The past few months have seen me dedicate as much free time as possible to righting a wrong from over a year ago. When I moved my arm of the UCHG to a new location I made a terrible assumption, and we all know what happens when you assume – you make an Ass out of U and Me.

I assumed that if I gave up my light gun game enabling CRT TV I would be able to quickly source a replacement and all would be fine. This was not the case. All was not fine and like a 70’s celebrity, and seemingly the entire cast of Coronation Street, I started to regret the actions of my past.

It seemed that one small fact had slipped my mind. CRT TVs are ranked just below Americans and Dark Matter on the heaviest things in the world list. Their impressive weight made shipping costs on Ebay extortionate and the nearest collection auctions were not so near. Spending a day on the road in a hired van to collect an arcade machine is worth it. Doing the same for a CRT TV is considered excessive! After months of searching it was starting to look as if  I would never play Lethal Enforcers again. Until this discovery was made!

Looks like we have found a suitable Duck Hunt playing TV! #retrogaming #nes twitter.com/UCHG2008/statu…

— UCHG (@UCHG2008) April 15, 2013

 A working TV!

At last I could right the wrongs of my past and be reunited with all the retro gaming gun play I had missed for so long… Or could I?

This fine light gun supporting TV was both perfect and hefty. It took three men to get it  into the car and once in, much like the porn on a  teenagers HDD, it took up 50% of the free space! Realizing that we no longer had the space to transport the TV and the crew we were forced to upgrade the car.

Afters seventy miles, two cars, five people and the realization that the van was the better idea – The TV was in!

The question is – Was it worth it? and the answer is simple. Fuck Yeah! With this bad boy in place it is now time to go back and score over a million points on Duck Hunt, get past the airport level in Lethal Enforcers,  take down the Wild Gunman, finish T2 arcade and find a decent game for the Super Scope. None of this would be possible without the TV.

If I have learnt anything from this adventure it is this. Never dispose of your CRT TV. No matter what you may think, unless you live next-door to an old TV shop, it is not easy to get one back.

The Hunt is now officially on!

Believe it or not, GTA has been part of my life for the best part of 20 years. And over those years, playing through pretty much every GTA there is*, it has made me do things.

Yes, it turns out all those news reports that come out every time a new sequel is released are true – GTA is a dangerous bit of gaming history, one that can manipulate a soft human brain (like mine).

Here’s just a small list of things that Grand Theft Auto has made me do.

GTA1 made me…
Realise that PCs were better than consoles

This realisation came when I found that after I had been enjoying stealing fire engines and crashing trains into eachother on the PC version of the original GTA – the poor old PS1 had no such luxuries. Not a train in sight! PC FTW! PS1 SUXBALLZ!

GTA: Vice City / GTA3 / San Andreas all made me…
Appreciate a good soundtrack, and love the sound of 80s hiphop (amongst others)

All GTA games have had fantastic soundtracks – but it was the Vice City incarnation of GTA that struck me the most. An amazing soundtrack made up its many radio stations, full of licensed tunes and original musicians hired back to act as radio DJs. Brilliant stuff, especially ‘Wildstyle Pirate Radio’.

GTA: Chinatown Wars made me…
Discover that mobile gaming on smartphones could actually be good.

Who knew? It’s not all Angry Birds and minigame crap.

GTA3 made me…
Get into PC customisation

GTA3 was the cause for much excitement – finally the series has broken into the 3rd dimension, no longer a top-down violence sim. Would it work? Apparently not, as my old Voodoo3 2000 graphics card (with an impressive 16MB of memory) wouldn’t cope. And so began my first foray into PC customisation, with the purchase of an incredible Nvidia Geforce3 Ti 200.

GTA: Liberty City Stories (though pretty much all GTA games) made me…
Smash things in frustration – due to savepoints and checkpoints, or lack of.

Fail near the end of a mission? Too bad, now you gotta drive all the way from the hospital for about 5 minutes just to try again – from the beginning.

GTA4 made me…
Get an xbox360 pad

Whether you love them or hate them, the sad truth is GTA4 is a bitch to play unless you get a Xbollox360 pad plugged in to that PC of yours

The entire history of GTA made me…
Get completely caught in up in one of best series ever made.

And it really is – no matter how many hours you sink into GTA, in any of its incarnations, you’ll always come back for more. My advice – go back to the original, and be amazed simultaneously at how far it has come, and how good it always has been.

Roll on GTA5!

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*encompassing (but not limited to) 1001 no. 69 ‘GTA’, no.70 ‘GTA2’, no.71 ‘GTA3’, no.72 ‘GTA4’, no.73 ‘Ballad of Gay Tony’, no.74 ‘Lost and the Damned’, no.75 ‘San Andreas’, no.76 ‘Vice City’, no.77 ‘Chinatown Wars’, no.78 ‘Liberty City Stories’.