You have to ask yourself, why did Asmik think this image would help shift copies of their game? Two teary men in a fuzzy stadium sharing a tender embrace and looking longingly at the Playstation logo. Seriously, it looks like propoganda. They might as well have opted for an image of two laughing cows taking a grass dump on a compact disc or two catfish flicking elastic bands at a wristwatch. 

Right, the game’s called Jewel Master so clearly the intention here was to have some jewels and some part of a ‘master’ feature on the box somehow, somewhere. 

Apparently, according to this picture, in this game you get to play a giant girly hand adorned with giant girly rings, and must use them to spray a badly drawn phoenix with a triangle of girly looking water. Sounds truly unwonderful. Neither Darran nor I have played the game, so in the unlikely chance that this game is absolutely amazing and has some huge web-following that we’re completely unaware of, we’ll apologise for lambasting its artwork in advance.

No, we don’t mean the sort of person who likes to hang around abandoned shopping areas and steal from old ladies when they’re not looking, but gamers with a genuine love of retro games. Ben Watts obviously is as he’s sent in this rather ominous picture of himself and a nice bit of speil as well. So are there any other Retrobates out there or is Ben the only one? 

Ben Watts

Huge fan of the Final Fantasy and

Resident Evil series.

I also love and will never forget

Cool Spot, on the Sega Mega Drive

and its sequel Spot Goes Too

Hollywood.

Expertise: XBOX LIVE! and making

my own written game guides.

Currently playing: Eternal sonata,

Command and Conquer Retaliation.

Favourite game of all time:

Resident Evil on the PSone.   

We smell a conspiracy here…We were recently sent this rather lavish Commodore 64 book (expect a review in issue 52) to complement the Speccy book we already have, but we’d love to see an actual Amstrad CPC outing in the same style. Then, and only then would the 8-Bit holy trinity be complete* * We purposely didn’t include the BBC Micro, so please don’t write in and complain. 

Ok, so we’ve not updated the blog for a while (that’s deadlines for you) but we’ll return with a fresh ferocity from tomorrow. In the meantime here’s a Christmas card that Konami sent us. It’s several months old now of course, but it’s so cute we just couldn’t bear to throw it away. 

As far as we’re aware, this is the first and only time that an image of a lizard, a fern, a gem and a silhouette of a family have ever been used on a boxart.

It kinda gives the impression that the family are playing the game on a big television and are experiencing the most photorealistic graphics ever created. Sadly, Animal Vegetable Mineral is simply a way to educate your computer by playing Twenty Questions - which means you’ll be staring at a bunch of words and answering stupid questions. 

Imagine how well this baby would have sold if it was actually real. I spent three weeks scouring the internet and was prepared to pay any price until I discovered that it had been created as promotional material.