Video Games without all the boring bits

CYBER-X RE-INTERVIEWS "PERRIS MOYNE"

3/2/2016

Boom! I'm Cyber-X.

You probably remember me as one of the top games journalists in the country in the 1990s, and from the top interview I did last year where I did my best to end the career of the veteran games developer and pompous liar "Perris Moyne".

It has been 12 months since I last spoke with "Moyne", and in that time he has kept his pledge not to speak to the press.

I caught up with this controversial figure to see what he's been up to while maintaining his dignified silence.

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CYBER-X'S 10 THINGS THAT COULDN'T LOOK LESS LIKE THAT BLOKE OUT OF THE WITCHER 3

16/10/2015

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BOOM! I'm Cyber-X. You probably remember me as the top games journalist in the country, back when I wrote for magazines like Super Top, Mega Top, Top Top, and Toppo's Top Games Mega Top Monthly.

Those were the days. The days were I could spend 48 hours caning it so hard that I gave myself septicaemia, and still rock up for work on Monday to write my top games mag column about what I can remember of my clubbing exploits.

Nowadays it's all fooking websites and YouTube and lists and shit. Well fook off! Because get this - I'm better at doing games journalism than any of these fooking four year-olds with their tunnel earrings and trendy fooking glasses that they've got now. And to prove it here's the best list you'll ever read.

Seriously, you're gonna want to share this with your fooking mates, because they'll literally piss themselves thrice. It's Cyber-X's 10 Things That Couldn't Look Less Like That Bloke out of The Witcher 3.

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CYBER-X PREVIEWS E3 2015

11/6/2015

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Boom! I'm Cyber-X. You probably remember me from some of the top games magazines of the 90s and early noughties. Magazines like Top Mega Zenith Games Pinnacle, and Crowning Uppermost Preeminent Gaming Monthly, and Leading Paramount Principal Superior Apex Prodigous Video Games Publication.

They're all gone now, of course. We're living in a YouTube selfie-stick culture now, full of narcissists who I hope choke on their own reflections.

As a result, people have forgotten the power of the written word, because they're all stupid idiots and babies who can't even read, because instead of reading books they just peer into these hinged things that look like books, but are actually mirrors. Yeah.

Back in my time, I was the top games journalist in the UK, if not the world - the games journalism Shakespeare of my time, only cooler and more drugged-up - and I probably still am, even though I've not written about games professionally since 2003, when I was fired for kicking the editor of Peak Apical Mammoth Computer Games and Video Games, because he was being a twat.

Seriously - no wonder the magazine folded ten years later: firing their star writer was the dumbest business decision since Hasbro briefly rebranded Play-Doh as "P-Doh".

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CYBER-X INTERVIEWS "PERRIS MOYNE"

17/2/2015

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BOOM! I'm Cyber-X. You probably remember me from the golden era of games journalasm, before the industry got overrun with stupid babies, who think they're cool and aren't even proper games journalasmists. I hate them and I hope they all die one day. Bit much? Deal with it.

Back in the day, when I wrote for Top Mega Top Top Gaming Top Mega Top Monthly, I was known to be the most hardcore journalasmist around. There wasn't a single person I interviewed who I didn't make cry. Developers. Publishers. Graphics artists. Fat people.

I was awesome at it. And at all other things. Recently, I've seen a lot of pretenders to my games journalislamist crown having a pop at games developers for some reason. I can't be arsed to look up why - I've pictures of my cool nightclub exploits to upload to my cool gaming blog - but it looks like it's something really bad or something. Well, I'm gonna show 'em how it's done.

Unfortunately, I don't have no games developer's numbers, so I've had to imagine what it would be like to interview one of them. But because I've got an excellent imagination - the top imagination in all of games journalasm - this is exactly what it would be like if I was to interview someone called something like "Perris Moyne".

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CYBER-X: A Day in the Life of a Games Journalist

26/1/2015

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BOOM! I'm Cyber-X. You probably remember me. I used to be the top games journalist in the industry of gaming between the years 1993 and 1999. I can't really remember much from back then, but I bet I won loads of awards and got made the editor-in-chief and that.

Ok, so I dropped out of the industry for a bit after I got fired for letting an issue of Top Total Games Mega Magazine go to press despite being full of nothing but full page photos of myself (on drugs) in various mad poses. Apparently, that wasn't what the readers expected from games magazines back then. What do the effing readers have to do with anything? Bunch of whiny tits.

But now I'm back, baby! I've managed to pick up a bit of freelance work for MeSoLikeeeGames - a website that's probably the top gaming website on The Webs, so I'm already on my way to becoming the top games journalist of the modern era. MeSoLikeeeGames is run by this really cool guy called Timmathon Shoes, or something. He's only 14, but he obviously knows quality writing when he sees it.

Also, he's easily intimidated - so if I want to fill a piece with photos of myself I know all it'll take is a couple of aggressive phone calls, and some thinly-veiled threats. Kids are pathetic. I'd never have let myself get bullied by that. He makes me sick. Inadequate little ponce.

I digress.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

People often say to me "Hey, Cyber-X - please take your hand off my throat, and tell me what it is like to be a games journalist". If I'd had a quid for every time some useless, pathetic, weak-jawed sap had said that to me I'd probably have about fifty six quid (enough to buy a couple of drugs - except in London, where that's barely enough to buy a single drug).

But whatever (for the record, I don't - and never would - live in London... besides, the hipster community have me blacklisted, after it was alleged that I once hospitalised an entire Hoxton bar full of hipsters because I saw someone drinking out of an old Bovril jar, for god's sake - I have no memory of the incident, so it couldn't have happened. And if anyone tells you they've seen the CCTV - they can shove it deep up themselves. That isn't me. I'm not as hunched over, fat and bald as the guy in the video).

Anyway. To shut you all up - here's what the average day of a gaming word-slave looks like:

10AM - Get up. Take a quick breakfast drug to get you ready for the day. Sit around wondering why nobody has got you dressed yet. Eventually remember that you're supposed to do it yourself.

11AM - Postman is here! Yes! Review copies. Except... you only received a couple of games. Didn't the PR guy promise you loads more than this? What's going on? Red mist descends. You're FURIOUS.

11.10AM - Call up PR company, fuming, asking where your review copy of some game is. They tell you they apparently emailed over a free download code, whatever that is. Argue with the PR drone that this is no use to you - you need physical product. Get nowhere. Swear. Threaten. Hang up. Punch a wall.

MIDDAY - Take the few physical review copies down the Computer Exchange and sell them. Have an argument with the bloke in there because he won't buy some game off you because it's not out yet, and has "Promo Copy - Not For Resale" stamped on it. Show your disdain for their business practices by kicking the sales counter, and elbowing the till off the desk. Smear phlegmmy spit on the window as you leave, and write your name in it.

12.30PM - Count up whatever money you made from selling the games, and go buy a few drugs.

12.45PM - Take drugs. Stumble around town centre. Go back into the Computer Exchange and have another argument with them. Remind them you're a games journalist and they should show you respect, because you once got an all-expenses paid trip to Egypt for the launch of Tomb Raider 2. Remind them that you only did that for your pathetic readers, and you hated every minute of it, and that you hate writing about games, and the least they can do is not bar you from their shop.

2PM - Receive email from Timmathon asking you how you're going with that review you'd promised two weeks ago. Remind the pathetic little tart that he's only paying you a fiver a piece, and that if he wants stuff quicker he'd better up his rates. Threaten him to get off your case, and remind him that he's not your dad, and if he acts like he is you'll slice him open.

2.10PM - Look up reviews of said game online, cut-and-paste bits of them into an email, and send it to Timmathon just to shut him up.

2.40PM - Sit back and revel in the glory as your piece of literary genius is published on The Webs.

3PM - Decide to write a sitcom.

3.15PM - Finish writing sitcom. It's utter genius. It's like an autobiographical take on Phone Shop; except instead of being set in a Phone Shop, it's set in the Computer Exchange, and all the staff are wankers and there's this customer who works as a PR guy for a games company and he's a wanker too and in my episode the shop catches fire and this cool games journalist guy walks past and sees them all on fire and has to decide whether to save their lives and he chooses to let them burn because they're wankers and he's hailed a hero and loads of birds want to have sex with him on drugs.

5PM - Record a podcast/write memoir/take a drug/ring mates to see if any of them are going out tonight/Have argument with mate because last time you were out you apparently threw a bottle of vinegar and a packet of McCoys at his fiancé.

5.30PM - Ring up your ex and ask to speak to the kid, and when she refuses - because last time you apparently accused him of being gay because he got a Peter Pan costume for Christmas - break down crying and say you wish you were dead, and can you borrow some money please?

5.40PM to 5AM - Don't know.

5AM - Bed.

More from Cyber-X...

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CYBER-X: A RETURN TO GAMES JOURNALISM

6/1/2015

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BOOM! I’m Cyber-X. You probably remember me. I used to be THE top games journalist back in the 90s, writing for THE top games magazine, Top Games Magazine.

While most of my effeminate, thin-necked, loser baby colleagues were wasting time reviewing video games and writing "articles", I was out getting mashed and bashed like a crab's abdomen in some of North Bolton's top night clubs.

Top times. Top, top times. The topp-est. I can't move on...

And what was better still - it was all on expenses, because I got to regale readers with my messed-up antics in my top photojournal/column for Top Games Magazine. Only loser babies read video games magazines because they want to read about video games. I hate loser babies, and I hate games magazines that just drone on about video games. Get real, losers - NOBODY CARES. You stupid loser babies. Stupid nerds.

TOP TIMES

But as they say, all good things come to an end when you rock up to work still drunk and paranoid from the night before and throw a stapler at your editor because you misinterpreted something he said - and that's just what happened to me. I've had some dark days during the intervening years, and on some of those days I barely had enough money to buy more than three or four drugs.

But as they say, all bad things must come to an end, and now I'm back - back to shake up this games industry like a crab in a sieve, even though I've not really played any video games since I stopped writing for Top Games Magazine. Or indeed, ever (as far as I remember).

So I'm well pleased to announce that I'm launching a brand new online version of Top Games Magazine - Top Games Magazine 2000.

It's gonna be full of all the stuff you used to love in Top Games Magazine - but updated for the year 2000, or whatever year it is now (drugs are great, but they mess with your ability to buy or read calendars).

It's gonna be the coolest online games mag - cooler than a crab in a trough of liquid helium. NO BABIES ALLOWED. Here's the full line-up of what you can expect, nerds:

MY CLUBBING PHOTOJOURNAL/COLUMN
Yeah! Just like you used to read back in the day (old school) - you're going to see everything I get up to in some of North Bolton's top nightclubs.

Everything from knocking back the drug "E", to running around the dancefloor high-fiving people in the face whether they like it or not, to kicking down toilet cubicle doors while threatening to kill some little Welsh bloke who kept doing these stupid faces at me from across the dancefloor. It's gonna be epic - like a really epic crab that's covered in bling and drugs!

KRAZY KHARACTERZ!
Yeah! That's right: Top Games Magazine 2000 is gonna be full of crazy characters, and I can't wait to introduce you to some of the "wacky cats" I've got lined-up. Brace yourself for Some Guy's Comedy Father and his insane jokes ("Q: What do you call a Middle Eastern crab? A: A crArab!"), Hannibal Lecter's Problem Page ("Stay away from MY trough!"), the Street-Slang Eels ("We curse your minds, sir!"), and Prancing-J (a searing parody of all the loser baby games journos I used to work with back in the day - BABIES! I hope they're all dead! They ruined my life!).

MORE PHOTOZ OF ME!
It ain't just clubbing and drugging I get up to in a cool way - literally everything I do is mental and cool...! So I'm gonna give you a behind-the-scenes sneak peak into my life. It'll be like lifting up a crab's carapace to see its mentally ill guts.

VIDEOZ OF ME!
Someone told me you can make a load of money by being a vlogger, and with all the drugs I need to take to entertain you - I'm gonna need a lot of money. So you can be dead certain I'm gonna be jumping on that gravy train like a crab on a pogo (pogostick). I dunno what I'm gonna be talking about - maybe I'll just sit there and take drugs and see what happens. But let me tell you that, whatever happens, when Cyber-X takes his drugs, it's all guaranteed to be cool and interesting! One time, I gulped down a big fistful of the drug "whizz" at my nan's house, and spent an hour hunched over, trying to rub my forehead along the skirting board.

So, that's it - be sure to check into the site every day, perhaps multiple times during the day. It's gonna be top - like a top crab buying a new top in Top Shop! NO NERDS ALLOWED.

CYBER-X IS SPONSORED BY

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CYBER X: LIFE AFTER GAMES JOURNALISM

14/11/2014

BOOM! I’m Cyber-X. You probably remember me. I used to be a top games journalist, writing about all the top video games of the day for all the top games mags, like Top Games, Games Top, Mega Top, Top Laptop, Total Top, Tip Tops, and Top Tops.

Every month you read/looked-at my photo journal column, Cyber-X’s Top Night Out, in the pages of Total Toptop Games Top-Top Video Games Mega Top Monthly, detailing my wild and mentally ill exploits at some of North Bolton’s top nightclubs – clubs like Top Club, Club Top, and Clop Tub. Some nights I even wore a crazy top hat to really ram home the point. I also mostly only ate Pot Noodles – this is because the word ‘pot’ is ‘top’ backwards. It wasn’t easy, but for true authenticity I even ate the Pot Noodles in reverse; feeding them into my anus, and – usually the next day – excreting them out of my mouth.

Those were the days. The top days of my life (up until that point – more on this later: LOL… or should I say TOP…!? You see, TOP is an internet acronym I invented – it stands for ‘Total Overload of Phunn’). But then it all went wrong. Or as I like to say (‘cause I literally just don’t care what anyone thinks) - ‘tits up’.

FRIED (FIRED)

Total Toptop Games Top-Top Video Games Mega Top Monthly folded, and I got laid off (aka “FIRED” – little did I know then that the thing that was really being fired was a bullet being fired from the starting gun of a particular type of race – specifically, my race to the top). It happens. But without a job, my access to free review software dried up, so I had nothing to sell in Computer Exchange, so I couldn’t afford to get into clubs.

Worse still, most days I barely had enough money to buy drugs, and then my girlfriend left me, so I couldn’t even steal money from her to buy drugs. It was literally like being in a nightmare – a horrible, clubless, drugless, attentionless nightmare. I was trapped at a bottom of a pit, and there wasn’t even anybody who wanted to peer in at my brilliantly manic antics.

It felt like the whole world had it in for me.

Before long, I found myself living in a sewer. Not a metaphorical sewer – but an actual sewer. It was the top sewer in the country, but it was still a sewer. And even though I was sleeping on a big mound of top quality shit, which you probably could’ve sold as fertilizer to some of the country’s top farmers, nobody needs that as a bunk. Frankly, however you look at it, shit is still shit. It still stinks, it comes out of bums (except when it’s coming out of my mouth – see above) and is made from dirty brown germs. There’s a reason it’s called shit – and that’s because it IS shit. Literally.

LOWEST TOP POINT

But it was at my lowest point that everything changed for a second time. I had a revelation – I realised I was better than this. In fact, I deduced that I was better than everything and everyone – I was literally the best person alive on earth at that point. Why else would I have had my own monthly clubbing photo column in a games magazine, when nobody else did? Mother Theresa never had her own clubbing column in a games mag. Nelson Mandela didn’t.

Neither did his father, Admiral Nelson “Winnie” Mandela-Day – the only column he had was a stupid, boring one in Trafalgar Square made out of concrete, and surrounded by four black lions (the only lions I’m interested in are my loins – where my genitals live).

Who wants to look at that, when they could be reading about/looking-at me in a video games mag, hanging out in clubs, with dilated pupils and a bottle of beer in my hand? But I did/had my own photo column. Literally. I was, however you looked at it, better.

In that moment of profound self-awareness I was reborn – that sewer was my manger, and I was the infant Jesus, ready to bring my message to the world. I just needed a Star of Bethlehem to follow, same as Jesus did. And then I found one.

TOP HAMMER

As I stood there reeling from this cranial hammer blow by the Mallet of Enlightenment, I looked down at my feet and saw what I can only describe as a carrot, bobbing in the horrible brown water like a dead fish. And just like Jesus turned a fish into a load of bread, or whatever, I turned this fish/carrot into a big pile of hope/cash. Splashing around like a wailing lunatic, my fists hammering inexplicably at the sides of my head, I followed the carrot as it was carried along by the “carront” (current).

Eventually, it came to rest at the foot of a filthy old ladder, which was all rusted and that. To the average layman this was just a regular ladder, but to me it represented the difference between a life of hope, and a life of staying in a sewer, gnawing away at a dripping fatberg as my only source of supper.

Seeing it as a sign, I began to ascend, pushing my way up, up, up – and out, out, out through a manhole, in the middle of a street. To the layman, it was just a regular, every day street, but it was soon to become something more – a backdrop to my transformation into something else, something greater. Greater even than I already had been as one of the country’s top videogame journalists and clubbers.

As I knelt there in the warm sunlight, with no way to know whether the carrot had been real, or just a figment of my vibrant imagination, I realized that in front of me was a retailer specialising in self-help books. It was a sign within a sign (and the sign read “SELF HELP BOOKSHOP”). And in that moment I had my new direction. Everything I had been through – the sleeping in shit, the selling my crazy top hat to buy drugs, the fashioning a humanoid companion from wadded clumps of moist toilet wipes – had been just part of a journey, and here I was at the finish line.

I decided I would become the country’s top self-help guru and motivational speaker. I would help others whose lives were stranded in a rut. I would reach out to them, like that famous painting where the two hands are reaching out to one another (is one of the hands the hand of God? We can only assume). And that’s what I did. It didn’t exactly happen overnight, but let me tell you – it was well easy.

This is the Cyber-X that stands before you today (and I literally am standing as I type this – any idiot could tell you that standing is at least 100% more dynamic than rocking back and forth in a corner, or laying face down on the floor; try and picture it – me barking out instructions to my voice recognition software, as I march around my granddad’s garage with my thumbs hooked cockily into the belt loops of my fairly expensive jeans).

TOP LOSERS

These days I dedicate my time to helping losers like you (that’s right – I called you a loser – deal with it), from every race, creed and social background, out of their own pits. Some people have called me a genius (modesty precludes me from naming names – let’s just say one of them is a certain top TV street magician called “Bynamo” – wink wink). Others have called me a madman, or a prodigy, or an unnatural phenomenon, or a guru. Let’s just say I’m a bit of both.

But there was a certain other madman-cum-genius-stroke-guru born just over 2,000 years ago – and he didn’t do too bad (yeah, I know he got hung from a cross, but he also came back a couple of days later, so it must’ve just been some sort of magic trick or something: beat that, Dynamo – respect!).

This article is the culmination of my journey from video games journalist, to sewer dweller, to the country’s top motivational speaker and self-help guru. Every word on this page has my blood in it (literally – while typing this out I cut my thorax on my massive signet ring, and needed one stitch). Every paragraph is true. I swear.

Normally I charge about £450 (plus VAT) to allow access to my life-changing advice. I hold regular seminars (I call them “awesominars”) in top nightclubs across the country, where you can let me change your life to the relentless, undulating throb of post-garage Japanese techno, hardcore European house, or progressive 1,000bpm electrowave crabpulse (it’s the cutting edge of club culture: the sounds are filtered through a couple of old crabs strapped to a big broom). But today I’m going to share with you today my Top 5 Top Tips for Turning Your Life Around – TODAY!

BOOM! Come on, pigs – let’s make this happen:

1.    JUST SAY NO! When bad stuff happens to you, look it straight in the eye and say “NO!”. Like, let’s say you’ve just been refused a bank loan – firmly lock gazes with the bank wanker (or bwanker), purse your lips, and hiss the word “NO!”, over and over and over, rising in pitch and intensity, until he either decides to give you the loan, or asks you to leave. This is even more effective if you don’t pause to breathe in between. If you pass out, he (or she – this is the 21st Century after all, guys!!!) might feel enough pity to give you the loan.

2.    THE POWER OF NOW! They say there’s no time like the present – so most days I like to give myself little presents. If you’re a top genius like I am, this is a great way to reward yourself for being like that, thus encouraging you to be even more like that. Last week I bought myself a new watch. The week before it was a banjo. Maybe I’ll learn to play banjo, maybe I won’t – that’s not really the point.

3.    HOW TO WIN FRIENDS! Nobody likes to be alone, and everybody likes getting presents (see Tip 2), so why not get more friends by buying presents for people you’ve just met? One of the most effective presents is a pint of beer, so I carry one around with me at all times, just in case I bump into someone I’d like to be friends with. Five times out of ten they’ll really appreciate it, and hopefully not find it too creepy, or ask too many awkward questions about the smell of the beer.

4.    AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE! How can you make people do or say whatever you want? Unfortunately, you can’t – but you can make it more likely. Try sneaking into your target’s home while they’re sleeping, and write instructions on the insides of their eyelids, using henna. If they wake up while you’re there – just firmly put your hands over their eyes, mouth and nose until they fall asleep again.

5.    STOP WORRYING! This one’s easy – grab a pen and a piece of paper, and write down everything that’s worrying you in life. Now work out who’s responsible for those worries, track those people down, and make them pay. It doesn’t have to be anything illegal – just damage their car in the middle of the night, or post a shredded bird through their letterbox. They’ll never know for sure that you’re responsible, but they’ll probably have an inkling…!!!! Maybe you could write your initials on an undamaged part of the bird, just to add an extra, subliminal message.

So there you have it – straight from the horse’s hay-hole, a few top tips you can use in your everyday life, starting today. Who knows? Now you’ve had just a taste of what Cyber-X can offer, maybe I’ll see you at one of my awesominars, where you can watch me enjoying plenty of attention, as I stomp around pointing aggressively, kicking at the walls, grabbing the back of my head, and barking light switches. Usually, people are too cowardly to ask for their money back – but that’s just how I like it. BOOM! I’m Cyber-X.

CYBER-X RE-INTERVIEWS "PERRIS MOYNE"

CYBER-X'S 10 THINGS THAT COULDN'T LOOK LESS LIKE THAT BLOKE OUT OF THE WITCHER 3

CYBER-X PREVIEWS E3 2015

CYBER-X INTERVIEWS "PERRIS MOYNE"

CYBER-X: A Day in the Life of a Games Journalist

CYBER-X: A RETURN TO GAMES JOURNALISM

CYBER X: LIFE AFTER GAMES JOURNALISM

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