Celebrities are the best aren't they? They're like us, except they're famous for some reason or other, and they go to the gym and watch what they eat and they get photographed with make-up and nice lighting and that, thus reminding us what ungodly, useless, hideous, monstrosities we ordinary folk really are. 

They're like normal people, but with all the flaws edited away or airbrushed out; sort of the other end of the primate scale to monkeys, I suppose. No wonder we idolise them - and then point and laugh when they show signs that they might be human after all. "HA HA! That'll learn 'em to be portrayed as better than us!".

But anyway. Celebrities haven't just been confined to films and television and magazines and stuff. Sometimes they also appear in video games. Here are 10 of the more unlikely celeb gaming cameos.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

I'm a bit obsessed with games packaging. Well, old games packaging. And "obsessed" might be pushing it. I suppose I'm more mildly interested, but that seems like a pathetic justification for an entire article on the subject. 

For me, the boxes were always part of the experience - and why I never really bought into pirated games in the way many of my peers did. I wanted games delivered in the way their creators intended - with the manuals, and box artwork, and all the razzmatazz. Even now, holding an old game in its original packaging can send a shiver along my spine. Although, that might just be a herniated disc.

Ha ha - I'm probably going to end up in a wheelchair! 

Anyway, with downloading fast becoming the standard way in which games are delivered, packaging, alas, seems to be dying out. Yes, that's good for the environment, of course (though, frankly, do we really need all those polar bears? I've never even seen one in real life, so it's not like I'm going to miss them), but it also - for me - dilutes the emotions a bit.

With this in mind, let us now celebrate the golden age of games packaging. 

GUEST POST BY SUPER BAD ADVICE

Like some sort of technological Dignitas, Sony have announced that the PS4 is officially in the end part of its life cycle. It’s arguable that belching out such a diktat while your competitors respectively have a more powerful console and a more innovative console for sale, and you’ve not even got anything announced yet, is a real stupid move that will give potential customers ‘the wet willies’.

But then who are we to argue with the genius creators of the MiniDisc?
 
However, to get you ‘pumped’ for the newest arrival in the format wars we can bring you these exclusive facts about the all-new PS5 thanks to our special spies embedded at Sony HQ (and by special we mean they only exist in our minds – we don’t even know where Sony HQ is! Probably Uttoxeter?)
 
Each one is literally more true and fabby than the last, and here they come!

When I was a lad there were basically three home computers that anybody had (barring those weirdoes whose parents had bought them an Oric or Dragon 32); the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, and the BBC Micro. Generalising hugely, ownership of these three machines were - respectively - working class children, middle class children, and rich-o-posh kids who lived in mansions, and were called things like Peregrine and Farnsworthingtonsil and Trebuchet Bournville III.

Not to "bee" confused with a "model bee", the BBC Microcomputer Model B was designed by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project (a way to introduce people to myriad joys of computer use).

Both the 16k Model A and 32k Model B were released in late-1981, and the system was sold with an emphasis on being boring (education) - which is why it was, for much of the 1980s, the computer of choice for schools. 

Nevertheless, like all gadgets, it soon became known for its games, and - due to the power it concealed beneath its nicotine-yellow carapace - it did games real good. 

Despite being a Spectrum owner, I was lucky enough to have access to the BBC through my mother. She worked in a school for naughty children, as a classroom assistant, and would regularly bring the school's BBC home for the weekend. Presumably, to stop them sneaking back into the school and stealing it (a gang of them once locked the headmaster in a classroom, stood in a circle around him, and passed an air pistol to one another).

The BBC was a proper powerhouse of a machine. Aside from the fact it was bigger and more expensive, the one I played on came with a proper monitor. Consequently, the graphics were sharper and more arcade-like than the C64 and Speccy could ever dream of. 

Now get this: here are my 10 favourite BBC Micro games. And no... Granny's Garden isn't one of them.