First off let me begin by saying Happy Halloween and I hope you all have fun tonight.



So yesterday it came out that Lost Winds creator David Braben got a bit of strop on because of HMV doing second hand games so I'd like to share with you briefly a thought on this matter.

Big deal. Simple as that really because HMV did pre-owned games once before and failed at it hard mostly because they couldn't compete with Game, Gamestation and EB (when EB was still around) on the prices of pre-owned games so you'd end up browsing what they had and finding a dog eared copy of The Bouncer for £35. In Britain now they will find themselves having a much harder time than the last time they tried this becuase the market is already full of shops that are better associated with the sale of second hand stock and are better at it.

To start with you have Game and Gamestation both of whom have been around for a considerable time and have a bigger base of clientel that will sooner go to one of these stores because of theyre familiarity with them, you've also got a small chain of independant stores called CEX whose entire stock is made up of second hand sales and they are branching out with some considerable speed. On top of that you also have the likes of Cash Converters and Blockbusters, both of which can be found outside of large shopping complexes of town centres, in residential areas.

HMV couldn't compete when a second hand market was comparitvely niche, how are they giong to cope now that the market is much more saturated?

Although I disagree with the beliefs of Braben and much of the big corporate games industry, game shops do need to reign in just how much of what they sell is pre-owned. At present the shelves are more full of second hand games than box fresh copies and getting hold of older releases that don't look like they've been used as a beer mat is next to impossible at times, extra impossible if the game was a bit niche (stand up Elite Beat Agents), double extra impossible if you want a PC game older then a year that isn't WoW or available on Steam.

Despite the shops going out of thier way to sell me someones used tat at £10 off the price, the staff in most of these places arn't quite so heartless seeing as most of them are gamers too. A good example of this happened to me recently, I went into a GameStation and inquired about used Guitar Hero 3 with Guitar for the 360 in the window for around £50. Upon inquiring the gentleman behind the till told me not to go for it as they were sellng Guitar Hero 3 and guitar brand new for the same price (not that the shop was advertising the fact) with a free faceplate thrown in.

++Bonus things++
First up a stop motion animated paper craft Megaman hopping and shooting around levels made up of food and random stuff.

I havn't played Megaman 9 yet and am not really a Megaman person (RE: I suck at Megaman games) but that BG music is very catchy, speaking of catchy next up is 80's anime style live action music video for the Black Kids song Look At Me (When I Rock Wichoo).

I saw this whilst sitting in a favoured pub of mine and was instantly won over by the washed out retro feel of the video and it's Battle of the Planets vibe, also: funky tune.[url][/url]