Enjoy Your Life With Latest Games

Online gaming is one of the remarkable inventions that is ever made by modern science. The total number of games that are being played across the globe is truly uncountable. This entertainment resource is one of most popular choices of entertainment among the children as well as teens. Not only an online game serves as a high-class entertainment, it is also a good medium to meet other online players from different places or countries. Most of latest games are made on the flash platform.
Online gaming is not only the source of enjoyment for the game enthusiasts all over globe, but is also growing to be one of the most lucrative businesses. The websites which provide plenty of latest games get gigantic amount of hits and therefore they become fabulous advertising tools for most marketing campaigns.
There are numerous types of latest games available on the Internet, such as shooting games, adventure, fighting, racing and many more. The shooting games are sub-genre of action frolic because shooters get the opportunity to take part in most adventurous actions. Under the category of shooting games, the player usually views the events from behind the eyes of the main character, normally a few feet behind the shooter. They are based on high-end features and most of the times they are based on popular films. These are the favorite tools for doing time pass for the shooting enthusiasts. These games have been favorite among the kids as well as teenagers. The shooting games either require you to fulfill one particular mission and in some cases, just let you to kill the enemies without any proper mission. There you just have to clear the game stages.
Free online games also include space related games, wherein your aeroplane just goes on shooting meteorites and other targets, which come in the way of your space craft. In the middle of the game, you can also get some surplus power that can add extra strength to the players’ plane, such as power missiles, protecting rings, multi way missile and many more. Therefore, these are considered as great stress relievers.
Innovations have always been a rife part of most of the new types of activity conceived by mankind and hence the facet of invention is also a part prevailing in the world of online gaming. These inventions are quite absorbing in terms of their game-play and hence increase the pleasant experience of playing the latest games. An individual who is playing an online game can chat with his antagonist in a real time multi-player game and he can also win money.

Have Fun and Enhance Your Skills With the Latest Games

Fun is necessary for every human being on this earth. This is a must, because without fun a person feels tedious which might affect him badly on his work. To get the dose of relaxation or in order to finish the boredom or to pass the spare time and for many other things we seek refuge of this option. People get involved in various activities to accomplish this purpose. Some play sports, other play small games while some other get engaged in other activities.

But, as the technology has become advanced, there are some more modes of fun which have been recently introduced. Some of the most prominent among them are the video and computer games. These frolics on one side become an excellent source of fun and on the other hand they create a lot of excitement in the minds of the people. Video games are actually played by connecting the gaming devices into the television sets. Computer games are basically played in the computer with the help of a keyboard, mouse and joystick etc.

A lot of eagerness can be witnessed among the people who always remain eager to know about the latest games. Two types of computer frolics are famous nowadays – online and offline. Online games are played on Internet whereas offline ones are stored in the hard disk of the computer. In the later case, you won’t require the connection of the World Wide Web. The Online ones are available on many websites. Most of the sites and portals offer them free of cost whereas some of them charge a little extra charge for them. You would just require the flash software on your home PC which too is available of some websites of World Wide Web totally free of cost.

Some of the latest games are Conflict, Toy Warz, Slam Day, Lord of War Chapter 2, Formula 1 Champion. These frolics are based on different themes and are made for the people of all types of interests. On the surface, these themes can be categorized as adventure, fighting, castle, car or bike racing, etc. If we go in detailed classification, then many more sub-categories can be made. For instance, conflict games which are a type of fighting frolics. War of toys, in which the fight between different toys are displayed and many others. Many of these are liked mainly by children.

Some of these frolics are available for download on many websites. You can download them without paying any extra charge. Whereas, a few of these provide them after charging a little extra amount. You can download immediately by paying them via credit or debit card online. On the contrary, some of these gaming activities are also available online which can be played any time at ease.

Definitely, these frolics have proved to be a boon in the area of fun activities. With the support of these activities people can enjoy and relax even while sitting at home in front of the computer. Moreover, they have proved to be very helpful in increasing the concentration and exercising the brain of the players. That’s why, these days parents like them too. Many of the latest games are specially meant for education purposes. For example, you can see several games which help the students to enhance their typing skills. Hopefully, in near future we shall find some more like these which we can not imagine as yet.

Video Games – The Perfect Escape?

Why oh why did you say yes to that last shandy? The kebab seemed like a good idea but your mouth now resembles the inner lining of Phil Jupiter’s underpants. And to top it all off, you’re stuck in a lava filled dungeon and some b*****d has kidnapped your princess. Where did your life go so horribly wrong?

I’ve got news for you, it’s much, much worse. It’s not that you’re hungover playing Super Mario Brothers, it’s that you spend your life “working” at a computer located in a sterile office surrounded by drones. Your only escape? A Friday night binge drinking session down in Clapham, tonsil tennis with a rather suspect femme fatale and bouncing around 8-bit levels crushing the skulls of Goombas with your immense chubby Italian plumber girth the next morning (she didn’t come home with you).

Computer games started out as something completely innocent. I remember my cousins having a version of Pong that despite being an absolute nightmare to plug into the telly, was good fun for ten minutes. Bouncing the ball around with the paddles was hardly Wimbledon. What was, was the 8-bit version of the AELTC’s prestige tournament which was one of the first games I played on the Master System. Still to this day the game mesmerises me, with added career mode, I can’t help but feel I’m there on Centre Court. Especially as I couldn’t play tennis for toffee.
These days, games such as the Grand Theft Auto and Halo franchises take escapism to whole new levels, allowing you to explore entire cities and indulge your wildest fantasies whilst piping hordes of bad guys. There’s a magazine on my desk right now emblazoned with the word “hero”, if only. And whilst escapism is almost at its absolute peak (barring virtual reality), it started way back in the 80s and had as much of an impact then as it does now.

Adult life fundamentally, hasn’t changed much in the last thirty years. Despite numerous advances in technology, supposedly to make life easier, for most of us it’s the usual 9 to 5. Slaving away to line someone else pockets only to come home at some ungodly hour completely exhausted. Eat your dinner, stick on the telly, sleep, repeat. Rather crudely, I hypothesise life requires five different needs: achievement; relaxation; emulation; competition and belonging. At the moment, sitting here in a non-descript office I feel tense, bored, lonely and as if this is just another day to kill on a road that is seemingly going nowhere. No need is being fulfilled, I want to be at home playing video games.

Achievement is the easy one. Those who are successful in life and who feel they are living a good life can point back to a string of achievements. Whether it’s continual progression through the ranks at work, bringing up offspring or jumping out of a plane, nothing beats feeling a sense of achievement. For those starved of such events, video games offer up an easy alternative and its impact is almost immediate. Going back to early arcade games such as Pac-Man and Asteroids, you’re instantly rewarded with level progression and score accumulation (sometimes to reach the feted leader board). Home entertainment systems such as the ZX Spectrum brought games like Manic Miner to the fore. This rise raises the other point that these needs don’t just relate to adult life but to children as well. For kids growing up, a sense of achievement can be gained from doing well at school, well at Physical Education, being praised for good attendance etc… How often would this really happen? Sometimes at primary school, I would feel a greater sense of accomplishment after nailing a few levels of Sonic than at anything I’d done during the day. With the xbox360 console, Microsoft brought the “Achievement” points system based on unlocking hidden secrets or even just by completing levels. Why did they do this? We all love rewards, even more so when they’re obvious. As unnecessary as this development was, it adds another level of achievement to the subtle one already existing.

This brings me to the next “need” – relaxation. Or should I say, Relaxation through detachment. There is no point in me going home to play a computer game where the protagonist is a Customer Service advisor who has to answer the phone and respond to emails all day. They say that during lunchtime it’s advisable to have lunch outside of the office, so that your mind is taken off work and relaxed accordingly. Video games work on the same principal as in they can take you out of work, out of your home life and into something much more wondrous. The aforementioned Super Mario Bros is a great example. I believe it’s the first true example of an ethereal world where you can explore and unlock hidden rewards at whim. Earlier consoles and computers had games containing hidden levels given, but the graphics and memory available pre-1985 struggled to do anything on this scale. Throw in a hero story where you’ve got to rescue a princess and you’ve got the whole package. I could talk about detachment all day long but the upshot is that video games take you to another world at the flick of a button where you can easily forget what your life is really about.

As I mentioned previously, I was bog awful at Tennis when I was a kid. Someone who was not awful at tennis was Stefan Edberg. Although Wimbledon on the MS was licensed, it contained no real players’ names. But my word, did one of the characters look like the Swedish maestro himself. When you’re growing up, role models are important. That seems like a rather obvious thing to say but how many kids lack the proper role models in everyday life? We look up to people and we want to emulate them. We see them achieve great things and we want to achieve them ourselves. When we can’t do something, video games (especially sports titles) are an easy way of emulating our heroes. I played World Cup Italia 90 on the Mega Drive way more than I should have purely because it was the only way of recreating the tournament that I had available. Emulation even boils down to just wanting to be said Italian plumber hero (one was also rather useless with the ladies) or a spiky blue hedgehog thwarting an evil genius.

Emulation follows on to competition. There is nothing like beating a game. All that coding and you’ve still beaten the CPU. Have that Edberg. It’s also great to prove you’re the best at the something, that you’re better than your peers. At work, I have few peers simply due to the mediocrity of my work. Do I want to be better than them? The feeling is hardly tangible. Competition is good for the human spirit. Constantly being challenged is how people get better and successful people thrive on it. The rewards are sometimes obvious, a big trophy, a big pay rise – but sometimes they’re not. Video games offer competition on all levels. Beat the CPU, beat your friends, beat the world. Video games offer a challenge when life falls on its backside. Want an arena to prove you’re better than your mates? Hold a Days of Thunder on the NES competition (not all were impressed… ). Multiplayer games existed in abundance from the days of Pong and now video game tournaments have evolved into a multi-million dollar industry of their own.

That brings me to my final point – belonging. Sega or Nintendo? If you’re into retro gaming that question alone is probably stirring something inside you. Why? Because choosing a console isn’t just about choosing a machine to play with, it’s about choosing a gang, a way of life that’s got be better than its counterpart. Kids and adults alike feel segregation on a daily basis. I was lucky at school as I had good friends with whom I still socialise with to this day. Others were not so lucky. When you move into the professional world it’s only natural that you want to work for a company where you belong. In your personal life, it’s only natural to want to live somewhere in a home with people you love and where you feel you belong. Even before online gaming with its vast communities and friendship came into existence, simply by saying in the playground whether you were a Mega Drive or SNES guy started positive chat about Sonic or Mario alike. They weren’t just consoles, it was who you were.

As much as a holiday might satisfy your relaxation needs or going to a football match satisfy your need to belong, there is nothing as complete as video games to provide the full package after a long day at the coalface.

5 Tips to Follow While Buying Computer Games

Computer games are extremely popular these days. There are so many choices out there for us to select from and this makes it all the more difficult. However there are certain tips that you must essentially take into consideration in order to nail your purchase. Below are some important tips that you must never fail to consider.

1. The demo of the game

There is a very large majority of computer games that are releasing and with these games the demo also releases. Thus it is only wise if you try out the demo game before actually going ahead and buying the entire full version of the game. This will obviously give you a great chance to know the game better and make good decisions in future while playing it.

2. Your system requirements must be cross checked

The latest computer games that are releasing these days have a lot of requirements as far as the system is concerned. In case you feel that your computer is in no way successful in meeting these requirements, you must give up on the game or at least purchase a new computer for yourself.

3. Multiplayer options

This multiplayer is obviously similar to the mass multiplayer options. You should know that these types of games allow the players to play with more than one player. No matter what, these are still very fun and exciting games and are games in which you can either shoot or frag the other players. You can also come together and develop another online character.

4. The piracy of the game

The piracy of a software is unfortunately a very common occurrence in games these days. Thus it should not be considered at all. The gaming piracy has become very difficult in recent times. The users who pirate the games may any time be forfeiting the great ability to play with any of their friends online. It is anytime better to go for an original game rather than a pirated one.

5. The rating of your game

All games are judged on the basis of an ESRB rating. It determines how violent the game has pronounced to be. Always pay attention to the rating of the game as it can affect your overall experience. You might prefer a violent game over another non- violent game but this is not the case for everyone. It is one of the important things to remember.

Why I Love Counter-Strike/How to Play Counter-Strike

Today I like to talk about an integral part of my computer/technology career. Unexpectedly, it is my skill on the game called Counter-Strike. I would like to impart to my readers my knowledge which helped me to be regarded as sort of an “expert” on the field of the said game. More than anything, I want to teach you how be the best on it. Also, I would like to discuss the significance it has in my life and the potential it has to touch others’ lives too.

I can’t imagine life without Counter-Strike (specifically the version 1.3 one). Needless to say, you can tell that I am nostalgic about it. I heard about the latest version that the makers of Counter-Strike are developing right now, which is Counter-Strike Global Offensive. I can already see the importance of your experience on playing Counter-Strike 1.3 on becoming good on that latest version; which can become handy especially now that on the tournaments of these stuff, you can get something over a million dollars as a prize.

So, let’s go into the heart of it: how to be good on counter-strike 1.3? Number 1, Brightness. Enemies are hard to see with the default brightness of the game. Meaning, if you are not the server of the game this is a necessity (this might seem unnecessary but trust me it is. It sounds senseless but it is not). So, to be able to do it, type “map de_dust” on the console. Wait for the console to take you to (guess where) de_dust. After, click ~, and type and enter on the console “brightness 999.” After that, enter “map de_dust” again. Wait until it gets you to de_dust again. Just now, it has the perfect brightness which will surely help you differentiate someone who is your enemy and friend on the game.

Number 2: Controls. Before even starting to play the game, go to the controls part. Click defaults. After that, change how you can buy with F1 instead of B; and how to buy bombs with F4 instead of M. For those of you who are curious, this would make you buy weapons, ammunition, and bombs faster which will make you more efficient on the game. Note, buy ammunitions with F1 + 6 and F1 + 7, instead of the alternative version. Trust me on this.

Number 3: Don’t be the server as much as possible. This is quite crucial. The most important reason why is that you would not be able to use technique number 1, which is the brightness part. There is simply no way of doing it. Plus, if you are playing in an internet cafe, which is what most likely is the case (because that is the easiest way to play it with other people; trust me), you cannot quit just anytime that you want because you would annoy other players. When you quit the game, other players will be disconnected to the game too. I would not worry so much on this certain technique, but I just thought you should know something about it.

Number 4: Weapon choice. Let’s face the elephant in the room. The only best weapon choice for the game is the sniper one. Pair it with pistol F1 + 1 and you have a perfect combo. The key here is practice. Train using the sniper one so that you kill enemies precisely as fast as possible and you would always be good to go. Plus, if you master using your pistol to kill enemies with headshots that would be a plus. Not that I am overselling, you can try other weapons but this would always be the perfect combo/one.
Number 5: Strategic positioning on the game. This is about where you go on the game (the path you choose). The trick here is choosing maximum efficiency. What I mean here is choose your position on the game so that you balance your safety and ability to kill enemies in the best way. Players on this game are very vulnerable. You can get killed in literally an instant. Protect yourself as much as possible without losing your ability to kill enemies. Since you already chose your perfect set of weapons, this would be like a walk in the park. With a sniper, choose a place where you can use it such that you are hidden but at the same time has the vision to hunt your preys.

Number 6: Map choice: you only have three options for this: cs_deathmatch, de_dust, de_dust2. Why? It is really tempting to say just because when you are already into the game, because it is just the way it is. However, for beginners out there, it is just the way it is because it would make the game fairer if you know what I mean. There is no special treatment and/or unfair advantage for either teams. Therefore, players equally enjoy the game (which is always a good thing).

Needless to say, it has a significant impact on my life. More than anything, it taught me how to be a team player and accept defeat graciously. It is a game where you can be yourself, make mistakes, get defeated or win with no pressure or someone judging you. Personally, it is a good environment to be in as a child. It might also added to my tech-savvyness. Despite it’s violent connotation, I disagree that it has negative impacts on anybody. So far, it didn’t lead me to be violent to other people. Contrary, it made me more compassionate, warm, and social.

I hope this helped you become better on Counter-Strike. Otherwise, if it made you curious about the game, great! Good luck playing it! I promise you it would be worth it. Try it as fast as possible now!

Common Problems Playing Games

1. “THE GAME WON’T PLAY!”

When it comes to playing PC games this is probably the biggest and most frustrating problem someone can run into. I have bought games before that wouldn’t play correctly and I had no idea why. When I have this problem there are a few things I do to help me figure out what the problem is and how to fix it.

A. The first thing I do is go the site systemrequirementslab.com which has a very helpful computer application to tell you if you can run the game or not. This will do a scan of what hardware your computer has and compare it to the minimum and recommended specs of the game you want to play. This can be extremely helpful because it is difficult to remember exactly what specs your computer has, and can help pinpoint what you should upgrade if you need to do so.

B. Check the drivers on your computer or graphics card. Sometimes computer peripherals will have a driver update, if you do not have the proper drivers installed it can cause issues with running certain games.

C. Check the in-game settings. Some games are very good at optimizing the setting to what will run best on your computer, but they do not always get it right. If a game isn’t running correctly in most games you can bump down the graphical settings to see if it will run correctly.

D. Reinstall the game. Sometimes it is possible that a file got damaged when installing the game or over time. If this is a problem it can be resolved by uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Most games can be installed through the Control Panel of your computer, but if not sometimes you can uninstall the game from the launcher of the game itself.

E. Sometimes unfortunately there are random issues with games that are very hard to pinpoint. If this problem arises you can contact the game company. Many companies have help lines or forums dedicated to helping people that have problems running their games. Usually they are quick to reply and will do whatever they can to help solve your problem.

2. “The game runs choppy online!”

This is another common problem when it comes to gaming, and this is not just reserved for PC gaming. Sometimes your PC or gaming system will run perfectly but you have a lot of problems when it comes to online gaming, thankfully there are some ways to try and fix this.

A. The first thing to do is check to make sure you are getting the correct speeds from your internet provider. You can run an online speed test at speedtest.net which will help you identify your download and upload speeds. If the speeds are slow or not what you are expecting there are a couple things you can do to try and remedy the problem before you call your internet provider.

B. If you have speed problems the first thing I recommend doing is checking your router. Sometimes speed problems are because of an old or faulty router. I recently had some problems with my internet dropping and decided to check on my router. I was using an old router with old wireless technology but I did not think that it was causing any issues. I ended up purchasing a new AC router and it doubled the internet speed I was getting beforehand with my N router. N routers have been around for awhile and AC is newer technology that provides more bandwidth and better signal strength than the N routers. With so many devices hooked up to household WiFi I think it is well worth the upgrade to an AC router as everything will run better.

C. If you discover that the problem is not the router and only your computer has speed issues you can check for any obstructions that might block the wireless signal. Sometimes it is completely random as to what causes interference and I have heard of people who had terrible speeds, moved their computer just a little bit in a different direction and everything worked fine. You can also run a malware scan on your computer to ensure that a virus is not eating up your bandwidth.

D. There is also the possibility of a faulty wireless card in your computer. I had a desktop computer that had a wireless card that randomly stopped working, it took me a long time to identify what the problem was but when I did it was fixed by simply buying a WiFi USB adapter. They are not very expensive and got my computer back online quick and easy.

E. If your problem is not remedied with any of these solutions you may have to contact your internet provider. Unfortunately sometimes there are just issues with the inbound line and it requires a technician to come out and fix it. Sometimes the IP can identify a problem over the phone and figure out if the problem is on their end or if they need to send a technician out.

3. Other Quick Tips To Help PC Performance

A. I highly recommend everyone installs a SSD on their computer. A SSD is a solid state drive that can replace your existing hard drive. The traditional hard drive is a moving part hard drive that spins and reads and writes data, while a SSD does not having moving parts and everything is stored on flash memory chips. Because of the way the data is stored it is accessed much quicker and more reliably than the standard HDD, they are more expensive at the moment but the speed increase is well worth the money in my opinion. I recently swapped my computer over to a SSD and it changed my boot-up time from minutes to seconds. Everything seems to load much faster and I can’t imagine ever going back to a regular HDD.

B. RAM Memory upgrade

A. Sometimes upgrading the amount of RAM in your computer can improve performance. You need to find out what kind of RAM you can use first though. To do this you can look in the System Information of your computer which gives you a system summary. In the summary will be a System Model, I used this to look online for how much RAM my computer could support and what kind I should use.

Collectors V Resellers, Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Tens of thousands of years ago the very first humans survived as hunters and gatherers. Our ancestors went out into the wild with basic tools and weapons to hunt for meat, and they scoured the forest for fruits, vegetables and berries. At the end of a hard day at the office these simple people would sit around their camp fire dividing up the spoils of the hunt. One of the cavemen always took a little bit more food than he could eat because he figured he could then use it to trade with later. If he didn’t want to tidy up after himself he’d just bribe someone else with a little meat. Didn’t fancy going out and hunting a mammoth? Why, he’d just offer up a handful of berries for any man who’d go in his place. Once the other cavemen noticed what he was doing, some of them kicked off about it, and a never ending argument began.

Okay, now my understanding of the dawn of our civilization might not be one hundred per cent accurate, but the point is that if we fast forward to 2016 then essentially the same thing is going on today. No matter how far we’ve come as a species, there’s always conflict, and there’s always somebody who seems out to get ahead at the expense of somebody else. But who is in the right and who is the wrong? Is somebody doing you ill or is that just your perception of the situation because you’re not getting your own way? These are important questions, and when it comes to the subject of collectors and resellers in the retro gaming community, there’s no easy answer.

The idea of retro game collection is a simple one. The collector wants old games. Perhaps they want to preserve video gaming history for future generations. Perhaps they just really like playing old games that remind them of yesteryear. Maybe they just think that retro games look cool on their shelves. Whatever the reasons behind it, the collector just wants to collect.

There’s something about collecting that most of us can relate to. When you’re at school there’s usually something that’s popular that all the kids are into. When I was in primary school all those years ago it was Garbage Gang trading cards. Man, we loved garbage Gang. We were crazy for them. Practically everyone in our class, boys and girls, collected Garbage Gang, traded Garbage Gang, and played with Garbage Gang on our lunch break. That mentality sticks with many of us as we grow, only most of us don’t carry on collecting Garbage Gang into our adulthood (I sold my complete set in 2010 and put that to rest). As adults our houses become filled with movies, music, books and a lifetime of photos and memories. We have shelves filled with books. Maybe it’s photographs or paintings or furniture. I have a thing for my travel photography and hang them everywhere, but I will always have a gaming collection as well. There’s just something satisfying about having a collection of things you like.

The idea of reselling is, again, a simple one. Like our caveman friend from earlier, somebody will always notice that there’s a gap in the market. Value is, essentially, whatever someone is willing to pay for something. You might not think that a handful of berries are enough compensation for going out and facing a woolly mammoth in battle, but if someone is willing to fight that mammoth for you then that’s what the berries are worth. The principle hasn’t really changed over the years. If somebody is willing to pay top dollar for something, then that’s what it’s worth.

But at what point does selling something on become morally questionable? Well, what if our caveman friend with the berries knows his friend just really loves berries and knows he’ll work for them? Is that fair? What if his friend is starving to death and he’s putting him into a dangerous position because he knows he needs the food so badly? Then it’s a little more questionable, surely, and you can understand why some might find that tactic to be aggravating.

Collecting versus reselling is an argument that has arisen within the retro game collecting community in recent years precisely because of this moral grey area. Collectors want to collect because that’s what they like to do. Whether they’re doing it to play the games or to look at them or to preserve them, they’re doing it because of a love for collecting and not for their own personal monetary gain. Resellers have noticed that old games are highly sought after by these collectors, and so they seek to acquire games, particularly rarer titles, to then sell them on to the collectors for profit.

It’s easy to see why the collectors might find reselling so contemptible. Reselling effectively drives up the market value of games, which makes it more difficult for collectors to do what they love to do. A reseller might go to a garage sale and spot some old games that they know are worth serious money to the right people, but to the people selling them, they’re just junk that they’re selling for pennies. Have you ever seen Toy Story 2? It’s essentially what the chicken man does when he spies Woody in the garage sale. He knows that the cowboy toy is worth big money and so he wants to try and trick Andy’s mother into selling him for next to nothing so he can maximise his profit. The chicken man might be a comedy animated villain (voiced by Wayne Knight, no less) but there’s people out there doing that every weekend to try and make money from video game collectors, and so isn’t that something we should be annoyed about?

There’s something that seems inherently shady about buying games that you know are worth a lot of money from someone who doesn’t have that knowledge and is selling them cheaply, and then exploiting that situation for your own benefit. But is the reseller really to blame?

For many thousands of years gold has been a valuable commodity here on Earth. The reason that it’s so valuable is that it’s so rare. As I learned in a documentary starring Professor Brian Cox a couple of weeks ago, gold is formed when massive stars explode, and those are such rare occurrences, that if you were to collect all the gold the human race had ever found it would still only fill three Olympic sized swimming pools. Today, we attribute value to things other than shiny, rare metals we dig out of the ground.

Games and gold aren’t so different. Resellers are, essentially, modern day prospectors, heading out and looking for the precious items that they’ll then be able to sell on to the highest bidder (quite literally in many cases, since these games widely end up on eBay). Resellers are searching for a rare or valuable commodity and then they’re selling it on to make money. Collectors find it distasteful because they think it drives up the cost of the games they want to collect, and because the resellers in question aren’t buying the games for the love of collecting, but for the love of profit.

But should collectors really begrudge resellers a money making opportunity? We all make money in our lives. And we all do different things to make our money. Is making money from selling old games any worse than, say, selling your old clothes? Presumably, somewhere out there, there’s somebody that loves collecting old clothes. Are they currently on an Internet forum somewhere, moaning about people who don’t care about collecting clothes going to charity shops and snatching up all the bargains?

More importantly, do the actions of resellers actually negatively impact the ability of collectors to collect? Value is what somebody is willing to pay for something, but if they can get it cheaper elsewhere then they’ll likely do that. A reseller can’t charge too much for the game he picked up at a garage sale because, unless there’s only one copy in existence, somebody else will be selling it at a much more reasonable price and the collector could just buy it from them. That’s how the free market works. Buys and sellers, together, determine the market value of an item. And so if collectors aren’t paying ridiculous prices for the games that resellers are offering, then those resellers will need to lower their prices. It seems short sighted to believe that there are evil resellers out there buying up all of the stock of old games and making all of the poor collectors remortgage their houses just so they can afford a copy of Stadium Events on the NES or Power Strike II on the Sega Master System.

The truth, as is generally the case in this sort of conflict, is somewhere in the middle. Resellers are, essentially, buying something and then selling it on for a higher price. That’s exactly the same as what shops all across the world do, including the shops that collectors will often go to on the hunt for classic games to pick up. Collectors often pick up a handful of games off the forums or a Facebook gaming page, knowing they’ve already got most of the those games and are only buying the bundle for the one title, they then sell on those duplicate copies of the games they own, unwittingly becoming resellers themselves. I’ve done it myself. We all have…

There’s no real black and white answer here. It’s easy to understand why some collectors might hate the idea of resellers getting in there before them and finding a classic game for a bargain. But there’s nothing, fundamentally, wrong with somebody selling items to make some money. It’s no different to how any shop works. Buy low, sell high; it’s the general principle that any business across the world operates under.

Maybe it’s high time that collectors and resellers put down arms and just did their best to get along. A good friend of mine who is a proper, die-hard collector has befriended one of the said resellers and now gets offered first dibs on the minty fresh stock the guys finds each week. That seems like a great solution to me! There are more than enough classic video games out there for everybody, and if occasionally you have to pay more money than you’d like to pay for something then that’s just the nature of collecting something. If you want something that badly then you should be prepared to pay for it, and if you’re not then are you really that committed to collecting, or are you just hoarding?

Hobbies cost money. My bank balance can attest to that. Over the years I’ve spent a fortune on things that I enjoy, and I wouldn’t even dare to guess at how much money I’ve spent on video games. Do I resent it? No. Gaming is my hobby, and I’ve been collecting games for over twenty years because of that. As we talked about earlier, value is determined by how much someone is willing to pay for something. That counts for collectors too. How much will you pay for something you enjoy doing?

The Top 5 Reasons We Love Retro Gaming

#5. Games Were Simpler Back In The Day

Video games have unquestionably become more ambitious and impressive in recent years. When you look at the likes of The Last Of Us, it’s impossible to overstate just how far video games have come since people were playing Pong forty-odd years ago. But for all the innovations within the medium, and for all the new fangled ideas and increasingly elaborate control schemes, there’s something to be said for how much more straight forward things were in the games we played as kids.

Gaming today can be difficult for people without the muscle memory that comes from years of dedicated gaming. Give your mum or dad a PS4 controller and if they’re anything like mine they’ll spend half the time playing the game looking down, attempting in vain to remember where all the buttons are. Use the left analog stick to walk, hold X to jog, or tap X to sprint. L2 is aim and R2 is shoot, but R1 becomes shoot if you’re driving because in a car R2 is the accelerator. R3 (that’s when you click in the right analog stick) let’s you look behind you, and to open the menu you need to hold down the touch pad. And that’s just part of the control scheme for Grand Theft Auto 5, one of the best selling games of all time.

Even for seasoned veterans the increasing complexity of games can become a turn off. Super Mario World is still as intuitive as it was back in 1990 because the inherently simple design and pick up and play nature of the game made it timeless. You can give a kid who’s never played a Mario game the controller and within seconds they’ll have worked out how to play. This simplicity is an attractive concept, which is almost certainly part of the reason that retro games like Shovel Knight and Axiom Verge are so popular today. The simpler a game is to play, the more inclusive and immediate the fun. Retro gaming has that in spades, and that’s the reason I’m still playing Super Mario World twenty-six years after release.

#4. Retro Games Have Better Music

As gaming production values have increased over the years, we’ve seen the medium change in many ways. We made the jump to 3D, we now have voice acting, and elaborate cut-scenes tell complicated stories that rival those seen in television or on the big screen. Games today feature fully orchestrated scores or soundtracks featuring popular music that are every bit as impressive as what we’d see in other mediums, but it feels like we’ve lost something along the way, too.

I can still hum the theme music to Treasure Island Dizzy on the Commodore 64. I was playing that game nearly thirty years ago and I haven’t played it since then (and I’ve still never beaten it, damn it) but I can still remember the theme music that plays in the background in its entirety. I played games last week and I couldn’t even tell you if they had music at all.

Because of the simplicity of early games, and without voice acting to tell a story, the music had to be good. Other than a few crummy sound effects, the music of the game was the only aural stimulation that the games provided. There are still great game soundtracks today, but they seem few and far between when compared to the games of my youth. Mega Man, Castlevania, the early Final Fantasy games, and iconic titles like Zelda, Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog – these all featured highly memorable tunes that stick with us long after the last time we played them. I still remember how the music for Commodore 64 classic Prince Clumsy changes when you save the princess at the end of the game like I was playing it yesterday. We can’t really say that about Shadow of Mordor, can we?

#3. Games Used to Work Right Out of the Box

One thing that games from yesteryear unquestionably did better than the games of today is that they, well, worked. You’d think that it should be a pretty fundamental aspect of any product released to the market, but it’s truly staggering how many games in 2016 ship broken, requiring either days or weeks of server tweaks to get the multiplayer working, or enormous day one patches to fix all of the bugs that made it onto the disc. Today, if you don’t have a decent Internet connection in your home, some games are genuinely unplayable, and many others severely hampered.

Street Fighter V released earlier this year, with Capcom promising that the single player Arcade Mode, a staple of the series, would be available to download in July. What if you don’t have an Internet connection? Well, then you’ve got half a game. That’s not a problem we faced when Street Fighter II released on the SNES in 1991. Back then, we had no Internet acting as a safety net for developers. Games had to work right out of the box.

Going back and playing Global Gladiators today is as simple as popping the cartridge into your Genesis and turning on the power. It works now as it did then; exactly as it should, and without any fuss. This is one of the many great things about retro gaming; if you’ve got the game and the hardware you’re pretty much good to go. You don’t need to download drivers, or updates, or patches. You put in the game, and then you play. Just like you should.

#2. Games Used to Be More of a Challenge

Today, anybody who keeps up to date with the latest trends in gaming will likely know of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and the reputation these games have for punishing difficulty. Gamers flocked to the Souls series in droves, excited to play a title that challenged them and refused to hold their hands. There’s no extended tutorial sections. There’s little in the way of help. You can’t pause. And every enemy can make mincemeat out of you unless you learn their attack patterns and act accordingly. It’s exciting for a game to provide us with an uphill struggle like this, but then, I’m old enough to remember a time when every game was like this. And worse.

Modern games have a tendency to spell things out to the player, often to an almost insulting degree. Popping a disc into a PS4 in 2016 means waiting for the install, then the day one patch, and then when you finally get a controller in your hand you spend the next two hours being walked through the early stages of the game like a kid on his first day of school. Everybody likes a bit of help now and again, but there’s something to be said for just being thrown in at the deep end and being told to sink or swim.

#1. Nostalgia

Nostalgia might seem like a cop out answer; after all, looking back on the past with rose tinted spectacles is often what fans of anything retro are criticized with. It’s easy to dismiss nostalgia as a way of justifying the opinion that everything was just much better in your day, but the truth is that nostalgia is an immensely powerful agent and it shouldn’t be ignored.

Today, we watch rubbish movies and bemoan the use of obvious CGI, but we’ll happily sit through Raiders of the Lost Ark and not bother mentioning that the melting Nazi at the end looks like he’s made out of plasticine. We listen to the appalling pop music of our youths with a reflective smile on our faces while turning our noses up at Justin Bieber’s latest video. And we’ll talk about Final Fantasy VII as though it were second coming of Christ, completely ignoring all of the flaws in the game that we’d hang a modern game out to dry for. Nostalgia is a strong enough influence to make us believe that Sonic the Hedgehog was actually ever good. Now, that’s serious.

The reason a lot of us like playing old games is simply because of the feeling we get playing them. I’ve played hundreds, if not thousands of games in my time as a gamer. And I’m smart enough to know that in that time video games have improved in almost every way. But that doesn’t change the fact that if I load up Street Fighter II I remember the days of playing it during the school summer holidays with all my friends. I remember the day I completed Toejam and Earl with my brother every time I hear the first few bars of its ridiculously funky theme music. And I remember the giddy thrills we got when we first got the fatalities working on Mortal Kombat II.

Playing old games, just as with watching old movies or listening to old albums, transports us to a time in the past that we like to remember. Whether it’s memories of old friends, loved ones, people we may see every day or might have lost touch with, every old game we load up is a window to the past and that’s special. The latest Call of Duty is never going to compete with that.

Civilization VI – How Will They Improve on the Previous Version?

Civilization V was released in 2010 and went on to be a big success story. The franchise has sold over 33 million units over the years with Civilization V being the best-selling version having sold around 8 million units sold worldwide.

And the gamer reviews for Civilization V were pretty good too. G5 gave it 5 out of 5. PC Gamer gave it 98 out of 100, and Game Informer 9.75 out of 10. And Civilization V took the ‘Best Strategy Game’ award at the 2011 BAFTA Games Awards.

That’s not to say there weren’t a few gripes with Civilization V though. One major quibble was the quality of the AI game opponents and their lack of smarts when conducting negotiations and diplomacy.

So how have Firaxis Games tried to improve on the success of Civilization V?

The latest version, Civilization VI, is due for release on October 21 2016. The same team that developed Civilization V have also worked on its successor. And it’s already been named ‘Best PC Game’ and ‘Best Strategy Game’ at the Game Critics Awards.

So what’s new? Well, the developers have suggested in various interviews that research found many gamers had come to find playing Civilization V one-dimensional.

The big aim with Civilization VI has been to create a game that makes gamers think on their feet a lot more. A more reactive experience is what the developers have tried to achieve.

And with that in mind they’ve made some big new changes for Civilization VI. For a start city development has been overhauled. Now when you’ve built a city centre you have to specialize the function of that city. It can become a specialist military, industry or science city, say – but it can’t contain elements of everything.

And that means terrain is much more important than in previous games. You have to think through and match up the function of your city with the landscape around it now for the best results. If you’re building an industrial city you’re going to need natural resources, for example.

That will impact on how you have to think about strategy too. There will cities that you’ll need to identify as being vitally important to your opponents’ infrastructure that you can attack, and cities that you’ll need to place extra emphasis on defending yourself.

The AI opponents have been upgraded too. So the historical figures like Gandhi and Teddy Roosevelt that you’re playing against will be more intelligent and cunning. Each has their own particular personality for you to read and monitor, but also hidden agendas that you’ll have to work hard to decipher.

And unlike in previous Civilization games there are much greater rewards to be had for developing the culture of your empire. In past versions of the game you will have found it much harder to succeed with an emphasis on cultural development compared to, say, science or your military. So for the first time developing drama, philosophy and poetry could be your route to victory.

How to Get Better at Stacraft 2

The best way to improve at Starcraft 2 is to play a lot. It sounds silly, but it’s simply true. When I started playing, I was originally placed in gold league and stayed there for a full three months. Then, slowly but surely, I rose up until I was in the top 50 Grandmasters in America.

Obviously, not everyone can become a Grandmaster (it requires, amongst other things, exceptional reflexes, reaction time and coordination), but I firmly believe that, with practice, everyone can become a master at Starcraft 2.

The first thing to work on is understand the game mechanics, namely: armor vs non-armored, range, attack speed, damage reduction, hidden bonuses, splash damage, etc. For instance, one thing that makes the Terran siege tanks so powerful is the fact that they might hit not just one unit, but up to 8. Obviously, the 70 damage they can quickly become 300-400, making them one of the highest-damage units in the game.

Every unit has its particularities and becoming intrinsically familiar with them will greatly improve your play. Any Protoss player, for instance, knows how to individually blink their stalkers to save them as they are about to die. Likewise, a Zerg player knows not to group their mutalisks during a raid if the enemy has air splash damage, such as a Thor.

The second thing to improve on is your knowledge of group battles. Almost all Starcraft 2 games are decided by one large confrontation, where the loser will be left on the defensive, rolling back, while the victor will keep pushing and destroying the economy and production capacities of the loser. It is better, in my opinion, to retreat from a battle that is clearly lost rather than lose every single one of your units in a lost defense. There are such things in Starcraft 2 as pyrrhic victory, where you somehow manage to hold a magnificent defense, but lose so much time and resources in the process that your other bases are left defenseless.

Another key trick to improve at Starcraft 2 is to utterly master the art of macroing, i.e. producing units, mining bases and, most of all, expanding. If you watch professional games, you’ll notice all of them expand very quickly, sometimes dangerously fast. While risky, an early expansion can bring him double the amount of minerals and gas you’d grab on one base, giving you a decisive advantage in the mid-game.

Lastly, take the time required to define and improve your style, whether it is micro-aggression, economy or turtling. Learning which race suits your best will also help you develop as a Starcraft 2 player and slowly grind up until you reach master. In my mind, with one or two hours per day, any player can become a master within 6 months if he practices correctly.