Yes, it’s the second episode of the James Newton Podcast (suggestions for snappier names welcomed)!, featuring five of the very best games released on the DS in the coming months. There’s some adult entertainment, juvenile fun and probably the best reason to leave the house this summer. To listen to the podcast, simply right-click and save this link, then pop it open with your chosen mp3 player.

In other news…

It appears I’ll have a little backtracking to do in the coming weeks, with Swedish magazine Game Reactor breaking the exclusive news on NiGHTS into Dreams for the Wii, and TRiPPY from NiGHTSintoDreams.com claiming to have known about it for ages. Well nobody bothered to tell me! Nah, it’s fine – I had no credibility anyway, so losing it in favour of getting a new NiGHTS game is a sacrifice I’m perfectly willing to make. Bring on NiGHTS 2!

I’m listening to Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad? by Prince, from The Hits 1

I did consider recording a special edition podcast about my experiences working the PlayStation 3 launch, but when a radio professional came down to conduct some interviews for BBC Radio York I thought I’d better let him do his job.

I’ve uploaded the segment so you can all have a listen to my contribution to the piece. Most of my comments were edited out, such as remarking how “midnight launches lend a social element to gaming that’s still sadly missing”. Personally I think my comments were a little more relevant than the clips used, my favourite being the pretty drunk guy who proclaims “I’m gonna be the top of the Internet gaming!”. If you listen out you can also hear my boss asking “what games did you want with that?”.

It was a piece for the breakfast show, so obviously it wasn’t all that in-depth, but I was a little disappointed that the angle of the piece was focused on two things:

• The weather;
• The price.

Granted it wasn’t exactly tropical outside, and £425 is a lot of money, but the overall impression I got was somewhat typical of most media’s portrayal of gaming and its community: bemusement. I edited out the breakfast presenter’s comments, as he bafflingly compares the PS3 to the equipment on Star Trek and moans about the price; pretty useless stuff.

The heart of the story should have been this: why were these people all so eager to get their hands on it? Why come out at midnight? What’s the most exciting thing about the PS3? Yes, the price is a factor and deserves mention, but it’s not the crux of the story, although perhaps to non-gamers it just makes these people seem strange, alien almost; if they can’t understand it, it’s just weird.

As always when dealing with mainstream media’s treatment of games, a little more research and understanding would have resulted in a better piece. Still, I am probably overanalysing this ever-so-slightly; it was just a segment for the local radio’s breakfast news.

There’ll be a new podcast from me up on Monday, looking at five awesome DS games to entertain you in the coming weeks and months. Subscribe to the RSS feed to stay informed!

   I’m listening to You Are My Evergreen by Feeder, from Yesterday Went Too Soon

Normally my music always lives in the Music page, but this is special, so it’s front page-worthy.

If you’re a regular reader you’ll notice I’ve been in a very Sega mood recently – Burning Rangers, NiGHTS, Shining Soul, Sonic and the Secret Rings and more have all been covered in some depth, and there’s still more to come. The simple fact is they’ve made the greatest games of all time and I love them.

I also love the music, so I arranged and performed a very special medley of some of the best music to have come out of Sega in the past twenty years or so. You’re getting five minutes of quality piano Sega music here, too – Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, NiGHTS and OutRun all make appearances.

You can download the medley here.

With so much great Sega music to mine I fully intend to perform more medleys in the future, hopefully including tunes from Shining Force, Panzer Dragoon and maybe that one with the blue hedgehog in it!

Diaries are back!

Yep, I did a backup of my diaries before the site went down so now you can enjoy Landgraff United’s cup run, James’s adventures in Eville and the dusty diaries of Farmer James in Forget-Me-Not Valley. Just head over to the Diaries page and enjoy!