Before you make me punch you repeatedly in the face

1. US prices do not show taxes, but British ones do

Bitch, whine, moan. That pretty much sums up what spews out of many British mouths when comparing prices in the UK and USA. In some cases, our American chums do get it better, but often they don’t—it’s just British people being stupid.

Case in point: the new Apple MacBook line. “Wah wah wah,” have gone lots of Brits, in a Kevin-the-teenager-style emo tantrum, moaning how it’s so unfair that a $999 laptop in the USA costs £719 in Britain.

Here’s the thing: US prices are shown without taxes. Therefore, you have to compare with Britain’s ex-VAT rate. At the time of writing, the US price is about £575, meaning the UK price is a full 37 quid more. And given how much Sterling’s getting kicked on the markets right now, Apple’s actually been pretty good with its ‘internal’ exchange rate and built-in cushion.

So, for all you people bullsh*tting about how you can “fly over to the US and get a laptop and still have change for munchies”, just try it. See how far you get with your 37 quid. You’ll probably be dropped out of the plane before you get past Ireland.

2. Rinse and repeat

Go back and read point 1 until you actually understand it, and then stop whining about how expensive items are in the UK unless they actually cost significantly more (Hello, Adobe CS4!)

These aren’t tears of joy—they’re tears of pain

1. Refresh your material

Yes, your material is clearly the funniest thing known to man, and it bears repeating to everyone on the face of the planet, including undiscovered tribes in the deepest, darkest reaches of the jungle. But here’s the thing: when I’ve already paid to see you live last year, in an entirely different tour, and you come on stage, mentioning that you were part of the last tour and are lucky enough to be included in this one, it’s probably best to actually have something new to say.

This might surprise you, but while repeats are bad enough on television, they’re far more annoying than a billion Janet Street Porters when you’ve paid 20 quid per ticket to watch a word-for-word regurgitation of a year-old act.

2. Adapt your material with care

I know I’m probably being ungrateful here, and that you should in fact be able to go on stage, play a tape recording of your act, and just read the paper and drink beer in front of me, but what I’d actually like to see is something unique and original. When you clearly have in your canned script ‘insert current location here’, it makes me want to insert something into you, like a really sharp stick into a nervous-looking eye.

To take an example—entirely at random, obviously—if a certain support act were to happen upon an Aldershot venue and try to do jokes about the town, don’t fire off the exact same jokes with the same generic information that you used a year ago when doing the exact same act in a totally different venue a number of miles away. It just makes you look like a lazy git—and, frankly, if you can’t come up with some new material for a 25-minute support act during an entire year, I think those dreams of playing Wembley Arena should be shot to pieces right now.

3. Refresh your material

Yes, your material is clearly the funniest thing known to man, and it bears repeating to everyone on the face of the planet, including undiscovered tribes in the deepest, darkest reaches of the jungle. But here’s the thing: when I’ve already paid to see you live last year, in an entirely different tour, and you come on stage, mentioning that you were part of the last tour and are lucky enough to be included in this one, it’s probably best to actually have something new to say.

This might surprise you, but while repeats are bad enough on television, they’re far more annoying than a billion Janet Street Porters when you’ve paid 20 quid per ticket to watch a word-for-word regurgitation of a year-old act.

Decidedly Sound investment or Dreary Stupid idea?

Yesterday evening in Japan-o-time, Nintendo announced the DSi, the next iteration of the Nintendo DS. With the DS being the console that changed the gaming landscape, paving the way for the family-friendly Wii, and having sold in huge numbers, any change is clearly dangerous.

Nintendo runs the risk of a drop-off in sales with people waiting for the DSi, or people being underwhelmed by the hardware specification, and therefore getting tempted by something more powerful, or more open (like the Pandora).

There’s no word regarding whether the DSi will support non-stupid router security, but here are my thoughts on the announced features, in patented* ‘hurrah’ (good) and ‘hurroo’ (not good) format:

* Not patented.

Bigger screens

The screens are apparently 17 per cent bigger than the ones on the DS Lite, meaning 17 per cent less squinting, but they appear to be the same resolution, retaining compatibility. Although some muppets are reporting both screens are now touchscreens, they aren’t—only the bottom one is, but again this is good from a compatibility standpoint. Hurrah!

No GBA slot

We all knew this was coming, surely? However, this presents a double-whammy, and a triple whammy if you go ‘yarrrr’ a lot. No GBA slot means no GBA games (which means no Rhythm Tengoku), but it also means games that utilise the GBA slot for expansions are scuppered. This also means anyone making use of a 3-in-1 for playing loads of naughty GBA titles on their DS is stuffed. Hurroo.

In fact, no GBA at all

With the GBA slot gone, so is the GBA hardware, bringing to an end the original Game Boy line entirely. This makes us sad. Not as sad as if our puppy died, but about as sad as if our PVR missed off the last three minutes of QI. Hurroo.

SD slot

This sort of replaces the GBA slot. And there are all sorts of exciting things you can do with an SD card, right? (Spoiler: ‘yes’ is the right answer—see below). Hurrah!

Built-in cameras

The big black dot on the front of the DSi isn’t a skin condition (sorry, beauty spot)—it’s a magical camera hole! This would have enabled your DS to take the place of a digital camera, if only Nintendo hadn’t kicked itself in the face with the resolution. Think iPhone’s camera’s bad? Wait until you get a load of the DSi cameras, both of which are 640 by 480 resolution (0.3 megapixel). Yes, that’s not a typo—the DSi’s cameras will be on a par with those from a really rubbish mobile phone.

The photos will be editable using the stylus, presumably dumpable on to the SD card, and high-res would have been somewhat tricky to deal with, but I can’t help but feel a little short-changed here. Hurroo.

DSiWare

This one’s the biggie. The DS is currently the odd console out, lacking downloadable games content, but that’s all about to change. DSiWare will bring to the DSi a range of titles between no money and about seven quid in cost terms.

What these games will be is unclear, but I suspect Game Boy releases are on the cards. However, emulation software for the DS via the naughty internet shows that while the GBA is out of reach, the system can definitely run NES, Spectrum, 8-bit Sega and even Neo-Geo titles without stumbling, and so here’s hoping for some serious variety. Hurrah!

Opera

The browser’s now built in to the firmware (which we just bet also has some nifty way of blocking R4s and similar cards), and so it’s free. That is all! Hurrah! (Apart from the R4 speculation, obv.)

Release date

The Japanese will get their hands on the DSi, priced at about 100 quid, in under a month. November the 1st is the happy-time date. With us being a worldwide economy, that means a simultaneous worldwide release, right? Wrong. Nintendo has set their Mug-o-tron to ‘high’, and will milk the UK for one last Christmas, before unleashing the DSi in Europe next year. “We’re aiming to launch DSi in Europe in Spring 2009,” said Nintendo. Translation: “We’re aiming to get idiots to buy a DS this Christmas, and then a DSi in March. Mwahahahahaha!”

Don’t be an idiot, readers. Make Nintendo suffer for taking the piss out of you. Not so much a ‘hurroo’ as a MAJOR FAIL.

Overall, this announcement rates fairly highly on the game-o-scale. It’s not a Rhythm Tengoku of goodness, but more like a Zoo Keeper where you’re forced to play Quest Mode against your wishes every 40 minutes.

Hop to it!

As if bomb squads don’t have a hard enough time, Jumpman is tasked in this platform game with defusing bombs in Jupiter Headquarters, a place that clearly needs a serious heath and safety check. Precarious platforms and all manner of hazards await our athletic chum in this dated, playable and frequently frustrating platform game.

With Jumpman originally arriving on 8-bit computers in the early 1980s, it’s not much to look at, and the sound is guff, but designer Randy Glover had a wicked sense of humour and a real sense for level design. Therefore, each of the 30 levels brings its own set of dangers, such as ledges that vanish once you defuse a bomb, UFOs that dart around the screen, and manic robots hell-bent on killing you in the face. Also, when you inevitably come a cropper and tumble down the platforms to your untimely demise (and a jolly, slightly sarcastic rendition of the death march), you still defuse bombs that you bump into and can therefore sometimes complete a level during your dying moments, which is a nice touch.

Aside from poor aesthetics, niggles with Jumpman largely relate to some screens being absurdly difficult and controls being twitchy on the faster levels. However, if you can put yourself in the mind of a 1980s gamer—it was a time when gamers were real men: hardcore, but with mullets—you’ll find Jumpman a compelling, challenging, and occasionally maddening game.

Jumpman is available now for 500 Wii points (about £3.50). It’s tough, so wimpy gamers need not apply. Mullets, however, are optional.

It rocks. It’s diamond. Etc.

In the early 1980s, Peter Liepa was tasked by First Star Software to rescue a project that was, at the time, a canned and barely playable clone of obscure arcade game The Pit. Rather than fudge a solution on his Atari, he instead deconstructed the 1981 Centuri title, playing with its component parts of digging through earth, avoiding monsters and collecting jewels. What evolved was a game that in every way bettered its arcade-based inspiration and provided the cash cow that First Star subsequently milked to exhaustion over the next 24 years.

The core of Boulder Dash is simple: guide Rockford (who, depending on various artistic interpretations, is either a prospector or a cave mite with a penchant for munching diamonds) around various underground caves, tunnelling through dirt, avoiding deadly monsters, grabbing diamonds and seeking out the exit once a set number of gems has been pilfered. Tight time limits, varying speeds, excellent level design and occasional new foes ensure that Boulder Dash never lets up, and once you’ve conquered its 16 caves and four intermission screens, you’re plonked back on a harder Cave A, with a different layout and an increase in enemy numbers.

An almost perfect combination of frenetic arcade gaming and thoughtful (but quickfire) puzzling and strategy, Boulder Dash is one of the very few games from the early 1980s that is a true classic. And although the C64 version on Wii Virtual Console doesn’t quite match the Atari 800 original, it comes close. Sadly, the majority of subsequent Boulder Dash games (including the recent—and dire—DS Boulder Dash Rocks) never managed to capture the magic inherent in Liepa’s original, and so here’s hoping this rerelease enables a whole new generation of gamers to fully embrace and enjoy the game, and long-time gamers to fall in love with it all over again.

Few games truly stand the test of time, but Boulder Dash is a rare example of one that will still be worth playing in 2028, let alone today. Essential.

Boulder Dash is available now for 500 Wii points (about £3.50). If you like videogames and don’t buy this, you’re an idiot. Oh, and no the NES version wasn’t better, Nintendo fans.