A nice weekend

A pleasant surprise from Sainsbury's for my birthday, a voucher for a box of 12 Green & Black miniature bars worth £4.99, well £3.99 as they were on special offer. There followed another voucher as an apology for a distribution failure meaning I might not have been able to pick up what I wanted, so a pack of mince pies too.

Had the Bratii over yesterday. Seeing as I've yet to get a second controller for the 3 I hooked up my PS2 instead along with the light guns. I wanted to run a Gunslinger game, but it kept giving a Disc Read Error - yep a damn blue disc. I don't know why, but the blue discs seem to cop out quicker then the silver. Anyway a good dose of Time Crisis 2 and 3 was fun except I'd forgotten that on two player mode the screen is split in half (you share one in training mode) so you can barely see what's happening on a standard sized screen. Bratus Major had fun, Bratus Minor had fun although for the most part he wasn't even aiming at the TV and kept getting killed. Some sore fingers indicated the need for a rest.

Then in went a Sonic collection which I knew they'd played in its MegaDrive version, Major instantly went to the ones he hadn't seen especially um Dr Robotniks Mean Bean Machine (or some such) a puzzle bobble, tetris type game. Major skipped the instructions and set himself to Easy, I set Minor to Easiest (nice touch being able to do that) - Minor won and Major complained and reset the machine. Major on Easy, Minor on Easy - Minor kicked his arse 600-200. Major complained he didn't know what the controls were having skipped them twice, wasn't pleased when I pointed out that neither did Minor. Out came Sonic in went Gauntlet.

I wanted them to play the first one which was a direct port of the PS1 version, dead-simple, but the later one went in, which was a tad more complicated. Major chose the Elf as he had a cool glowing purple sword, I picked a Warrior for Minor and off they went. I gave some pointers and helped Minor on the bosses. Despite being in the lead in terms of gold and levels Major complained that he wanted to be a Warrior, of course Minor started that he wanted to be a Warrior too. Major logged out and in again as a Warrior played for a bit then reset the system. I called a break for food.

Minor decided he wanted to be a Wizard, Major ended up as a Valkyrie. I left them to it.

Their parents returned, I showed off my PS3 and we talked about the Wii with me mentioning Minor's current inability to aim at the screen. Not having a PS2 the new PS3 looked tempting, but the Wii had the edge if you can get one from anywhere. The Bratii managed to defeat the first boss, but Major had got himself killed and Minor was refusing to go to a check point to reincarnate him and was having too much fun bashing an infinite stream of enemies. Much sulking. Minor moves on and Major comes back in to finish the level at which point they can all leave.

They had fun, and polished their console skills all that eye-hand coordination. All-in-all a good day.