The First 4 Fiqures sonic collectable fiqure

Hey guys and welcome back. Ok so for todays review I just picked up something really cool from Ebay for around £8.00 that Im sure any Sonic fan would like to have in there collection and that is the First 4 Fiqures Sonic the hedgehog Collectable Fiqure. Aswell as Sonic there is also a Knuckles and Tails fiqure. First a little background info on First 4 Fiqures. They are basically a company that hand crafts fiqures based on Video Games to a striking resemblance of their digital counterparts. If you would like to check them out Click Here. Be warned however if you plan on getting one of their fiqures make sure to preorder ahead of time as they are very sought after and get snapped up very quickly.

Onto the fiqure,  Once you get your fiqure this is the box it comes in. The box has a large picture of Sonic on the Front and the back which does look like some Official Sega Art Work. Now your probably thinking "hmmm the box looks very flimsy" and you'd be correct (excellent perception young one) but luckily the seller packed the thing in good or I shudder to think what sort of mess it would have been in... seeing Sonic missing a leg or an arm would quite possibly make me faint, throw up and have some sort of heart failure in that order... no one should see there hero in that state.

Moving away from Sonic dismemberment (which is something i thought i would NEVER be saying in my life) the actual fiqure is made from a hard plastic material and stands at about 5 inches tall. It feels sturdy although obviously I cant see it standing a huge fall, and since im not willing to launch my fiqure out of the window lets move on. The fiqure although sturdy is actually very light weight which did worry me i must say as I was expecting it to be a little heavier although when you look at the stand and how it sits on it perhaps its better off being light, but well get to the stand a bit later. All of Sonics Proportions look spot on and I must say it does look just how I imagine Sonic would look in real life. So well done First 4 Fiqures for making retro Sonic look good.

The paint for the most part is ok, not something to gaze upon in awe you understand but for a fairly cheap fiqure pretty dam good in my opinion. As always with most small fiqures it looks so much better from a bit of a distance but this also does look very good up close to. All the colours are spot on, none are the wrong shade and the paint does seem to be high quality and doesnt overlap any parts they managed to keep it with in the lines but one thing that does bother me though is the eyes.

As you can see there is a bit of a paint bubble on his left eye which im worried if it flakes of may reveal the under colour and on his right eye if you look very carefully at the picture you can see a line that runs around his eye. Perhaps its just me being picky though but i will leave you to judge for yourself.

So for presentation the fiqure does hold true to the classic Sonic image and to me a classic Sonic fan this makes my inner geek scream with delight.

Onto the stand.

 The stand is very very light weight and this I am a bit more worried about as the stand is also supposed to be like an anchor to stop the fiqure falling over but this thing is very thin and lightweight but thankfully it is also rather wide so this helps aid in the stability. Although very simplistic in design I quite like the stand, its not to bland so that it looks out of place but not overpowering so that it draws away from the main man himself. and as you can see from the picture up top looks very well when the little blue dude is placed ontop of it. Sonic is held in place with a small hole in his foot that slides into a raised piece of the stand.

In conclusion I am very pleased with the fiqure despite the few imperfections. If you were to ask me should you get it I would say yes, its not to big and looks very well on my shelf. I would rate it a solid 7 out of 10. So if your in the market for a well made, inexpensive Sonic fiqure I say look no further than the First 4 Fiqures Sonic the Hedgehog Collectable fiqure. Thanks so much for reading, and have a great day.

Im Back!

Hello friends! Well after a long long long break from blogger i decided to try it out again. This time around I am going to try and make regular posts. Basically this blog will be reviews on such things as video games, technology, perhaps some merchandise that i may acquire things like that, but will also be a glimpse into my life and what goes on as i live on this small little island and what I get up to. So to cut a not so long post short Im back, I intend to stick around and hopefully....hopefully i can turn this blog into something enjoyable, cheers for reading :)

Nintendo 3ds review. Was all the hype worth it?

Hello and welcome to my first blog. This is indeed very exciting for me as I have wanted to do this for a long time and help as many people out who are stuck and don’t know whether to purchase a product or not. So, without further ado please sit back and enjoy my review and thanks for showing support.

Ah Nintendo you have truly shaped the gaming world as we know it incorporating elements into your systems that have become so ground breaking they are still used by Microsoft and Sony to this very day. Well Nintendo have taken another bold step into the murky depths of 3d immersion. Oh sure 3d has been around for ages but it never really caught on. Remember the Nintendo Virtual boy? that huge red and black monster which was claimed to be a hand-held (yeah right) and caused migraines if used to long? Well maybe the less said about that the better. Well Nintendo have decided to give 3d another go and this time I think they have succeeded in their endeavour for 3d immersion gaming.

However, before I get into the 3d aspect of this console lets go over how it looks. I got my 3ds on launch day and have it ever since, the first thing I thought as I opened the box and peered in was "It looks just like my dsi only shinier" This is by no means a bad thing the 3ds is a compact,very nicely styled piece of kit. The only thing is if you have large hands it may prove difficult to hold, you know what they say about people who have big hands? Get a dsi XL, little joke there.... anyway I think Nintendo did an amazing job in fitting all the Tech inside this small shell. I got the black 3ds which I must say does look absolutely great in my eyes. As you probably know the 3ds is a clamshell design so lets flip the lid and see how it looks open.

The first thing you will notice is the huge 3.53 in (90 mm) 5:3screen which is capable of displaying 3d images. The next major thing I noticed was the analogue nub which is placed where the d pad was traditionally placed on systems of old. The d pad has moved below the nub however i don’t use this much. To the right you will find the A B Y and X buttons which are a good size unless you have huge thumbs which could overlap the buttons. The buttons themselves have a nice click to them and feel really responsive (something I thought was missing from the ds lite which had very mushy buttons). There is also a touch screen which measures in at  3.02 in (77 mm) 4:3 which does not display 3d images. Below this screen is a select, home and start button. I’m sure everyone reading this is familiar with at least start and select buttons but the home button basically takes you back to the home menu however unlike the wii which stops game play after pressing this button the 3ds basically suspends game play and allows you to continue playing on which is always good. To the immediate right is the power button. On the top portion of the 3ds is the really exciting part, the 3d slider. This lets u control how intense the 3d is (well get to see how fat Mario really is). Ill go over the 3d later. There are three 0.3 mega pixel cameras on the console the front 2 can take 3d pictures and the inner camera is only capable of 2d. This is where I think Nintendo could improve on the console. Only 0.3 mega pixels? my old Sony Ericsson K750i has 2 mega pixels. I can kind of get the reason behind the low quality but i would have payed a bit more for a good quality 3d camera but oh well ce la vie as they say in France. Well I think I have ranted on long enough about the aesthetics. Ill go over the peripheral now

There isn’t much in the way of peripheral but the most noticeable is the charging dock. The idea behind this is that you can simply drop the console into the dock and let it charge. Now, I may be nit-picking here but I think they could have scraped the idea of the dock and spent a bit more money on the a fore mentioned cameras or some other aspect of the console. I personally don’t really see the appeal of the dock its not all that hard to plug the charger in the back. Also it is very light and in my case I have hit the charging cable leading to the dock and knocked the console on the floor so just be careful of this. You will also receive a 2gb Toshiba sd memory card for saving pictures or whatever already installed into the 3ds so if you open the box up and don’t see a card you’ll know why. The last peripheral is one of my personal favourites. Its the augmented reality cards. These cards are used in conjunction with the 3d cameras and are able to display a virtual representation of that character on the card, also with the question mark card you can play 3d games ( my personal favourites are the dragon game and golf game but ill go over the software in my next review. I have high hopes for these cards and was thinking they would be great for games like Yu-Gi-Oh and the pokemon trading card game, what do you guys think?

The last thing I will go over is probably the most interesting part of the console, It is of course the 3d. When I got my 3ds  I couldn’t wait to check out the 3d. First I charged it up (little tip, always let anything that has a rechargeable battery charge completely the first time because if you don’t the battery will think that it is completely charged when in fact it isn’t and wont be used to its full potential, I learned this from my dad who has been an electrician for around thirty years) then when it was fully charged I turned it on and the set-up screen appeared, I wont go into detail about what happens but needless to say when I first saw the 3d I was blown away I couldn’t believe it. It really is something you have to see for yourself. The technology used to pull the 3d effect of is called parallax barrier which basically sends two images to each eye to fool the brain into thinking its 3d. Like our depth perception of you close one eye the 3d effect goes away. As I mentioned above there is also a 3d slider  to change the strength of the 3d or turn it off altogether.

You have probably read all the reports about the 3d messes up your eyes well let me put your mind at rest, I have played this thing for nearly eight hours straight to see what happens (the things I do for you lot) and nothing happened, no dizziness no exploding eyeballs, nothing. My eyes were a little tired but that’s to be expected after eight hours of staring at a screen.

So that concludes my first ever review, rest assured I will be doing a review on my games I got ut I want to wait as I have ordered another game of Ebay and want some time to play it. I wont spoil the surprise , I will also review the software built in the the system. In my opinion yes the 3ds is a good piece of kit if you have the money to spare id say go for it, but if your a bit low on funds id say wait until the price goes down and some really cool games come out, then I think the purchase can justify itself. Anyway thank you very much for taking the time to read this review. I hope this blog will become successful so I can help out as many people as I can about gadgets. I will be your test subject so to speak and hopefully will help you out. This is getting a little long so ill wrap up now, thanks for reading and have a nice day.