Continuing my hobby of writing about games, I decided to write a series of match reports following the exploits of the fictitious Landgraff United in Pro Evolution Soccer 4’s Konami Cup.

Landgraff United – LGU for short – is a team my friend Sean put together in an online football management game called HatTrick. He used to write team news on a forum, and it inspired me to do the same. I edited one of the game’s fictitious teams to match the kit, stadium and lineup of Landgraff United, then entered them into the Konami Cup. How did they fare? Read on!

Konami Cup 1st round.

Landgraff United vs. Real Betis.

Landgraff United‘s Konami Cup campaign got off to a disappointing start today with a heart-wrenching 2-1 loss to visiting Real Betis.

After falling a goal down in the 27th minute to a spectacular Oliveira diving header, LGU threatened the opposition penalty area numerous times, coming closest with a Lewbrant thunderbolt just before the half-time whistle sent the visitors in a goal ahead.

Coach Miguel Trincado Settier must have rallied the players at half time, as within five minutes the hosts were awarded a penalty right in front of their loyal supporters. Marco Hoogstrate decided to take over from regular set-piece expert Steen Rud Risum, and would have been disappointed to see his spot kick saved by Contreras in the Betis goal. However, LGU kept the pressure on and, after a quick cross from the right William Pierce popped up in the six yard box to head the ball straight across goal and inside the far post. The Landgraff Arena exploded; LGU’s celebrations in front of their own fans were ecstatic.

After the restart the game was a very scrappy affair with neither side holding onto possession too well. LGU applied some pressure to win a series of corners but failed to make use of them, and when Betis broke to the other end the defence gave away a needless foul. A quickly-taken free kick saw Betis ace Fernando sneak in around the back to tuck the ball away and make the game 2-1 in the 87th minute. Landgraff United’s loyal fans, so buoyant after their team’s equaliser, were now solemnly silent as the small group of Spanish fans celebrated.

Still optimistic

Despite a late chance for LGU the final whistle blew on the game at 2-1 to Betis. A disappointed Miguel Trincado Settier told me he was proud of his players despite the result.

“I thought we showed tremendous heart to get back into the game at 1-1 when we could have given up. We were unlucky with some of our chances, and I think we gave away a sloppy second goal, but sometimes things just don’t go your way. It’s just part of the game. We’ll be better-prepared for our second game next week.”

LGU now face an uphill struggle to qualify from Group 1, but hopefully coach Settier’s enthusiasm will rub off on his players in time for their next match against tournament dark horses Somesterrine.

Next match: Landgraff United vs. Somesterrine

Not, as you might be thinking, an excuse to play games non-stop until your eyes bleed but rather a social networking website mainly for people who play games. Think of it as a MySpace with even worse social skills, if you like.

Anyway, I actually think it’s a pretty good site. There are pages for games, developers, publishers and of course players, and anyone can contribute to game pages, creating them and adding content as they wish. Of course, if you’re just there to make friends there’s lots of provision for that too, with groups and friends list, just like any decent site.

I created a group for game bloggers called – in a very Jamesian twist of ingenuity – Game Bloggers. I thought it would be a good opportunity for other game bloggers to exchange links and build traffic, so if you’re a GGE member you can find the link here. If you aren’t a member but it sounds interesting, leave a comment (or email me) and I’ll be happy to send you an invite!

I’ll also be working harder on building links here and increasing my traffic, which seems to have dropped off a little this year. If you have a website you’d like me to publicise, let me know and we’ll exchange links.

Incidentally, today I started and finished my second soundtrack in two months for a documentary called “The Future of Farming.” Mixing rustic, lightly lilting acoustic guitar rhythms with gentle spacial synths it’s another string to my bow – scoring a documentary is hard, but I think I’ve done a good job. Expect samples in the coming days!

Originally starting life as Project Berkley – creator Yu Suzuki named it after the University of the same name because he liked it – Shenmue was one of the very first “go anywhere, do anything” kind of games that Sega termed Fully Reactive Eyes Entertainment.

An ambitious project that quickly became the most expensive video game of all time – possibly introducing the current trend for enormous budget games, but that’s another story – Shenmue tells the story of a Japanese teenager named Ryo Hazuki, who grows up in 1980s Japan.

Returning to his home and dojo one December day, he sees his father killed by a man wearing green Chinese robes. The man attacks Ryo, then leaves with a green mirror made of mysterious green stone. Waking up several days later, Ryo resolves to discover what happened that day and avenge his father’s death.

Shenmue is an awesome experience because it creates an involving and engrossing world through detail. You can pick up pens, notepads, turn lights on and off, collect toys, drink cans of pop (and win a prize!), train to improve your martial arts skills and so much more I can’t remember. Sections of Dobuita (the nearby town to Ryo’s home) were modelled on Dobuita St in Japan, and when you complete the game it’s possible to play through the game using that day’s real weather from the area. That’s how cool it is.

Part of the joy of playing Shenmue is that it’s unintentionally quite a funny game. The voice acting isn’t of the highest standard and although the script is wide – every time you have to fulfil a new objective you get new dialogue, which happens quite a lot in a game this size – you’ll hear certain phrases over and over again. In fact, one of my favourite ways to amuse myself is to use Shenmue dialogue in real life. Here are a few of my tips:

• When asking a friend about a previous event, ask “what do you remember about that day?” If this fails to bring a response, prompt them with “that day the snow turned to rain.” This always helps.

• If someone asks what you’re looking for, tell them you are looking for sailors, or a man named Charlie. He has a tattoo on his arm.

• Whenever drinking, always finish with “oo-ahh… good” and look at the can, bottle or cup. This will never get old, even if you do it every time you have a drink over the course of six years or so.

Shenmue is vast and unfortunately unfinished. Shenmue II is available on the Xbox but I don’t think it’s quite as good as the first one as it doesn’t have the same feeling of being able to explore a small area; it’s rather larger, and the environment is less appealing to me as it’s set in built-up Hong Kong, rather than rural Japan. Still, it’s worth getting if you find it – 2 for £20 from Gamestation as well, you’ll be pleased to know.

What do you love about Shenmue?

Okay, so the first post of the year isn’t exactly a classic, but it’ll just clear a few things up and then we can dive into the content proper as soon as I write it!

• Lots of people come here searching for a poem called “The Game“, by somebody who shares my name (that’s James Newton, by the way). Obviously this isn’t the right site, but it certainly matches all the key words. Anyway, if you’re here looking for the poem “The Game” by James Newton, and it’s about football, you actually want the tenth poem down on this page (link)
• I’ll do my best to come up with some Wii Play tips, and there’ll be a short Wii Sports video soon!
• I am the number one games expert in Malaysia according to MSN Live Search!
• Thanks to my soundtrack work on Tanner, I’m now up on IMDB. Check it out!
• This month’s issue of GamesTM has an excellent four-page feature on NiGHTS into Dreams, including an interview with the usually-reclusive Yuji Naka. He doesn’t say anything about Wii NiGHTS (the article does mention Air/Aero NiGHTS though), but there is an interesting revelation about the original Saturn analogue pad: the first person to hold the prototype was none other than Steven Spielberg.

That’s about all I can come up with at the moment. I can’t tell you my posting schedule over the next few weeks – I won’t be at work, but I’m going to my parents’ house for a week, so it could be quiet.

Oh yes, last thing – it’s my 23rd birthday next Wednesday, the 10th of January, hence the cool banner.