So long since my last post and so many things to write about! Start og the rugby season... Brighton vs Northampton... new LP deck... Colin McRae Gathering.... Mrs Aitch's Finest Marmalade... but one that's more urgent.

Steam have the entire id Collection available for $34.99 this weekend only. After then it reverts to $79.99.

I bought in; the collection contains a rediculous amount of software, most of which I own but most of which doesn't work any more. Well, with Steam it does - and I know it'll work forever more. It's also a great opportunity to backfill holes in my gaming career - for example, Q2MP2 and Hexen / Heretic series. You also get all of the Commander Keens, all the Dooms (1,2, Ultimate, Final, 3, 3MP) - all for just over £20.

Buy it. Buy it now because the deal ends today. You'll not regret!

-(C) H out

There's been a lot of press recently about Children who don't exercise enough. The BBC leads an article with the paragraph:

Only one in 40 11-year-olds meets the national target of an hour of physical exercise a day, say researchers.
A University of Bath study of 5,595 children found that 95% of boys and 99.6% of girls fell short of this time.

The Register picked up on this theme in their article Keeping a Hawk-Eye on those miserable Wii kids. An interesting quote they picked out was:

Larne GP Brian Dunn says he sees the result of increasing inactivity among children in his working life.
He said: "There are problems caused by an absence of outside playtime and children being driven to school. Children generally don't walk to school any more and there's less exposure to physical games. It's also easier to opt out of them.

"Then when children go home they just watch TV and play computer games. This is going to cause ill health in the future."

What I'd like to ask is: why would kids rather play computer games than play outdoors?

The most obvious suggestion is laziness. It's easier to play Mario than football. That's probably true, but there's more to it than that. For a start, footballs are cheaper than Wiis and most people have a nearby park. Also, kids will happily walk or bike around to their mate's house – in order to play video games. If they were totally lazy, they wouldn't.

One reason I'd suggest is that you can be better at doing “stuff” in a video game than you ever will be in real life.

If I go to play football, I can play with some mates. I can pass, I can shoot and, in an hour, I might even score a goal. Playing FIFA, I can score the winning goal in the European cup.

If I go to play tennis, I'll hit the ball, hit the net, send the ball out... I'll suck. On the Wii, I can fire up Wii tennis, win by a street and – the best part – on the Wii, it even looks like it's me that's winning!

If I go to race, I'll either get arrested or I'll pay a shedload of cash to visit a karting track. Either way, I'll never be awesome unless I invest a significant amount of time and money. On the PC, I can win the British Rally or beat Michael Schumacher from the comfort of my office chair.

Being a gamer keeps my dreams alive; I'm not going to be able to do any of those things in real life. And, because I fulfill my dreams by gaming, I never will.

Today I'm going to write about my Stack.

The Stack is a concept familiar to anyone who's played video games. Or who reads books. The Stack sits in the corner and glares at you. It camps, promising to give endless hours of enjoyment, in exchange for a mere 30 hours of your life per shot.  Oh, the hit.

The Stack is the pile of games you've bought (surely not downloaded), maybe because they had just come out and were Really Cool (FarCry, anyone), maybe because you're tied into the company like a Level 69 Hunter (id - Quake, Doom?), or maybe because they're Really Cheap! (Play.com currently have Prey for a fiver). The pile you have but haven't finished. Or - dare I say it - even played.

I have Stacks going back as far as I have computers. I have a PC Stack, a GameCube Stack and an N64 Stack. I even have - wait for it - a SNES Stack and a NES Stack! Many genres - FPS, RPG, RTS, sports, driving, platform, puzzle. Top down, first person, side scroller. They're all in there.

I need to beat them down. To defeat the monsters lurking on my shelves and on my disks. I've only got one of the consoles hooked up at the minute, so that hoses the N64, SNES and NES. Narrowing the stack down to the PC and Gamecube doesn't help much, though. I'll also cross out anything too old - maybe not everthing though. There are still some classics I've got to finish!

So, here is the stack. Sorted by no particular means:

Gamecube:

• Zelda: Windwaker
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
• Super Mario Sunshine
• Hunter: The Reckoning

PC:

• Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
• Prey
• World of Warcraft (i.e. L60)
• WoW: Burning Crusade (i.e. L70)
• Command and Conquer 3
• Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne
• Starcraft: Brood War

Some of them (WC3:TFT, SC:BW) are sooo close it's painful! Some of them (Hunter) I've yet to start despite having it two years.

Wish me luck. From hereon in there's nobody but myself, a pot of popcorn an three gallons of coffee. First up is the Doom 3 mission pack. Where's that shotgun?

-(C) H out...