I own a lot of video game related junk. I horde the stuff like there’s no tomorrow. A friend of mine recently tried to throw out a few broken GunCon pedals, which I quickly snapped up and put in boxes. Why would I do this? WHY CAN’T I THROW THEM OUT?!

In all honesty I believe that one day we will live underground and trade jugs of water and video game memorabilia for ammunition to fight of the legions of robots from hell. It’s what I was raised to believe. It’s in the bible, go read it!

Anyway, I figured I’d share some of my less junky pieces of junk and maybe encourage others to show off their collections.

First up I figured I start with one of my favourite items, a pack I bought a few years ago for Sonic’s 10th birthday. As a kid I was a huge SEGA fan boy, and in a way I still am. I only wish there was more SEGA branded stuff that was actually good. Ah well... a man can dream.

I got it off the now dead Lik-Sang (oh how I miss you) a while back. As far as I recall it was pretty cheap. I don’t remember exactly but it was less than AU$50. The pack included a copy of Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast, a 10th Anniversary copy of Sonic Adventure 2 (which I’m certain is the same game as the regular version), a soundtrack CD that contains various Sonic tunes from all of his games, a gold coin with Sonic embossed on it and a little history booklet. It also came with a Sonic action figure thing that was about 30cm tall, but I’m pretty sure it’s in a box somewhere that I can’t find. It’s probably next to the GunCon pedals and the Nintendo 64 RF adapters. That’s not a joke.

Anyway, on to the pictures.



Here is the Sonic anniversary pack next to a copy of Sonic Adventure that came in the pack.



A close up of the back of the box.



This is Sonic’s birthday. Write it down and try and remember it this time. You guys are such dicks. Think of all he’s done for you!



This is what comes inside the pack – Sonic Adventure 2 and the other digi-pack thing.



Here’s a close up of the coin. Front and back. Not sure which one is the front.



Here is the first page of the booklet. If you look to the left you can make out the embossed logo that is on the cover. Because the cover is white it doesn’t show up in photos very well.



An example of one of the pages inside the booklet.



This page has a few Sonic facts.



Yes kids, there was a time when Sonic was popular.



This is the last page. If only he could evolve to good games.



Well that's it for now. I have some more stuff I'll post when I get around to it, which shouldn't be too far away.

(Any comments would be very much apppreciated!)

GameTab recently became one of my favourite video game websites. It's a simple idea – take every popular gaming website out there and form an easy to read website with a list of today’s top stories.

However, just recently something annoying on GameTab caught my eye that I don’t think should be overlooked. Mostly because in my experience this type of error occurs all too often.

The annoyance I’m referring is a story with the title “Xbox 360 Premium w/ HDMI and 65nm CONFIRMED”, which seemed odd to me as I had read earlier on Destructoid that Microsoft refused to comment on the subject.

This is the front page of GameTab the day I noticed the story.





I clicked the link and found this.





As you can see, after checking the Evil Avatar post I noticed that they had cited Engadet as their source, and even the owner of the post had reservations about this claim. Anyway, I followed the link and read the Engadet story and noticed this mistake.




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It seems like they posted this with little to no research on the subject. It even cited ShackNews as a source, which is bizarre as they clearly stated “no 65nm chip” in their post.

Still if I was going to blog about this I should make sure that I had all my facts straight. So I checked 1UP.com, IGN and GameSpot, arguably the three biggest video game websites. This is what each of them had to say on the subject.




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Notice that not a single one says that the new Xbox 360 has a 65nm chip. Actually, 1UP.com and IGN don’t even mention this. I did notice however that IGN had cited Engadet as their source, but I assume they were smart enough to call Microsoft to confirm all the details.

In the end I went straight to the source, ShackNews, and found this.





No 65nm chip. Plain and simple.

The point I want to make good video game sites like (1UP, GameSpot, IGN and Destructoid) had their facts straight, and it's hard to fault GameTab as it's basically just a RSS feed dumping ground. Even the user on Evil Avatar did the right thing and cited their source.

But Engadget were just sloppy and should have done their research and verified their claims, or at least read the ShackNews article a little closer. What really gets to me is the tone Engadget uses saying “...obviously the cooler 65nm chips...” when they have no idea if this is true.

To many this probably went unnoticed, but I often find little stories like this crop and wonder why nobody has bothered checked their facts.


On a lighter note, cocks.





Full disclosure: I don’t think it’s relevant but I don’t want to get caught out, so I should point out that I am an IGN Insider member.

Sources:
http://www.destructoid.com/the-rumors-are-true-hdmi-equipped-premium-360-found-on-sale-updated--37956.phtml
http://www.gametab.com/
http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/08/xbox-360-premium-confirmed-shipping-with-hdmi
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34000
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3161834
http://au.gamespot.com/news/6176397.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;0
http://au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/811/811669p1.html