In a triumph of hope over expectation, I’m off to watch West Ham 🥶

I sold my pristine copy of Conker’s BFD on eBay for £20, when selling a bunch of stuff to fund my 360 Elite purchase 😭😭😭.

My favourite (and most played) game of last year 😍

Didn’t have ‘recreating the plot of Mercenaries 2’ on my 2026 bingo card. Not in the first week, anyway.

Christmas Lego completed 😃. Happy with that, think it will look good on my work desk 😄

Christmas Lego, it is your time

Bill starting 2026 in her emotional-support tipi, made into a cave by my gaming floor cushion (routemaster moquette 🫡 🚌🤓😎) due to the sodding fireworks. On the plus side, she misses the hootenanny

At my in-laws for the day…

Had a later-than-usual Christmas Day start this morning, as my daughter has a stinking cold, so we let her have a lie-in. Bill knows the presents are kept in the spare room, and was standing guard over them 😄

Christmas present to myself. I had one of those machines in Christmases 1980, 1981 and 1982 (Astro Wars, Scramble, Firefox F7) from my (much older and employed!) brother. I think he wanted to play them 😄

Christmas Peep Show episode watched. Christmas can now begin. Cauliflower is *not* traditional

Subscription copy of Retro Gamer arrived. Very poignant to see Nick Thorpe’s byline, after his sad passing a couple of weeks ago 😔

Having my annual re-read of A Christmas Carol and struck again by how on-the-money Dickens was about religious hypocrisy and political callousness c180 years ago. Plus ça change… 😢

Spare a thought at this time of year for all the reactive dogs, as the Black Friday purchases start being delivered.

🏆Win🏆the perfect Christmas 🎄 gift for a stones enthusiast:
STONE LANDS (on the Waterstones and Telegraph Best Books of 2025 lists) AND ALSO
THE OLD STONES (The Megalithic Portal guide, winner of Current Archaeology Book of the Year)
To win a signed (and dedicated if you like) copy of both books… 1/

[THREAD]

Right, as promised, here's 30 personal recommendations from yer man Scullion for the current Black Friday sale on the UK Nintendo eShop.

To stress: this is the UK sale. Some of these will be in the US too, but not all are.

It's also far from an exhaustive list!

Took the afternoon off to visit the Nintendo Pop-Up in Westfield Shepherd’s Bush. I was concerned about the queue but only took 5 mins. I asked inside if that was normal and they said last weekend it was hours’ long. Glad I took the time off!

Bill accidentally recreates Plato’s Cave.

We've had some great coverage on VGC recently, but with Google continuing to erode small publishers’ reach, it’s going to be a tough Q4 for independent sites.

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