Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

So, last week saw the release of promotional material for Modern Warfare 3. I was walking into Tesco when I noticed the stand with empty game cases close by the door. It surprised me because I really wasn't expecting it. I had pretty much forgotten the new CoD comes out in November and it is only June so I didn't expect Tesco to be flying the Call of Duty flag so early in the year. Game and Gamestation, yes... Tesco, no. Mind you, on the release of Black Ops my local Tesco was over run with people buying the game (and I'll bet a lot of employers were wondering why no one was in work that morning). I'll also point out that I don't live in a city, just a town, so it's not like the epicenter for all the fans to purchase their next hit of gaming goodness.

Below is a picture of the Modern Warfare 3 box that has hit the shelves as a promotional tool.

Last year Black Ops left a sour taste in some peoples mouth as it failed to live up to the hype. Many hardcore online gamers reverted back to Modern Warfare 2 for the all out mayhem. This isn't to say Black Ops is not a good game. Treyarch did do a good job with the story and the extra zombie content but it felt (and pretty much is) a rework of World at War. Anyway, I'm not going to bang on about the pros and cons of Black Ops as this is not a review.

As has always been the way with Activision they alternate between Treyarch and Infinity Ward and this installment will be brought to you by the more than capable Infinity Ward.

So with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 back in the hands of Infinity Ward one things for sure... that unrivaled online multi-player action will be back and better than ever.

Nintendo Wii - Classic Controller Pro.

Being a big fan of retro games it would be rude not to have a classic controller for the Wii. The one I decided to buy was the Classic Controller Pro in gold.

I am very impressed, they have done a cracking job with this pad. Even though the controller feels very light it doesn't feel cheap. All the buttons have a nice crisp feeling to them and the overall finish is outstanding. Everything is nice and accessible and it just fits your hands perfectly. I haven't actually held the standard classic controller (the one without the grips) but I think the pro will be easier to hold, use and live with. The grips that have been added make it less aesthetically pleasing compared to the original classic controller but damn, it's one comfortable controller.

Last night I used the pad to play Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past (check out my LTTP review), I racked up almost 3 hours on the game and my hands could have easily carried on. Sadly it was late and I had to get some sleep otherwise my hands would have happily played well into next week. I read somewhere that Capcom had a hand (no pun intended) in helping make this pad. Both Nintendo and Capcom have done themselves proud. While I do like the Wii's wiimote and nun-chuck it's nice to have a traditional method of input like this classic controller. A point to note is not all true Wii titles are compatible with it and it cannot be used as a GameCube controller. You are able to use it with the new Golden Eye, and I would recommend it for this game instead of the Wii's native mote and chuck. If you are unsure what games it does work with check the reverse of the game box. It is worth its money (between £10 - £20) just to use with the Virtual Console games. The biggest, and only real downfall is the fact you can't use it as a GC pad.

Sega - Living In Shadow.

Sega has always lived in shadow. They did have their successes but never quite made it. It was a crying shame when we lost one of the pioneers of home consoles. Atari, Amiga, Sinclair, and Sega to name but a few that have fallen by the wayside. In fact we have lost all of them with the exception of Nintendo (but that's another story for another day). The birth, life and death of Sega as a console manufacturer started with the SG-1000.

The Sega SG-1000 was launched in Japan on July 15, 1983 (the same day as Nintendo launched their Famicom system, also known as the NES - Nintendo Entertainment System). The SG-1000 wasn't a complete failure and did sell pretty well in Asia but not as well as rival systems. It went through 3 revisions while on sale and also had a 4th revision in Taiwan where it was well loved, and remembered as an iconic system. The 4th revision sold in Taiwan was most likely a modified Master System. The system was also

sold in Australia, France, Italy, South Africa, Spain and New Zealand. In the original format it was never sold in North America. The SG-1000 was a second generation console while the NES was a third generation console (8bit era). While these words are kind it wasn't a popular system and the only real success was in Taiwan.

Sega's next console was the Master System. A direct competitor to the mighty NES. I'm not going to bore you with release dates and sales figures but I will say; Sega didn't do too badly with this one. In Brazil and Europe it sold well, it was on sale and selling for around 10 years. The Master System was sold in North America but couldn't touch the NES due its popularity and game library.

I spent many an hour in my miss-spent youth playing "Alex the Kidd" and "Sonic" on the Master System[2]. Quite a few friends also had Master System's which isn't surprising considering it was popular throughout Europe. On a technical level the Sega Master system was the superior machine. Even though the Master System had the Brazilian market mostly to itself, had success in Europe and was marketed in North America it still only managed a fraction of Nintendo's global sales.

Enter the Game Gear.

The Game Gear was virtually a hand held Master System. It was an all round quality piece of kit. Instead of having a monochromatic display like Nintendo's Gameboy, the Game Gear sported a full colour LCD screen. However it wasn't the first handheld to have a full colour display, that award goes the the Atari Lynx. The Game Gear also had a good set of accessories. There was a Tv tuner which allowed you to watch full colour television and the MasterGear which allowed you to play Master System cartridges on the hand held as well as car chargers and battery boosters.

The Lynx was ahead of its time and like most things ahead of its time it failed. Both the Lynx and Game Gear had poor battery life compared to the Gameboy, they also cost considerably more. The Lynx was released about 1 year prior to the Game Gear and sold roughly 5 million units. The Game Gear did much better than that selling approximately 11 million units. Both the Lynx and Game Gear's sales added together were nothing compared to the juggernaut that was Nintendo's Gameboy. The Gameboy was an unstoppable
force with just under 65.5 million units sold worldwide (that's not including sales of the Gameboy Colour, Gameboy Advance or Gameboy SP).

Nintendo, the thorn in Sega's side, had done it again.

Next came the greatest success Sega would ever achieve in the console market with the Sega MegaDrive/Sega Genesis.

They never released an official sales figure for the Mega Drive but estimates range from about 30 - 40 million units. Upon release the console was ignored in Japan. To try and boost sales Sega offered a few state of the art accessories such as an online banking pherial and an answering machine. Even so, it still had no success in Japan but all was not lost. Thanks to clever marketing in North America the Mega Drive did well. At the start of 1992 Sega had the advantage with a 55% market share to Nintendo's 45%, a lower price and ten times the amount of games the Snes had.

The advertising continued to market the Mega Drive as the cooler console. Due to these marketing tactics teen age boys would not admit to owning a Snes instead of a Mega Drive. Through out the early 90's Sega and Nintendo were at war. Neither could hold a lead in the market for several years and at one point Nintendo's share even dropped to 37%. Never-the-less Nintendo did end up winning the war. As always the console was very popular in Brazil and had 75% of the market there. It was also loved in Europe and enjoyed support until 1998 and sold 8 million units. The legacy of the Mega Drive still lives on through Tech Toy (Sega Firecore, Mega Drive 3 and 4).

Following the marginal success of the Game Gear, Sega had another go at a handheld console. It was called the Sega Nomad and was released in 1995 in North America.

Though the console had an NTSC/PAL switch on the internal board it was never sold in PAL regions. It was marketed as a portable Mega Drive/Genesis but was an improved version of Japan's Mega Jet (more about the Mega Jet in a moment). The Nomad had a 3.25 inch colour screen and was completely portable. Sega originally wanted the Nomad to have a touch screen interface (many years before the Nintendo DS) but at the time that kind of technology was too expensive.

Sega's Nomad could play most Sega games without an adaptor. It suffered from poor battery life.  One on going joke is X-Men requires the player to reset the game at some point to progress. The Nomad has no reset button so it was impossible to carry on. A few compatibility issues are also noted with the sister systems add-ons: 32X and the Power Base Converter. While they did work with the Nomad, the size and shape rendered them virtually useless. Imagine a handheld with a 32X plugged into the top with a game in the top of that. The Nomad only sold about 1 million units. It was a failure and the last true handheld console Sega released.

The Mega Jet, what the Nomad was based on, was a semi-portable device. It was used for in-flight entertainment by Japan Airlines. The console didn't have it's own screen but was hooked up to a small monitor used on Japan Airlines flights.

Basically the Mega Jet was a small Mega Drive. It was released in Japan for the public to buy in 1994, prior to this it could only be found on a Japan Airlines flight.

The Saturn was released on the 22nd of November, 1994 in Japan. The rest of the world saw the release in 1995. This was the 5th generation era and things were about to change. There was a new kid on the block, Sony. Sony originally planned to team up with Nintendo to make a CD based add-on for the Snes to compete with the MegaCD. However, Nintendo pulled out. Based on Sony's dealings with Nintendo they decided to release their own console, the iconic Playstation. The Saturn was a powerful beast with 2 CPU's and 6 other processors, but this made programming for the console difficult.

The Saturn was quite a popular console in Japan. About 170,000 consoles were sold on the first day of release. In North America Sega announced it would be released on September 2nd 1995. Sony announced that the release of the Playstation would be one week later. Sega had an ace up their sleeve, however. At the E3 convention in May 1995 Sega would release the Saturn immediately. This gave Sega a 4 month head start on Sony with Nintendo no where to be seen. It was mid 1996 to early 1997 before the whole world
would be able to buy the Nintendo 64. The early launch backfired on Sega as the system had very few games to begin with. Many Japanese titles would not be imported and Sony's Playstation would be $100 cheaper than the Saturn. By the time the Playstation was released in North America the Saturn had only managed to sell 80,000 units. The Playstation sold more than 100,000 systems on release alone. The Saturn was a failure. Sega lost $267.9 million, 30% of its work force had to be laid off. Sega didn't even have much success in Europe this time. By the end of its life the Saturn had sold 9.5 million units worldwide. Sony's Playstation had sold in excess of 100 million units.

Sega it seemed, was dying. There was one last chance for Sega to redeem themselves. The Dreamcast.

Released in 1998 in Japan and '99 for the rest of the world the Dreamcast featured technology that was well ahead of its time. It pioneered features that would become standard on all consoles in the future such as an internal modem to allow online play through dedicated servers. This was a starting point for all services such as the Playstation Network and the Nintendo channel. Alien Front Online was the very first game to use in-game voice chat. There was also downloadable content for games too. It was also the first of the 6th generation consoles. It was released ahead of competitors: Xbox, Playstation 2, and the Nintendo Gamecube.

With this kind of technology and early release Sega was surely onto a winner. Sadly that was not the case.

Even though there was problems with the Japan launch, the system did well in America. In the United States alone 500,000 consoles were sold in just 2 weeks. It sold so well Sega could not fulfill some advanced orders. It took just four days for Sega to make a cool $132 million in hardware and software sales. Between July 23rd and 30th of September Dreamcast sales grew 156.5%, this put them ahead of the Nintendo 64 for volume of units sold (Nintendo's Gamecube was yet to be released). This is not surprising really as the Dreamcast was 6th generation and the Nintendo 64 5th generation. But, things were about to turn sour.

Sony's launch of the Playstation 2 was the start of the Dreamcast's demise. Sega's end was nigh. Production stopped in 2001. Sega did continue to sell refurbished systems and releasing new games until 2007. Most of the games were originally developed for Sega's NAOMI arcade hardware. Sega's last first-party Dreamcast game was released on February 24th, 2004 (Puyo Puyo Fever).

A couple of Sega's computers have been missed out of this list. Most notably the TeraDrive. The TeraDrive was basically a desktop pc glued to a Mega Drive that allowed development of games. Below is a picture of the TeraDrive.

Sega spent 28 years in the business and when production of the Dreamcast ended in 2001, a piece of history died. Sega still lives on doing what they originally did- make games.

The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past.

I'll always look at LoZ: A Link To The Past through rose tinted glasses. I was just seven years old when it was released and the Sega/Nintendo war had been neither lost nor won. I wasn't lucky enough to acquire the game at release. It was the following year this iconic title found its way into my hands. If I had known then what I know now... I would still have picked up the control pad and embarked on what will turn out to be a life long love affair (perhaps addiction would be more accurate). Not a year has gone by when I haven't played the game at least once. Sometimes on the original hardware, sometimes on an emulator or
perhaps the game boy edition and more recently on the Wii.

My mother came to my house for a cup of tea near the end of last year (don't stop reading I am going somewhere with this). I had A Link To The Past on and she instantly remembered it. We had a good laugh over it, almost 20 years on and I'm still playing the same game! So what has kept me, and countless other die hard fans hooked for just less than 2 decades? Well, lets find out.

To start with the game could charm the pants off a nun. It oozes with niceness that 90% of today's games lack. You all know the games, those that have that miserable gray tint to them, games that take themselves way too serious. The graphics on this instalment from the Legend Of Zelda sires are still outstanding and don't seem to have aged at all. Against some psp titles Zelda still has the upper hand. OK, at the side of the tower of power that is the Ps3 and Microsoft's Xbox it can't compete but- think if a remake of it was made for Ps3 or Xbox in the same style- how much crisper could the cartoon-y graphics get?

It also has a fun and interesting story line that makes sense and resembles Lord Of The Rings (like all Zelda titles). You instantly find yourself caring about the characters and the fate of Hyrule. After defeating a boss, sometimes I've been known to shout out loud: "I'm the hero of legend, idiot!", that's how good the story line is. The story starts one rainy night in the house you share with your uncle. You are awoken by a telepathic message from the Princess Zelda. She says she is locked in the dungeon of Hyrule Castle. Your uncle is dressed for battle and tells you to remain in bed. This is where your epic journey begins. You are left to roam the huge worlds that stretch before you.

The game play is outstanding, there's no other word for it. The controls are simple but very affective and the whole experience is really first class. The way the game has been set out leaves you wanting more and more. You can't explore one area without a specific item, then when you have it something else is blocking your way which means negotiating more dungeons, retrieving another item and beating more bosses. Marks out of 10 for this game... has to be a wholesome 10. I, like many other fans consider this the best in the series. It has stood the test of time and then some.