How Game UK wasn’t hacked but Video Game News sites were.

Earlier today a story broke on Softepedia (I think they were first, I may be mistaken), written by their “Security News Editor“, stating Videogame retailer Game website had been hacked and user details including email and passwords had been posted on line, specifically on pastebin.

As videogame related news often does this information then quickly spread to a lot of other websites, mostly via video game bloggers’ copy and paste keys. However even a replutible source like ComputeractiveMCV and NowGamer carried the story, although as “reports” of a hack.

The only problem being Game hadn’t been hacked, and if anyone of at one these sites had committed fifteen minutes worth of research would have quickly notice that this list of users is mostly taken from this list of hacked emails accounts which are primary based in Indian and Pakistan and was release Oct 2011.

Even a couple of minutes copy and pasting a few of these emails accounts into Facebook search would have relieved this accounts where based outside of the UK and therefore very unlikely to belong to Game UK customers.

However in the race to publish the story none of the above websites did this. They waited until Game themselves issued a denial before admitting that the story was wrong. Softpedia still haven’t updated their story despite Game issuing their statement over an hour ago, so much for updated minute ago.

This is a rather sad state of affairs for Video Game journalism.

History of Turrican Episode 6: Universal Soldier

Funky Monkey is back with the final part of The History of Turrican.

Beware, for ’tis a dark day… We conclude this whistle-stop tour of Turrican History with a look at the perils of Movie licences, and a sloppily converted game called Universal Soldier.

Oh! And if I get 300 views per video on all my History of Turrican Videos by January, I’ll start a second series, and go in-depth on some of the mentioned games! Tell your friends!

Follow Funky Monkey on Youtube and now Twitter.

History of Turrican Episode 5: The Nintendo Saga

Funky Monkey is back with the fifth part of The History of Turrican. This time it covers Turrican on Nintendo systems.

The History of Turrican continues with a side-quest into the realms of gaming giant Nintendo. Witness One man’s NES vision! Behold the beauty of Super Turrican! Gasp as Super Turrican 2 isn’t as good!

And watch out! The season finale is in 2 weeks!!!

Follow Funky Monkey on Youtube and now Twitter.

The Voice of Alien Breed’s Aliens turns 171

Colin the Burmese cat turns 19, to appear at Bath Spa University.

Colin, a Burmese cat will appear alongside his owner, Allister Brimble (hundreds of audio tracks over the years including many of the early Team17 hits) at Bath Spa University this week.

Colin was perhaps one of the very first voice over artists to actually be an animal and provided the basis for many of the sound-effects that were to grace Team17′s break-out hit ‘Alien Breed’ in 1991, to which a glamorous next-gen sequel was launched on XBLA late last year.

We can assure everyone that Colin wasn’t harmed in the development of the game, but was ultimately ‘encouraged’ to make the mewling sounds which were finally mixed with elephant noises to create scary sounding Alien screams.

At 19 and a grand old 171 in cat’s years, it is currently unknown if Colin will star in any future titles and is getting busy doing very little in his Exeter retreat.Allister also penned a modern remake of his classic Alien Breed opening track, which features in “Alien Breed Evolution’s” credit section.

via Team17

Breaking it Down

No More Internet

You may have noticed this rather dramatic image. However don’t fear, I’m not acting out for the attention (well, at least not anymore than normal). It’s just a little note to say I’m going to be reducing the amount of time I spend on the internet, as I want to prioritise other areas of my life.  I’m going to try and manage my internet time more effectively so hopefully you won’t see a big change in the number of blogs posts.

One thing I want to be doing more is hitting the town on a Saturday night, and this I’ve been arranging nights out with my old mates. They are particularly hard bunch to pin down, but we enjoyed a great night out together and the end on last month. I’d forgotten my camera, so sadly I’ve got no pictures, but it was a really great night. We’ve got another night out planned for the end of this month.

I’ve recently knocked out some new ObscureInternet Posts, including a new three part scam baiter. Part one is available now and the next couple of parts will be up in the next two weeks.

images[1]Gaming wise, after playing Saints Row 2 almost to death (I’m about 82% complete, but all the stuff that’s left isn’t as fun as the rest so I’ll leave it for now) I’ve picked up a couple of new (and more importantly cheap) PS3 games, they are GTA IV and Metal Gear Solid 4: Cut scenes of the Patriots. Conor bought himself Lego Indiana Jones 2 for the PS3 and we also got Let’s Dance but I haven’t had a proper go of it yet.

The Animex International Festival of Animation and Computer Games is again taking place at Teesside University, and as part of this Conor got two tickets to see UP and the Cineworld in the town.

image1[1]While we were at Cineworld we bumped into Darth Vader and  a few other Star Wars characters and I even managed to say the ‘Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?’ line and it was in context as he was about the same height as me.

The film itself was brilliant and despite seeing it in 2010 it is definitely my movie of 2009 (beating even District 9) and my been getting old and sentimental but those scenes at the beginning of the movie really got to me, also Russell is awesome.

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January 2010 so fat.

You know what? Writing blog posts is rubbish, it’s such a bloody chore that I’ve got about 425 things I’d rather do, including wash the dishes, and that’s without really thinking about it, I could come up a few thousand more things I would rather do if I thought about it for another minute or so.

However, since I’m upset over Scribbler not updating mercuryvapour (and deleting a load of old posts) it would hypocritical of me not to do a proper personal blog post once in a while.

“So, what has happened since I last did a proper update?” I hear none of you ask. Well the answer is if you are bothered to read on the following is (in no particular order);

Built a Snowman

As the country ground to it’s annual halt because of a little snow earlier this month, I happy plodded along working from home. However as the old saying goes; When God gives you Lemons snow, you squeeze them in that fuckers eyes make snowmen.

Snowman

Note the hat (mine) and the six pack (not mine).

Upgraded the PC

I finally ordered new parts for the Desktop PC as I’d manage to scrape up enough money and because the old parts were so knackered the PC was crashing to a Blue Screen of death on a daily basis.

New PC Bits

The PC build (and reinstall of Windows 7) was as easy as Lemon Pie (like they say, when God gives you Lemons, you squeeze them in that fuckers eyes make Lemon Pie) the only slightly problem was my complete ignorance of the existence of SATA power cables. I had to pop out to computer shop to buy one, which was pretty stupid as later when examining my spares box, I found I three of them. I just didn’t know what they were when I put them in there.

PC runs like a dream now, I can actually have more than four tabs open in Chrome without the PC breaking down like a Eurostar train in a winter snowfall.

Read some books

Got a started on my Christmas books by reading through Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn, which is laugh out loud funny (a rare thing for me), The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate and Eric Bischoff’s Controversy Creates Cash, which I download read on the ebook reader (it still gets used, and I still love it) after watching Bischoff and Hogan’s return to Monday Night Wrestling with TNA.

I’m currently reading Charlie Brooker’s Dawn of the Dumb, and it’s every bit as funny Screen Burn.

Sort out my New years Resolutions

I’ve sorted out a my New years Resolutions for this year, they are the usual goals (stop being fat, do some work, have a life, etc), but this year I’m going to be smarter (no pun intended SMART goal fans), I’ve broken these goals into Monthly and Weekly targets which are documented and updated on a weekly basis. I’m also having a weekly meetings with a friend in which discuss, track and verbally commit to our weekly goals.

Also as mentioned previously the ObscureInternet forum, is has new a lose weight and get fit subforum, which is going very well at the moment.

Played Saints Row 2 on the PS3 far to much

I went out bought a game for the PS3 that I could play, this games was Saints Row 2 as it was a cheap and came highly recommended from my friends at the insideoutcast podcast. It’s definitely a lot of fun, and I’ve managed to knocked up almost 50 hours playing time in the last month alone.

Did some boring Internet stuff

I’ve done a fair amount of blogging this month, this will be my twenty post which is probably a new record for this blog, (look in up in the Archive, I can’t be arsed to). Last months myleene-klass-and-jonathan-shalit-are-full-of-shit post got an amazing response. It had a recording number of readers, was retweeted a lot, and was linked to by some pretty great blogs. I may do more of these ranting about real world stuff in future.

I’ve discovered Windows Live Writer, which I’m using to write this post. The drag and drop features are superb for things like images, and I imagine I will be using this a lot for future ObscureInternet posts.

Speaking of ObscureInternet, I’m still working on a new design, and looking at kicking off with some new articles shortly.

Nowt else interesting.

So that’s pretty much what I’ve been getting up to since new year, dull isn’t it. I’ll just rap this up by saying this post took about a day to write, so I hope you enjoy it.

The Aquatic Games on Jim’ll Fix It?

After the James Pond 2 Robocod post, I got a message from on Facebook asking “Remember also Aquatic Games?”
It’s a good question, although I didn’t own the game, I do remember The Aquatic Games, it was a underwater Olympics style game featuring James Pond.
The Interesting thing is this question awakened another Aquatic Games memory in my head in, a memory I’m not sure is 100% accurate. This  memory is seeing Aquatic Games being developed on a episode of Jim’ll Fix It.

A young lad wrote a letter to Jim alongs the lines of “Dear Jim, Can you fix it for me to be in a video game”. And thus the lad was swept of to Millennium Interactive (I guess beggars can’t be choosers) to help with development, and appear in a game. The young lad even got to meet and help Richard Joseph with the music.

So I am wondering did this really happen, or is just a trick of my ageing mind? Does anyone else have memories of this? I’ve done some research but the internet has been no help.