Julius

As someone who works at a bank, I always find it interesting when people have an aversion to utilising credit, because used smartly, it can go a long way in making things easier and simpler, such as with pre-orders like this. I noted it elsewhere but I stick pre-orders like this on a credit card and have the funds kept in dedicated spaces elsewhere, then transfer the funds over to the credit card as and when I see that the payment has been made. Saves me needing to check on and keep available funds in my current account. Not to say that it's wrong or anything like that, it always just makes me curious, I guess because of my job; but whatever actually works for you is almost always best. I've seen "more privileged" customers be excellent with managing credit, and others with ample funds being absolutely dismal at managing their credit (because they're too proud to set up a Direct Debit). I mean, anecdotally, I've got colleagues who also dodge using credit every chance they get (some who refuse to even use things like eBay) despite being fully aware of its potential importance in terms of building a good credit score, but some of them are also in a position where they have no real need to build up their credit file (traditional households from other cultures), so

Yeah, honestly it reminded me of that community fair play function the console launched with and was demised after very minimal use. Just seems like such an afterthought. Bit of a shame, as well, because with so many of these Xbox-published games making their way over as digital-only releases, I was finally starting to rack up some decent points! Need to make sure I remember to cash out. Honestly, I think they should take a page out of Nintendo's book when it comes to the Platinum points. Let's see some unique PlayStation IP avatars and Welcome backgrounds, let's see some official merch made available for legacy IP, heck let's go beyond that and have the points be able to go towards hardware or have earn double points when spent on PlayStation first-party games, weekends/periods where points go further (I think LEGO has something similar), and have a similar approach where points go twice as far when buying Classics available through subscriptions (also make way more Classics available, lol). There's so much they could do, honestly

Starting to see some reports of Pro Controller pre-orders being charged... We're getting there, folks. Slowly but surely, we're getting there

The PlayStation Stars loyalty program is officially winding down, with qualifying points redeemable until November 2026. They're now looking ahead to what form a loyalty program could take next on PlayStation.

As H-o-T shared in the PS5 thread, this is coming to PS5 this summer. Enhancements included in this version will be coming to other platforms for free. This release will also include support for DualSense haptic feedback and be enhanced for PS5 Pro. Bit of a shame this will very likely be digital-only like most Xbox games coming over, maybe even more so because this didn't get a physical release on Xbox in the first place. Curious to see how this is priced, seems like an easier pill to swallow playing a game like this on Game Pass – I don't know if it can shift units if it's more than £40 after Forza was £55 and Oblivion Remastered was £50? Feel like £35 would be a sweet spot.

Crazy how many things are coming to PlayStation from Xbox before Halo, really makes you wonder what their plans are for that franchise on PlayStation. Anyways, sure, I'm in for this. Good excuse for me to finally play the first game too.

Ask the Developer interview for the game is up! Including how Cow got involved in the racing scene... Love the little sketch The lowdown, stolen shamelessly from ResetEra:

Seems like some retailers, such as Smyths, are having trouble fulfilling orders for the 512GB microSD Express cards and have delayed delivery of pre-orders of the cards until the end of July. Might just be something worth keeping an eye on, as I struggle to imagine them being the only ones with potential stock issues for the 512GB cards.

Three waves of icons based on classic Nintendo systems will drop across the next three weeks leading up to and around the launch of the Switch 2, with the N64, GBA and GCN icons requiring that you're an Expansion Pack member to unlock: Pretty cool stuff!

Oh shoot – Neil Druckmann is guesting on Sacred Symbols+ this week?! Surprised to see this, but always listening to Neil, so no need to twist my arm!

Official trailer for The Bear S4:

Performance details for the game: Shinen have also confirmed that a free content update is already in the works: Good stuff!

Just been charged for my GameCube NSO controller pre-order by the Nintendo Store...

Confirmation that Battle Engine Aquila will have trophies.

Creator's Voice for the game is up:

Illuminate have reached Super Earth, so there's a new massive city map: Going to see if I can convince my friends to take a quick break from Forza in favour of protecting democracy this Friday Looks so good

I'd be very interested in picking this up, I've added a copy of Hotel Dusk to my eBay basket numerous times but never pulled the trigger, despite it going for so relatively little. So I certainly hope so! To give them credit where it's due, because I think they did some decent investigative work to look into the trademark more and because Reddit is usually an atrocious source, the person who did some digging into this was BreafingBread on Reddit (as in...breathing? What a username 😞 I mean, I totally buy it; this feels like the type of game you revisit late in a generation, they've done Another Code already, and the busiest time of the gaming announcements calendar is fast approaching. See you at the Not-E3 or September Direct I guess, Hotel Dusk?

Kid Icarus has been added to the service.

Thanks Sam, I'll probably pass purely because my wallet could do with a bit of a timeout after all the Pokémon cards I picked up yesterday, but I really appreciate it! Yeah, it's one I've been eyeing up for a good while now and the first time I've seen it in person, so if I don't stumble across it at any of the similar events I'll probably be attending later in the year (Birmingham Toy Fair or Birmingham Comic Con), I might just be cheeky and stick it on my birthday/Christmas list I always struggle for gift ideas anyways! And yeah, no joke about that post-Plat, non-Plat version, I think I've only ever seen one up for sale online across, what, like two or so years now of keeping an eye out and occasionally actively searching for Silent Hill 2? It's crazy, and I imagine a pretty niche case where it might be even harder to find given the comparatively greater success the remake has enjoyed. It's also such a weird one where I swear no-one can seem to agree on what the best version of the game on PS2 is when it comes to wanting a physical copy otherwise (the whole Director's Cut only being in the Platinum release if I'm remembering right?), they just all agree obviously to not play the HD Collection And then I also question whether I should just play the remake instead, but where's the fun in that?

Yeah, definitely. The early pre-orders for Black Bolt & White Flare went up a week or so ago and even only being on the fringes of the community after doing a lot of research ahead of the gaming market, the chaos of it took over all of my news feeds for a hot minute. Destined Rivals was similarly rough, apparently, and I imagine whatever set is bringing back Mega Evolutions later this year will be a bloodbath. I do really like the idea of doing a master set, but honestly, I feel like a lot of cards would be wasted on me. One of the vendors at the gaming market asked me about my progress with Crown Zenith because most of my pick-ups are from that set, so I guess if I were to look to master any set it'd be that one, but I might just look to get complete Trainer Gallery and Galatian Gallery subsets instead? No idea

Nintendo will be returning to Gamescom this year! Crazy the difference a new console generation makes (they skipped the show last year) Curious to see if they show up in Opening Night Live or hold any Treehouse or Treehouse-type events around that time?

Absolutely appalled, but not completely shocked, by the news the last few days that Gary Lineker is now expected to leave the BBC: And what for? For sharing a pro-Palestine clip which included a tiny clip art rat which he made the mistake of not knowing was included as a potential jab at the Jewish people in reference to how they were referred to by Nazis during the second World War. Which he then took down very quickly and apologised for at length for his lack of awareness. This ahead of his final Match of the Day appearance this coming weekend, which he will reportedly not be presenting, and he will also not be getting to present the World Cup next year, which was to be his final bow. I've got a lot of time for Lineker as someone who grew up on him hosting Match of the Day and virtually every major footballing event from my earliest years to now; he's synonymous for me with the very concept of a football show presenter. F1 highlights and Match of the Day re-runs of the Saturday night show made up many early Sunday mornings for me as a kid, obviously there were the Walkers ads, and watching him more and more on Saturday nights as I grew older only made me respect him as a presenter more. More importantly, and I'm not really one for politics in the sense that I think a lot of it is nonsense, as important as it is to be aware of it, but I think I'm in alignment with all of the views I've seen him express publicly, and it is a sham - not a shame, a sham - that speaking up on what's going on in Gaza has played out this way, but it seems like the BBC have been gunning for him for a while now and this is just an excuse to shut him down. Still though, I mean, how dare someone call out children dying, right? The BBC's commitment to "impartiality" has been a weakness of theirs for as long as I've been an adult, and probably going back to when I was an early teenager. But so the story goes

Went to the Birmingham Gaming Market today and did some proper damage to my wallet – check a look at the pick-ups! Trainer Gallery / trainer-present cards: A lot of cards I love here, I'm a big fan of the Hisuian Arcanine and have wanted to pick that up for a while, and as you can probably tell, I'll gladly pick up any card featuring N. My favourite of the bunch, though? Honestly, probably Clair and her Kingdra, I just love how dynamic the artwork feels. Standard Pokémon: Finally picked up that Electivire to go with my Magmortar from last year's Toy Fair pick-ups! Think my favourite of these is either the Skarmory or the Cleffa. Okay, it's the Cleffa. V cards Quite a few I like here, obviously, and I really like the Arceus full arts. Having looked up all the Arceus cards and recently locating my Water-type Arceus card from my childhood collection, I'm considering a complete Arceus collection, which is why I broke my soft rule here of only one card per Pokémon – but I did spread the Arceus love out over several stalls at least! I think my 3 favourites would be Raikou (Legend of Thunder represent! It was my most expensive card again £28 for most of the day – but we'll come back to that), the Hisuian Samurott (love the contrast of the golden leaves and the blue of the water), and that Lumineon (it just pops so nicely!). Trainer cards: Favourite of these has to be Cynthia's Ambition, which was the most expensive of the bunch at £20. She's probably another one like Arceus where I see myself collecting all her cards, she's just one of the characters I grew up on and all her full arts look rad as hell. Love the Friends in Sinnoh card too, but that Falkner card also looks far better than any first gym leader deserves to look! So, going into this event, I actually have defined my collecting a bit more: it's about the cool artwork, characters and Pokémon I have attachments to from my childhood, and there are some Pokémon I'm considering doing 100% collections of, but I also want to draw a line in my spending a bit, and so most of my spending will be limited to events such as these and I have defined two categories I'm buying cards of – "standard" which are cards below a certain price threshold, and the "premium" cards I'll only ever buy one or two of at a time because they're over that threshold but limited by another. I don't care for graded cards as the value for me is in having the cards myself, I don't really care about the price (unless it's too much) but just want cool cards, and so while Near Mint is my ideal condition for my collection, I'm fine picking up Light Play cards if it saves me a little money. I think having a ceiling on my spending and a better idea of what I wanted finally gave me the confidence in returning to the hobby that I needed to pick up some sleeves, toploaders (for the premium stuff), and two binders (black is standard, blue is for the premium cards in toploaders): With that out of the way, I can talk about the final 2 cards I picked up today – my premium pick-ups. I did a lot of research before the event and had a rough idea of what I'd be interested in when it comes to the lower end of the premium cards pile, but the higher end was much, much more defined as a particular subset of a certain subset of cards which I think have awesome art and just a lot of sentimental value. And I knew which of those cards I wanted first, too. The first cards stall we hit up on the day was towards the back of the gaming market and had a great selection, with a loooooooot of great stuff, and it's where I probably picked up 40% of my cards straight off the bat. I spotted a few cards from the smaller subset of premium cards I want and another card which would make an excellent companion piece to a previous pick-up at the Toy Fair, but wanted to wait until the end of the show before pulling the trigger. Hitting up a few more stalls I saw the same card from the small subset I want at a higher price, and also the most expensive card from that small subset. Eventually I got a bit burned out on looking through binders and after finishing off our run through every stall, I knew it was time to go back and revisit those cards and pick one of them to take home! Unfortunately for my wallet before doing that I had a run-in with not getting my hands on a limited edition Japanese PS3 box set of Shadow of the Colossus and ICO, so I decided to go above and beyond, returned to the stall and picked up both of the cards I was interested in: Umbreon VMAX to go along with my Umbreon from last year (which by the way has doubled in value to the point that it is nearing the threshold I'd consider a purchase at to be worthy of the premium binder!), both from the same set and featuring Karen, and the Crown Zenith Galatian Gallery subset's gold Arceus VStar. I mean, where better to start my premium collection than with the Alpha Pokémon that (in-universe) started it all? So, the small subset I was referring to was the Creation Trio + Arceus gold VStars from Crown Zenith, all with beautiful art from Akika Egawa showcasing the legendary Pokémon at different spots in relation to Mt Coronet: Sinnoh means a lot to me in terms of my Pokémon fandom, and so the appeal just makes sense, and these cards helped me figure out that yeah, there are some cards I'm glad to up my budget for (but, you know, within reason and still trying to be sensible by pacing myself somewhat). While I think my aim is to buy most cards at events, considering I could've picked all of these up in September last year when I was starting to get back into the swing things for less than half of what they're now going for, I think I'll be picking up a few of these between now and the Toy Fair in September (assuming I go). We saw all of these cards at the event today, and Giratina, as I already knew, is by far the most expensive (roughly as much as Dialga and Palkia combined), but even though it's my favourite legendary Pokémon, I think it would've just been an odd place to start. I'm counting 37 cards picked up today and a lot of damage done to my wallet, but it feels so fun and genuinely good to be back in the hobby. This is the most excited I've felt about Pokémon in a long time, and honestly the reason I didn't pull the trigger on some Paldean cards today isn't for a lack of art, it's a lack of context not having played those games, and so Scarlet is pretty high on my list to get to now! What's more, Destined Rivals launches at the end of the month with some AWESOME cards coming! With partner Pokémon cards back in full force and Team Rocket the focus this time (ft. Giovanni and the HeartGold and SoulSilver Rocket Executives!) you essential have Rocket's cards returning, a new Cynthia full art, a few Ethan/Gold full arts (including an AWESOME Ethan's/Gold's Typhlosion; Legend of Thunder represent!!) and many other awesome looking cards to go with it all! And then there's the whole Black Bolt/White Flare situation where every Pokémon in the set is getting a full art and they've been split across two separate, parallel sets like the games? I can't wait