrong. They have truly outdone themselves this time:



It's some kind of cosmic sign that this still exists and is on a shelf after 15 years. Perhaps there's even some kind of metaphor for SEGA there. We have ZERO doubt at all that were we to open this wonderful little bottle of gaming merchandise DELIGHT, it would actually smell of 1992, Mega Drive, and Becky Boroughclough's hair.

THIS IS THE SCIENCE BIT:
In fact the bottle has been opened now and the reaction it has elicited from people includes:

"Smells of 'Tolkien powder'."

"Smells of grannies."

"Oh fuck it smells of liquid."

"It smells of cocaine." (After snorting it.)

"It smells just like Tails - SHIT."

This on-the-spot report provided by guest updater The Cap'n.

Labels: GONZO

Dear UKR

I was at E3 last week in industry guise. Trying to avoid actually doing anything to justify my flight cost and hotel bill I wandered onto the Nintendo stand and spotted Google video star Andrew Rosenblum presenting the next installment of his 'show'. He and his skinny gimp friend were bizarrely being filmed by an attractive if a little young (16 is legal in the US isn't it?) female dressed a bit like a schoolgirl... Anyway before i could get a picture of the schoolgirl they all ran off to some the Isle of Man development stand to film some blindfolded Japanese bloke playing video game music i hadn't really heard of on a bontempi keyboard, which quite frankly was a bit shit.

Anyway please find attached picture of 'Google video star' Andrew Rosenblum... perhaps you can run a behind the scenes style feature... or just post it up as one of the more bizarre stalkings by your readers.

One of the more bizarre stalkings by our readers.

Labels: GONZO

We've had someone else email us a photo of their Sonic-themed tattoo. This guy had the Sonic & Knuckles logo drilled into his skin FOREVER.

Hey, saw your post on Sonic tattoos, and I thought I'd share my own with you.

Its of the S&K logo, which I personally regard as the greatest Sonic logo ever. Hours upon hours of my youth were spent re-playing Sonic 3 and Knuckles, so it became somewhat of a favourite.

Great site, btw.
Bird

We emailed him back, suggesting this photo made the tattoo look like it was drawn on in pen. He then replied, saying the photo was taken on the day it was done, and it looks blotchy because of the scabs. Scabs are why we haven't got any tattoos. He sent two more pictures in as further proof:






We HAVE to get one of Cream The Rabbit. HAVE TO NOW.

Labels: GONZO

No, we didn't get any good material for UKR out of going to E3. All we got were loads of predictable, cliched photos of the show, like everyone else always gets.

LOADS OF PREDICTABLE, CLICHED PHOTOS OF THE SHOW:




This is a booth babe. We spoke to her. We said "Can you pose with it?" and she said yes and did this. We walked away feeling 5 percent more dead inside, and 50 percent more erect. Women who do what they're told are great.




This is the moron queue for the PlayStation3 Disappointment Adventure. People (ALL the people) were poking fun at PS3, openly mocking it's shite games and idiotic management suits who are blind to the truth. The games are all dull sequels, as with PSP. It's so going to be a disaster and we'll be there to spunk on Sony's gravestone when the bailiffs padlock the doors.




This is SEGA making PS3 look good. It feels wrong.




Some bloke with some tattoo of some game character. He's rolled his sleeve up so everyone can see it. We can laugh now, but when we get Cream The Rabbit tattooed on next month we'll be doing the same.




This is the obligatory picture of some fat fuck obsessing over a retro machine. We were shooting fish in a barrel out there. He's taking a *photo* of it.




This is Nokia's N-GAGE stand. It was always empty, which was great - if you needed to quickly walk from one place to another, you could cut through the N-GAGE bit.




Nokia spent the big bucks on some women. We didn't speak to these ones, just pointed the camera at them and they did that hugging/smiling thing like perfectly trained sexy androids.




This fat man's self-esteem was lowered further still by us following him, pointing and taking his photo. We ought to feel bad about that, but actually don't! It's another link in our chain for the afterlife, but was worth it.




Another woman, along with some men standing quite far away from her and taking photos *of* her without actually looking *at* her. That just about sums it up.




Silver The Hedgehog. Shadow was also there, but we just couldn't look him in the eye.




The woman again. We've got 100s more of these, but they're all this dull. Sorry about that. If we're ever allowed out again after this, we'll try harder.

Labels: GONZO

This is an email we got, in its entirety. You can't edit down genius like this.

I'm a huge Sega fan and absolutely love your site, your trip to Sega page is pretty funny and now I want a Homestar! Anyway, thought I'd show off my Sonic tattoos while I'm here so take a look at them if you're interested.

Had the idea of having four Sonics running around my leg.

Ross

We should've done this. You should have done this. What a man.

Labels: GONZO

Another important piece of SEGA nostalgia merchandise has been discovered!



Sonic and Knuckles have been scribbled out. There's a reason for this. The person who owns the book will explain himself in the next caption.




"If you look at the intro page, you can see where the young me crossed out all the Sonic pictures because I HATED Sonic for being RUBBISH. I am sorry."




It's not really a cheats book. It's an empty notebook for you to write your own cheats down on. It must've been a lot easier to produce than today's 200-page walkthroughs of Splinter Cell.




Mario cheats shouldn't really be written down in a SEGA book.




If you've got some old rubbish on your attic that says SEGA on it, please send it in. We're rapidly becoming the Wikipedia of SEGA.

Labels: GONZO

Here's some of the stuff we've been sent. You might think this is the 'easy option' but in fact it's amazingly tiresome cutting and pasting the best bits out of emails. It's too much like our day job.

If any of the below stuff is from you, you are one of these:

THING ONE: SOME PHOTOS OF THE NEW ZEALAND XBOX 360 'LAUNCH BUS'

"New Zealand's Xbox 360 pre-launch idea. Instead of a big party we got a custom bus filled with the units they put in the shops. Twenty of them, with released games like PGR3, CoD2, DOA4, Kameo, Tiger Wood and a demo of the final build of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter."

"They also had giveaways (trucker hats, armbands, lanyards) and some chick dressed up as Joanna Dark (no photos of her)."








THING TWO: A LINK TO THE 'RUB RABBITS' FLASH GAME

http://www.the-rub-rabbits.com/minigame/en/index2.html


THING THREE: A HUGE PSP AD BANNER ON A BUILDING IN MANCHESTER

"I took it in Manchester. Feel free to do what you like with it."




THING FOUR: A REINTERPRETATION OF THE 'EMILY BOOTH' MAGAZINE COVER

"Hidden message in the Emily Booth cover."




THING FIVE: MAN IN JAPAN SPOTS SEGA iDOG AND iFISH

"I spotted the now infamous Sega product Homestar in a shop in Japan today. Lo and behold, what was next to it? The Sega Toys duo of iDog and iFish. I've got no idea what they do but it's nice to see Sega catering for the iPod generation, right? Plus they were in a sale too! That makes me sad."




THING SIX: THOSE OLD PHOTOS OF GIRLS AND GAMES CONSOLES

"Just wondered what you thought about these piccies..."

http://www.siliconera.com/2006/03/04/the-girls-of-gaming


THING SEVEN: EMILY BOOTH ON TV!

"Well i don't know if this is good or bad news but Miss Booth can still get some kind of televised work. She can now be found on some crappy Sky quiz channel called iplay, on channel 166 i think. Oh my surprise when her face popped up at 3 in the afternoon when i was flicking through the channels. Well its like the world has turned full circle with her back on unknown television but at least on LiveTV she nearly got her kit off!"

"No wonder she has been selling her fanny encrusted wares on Ebay, times are truly hard."

"I have enclosed some poor pics that i took with my Sony Ericsson, also it would appear that times are hard for Nipper the dog also, as he appears to have taken up a part time job outside of HMV with her."

"Hope you enjoy, sorry if it's nothing to wank over."










THING EIGHT: POPSTATION SPOTTED

"Exclusive PSP Redesign spotted!"

"This was probably not worth the soul rending effort it took to actually get the photo off of my fucking phone."




THING NINE: LARA CROFT, DESIGN LEGEND

"I received this email from the Tomb Raider mailing list. So far as I can tell, the first Tomb Raider game is a candidate for BBC Culture Show's Design Quest whatever. Not being Brit I have no idea what that is, but it may be worthy of your interest."

"Somewhat amusing:"

"'Equally important to its success was the skill with which the designers and animators at Core Design depicted its central character, Lara Croft, as a post-feminist heroine'."

"...Says the BBC site, refering to the original misshapen Lara of course."

"Also since when are videogames considered cultural?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/cultureshow/designquest/vote/


THING TEN: TWO SEPARATE EMAILS ABOUT GIZMONDO

On the way back from E3 last year I ended up sitting next to a Gizmondo PR. I pretended to be asleep or absorbed in my plethora of handheld consoles in order to avoid having to speak to them, but I did listen in when he was speaking to some European web journo sitting on his other side. During that conversation I found out that the PR's favourite game ever was the vertical shooter that was exclusive to Gizmondo because "all these new games are rubbish. I like them old school. Alpha Blaster (I just made up the name, I can't be bothered to remember it or look it up) is brilliant because it's old school." I also found out that his favourite game from the show was Okami. He said it was "the first game on the PS2 that I've seen that actually looks any good. I haven't liked anything else on PS2 till now."

Yours,
An anonymous industry person.

EMAIL 2:

Just a quick word to say I used to work at the Cheadle's office of Gizmondo and the story put forward so far is completely true.

The problem was never the people in the development studios (well apart from maybe the Swedish studios who didn't actually release or finish anything) all the ex-Warthog staff, and to be fair the studio managers as well were constantly fed reports that 'everything was fine' and that 'this is just a small mishap'. Of course if a company doesn't even talk to their employers, let alone about the state of business, then employees themselves have no way of knowing how desperately bad things are. After all the company had just signed a 14 year lease on the studio building and had invited designers around who were planning to remould the studio into the theme of a giant Gizmondo with curvy desks and floors. oohh..fancy!

I think one of the more laughable situations for me personally however was when a time came around where the company basically admitted that the people in head office had no idea what they were supposed to do ( I suppose when you fill the company with models, cars, race horses and what not it may get a tad confusing). As a result everyone in the company had to fill out a form detailing exactly what they're role was within the company and whom they were answerable too (I guess the horse was at a slight disadvantage). At this point we were assured that any staff cuts would be purely in the administrate roles at Head Office. Maybe the clever people in charge got confused, maybe they thought the Head Office was in fact in Cheadle, however the very next week the whole studio was given a months notice.

When the rumours of redundancies first surfaced the person in charge of Human Resources (I.e the person who is supposed to represent and look after the employees throughout the company...but maybe she forgot that as well) thought 'sod it' and went off on her holiday knowing full well the situation everyone was in. Not once did anyone from head office show any concern for the employees in the development studios, nor during the 'consultancy period' did they think to further 'consult' staff about what was going on (they were all too busy covering their secretary's in silly-string for Christmas cards).

All in all a interesting experience! Although I can understand how the company might have been able to convince investors at the time (being able to show them a product and a couple of games and saying 'look! we -are- making something really!') I dread to think that somehow the people responsible will move on to other projects in the future and secure even more investor money to continue their manipulative lifestyle (and maybe buy the remaining 398 Ferrari Enzos!),

Also you might be interested to know, not happy with playing the world once, rumour has it that Carl Freer is in the process of starting a new company! http://www.xeromobile.com/. (http://www.gizmondoforums.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5469&st=0) Not sure what they are about yet however they seem to be very keen to gather investors at present. Another Gizmondo like scam I hear you say? Most likely, I suppose $3.45m salary isn't enough and the guy does still have to keep with insurance payments on his $115,662 car.

I'd prefer to stay anonymous for now thanks.


THING ELEVEN: "VITAL INFORMATION CONCERNING MICHAEL JACKSON AND THE DESTRUCTION OF PLANET EARTH"

"Check this out. It's the fucking shit."

http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/

"Your servants, Phil and Muffin"


FINAL THING: A SONIC THE HEDGEHOG WINAMP SKIN

"You'll probably like this:"

http://www.winamp.com/skins/details.php?id=147154



"Yay!"

Yay for you. Nice work, scouts. See you in [time period until we can be bothered to do it all this tiresome cuttin' an' pastin' an' image resizin' again].

ONE FINAL CONCERN
We're worried we've spunked too much good stuff in one update, which will lead to the internet's "interesting reserves" being fully depleted by summer. So we might never do this again.

Labels: GONZO

Some days we feel like Sega is doing things specifically for our entertainment. Like today:



"Let's get out the Sonic costume and do some photos for UKR!"




"They're bound to do an update about this! I look so stupid! Ha ha ha! Look at me! I'm Sonic The Hedgehog!"




"Let me wear it for the next one!"




"Bend your knees more, Steve!"

Thanks, Sega. Next week, could you dress up like Cream The Rabbit and wee on us in the bath?

Labels: GONZO

And to think it used to be such a bustling hive of activity when it opened less than a year ago.



At least the management paid themselves several million dollars, so everything turned out OK! Thanks to OFFICIAL UKR SEGA SCOUT Tomleecee for the photo. It's a good pic and it's nice that the binman is in front of it. Adds depth and colour, that.

Labels: GONZO

Hey there, Sega Scouts! You've all been busy! We've had loads of email, and for once it isn't all about buying Viagra from India, or getting a billion pounds from Nigeria, or removing that libellous update we did about that shit thing your company makes.

We've had emails about Sega! And games! And other things people think are the sort of things we might like to do updates about.

Anyone who's emailed us something is now officially a UKR SEGA NEWS SCOUT. You may download this badge and display it on your blogjournalspace with pride:



Making text go in a circle in Photoshop is an exciting new thing we've just learned how to do. Here are the things we've been sent by the UKR SEGA NEWS SCOUTS recently:

THING ONE: FAKE PSP PROMOTIONAL VIDEO

"Hi UKR"

"This was up for a while ago but only via torrent -- now it's available via the magic of Google Video, wheeee! enjoy!"

FAKE PSP PROMOTIONAL VIDEO



THING TWO: A PIECE OF 'NEW GAMES JOURNALISM' POSTED ON IGN, OF ALL PLACES, WHICH WE WERE PRESUMABLY SUPPOSED TO RIP THE PISS OUT OF

"I thought it would be ripped to shreds already!"

'NEW GAMES JOURNALISM' POSTED ON IGN



THING THREE: 'SEGA MUSIC' WIKIPEDIA ENTRY

"Hi guys."

"You may have already seen this and posted about it, but just in case you haven't..."

'SEGA MUSIC' WIKIPEDIA ENTRY

"The music's traditional form was largely improvised and was intensely emotional. It was also used as a funereal dirge and as part of traditional exorcisms."

"Who knew SEGA had such magical powers?"

"Look at the woman dancing the SEGA too!"

"If you've already seen this and are already bored to tears of random peple sending this to you, then feel free to bin this immediatly..."



THING FOUR: ANCIENT SAKURA TAISEN ADVERT FROM JAPAN

ANCIENT SAKURA TAISEN ADVERT FROM JAPAN

"Had to pass this on"



THING FIVE: SEGA TOYS 'MAKE-UP GAME FOR GIRLS' COMING TO AMERICA

"Radica, the company that makes these stand-alone joystick only titles has signed a deal with Sega."

HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 9, 2006--Radica Games Limited (NASDAQ:RADA) has announced a partnership with Sega Toys (a subsidiary of Sega(R) Corporation) to develop, manufacture and distribute Digi Makeover, one of the most anticipated toys to debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York City, February 12-15. Designed for today's young teen girls, Digi Makeover includes a makeup case-styled touch pad with digital camera that plugs directly into the TV and lets girls take their picture and get creative with their very own makeover, including makeup, hairstyles and accessories.

Digi Makeover is expected to hit retail shelves in the fall of 2006 and will retail for approximately $59.99.

According to Jim Silver, editor of Toy Wishes Magazine, Radica's Digi Makeover was one of the most talked-about products when industry experts saw it last October. "If the execution is done well and there aren't any major problems with it, I can see it being a big hit this fall," he says.

"Sega Toys continues to be a dominant force in interactive entertainment," says Pat Feely, CEO, Radica. "We're thrilled to be partnering with them and bring their innovative technology to this
product."

Isao Kokubun, president and CEO, Sega Toys notes, "As a leader in girls' lifestyle products, Radica is an important partner to bring the concept of digital makeovers to the retail marketplace."

The foregoing discussion contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from projected results. Forward-looking statements include statements about efforts to attract or prospects for additional or increased business, new product introductions and other statements of a non-historical nature. Actual results may differ from projected results due to various Risk Factors, including Risks of Manufacturing in China, Dependence on Product Appeal and New Product Introductions, and Dependence on Major Customers, as set forth in the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2004, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. See "Item 3. Key Information -- Risk Factors" in such report on Form 20-F.



THING SIX: ANOTHER ASTOUNDING COMPLAINT ABOUT THE RETRO GAMING FEATURE, ONLY IT READS SO POORLY WE SUSPECT IT MIGHT BE A FAKE (AND IF IT ISN'T A FAKE WE GENUINELY FEEL A BIT SORRY FOR THE AUTHOR)

"Your Retro Special is a defilement to 1000's of gamers world wide. To act like the old should of never existed only means that you have no respect to what brought games to what they are. BACK THEN and AT THE TIME, those games were top of the line in not only entertainment, but even technology. International Karate, along with Street FIghter 2, Mortal Konbat, and many more has given the fighting games of today a platform of exsistence. WIthout them, you may never even see your damned VF4 (another thing: VF4 is made up from the improvement of 3 other game before it. You wouldn't have VF4 without even those 3 games)."

"Games like FFVII, Sonic 2, and Driver were the cream of the corn. They were the at the top, and the pinical, or the gaming stages before all else came along. Without FFVII, or even Final Fantasy 1! There may not even be a strong base for any existence of good RPG."

"As for other poiints, sex in games was never a strong point outside of the virgin 18 year old players. Noone really cared for 1000 polygon girls as much as they did with the 200 pixel failure of Sam Fox Strip Poker. Cause they are all into real things, honestly."

"oh, and the lack of back light during the Gameboy days. This factor was to cut to damn cost. Really good for those short on cash, cause those things like the GameGear failed based on eye hazzard, and for cost. the Back Light screens of the GBA sp and DS are a invention of price reduction in the economy. If you gaming in your hands for the go that wasn't over 500 buck to have back in 1995, you'd never be bitching about the Gameboy not having a light. You'd have a flash light shoved in your mouth while under the bed sheets playing Pokemon for the 150th catch."

"For fuck sacks, you're got it made in the fucking sun with gamign to day. Respect the past, cause it's hardships gave you this golden shove that is surgecly embedded in your ass!"

--
This is not an MTV commersial...

- James



THING SEVEN: SOMETHING ABOUT ENTIRELY FABRICATED GIRL GAMING CLAN THE FRAG DOLLS (U.S.)

"I don't know if we're supposed to send in news about the Entirely Fabricated Girl Gaming Clan The Frag Dolls to you anymore in case you're tired of the Entirely Fabricated Girl Gaming Clan The Frag Dolls.

"Just in case though, here's a link where the writer appears to be unsure what's sexier, Entirely Fabricated Girl Gaming Clan The Frag Dolls member "Rhoulette" or shooting Nazis in planes."

SOMETHING ABOUT ENTIRELY FABRICATED GIRL GAMING CLAN THE FRAG DOLLS (U.S.)

"There, that's got to be a contender for most extraneous mention of Entirely Fabricated Girl Gaming Clan The Frag Dolls yet!"



THING EIGHT: A LINK TO SOME BBC RESEARCH ON 'GAMING'

"...whereby anyone who has accidently played a mobile game instead of pressing the shortcut for sending a text, or lent on the red button of their remote and played an interactive TV game in the last 6 months qualifies as a 'gamer'."

"Other highlights:"

"Playing a game of any sort once a week or more makes you a heavy user."

"Sega Dreamcast is more popular than Sony PSP across the 6-35 year old age range."

"66% of 6-10 year olds have played interactive TV games in the last 6 months. This is more than Xbox, Gamecube, Dreamcast and PSP put together. And more than mobile games."

BBC RESEARCH ON 'GAMING'

"I'm sure you could squeeze an update out of this report. And feel free to crib any of what I've written."



THING NINE: SOMEONE'S COLLECTION OF BOOTH BABE PHOTOS:

"Now that the subject of the E3 booth babes is all over the Internet, here is a link to my annual boot babe pictorial to add to your list - the best to be found anywhere - every year - eight years running!"

BOOTH BABE PHOTOS



THING TEN: A LINK TO A WEB SITE THAT SELLS 'INTERCHANGABLE RECTAL UNITS'

'INTERCHANGABLE RECTAL UNITS'

"There's got to be a joke in there somewhere, I'm sure."

What a fitting way to end. Keep them coming, Scouts!

Labels: GONZO

Well we had nothing else to do and there was nothing on TV apart from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and some gardening...




...and it was still another seven days until we had to go back to work and we were already bored of life, the internet and Kate's Playground, so decided to GO OUTSIDE and see if anywhere in fashionable London had Xbox 360s in stock. If they do, we're getting one. For Geometry Wars, and Xbox 360's other entertaining launch game -- Setting Up Your Wireless Network.




Our best score on Setting Up Your Wireless Network is 42 minutes! Setting Up Your Wireless Network comes free on every Xbox 360!




Anyway. This is GAME in Oxford Street. You can see two things (1) They have no Xbox 360s, and (2) they're trying to charge fifty quid for Quake 4 for no one to buy because they haven't got an Xbox 360 to play it on. That's very optimistic of them.




This is HMV in Oxford Street. It's where people like us go to buy things we want. It's HUGE and sells EVERYTHING you could ever need. It's the shop that always opens at midnight when games launch. It is the THE official shop of men in London.




Except it hasn't got any Xbox 360s. This is REALLY BAD.




This made us happy though! Ha ha! Stupid Sony fucks! It's not just Microsoft that can't get its most important thing, ever, into the shops for when people want to buy it.




This is GAME in Canary Wharf. Canary Wharf is London's new financial district, full of posh buildings and businessmen in suits. The sort of men who would happily spunk away three hundred quid on an Xbox 360 in their lunch break. Only they can't, because they're all out of stock here too.




FAT OR PREGNANT? For about three years, ever since first getting a phone with a camera on, we've had the idea of doing "FAT OR PREGNANT?" -- a joke quiz about whether women we see on the London Underground system are pregnant, or just fat. The reason behind this is this. If she is PREGNANT, then OF COURSE we'll give up our seat to let her sit down. We are gentlemanly like that, despite how it seems on the internet.

If, however, she's JUST A BIT FAT, offering her a seat would horrify the poor woman who would think she's so FAT AND DISGUSTING that she looks pregnant. She'd be devastated, her self confidence would be SHATTERED and she'd probably go home and cry and comfort eat, which would make things even worse. That's a dilemma we face almost once a week because we get on the train at a part of the line where you usually always get a seat going home. So, is she FAT and therefore the standing up is probably doing her good, or is she PREGNANT and are we being a bastard in not offering up our seat? It's hard being a modern man and having to sometimes worry about women's feelings :(




This is Computer Exchange. We were going to describe Computer Exchange as "where heroin addicts go to sell mobile phones and laptops they've stolen off businessmen" but that might be libellous, so instead we'll say it's where people go to exchange secondhand games for money and other games and hardware. Here, a SECONDHAND CORE PACK costs you THREE HUNDRED POUNDS! In American, that's 527 US dollars or, to put in another way, BLATANT PROFITEERING!




Incredibly, we went back to CEX on December 30, and they'd whacked the price up to 325 quid! It's more proof that the only winners in the Xbox 360 launch are the people that bought ones to sell on at a profit. Sorry the photo's a bit blurry, it's because our shoulders were HEAVING WITH LAUGHTER.




And now the Virgin Megastore. No Xbox 360s. The man on the till said "February mate" when we asked if they had any.




They haven't even got the high-def cables. Not that we need one, apart from to hang ourselves with to escape the boredom.




Oh god. Even on December 28 the shops are gearing up for the next event where we have to spend lots of money buying things for people we don't like :(





Anyway, so we went home and spent the evening of December 28 2005 watching the Tomb Raider movie, having failed to find an Xbox 360 to buy in all of London. After Tomb Raider finished we had a wank and some mince pies. Or some mince pies and a wank, it's a bit of a blur.




These are the mince pies. If you want to see photos of the wank, email in and ask.

THE SUMMARY
You couldn't buy an Xbox 360 in the most popular bits of London on December 28 2005. Which is pretty bad when you think about how important it is, and how the machine supposedly "launched" five weeks ago. It's the worst hardware launch ever! Looks like lots of people will be waiting for PlayStation3 or Nintendo Revolution, not out of choice but out of necessity, thanks to Microsoft's over-ambition.

Labels: GONZO