Coin Spiral

I stopped seeing these things around in my teens so maybe if you're younger than about 24 you might have never have seen these things.  I know they aren't video games but my schedule got all crazy busy again so I'm just going to write something quick that I remember from my childhood.

Arcades weren't exactly a common thing for me as a young British lad.  The only proper, full on arcade that existed to my knowledge growing up in England was the London based Sega World but even that eventually shut down and faded into obscurity.  Up north where I was from arcades didn't really exist at all per se.  There was still coin-op but they existed as small banks of machines found in bowling alleys and cinema lobby's.

What England had an awful lot of though is shitty little side attractions.  The most common one are those coin dozer things where you have a big thing pushing a large amount of coins towards the edge of the play field and you put a 10p in the machine in the hopes that once that gets added to the pile it'll push a bunch of coins off and allow you to play more.  Aside from that, grotty UFO machines filled with cheap, unwinnable kak and similar games were available but the machines were usually in bad condition and you wouldn't want to touch the joysticks or buttons anyway.

But there's one thing that really sticks out in my mind from these shitty mini-arcade things and it's the coin spiral bank thing pictured above.  The idea of this thing is that you'd put a 10p piece inside the slot and just watch the coin spiral round and round on its side into the hole.  Nothing electronic, just simple physics made it work and there was nothing more to it than literally wasting your money. 

As a small kid though coin dozers and UFO machines used to piss me off.  These things that LOOK like games but are actually just cheap excuses to steal your change.  Proper arcade games, even coin guzzling titles like House of the Dead etc. didn't piss me off because even though they were out to take as much money as possible, blasting things with a light gun was a ton of fun for me when I was small.  This thing however managed to be nothing more than a colossal waste of change and it wasn't pretending to be anything more than just that.  You'd put 10 or 20p in it, watch it go and then it was done, you got your little thrill and the thing wouldn't ask for more or tempt you with unwinnable prizes.

Anyway I don't really know what I'm fucking on about, I just remembered these existed during my work day and wanted to write something about it. 

GAME's Christmas Tinner

Are you fucking serious?  Please tell me this isn't serious.....

The above picture may seem like a terrible photo shop, but apparently it's a real thing.  For anyone who's reading this blog outside of the UK, GAME is the countries biggest game store, or at least it was when I was living there.

It's basically the equivalent of Gamestop in the US or Sweden or whatever.  You know what I mean, you walk in and the staff don't know diddly shit about anything at all.  If you ask for something that isn't a big name AAA title they give you this horrible look because they actually have to pick up the stock book and do some fucking work.  You walk in and buy used games and when you get them home they are all scratched up or have fucking jam on the disc (true story).  Idiots behind the desk will judge you based on what you're buying or what stupid piece of crap DLC you decide to pre order or not (another story for another time), basically fuck GAME, stupid piece of shit.

So the idea behind this can of fuck is that "gamers" can't be arsed to get off their arse for an hour or 2 to go and have Christmas dinner so GAME have released an entire Christmas dinner in a tin with the idea that you enjoy it over the course of the day since the thing comes in layers or some shit.  It looks fucking vile and the can looks like that brand of cat food, Whiskaz or some shit, who wants to eat something that looks like catfood?  The whole thing is only £1.99 too apparently, according to the daily mail, so you know it's going to taste like absolute shit.

Here is my problem with this though, cooking isn't hard, like at all.  Any sack of shit can cook something halfway decent and for most things it doesn't even take that long to do so.  Even when I cook something like bolognese sauce, which requires it sit there for 5 fucking hours to gather flavour, the preparation to get it to that stage takes about an hour, tops.

Back when I was a university student, I was convinced I couldn't cook.  I would eat ready meals and I was so inept at it that I didn't even want to boil pasta because I was worried I'd overcook it and just waste my time or some shit.  Then I went and got a girlfriend so I decided I can't just remain inept forever, and after a short time just simply googling a recipe and trying to follow it, I made something decent in about 30 minutes. 

Now, a few years later it turns out that cooking is actually really fucking easy and quick and with the power of google and the nearby supermarket there isn't really anything I can't make anymore.  I'm happy that I developed a new skill, my wife is happy I can now cook pretty good food and my body is happy because anything I make myself is guaranteed to be healthier than anything that comes out of a fucking tin.

So GAME, fuck you and fuck your stupid Christmas dinner in a tin bullshit.  Cooking Christmas dinner isn't even that hard, and I'm saying that as someone who lives in a country where most of the population doesn't own a goddamn oven.  I wouldn't be surprised if it really was just a can of Whiskaz with the label changed.

Absolutely disgusting, just like your shops and service.

A Stroke of Pub Genius

I'm the kind of person who occasionally likes to go down to a pub and have a drink or two with a few buddies when I get the chance, I think that's great.  That said, I'm not the kind of person who is into things like football (English football) or anything like that, I'm not all that much of a sportsman really.

So sometimes when I go down to the pub, nothing spoils it for me more than football being played so loud on a big projector with people yelling so loud that it's impossible to have a conversation.  That said though I'm not the kind of twat who complains, I get that people like to do that but it just spoils the whole pub thing for me.

So in London, some absolute genius had the idea of setting up a gaming bar.  It's basically like a pub but with computers in it and they show stuff like Starcraft 2 instead of football.  This is great because if people are yelling over Starcraft and I can't have a conversation, at least I have something that I'm interested in to look at.

The other nice thing about this bar is that its very existence sort of dispels the myth of all people who enjoy games being anti social uber nerds which while not as widespread a view as it used to be, still exists, and that's sad.

It's not the only one too, off the top of my head I think there is one in Manchester (UK) called the Kyoto Lounge, but on account of not being in Manchester for a long long time, I've not been to it so I don't know if it's quite the same thing as the Meltdown bar, but I've heard about them showing Starcraft tournaments, so that's cool.

So if you live in London or Manchester, or if you have something similar in your area, had down and wet your whistle and support this shit.  It's a great idea and it would be a damn shame if these efforts went under.