I am Mog Anarchy, and I like to play games. Whether they are old, new, retro, modern, online, offline, console, computer, critically acclaimed or notoriously bad. Here on my blog, I rant about, review, trash talk, praise and generally talk about all of my favourite and least-favourite games. I also write my own guides on how to accomplish tricky tasks, show off my creative endeavors and challenge myself with crazy in-game tasks. I also have a bunch of gaming merchandise which I am glad to show off. So drop me a comment, I love hearing your questions, criticisms, comments and general gaming discussions. :)
It's time for my seventh monthly Arcade Block! As I've previously explained; for a fee of $20 CANADIAN per month, Arcade Block will send you a lovely box of gaming merchandise, including a T-shirt. Shipping costs vary, depending on where you live, and larger T-shirt sizes cost a few $ extra - overall, my boxes including shipping, work out at about £24. This one was shipped on the 25th of April and arrived on the 6th of June. I'd received an e-mail about Nerd Block struggling with getting blocks shipped on time and that they have a backlog, but I seem to be getting them in a reasonable timeframe.
So, on Sunday I took a trip down to Bradford to visit the National Media Museum. It's a massive building that is full of media-related history - including TV, cinema, the Internet and of course, the floor I was most interested in: VIDEO GAMES. The 6th floor is home to the GAME LOUNGE; which is a big room filled with refurbished arcade cabinets and old consoles you can actually play on. I'd like to add that they're all free to play too - except Space Invaders (which costs 10p) and Point Blanc (which costs 50p) - admission into the museum is also totally free.
The cabinets included:
Space Invaders, Point Blank, Gauntlet, Donkey Kong, Defender, Asteroids & Frogger
The console games included: Super Mario Kart, Pong, Manic Miner, Prince Of Persia, Goldeneye 64 & Sonic The Hedgehog 2
The whole Games Lounge is nicely decorated with full wall-length murals of classic video game iconography and even features these lovely Tetris-block seats to sit at to play the table-style arcade cabinets and console set-ups.
It also features a classic staple of virtually every British museum and tourist attraction - the penny press! Basically you pay a £1 coin and a 1p coin to flatten out the 1p coin and stamp a design onto it. Here's the two I got made - a Pac-Man one and a Space Invaders one.
To round this blog off nicely, here's a compilation of the videos I filmed during my trip; my guided tour of the Games Lounge and several videos of me being way too overexcited trying out the games and arcade cabinets - even losing my ZX Spectrum virginity, playing Manic Miner for the first time!
They also sold a wide array of gaming merchandise in the gift shop - including an awesome messenger bag, Tetris stickers, books, Pixel Bricks and more!
Today on Minecraft Creations, I present to you: the sprite art statue that likely every single Minecraft player has made at some point, likely their first attempt at sprite art:
Yes, an 8-bit Mario from the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES. I did attempt to mix up the formula with a palette swap, using Mario's colours from the modern era, rather than the collection of brown/orange/red that the NES used. Fun fact: the very first recorded instance of sprite art in Minecraft was an 8-bit Mario; made from dirt, wood and cobblestone - uploaded within like the first hour that the Minecraft servers ever went live. Seriously, Google it. If you've never made one yourself, you know what you need to do. :)
Everyone knows I like Amazon.co.uk. I used to buy all of my games from Play.com before they decided they didn't want to accept my bank card anymore, so I migrated to Amazon. I'm a bit iffy on eBay, mainly due to the bidding wars and whatnot. But anyway.
I recently bought a NES from eBay, so I was mooching for some more games. It came with the original Super Mario Bros. so I searched for the "sequel" Super Mario Bros. 2 (even though we all know it's not a REAL Mario game, it's still worth playing!) and was quite surprised to find it half a million miles down on the page of results.
So out of curiosity, I searched for "Super Mario Bros." I didn't expect the NES original to be the #1 search of course; as I expected that went to the "New" naff Super Mario Bros. on the DS. (I'm just not a big fan of it, OK?). But where the NES original was, was ridiculous.
16th on the list - below some shitty little PVC figurines which don't even look like the official ones that came packaged in the red cardboard packs.
What was even more insulting to the awesome NES original however, was THIS:
It ranks lower than the ridiculous live-action Super Mario Bros. movie. Amazon, what the actual fuck. Get your shit together seriously.
