NumberSix

Ooh, looks lovely.

When's it out?

Oh yeah and get Super Mario 64. That is the best console game ever made at least.

Don't forget Perfect Dark and Mario Kart.

Three essentials.

That's a rubbish argument.

You're saying that just because a game is old, it's shit?

No, I'm saying that's how it's viewed. As far as a publisher is concerned, every game has a lifespan. A short lifespan. They bang it out with whatever publicity they feel it deserves, earn the money off it, and move on to the next project. It might get a platinum release further down the line if it's lucky. It's not like music where a whole generation of people will come back to an album launched decades ago and either replace their vinyl with a CD or buy it for the first time: the medium moves too quickly for that. An X-Box can do a shitload more than a Spectrum ever could, whereas Oasis and the Beatles aren't all that different, from a technical point of view. For commercial purposes anything that appeared on the Speccy (or even before the current generation of consoles) is little more than a curio, unless they can squeeze a current gen sequel out of it somehow.

I'm not saying that old games aren't good, just that the market demands the latest and greatest. If a music comparison has to be made, I'd say that the games market is closest to the singles chart.

The demand is there, but the titles need to be packaged, priced and converted properly.

There's a certain element that is interested in stuff like that, but I personally think that it's a pretty small minority. Take a look at how many copies of Midway Classics were on the shelves on launch day, and compare with whatever high profile franchise titles were released at the same time. My nephew would take one look at Jet Pac and declare it to be shit. Put him in front of the latest high profile X-box release and he'll almost certainly be captivated.

Why can't you with electronic games?

Because old games are shit and comprise a tiny, tiny fraction of the industry. People are interested in the latest franchise release, not Atic Atac.

I've never heard of him.

From that I assume he isn't very important.

How extremely tedious.

Who's S Campbell?

He's a games journalist. He's written a piece on piracy. You can access it by clicking the underlined bit of text in the original post, at the top of the page, just after the words 'it's here at...'

For the record.... there are some interesting and valid points in there, but the argument that piracy is good because it preserves the past is clearly bollocks. There's no disctinction made between proper piracy and emulation.

Heroin wasn't it?

He was doing fine until he got fucked over by the police, to be honest. He went into a spiral of depression, brought on by what he saw as the injustice (and the fact that work was thin on the ground) and he was obsessed with clearing his name. I think you could make a reasonable argument that the religious right (and the police/courts) killed him rather than the drugs.

The way the police handled his death is one of the most shocking things in the film though. Absolutely incredible.

Documentary on the life of legendary American comic Lenny Bruce. For those that don't know his story, Bruce was hounded by the police in the 60s and eventually convicted of obscenity. He was the inspiration for countless comics, Bill Hicks being one of the most notable, and genuinely changed the world: no comic since has been convicted of obscenity in America. He was way, way ahead of his time, and much of his material is as funny and relevant now as it was back then, over 40 years ago. He was brilliant, check him out.

Narrated by Robert de Niro, it recounts his life from his humble beginnings on the stage just out of the navy, with extensive interviews with his mum and friends of the time. A fascinating story, very well told. The injustice of it all is terribly, terribly sad, and the film manages to portray that very well indeed, contrasting his actual material with the charges brought against him. There's loads of old footage, both of his tv apearances and routines, and his many, many court dates. The transition from intelligent bright young comic to an utterly broken man really is terribly moving.

If you like stand-up comedy, and particularly if you like Bill Hicks, you really should see this (oscar nominated) movie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175844/

I just rented this today - I never played the first one.

It's, er, pretty hard, eh?

Leader is down!  Repeat: leader is down!

Again.

I used to be a furious DVD buyer. I've got shitloads of the fuckers just taking up space.

Then I signed up with a monthly dvd-by-mail site (netflix.com), about a year ago. I've only bought two or three since then. $20 a month. Bargain.

I imagine this is all negotiable. Gaming freelance work, yes, that stuff should need to be cleared. But TV work? This sounds like nonsense.

With a few obvious exceptions anything you do in your own time is your own business. If you're doing work for a competitor for instance, a publisher will rightly pull you up on it. Same goes if you're freelancing during work time or using work equipment.

Apart from that unless you've signed an incredibly restrictive (and utterly unique) contract, you'll be free to do what you want. That said common sense dicates that you should make your boss aware of any external work you're doing, no matter how unrelated it may be.

If it was a decent job then someone would be willing to pay you a decent wage to do it. Anyone accepting a job like this is either selling themselves waaaaaay short, or isn't good enough to get a decent writing gig.

That's simply not right, I'm afraid. Staffers get paid shit money. Always have, always will. Especially at future, who are a shower of shites. You don't go into magazine journalism to get rich.

So, what would be the most advisable route into journalism (be it films, games, whatever)? I was looking at courses in journalism, but to the best of my knowledge, the only one in Ireland is in Dublin, and I'm not too keen on moving there. Plus, I'd need around 500 points out of a possible 600 in the Leaving Cert to get a place, and that's very, very unlikely.

The other route I was looking at was doing Arts in UCC (University College Cork), which is much, much closer to home. But what subjects should I do within Arts?

Not to dissuade you from doing one of those degrees, but a qualification like that won't necessarily give you an in.

As mentioned elsewhere, the best way to get into the industry is simply to write. A degree in a related field will certainly not do any harm as regards helping you along your way, but the degree itself won't necessarily make you any more attractive to employers. Having a shitload of good writing in your portfolio will. Start your own site, for instance. Showcase your stuff on there. Then hassle editors/fanzines/local papers for freelance work, showing them the stuff you've got on your site as evidence of your abilities. Don't take no for an answer, either.

Far too many Journalism/Media graduates waltz out of uni thinking they're the dogs bollocks. Unfortunately for them the guy that took the editorial monkey job at 18 has three years on the job experience over them, so if you do go that route, make sure you're doing everything you can to get practical experience at the same time.

I think they should do a "drugged up" olympics, i.e. which country can produce the most effective sporting drugs wins!

They do. It's called The Olympics.

You said it yourself. All your examples are from HBO, a subscription channel.

Network US TV is a different kettle of fish entirely. I thought it was obvious that Charles was comparing network TV in the US with that in the UK.

Oh. I didn't.

It's not comparing like with like, in that case. US Network, especially primetime TV, is similar to six pm saturday on BBC1.

My point was just that there's plenty of edgy stuff on US telly. You just have to look for it a bit.

ALso one thing which is perhaps better here is that we are far more relaxed about things like swearing and sex.  In the US, showing a bood during a football match causes all kinds of national choas.

You are aware of The Sopranos, yes? Six Feet Under? Oz? etc etc. Plenty of swearing, fighting and fucking airing on US telly.

The Janet Jackson tit thing, although massively overblown, was only an issue because of when it happened. ie primetime on a national network.

Our TV is shit compared to what, exactly?

HBO.

Derek & Clive -

"T.V."

[ from the album "Ad Nauseam" (1978) ]

CLIVE:

    D'you know, I'll tell you something which really annoys me .....

DEREK:

    Yes, tell me.

CLIVE:

    ..... of which nobody tells the fucking truth about .....

DEREK:

    Mmm, ye-e-ess, mmmm.

CLIVE:

    ..... and that's how much television affects people. I mean, peop-, kids, you know, elderly people, all that sort of type, they watch television and they get very influenced by it.

DEREK:

    Yeah.

CLIVE:

    And I speak from personal, you know, personal knowledge.

DEREK:

    (belches out:) RIGHT YOU DO!

CLIVE:

    I-, I was watching that 'Holocaust' thing, you know, where-, that story about, er, .....

DEREK:

    (sniggers)

CLIVE:

    ..... about Hitler and Him-

DEREK:

    Yeah, what a cunt he was!

CLIVE:

    Well, he-, yeah .....

DEREK:

    Ohhhhh, I didn't want to know, he's a cunt!

CLIVE:

    He's horrible.

DEREK:

    Yeah, fuckin'-, fucking .....

CLIVE:

    And he, you know, he formed this dislike of-, for some reason, probably psychological, for, er, the Jews.

DEREK:

    Yeah.

CLIVE:

    And the story was on Holocaust how, er, you know, they all got wiped out and, er, .....

DEREK:

    Mm.

CLIVE:

    ..... put in gas ovens and stuff like that. And I was very influenced by that 'cause, er, Michael Moriaty was very good as that, er, Nazi.

DEREK:

    Mmm.

CLIVE:

    And, as soon as I switched off the third episode I, er, got on, er, got on a number 18 .....

DEREK:

    Mmm.

CLIVE:

    ..... and got up to Golders Green and I must have-, I must have slaughtered about eighteen thousand before I realised, you know, what I was doing .....

DEREK:

    Mmm.

CLIVE:

    ..... I thought, 'the fucking television has driven me to this'.

DEREK:

    Yeah, mmm.

CLIVE:

    Same thing happened with, er, you remember 'Andy Pandy'?

DEREK:

    Yeah.

CLIVE:

    He used to come on. As soon as that was on I used to get in a glove. I used to jump in a glove and rush down the road and, you know, the power it has over people.

DEREK:

    Mmm.

Excellent thanks. Don't know how I missed it

I've looked on supernova and torrentreactor for that torrent, but can't find it.

Any other suggestions?

This is just down the road from me. I thought it was about comics though.

OutRun 2 on demo pods? With Halo 2 out the same time? Don't think so.

Halo 2 is going to sell itself though.

I should buy it then, yes? What sorta music are we talking here? I know next to nothing about this but have always been intrigued. I love documentaries about music. Any music, man. I can enjoy U2 and RHCP docs, despite having no interest in these bands. I'd like to think that Buena Vista Social Club will actually meet my musical tastes as well, however.

It's about a group of cuban jazz guys. Anyone who's remotely interested in music of any kind should see it. It's absolutely fascinating.

Unless you hate latin jazz, of course. Even if you do the characters are just so interesting, and all the more so because they're real blokes.

My mate Jason says it's shit.

Jason is a clueless muppet.