My latest article for Gemr.com looks at the history of the longest running collectable card game in the world, Magic: The Gathering.
This one took a lot of research as I’d never really looked into the history of the game before despite having played it off-and-on since 2013. It’s not a comprehensive recount of the game, but more a general overview.
Still, I hope you enjoy. 😀
I’ve been a little late in posting this, but I’ve had two more articles recently appear on Gemr.com.
The first is a look at grading and valuing your collection with a few tips to get you started, which you can read HERE. This one was a lot of fun to write as I was able to take from my own experiance of doing just this sort of thing.
The second is looking at five controversial comic books. While Gemr had an article on controversial comics already, that previous article looked at comics that were controversial within the fandom while mine looks at five whose controversy overflowed to the mainstream world. You can read that one HERE.
Enjoy. 😀
Comic book retail has a long history of being a hard business. You don’t go into it to make money, you do it for the love of the medium. For 24 years Graphic Action Comics in Newcastle, NSW, Australia had been fighting the good fight. At the start of this month the store closed its doors for the final time.
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Originally this article was just going to be about the history of the Myst series which, as you’ll know if you’ve followed this blog at all, is one of my favorite video game series of all time.
However, as I researched the game I realised that it would be much more interesting to look at both Myst and Doom, two games that came out the same year and had a huge amount of influence on the videogame medium, even though they couldn’t be any more different.
Hope you enjoy the article.
As you may have gathered if you’ve looked through the blog at all, I’m something of a retro game fan. I grew up playing the Sega Master System and Mega Drive and had a Dreamcast before Sega moved to being a third party developer. I even owned a Saturn and Game Gear in there somewhere.
Still being a big Sega fan I love being able to replay these games, but it can be a little hard or inconvenient to do so. The original hardware is tricky to get to work perfectly on modern TVs (remember, this tech is 30 odd years old) and original games can go for insane prices. While it can be easy enough to set up an emulator on a PC, a PC isn’t really something you can just whip out for a quick game of Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine.
Continue reading “I Bought Myself an 8Bitdo Mini Controller”
My third article for Gemr.com is up. This one looks at five characters/ franchises that deserve the have their own Pop Vinyl or Hard Candy figures from Funko. Hope you enjoy. 😀
My second article for collector website Gemr.com went live recently. This one was an absolute pleasure to write as it looks at the history of my personal favourite comics hero, The Phantom.
The article takes a bit of a different tact than most “history of…” articles thought in that it doesn’t just recount how the series came to be and where it is today, but rather the impact it had on the people who read it and how that in turn influenced their culture and the character himself!
Lots of research went in to this, so if you take a moment to read it (pleas do) I hope you enjoy it.
Since moving to the UK I’d not really had anywhere to play Magic: The Gathering. In Australia I would go at least once a week – but often twice a week – to my local game store to play with fellow geeks. Be it an official event such as Friday Night Magic or just casual games it was always a lot of fun and something I truly missed in coming to the UK.
However, since my wife and I moved from Oxford to Hampshire, I’ve been spoilt with the choice of two game shops right near me, both of which put on Magic events. Well, this week I attended my pick of the two’s FNM, which for reasons I can’t quite remember they hold on a Wednesday.
I thought I might try something with this post; start a monthly summary of everything collecting related that’s happened in the last month. I thought it’d be a good way to look back at what I’ve picked up, what I’ve written, read, played and experienced in the world of collecting. So, without further ado lets begin…
Continue reading “The Wrap Up – August, 2018”
For those who may not be aware, Shenmue is a game originally released for the Sega Dreamcast in 1999. An early example of an open world game, it was incredibly innovative for its time. Recently, Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki announced that the long awaited Shenmue III was finally being developed. To celebrate, the original two games have been re-released on modern consoles and PC.
I played Shenmue for the first time when it originally came out on the Dreamcast, but 14-year old me was never able to get past the early parts of the game’s closing act. Hopefully, with age and wisdom, the re-release would afford me the chance to finally see the game’s end.
Continue reading “Finally, After 20 Odd Years, I’ve Completed Shenmue!”
