Finding £5 in an Old Pair of Trousers

The title refers to that lovely feeling when we're digging through some old junk we haven't looked at in ages, and finding some real gems we had no idea we had.

Like just now I was digging through my very very old games pile, and discovered this lot:

1. A Star Trek game compilation, comprising Starfleet Academy, Generations, 25th Anniversary, A Final Unity and Deep Space Nine: The Fallen. The last three I was thinking of tracking down as they're supposed to be really good, but it turns out I had them all along!
2. A special Eidos demos CD, with demos of Deus Ex, Anachronox, Thief II, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Urban Chaos, and most prominently... Daikatana. And more! Man that was a good time for Eidos. Mostly.
3. Duke Caribbean - Life's A Beach, Duke Nuclear Winter, and Duke!Zone expansion packs for Duke Nukem 3D. And they work with Good Old Games' version of Duke! Woo!
4. Redneck Rampage Rides Again. I knew I had the original, but the expansion?! No way!
5. Realms of the Haunting. The precursor to Clive Barker's Undying. When did I buy that? And why haven't I played it to death?!
6. Star Wars - Episode I Insider's Guide. Um, okay, I do remember buying that one. Whoops.

- Chris Capel

How To Put People Off Going To See Your Top Three Summer Movies, by Paramount

(Yes, still non-gaming, but at least we're back in the comfortable realm of Geeks now after Dave's terrifying descent into something vaguely approaching cool)

Regardless of whether you give a shit about them, three really big movies of this Summer all belong to Paramount. They are:

Star Trek (the JJ Abrams reboot of the franchise that went so far up its own arse it's long since circuled back around to Prequel territory)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (the Michael Bay toy robot-stroke-vehicles blowing things up movie, 2)
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (as close as we're going to get to Team America: World Police 2, except with less convincing performances)

Now, I'm not going to say whether I'm looking forward to any of them or not, but I'm sure we can agree that these are going to make a lot of money, provided Paramount doesn't really screw up their advertising.

...

I went to the cinema today. Hoping for some entertaining trailers to relieve the pain from the eyeball-gougingly terrible advertising, there was one of Paramount's. Now films only come with a limited amount of trailers, but Paramount had three major movies coming soon to show off. Instead of doing them separately, making a decent job of it and running the risk that one could be pushed off, they decided to advertise them all at once.

They condensed all three trailers into one very confusing, fast-paced and downright stupid reel, then had a cheesy voiceover person say the titles as quickly and dumbly as possible. There was a lot of sniggering in the audience.

I've seen the full trailers for these films. GI Joe still looks rubbish, but at least Star Trek and Transformers 2 looked entertaining in trailer form. But rushed through and with a pointless voiceover narration that stopped being cool some time in the 70s, I was embarrassed.

Still, at least Paramount weren't the only ones. While there are plenty of dark and ominous Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince trailers to choose from Warner Bros decided to make the film like some campy teen comedy. Just without the comedy... which I suppose is normal for most teen comedies.

- Chris Capel