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So you could scan Ebay for retro consoles for hours, flicking through thousands of irrelevant items and waste your life. Or you could have dozens of the items you’re actually looking for all coveniently displayed on one screen. And waste your life drooling over them.

Retro Gamer’s magazine website (in association with Ebay) now includes Bargain Hunt, a feature that allows you to select the retro console you’re looking for from a drop-down menu. You’re given information on its year, rarity and market value, while any Ebay auctions for the console and their current price, postage and end date are displayed below. Very convenient, especially as you’re going to be on the RG website anyway, no?

This is by far my most favourite (and the most relevant) shameless TPCG plug to date. I will actually be using this myself on a daily basis. Obsessively. So should you.

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Check it out here.

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A silly bit of fun? Well, not really if you’re serious about your photography - it’s a great means of gauging the mass appeal of your work. But even if you’re a gamer and your interest in photography goes as far as beery holiday snaps and the centrefold of FHM, it’s a suprsingly compelling way of killing five minutes. Yes, there are nice ladies on it, and it’s much better than Hot or Not.

Check it out right here.

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During EA’s press conference Valve’s Gabe Newell (who, dissapointingly, was looking a lot less fat than usual) gave us a brief insight into Left 4 Dead’s unique AI system, The Director.

“The Director is our AI and it gives you a different play experience every time,” said Newell. “It looks at what you and your teammates are doing and it uses that to make a decision about difficulty levels, about animations, about music cues and lighting cues to give you a new experience every time you play.”

We were then shown two videos of an attack on a gas station by a group of player playing cooperatively. The first video featured a group who hadn’t been working together very well, and had taken a lot of damage. The AI therefore changed the difficulty level accordingly, sending out a ragtag bunch of zombies who were easy to dispatch. The next video showed a more skillful team advancing on the same gas station, this time a veritable horde of zombies attacked them and the whole set piece was bookended by a giant explosion, which tore apart the environment.

We were impressed, but it wasn’t clear if The Director can generate random scenarios on the fly, or if it selects from a few premade ones tailored at different difficulty levels. Hopefully we’ll get to see more at EA’s demo boothes later on.

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Never underestimate the power of user generated content! During EA’s very (very) loud E3 press conference Spore creator (and all round genius) Will Wright announced that nearly 2 million user created Spore creatures have been uploaded to the game’s database - that’s more than the number of species on this planet!

“One of the reasons why we wanted to release the creature creator early is because we know the creative power of players when they get together is awe inspiring,” said Wright during the conference. “So we wanted to release the creature creator first and then by the time we release the full game we’d have a populated database of creatures - and these creatures would be playable in the over-the-counter version”

Wright went onto say that the response to Spore’s Creature Creator dramatically exceeded his expectations.

“I was hoping that we’d get around 100,000 creatures up by September (this was based on how the character creation tools worked out with the Sims), and maybe if we’re lucky we’d get a million by the end of the year. Instead, what happened was we reached 100k in 22 hours, and half a million in about a week. Right now we have something close to 2 million. The number of creatures we have on our database for Spore has actually exceeded the total number of species on earth. “

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We’re around an hour or so into Microsoft’s E3 press conference and, predictably, it’s been nearly all about the company’s malfunctioning white box, but Fallout 3’s producer, Todd Howard, has just let slip something of interest to PC gamers. As well as giving us yet another compelling demonstration of Fallout 3 (which is heading way this autumn), Howard remarked that PC (and Xbox) gamers will get “substantial exclusive downloadable content”. No word on what that content is, but it’s nice that Bethesda is keeping its PC fanbase in mind. Now lets shed another tear for the poor old PS3….

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As you already know Dragon Age has been coined as the “spiritual successor” to the sublime and epic Baldur’s Gate series of RPGs. Bioware’s CEO, Ray Muzyka, says that the game will “pull no punches” in terms of delivering a gritty and dark storyline, and reckons that it will be the most “emotionally intense” game he’s ever created.

Here’s what else Bioware has revealed about the RPG.

“* Epic Party-Based Combat – Dragon Age: Origins will introduce an innovative, scalable combat system, as players face large-scale battles and use their party’s special abilities to destroy hoardes of enemies and massive creatures.
* Powerful Magic – Raining down awesome destruction on enemies is even more compelling as players apply “spell combos,” a way of combining together different spells to create emergent unique effects.

* Deep Customization – Players will develop their characters and gain powerful special abilities (spells, talents and skills) and discover ever-increasing weapons of destruction.

* Your Story, Your Way – With its emotionally compelling story, players choose with whom they wish to forge alliances or crush under their mighty fist, redefining the world with the choices they make and how they wield their power.

* Origin Stories – Players will select and play a unique prelude that provides the lens through which the player sees the world and how the world sees the player. The player’s choice of Origin will determine who they are and where they begin the adventure, as they play through a customized story opening that profoundly impacts the course of every adventure.”

Hopefully will be able to bring you a more in-depth look at Dragon Age over the coming week - those damn closed doors have never looked so enticing..

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Total PC Gaming has arrived in LA! The city of gang violence, hardcore pornography and, lets not forget, angels. We may have just endured a grueling 12 hour flight - sat next to a man who insisted on giving us a smell of his colon every 15 minutes - but we’re now ready to head into the LA Convention centre to bring you news and ramblings from this year’s E3 (the video game trade show that’s kind of lost its magic, but is going to stick around for a little while longer until someone starts-up something better). Anyway, it all kicks off in around two hours, so be sure to check back here for the latest.

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Release date: 1996
Original RRP: £29.99

In brief:

Games luminary Sid Meier launches his second Civilization title having proved to Microprose that PC gamers would pay to play a loosely historical turn-based strategy game that doesn’t necessarily involve death and destruction. And good god, it sells even more than the first- who’d have thunk it, eh?

Box art: 2/5

Yeah… can you imagine this on any modern gaming title? I half expected a CD copy the Encyclopedia Britannica inside this…

Manual: 3/5

…hang on, this is the Encyclopedia Britannica. Who needs history lessons now?

Contents: 3/5

Ahh, the technology tree in laminated form. I’m going to put this on my wall and never bring a girl back to my room again.

Obscurity: 1/5

Civ II isn’t easy to find in big box form, but if you’ve owned a PC at any point in the nineties then the chances are you’ve played or at least heard of the Civilization series.

Condition: 4/5

If you’re gonna find it, it’s invariably going to be in good condition - Civilization fans wouldn’t dream of neglecting even the packaging of one of their favourite games.

Overall: 2.6/5

If only this was about the quality of the game… but it’s not. Apart from the overall condition there’s not much to push Civ II beyond half marks. Based on the cover, it’s a testament to Civ’s following and the power of the logo and brand that this game made any money at all.

(Online Content Editor: -999999999/5)

The most infuriating, unintuitive and sloppily thrown together content manger I’ve ever used.

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