knightbeat

I'd vote to keep season 2. You need a season to resolve the story of the two brothers, show how they survived while on the run, and deal with the peripheral characters with whom they escaped. Season 3-5 seemed unnecessary, though I'm wiling to be convinced otherwise.

Buffy peaked on the musical episode for me. The show wasn't perfect; Season 4 was fairly shaky, but s5 got back on track with an entertainingly shallow Big Bad and a sibling that added a new sense of mystery (one of the only times that a previously unknown family member has actually helped to revitalise a show). It was inevitable that Buffy would return and the implications of her resurrection would have an impact on the group as a whole, but the implementation was just so depressing! Buffy was clearly suffering a form of PTSD that led to her making bad decisions with Spike, and the Scoobies were constantly racked with guilt over their actions. S6 might have been saved by a credible villain, but instead we get 3 characters who are deliberately intended to be failures (awww, poor guys! They may not be evil, but at least they tried!, etc.). The rest of season 6 was a long & tedious slog to watch. Season 7 offered some improvement - I like the idea of the First Evil appearing in the form of previous Big Bads and the new slayers turning up, but I was only watching out of habit by that point. If I had the chance to quantum leap into Joss Whedon circa 2000, I'd condense the Buffy season 6 resurrection to the first 3-4 episodes and immediately launch into the season 7 story as a 'we succeeded in getting Buffy back, but managed to release the ultimate Big Bad and break the magic that causes new slayers to be called. How can we fix this?' plotline.

Apropos of nothing, what number should we be using for Jodie Whitaker's Doctor? The media tend to use 13 for simplicity, but she's the 14th Doctor if we include the John Hurt War Doctor iteration, and the 15th incarnation if we include Tennant's 2 Doctors.

I mistakenly thought Manifest was the 4400 reboot when the first episode was shown on Sky. The plot and characters in the 1st ep seem ok, nothing particularly good or bad, but I don't feel the urge to invest time in its serialised story after being burned by the meandering plots and unexpected cancellation of similar shows (like LOST, The Event, 4400, etc). I know that's probably unfair - the 1st season has good-ish reviews and a second season has been confirmed, but there's no guarantee it will be given the time to complete its story arc.

RG197 is definitely the issue of the year for me (so far, at least). The cover effect is fantastic and there's a great range of classic and more recent games covered this issue. My only (minor) complaint is that WH Smiths decided to stick a Win a Gaming Chair sticker on the cover and it's proving difficult to remove the sticky gunk. *shakes fist at WHS*

Are you suggesting that the writers are so creatively bankrupt and desperate for a plot that doesn't need to exist that... Because that sounds terrible worryingly plausible.

At the risk of starting a 'What is retro' discussion, does it make sense to move this thread to the Retro & Arcade Games forum, given the game is 15 years old? If this had been a new topic, it probably would have been created there.

Rolo is a good puzzle platformer for its time, with a lot of ideas that wouldn't look out of place in a Mario game. It's primary fault (besides the sickeningly cute characters) is that it doesn't have a battery save option, which makes it a slog to complete on a real machine. I recall spending 3+ hours on a saturday/sunday afternoon trying to complete it without a guide and was amazed to find longplay videos that were able to do it in 60 minutes.

This is clearly old news, but I just read that Tom Welling is (or may be) reprising his Smallville role in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Is anyone planning to re-watch Smallville in preparation for the event? I have to admit that I have fond memories of the show, even though the writing and low budget made it tortuous to watch (and the Allison Mack situation is still a bit weird).

The Brighton to London train was much like this during the late 90s/early 2000s.

I love the newsstand cover - the dynamic colours immediately attracts your attention and the use of Nintendo's GB typeface evokes its late 80s/early 90s charm. I notice a few people have been raving over the subscriber edition this month, but it's the newsstand edition that gets my attention. It's difficult to come up with a new angle on the Gameboy that hasn't been said before, so it's great to hear more from collectors who grew up with the machine for this anniversary. It only had limited appeal to me, as someone who grew up with 8-bit computers, but was clearly a gateway into gaming for a younger audience (my 9 year old cousin loved it) and those who moved around a lot (I recall a previous feature mentioned Prince William & Harry were addicted to it).

I notice ITV are currently broadcasting Star Wars 1-6 on Sunday afternoons. This reminded me of the times I saw Star Wars on TV during the 80s and 90s - the TV schedule announcements, toy adverts, stores announcing Christmas opening times, etc - that were placed before, during and after the movies. Before the 1995 boxset was released, I would watch my father's Xmas 1989 VHS recording of ROTJ and recall an ad break that took the viewer from Han Solo in a dungeon to Ken Livingstone eating cheese at his breakfast table - a confusing & slightly terrifying event at the time, but one that became ingrained into my ROTJ 'experience' and remember whenever I re-watch the movie. Are there any events or memories that others remember whenever you think of/re-watch a Star Wars movie or TV shows?

I think you mean descendent rather than ancestor here

I visited Console Concepts in Hanley a lot in the early 90s. I bought several Japanese import titles for my Megadrive in 1992-93 and think I cleared out most of their Amiga PD disks when I got my A1200 in 1994. I wish there were photos of their basement cave!

Good point, well made. We need to start thinking about preservation of 21st century DLC as soon as possible. Developers seem to have a handle on the 1980s Nintendo Famicom DLC games now, but there's a breadth of titles released for other platforms (such as PS2 and Xbox) that are in need of attention.