Let me tell you about Consolevania

Video games have a harsh time when it comes to TV. Currently the most popular video games show is actually some horrible channel called G4, a show so bland, so offensively mediocre it has to rely on youtube content that it can steal to avoid its viewers killing themselves out of desperate need for some sort of stimuli. Shows paid for by advertising and made with the sole reason of getting you to buy the shitty games they cram down your throat over and over again. Places that genuinely act like the Kinect is a good idea.

Dark times indeed. Most people who play games these days are probably too young or too stupid to remember the golden age of games shows, Gamesmaster on a Friday night with the amazing Dominik Diamond radiating class and suave, showing off the newest games and systems before they had even been anounced. and Sir Patrick Bloody Moore telling us all cheats. They'd have contests where two hapless little kids like me would battle to the gruesome end trying to collect the most coins in Mario 3. Amazing times, Pure times. You had the feeling the show wanted to tell you about the games for their own sake, and in a time before the internet this was amazing.

Pure Class Act

Gamesmaster and shows like it weren't bogged down with endless drivel, with female hosts who act as little more than nerd candy, with male presenters acting like some horrible pathetic dickhead version of geek culture, no pandering to the audience here, no acting like being a asshole VIDEO GAMER is somehow a good thing, no indirectly advertising the biggest and most well paying advertisers, just video games, contests about video games, news about video games, a childlike, raw love of this new medium that was only just emerging, tadpole like, from the primordial ooze. It was fantastic.

I know what you're all thinking. You're all going "oh but nems you're just remembering it different cause you're an old fogee with cataracts and a bad hip and you're mental" Well fuck you you little shit I bought all the dvds years ago from some knock off site and I watched them all a couple years ago so fuck off. I know what I'm on about here.

Your only real comment on this would be "Well times have changed. You'd be right, times have changed. Its acceptable to say things like "rofl" and "lol" in public now, TV like G4 is apparently 'good' now. Its a shame. If only there was something better, a shining star in an otherwise shit stained sky. You know where I'm going here don't you you little bastard.

 

 Meet Ryan and Robert. The two best video game reviewers that have ever lived. That might be a bit much but they were very very very good. I say Were because unfortunately they have both moved on from that world now. Robert is now doing boardgame reviews at RockPaperShotgun.com and writing shit for the BBC. Ryan is...Well I have no idea what Ryan is doing but it sure as hell isn't more episodes of Consolevania I am bloody sure of that.

Rab and Ryan used to do a show called Videogaiden, and a show called Consolevania. I won't mess around and try to work out which came first because honestly I have no clue. Both were very similer with the main difference being VideoGaiden seems to have been given a small budget due to it being on the BBC, and Consolevania is basically them two and their mate Kenny bombing around Glasgow doing silly game related stunts. This was pretty much the best review show ever made. possibly the best video game based show ever.

Its all down to those two guys up there. You see, they are friends. You can tell they are friends just by watching the show, go, click some of the links at the bottom and watch these two. They are best mates and you can FEEL it. They are also equal parts honest, funny, entertaining and insightful. If either of them ever read this and see I called them Insightful they'll probably kick my teeth in. But they are. and its wonderful. All they really seemed to care about was telling you about stuff they liked and stuff they thought was naff and why. It was never about telling you all about the latest flash bang whiz super call of duty 6 future space combat elves game, just about whatever amazing or utterly horrendous game they wanted to talk about. and it was always one of the two. Never have I seen these two review a mediocre thing, wheres the point in that?

They spoke to you as a person, not you as a wanky GAMER, not you as a pretentious GAMES AS ART dick but just you as a guy who wants to play some games. They was their charm, that was their uniqueness, that was probably their downfall. Neither of their shows were ever popular which is a massive shame. I would have loved to hear what they had to say about games these days. They always had this way of cutting through the bullshit and just telling you if you'd have fun with a game, you don't get that much at all these days. It's just unique. At times its downright lynchian, with Kenny going off and ruling alternative dimensions, implied evil overlords and unnerving sets. Rab expanded this in Downtime town, another amazing thing you can find below.

Please. If I have any readers at all (I do not) and you want to watch some really funny and interesting stuff about video games you might not have played, look these two up. You can watch all of Consolevania through the million and one links on their website, and you can watch series 1 and 3 of Videogaiden on youtube and the BBC respectively. If you find Series 2 please mail it to me you git. (Edit, An amazing mentalist left a comment with every episode of every show Rab and Ryan have ever done, What a world of dreams we live in)

Consolevania
Some mental who has loads of Videogaiden
An even BIGGER mentalist with litterally everything your tiny heart could desire
Rab sums up my entire feelings of GAMERS
The best intro to Consolevania
Videogaiden on the BBC
Rab's old new boardgame site (thanks for making me spend mad cash on a hobby I didn't even have Rab. You asshole)

Zaa Ooo Zaa
Nems