Where are all the cowboy games? Bald marines seeking crouch-level cover emerge from the shadowy, inexplicably-brown wastes of the industry’s finest on a weekly basis, whilst the sheer brutality and unique charisma of the western era has gone largely ignored. Thankfully, Rockstar have kicked down that paticular door recently, with the fantastic Red Dead Redemption, so hopefully many more devs will step up and give us more adventures in this interesting setting!

Hopefully, they’ll be better than this game.

So, this is what I’ve been toying with lately. It’s a TF2 hud. It’s pretty neat. You should try it.

Dare you find out it’s sinister secrets for yourself? (Spoilers: It’s actually a scale model on a spring in front of a green screen)

The Great Giana Sisters is a Super Mario Bros. ripoff. THERE I SAID IT. Course, this is not some startling new revelation: The original game came out in 1987, and lasted all of five minutes before Nintendo swarmed upon it like a pack of angry wildebeest. 20-something years later, the game returned in a new form on the DS and iPhone, somehow managing to avoid Nintendo’s wandering eye despite once again leaping into their kitchen, eating all their food, and probably pooping in the fireplace.

How does this even play? I want to find out, but not enough to buy a Japanese phone.

So, Modern Warfare 2. Whilst porky jailbait everywhere has been eagerly trembling (and wobbling, probably) at the thought of the next Harry Potter or Twilight, their older, hairier, possibly fatter brothers have generally been quivering in anticipation for the next entry in the storied Call of Duty series. Starting as Another Generic World War 2 Series, the series took a sudden, violent turn in 2007 towards the present day, trading in it’s MP40s and Nazis in for AK47s and Potential Nuclear Disaster. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare blitzed to sudden extreme popularity on the strength of a action-packed single player campaign and an impressive multiplayer mode.

When it was announced that Bethesda, a studio with many years of experience in medieval fantasy RPGs, would be resurrecting the long dormant cult classic series Fallout, fanboys all over the internet swept into a violent fury that the series’ dead, long bankrupt creators would not be doing the job. The rage only increased upon the revelation that it would not be an isometric, turn based game running at 640×480 like the originals, but a high resolution 3D game like Oblivion. But while the accusations that Fallout 3 would just be a pallete shift of Beth’s previous game increased, the studio had learned from past mistakes, and delivered a RPG tour de force that, while far from perfect, is still a great way to while away the hours.

If there’s one thing I love more than chocolate (and that’s a big call), it’s filling blank speech bubbles with crap. I dug up a bunch of such ventures into this less-than-loved craft, and have decided to upload some of them…