April

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As always, Blizzard easily won April Fools Day, although came a very close second with their "the real fight hasn't even begun to be finished" B.U.N.G.L.E gaming league. Everyone else needs to make sure they try harder in 2010.

The biggest fish in April's news pond turned out to be Konami's Six Days In Fallujah, which turned out to be Zero Days in Fallujah after the publisher axed the title due to its ginormous storm of controversy. The Daily Mail were furious, and developer Atomic were left befuddled after all the confusion.

There was also trouble after some tabs of MDMA were found in a used copy of IV. The were understandably outraged, though relieved that they spotted the narcotics before giving the game to their 12-year-old son. Nobody deemed it a good idea at the time to remind the parents that perhaps they shouldn't have been buying an 18 rated game for a minor in the first place. Daily Mail readers were also undoubtedly relieved when it was revealed GTA: Chinatown Wars posted disappointing sales despite critical acclaim, and a German MP found time to compare violent videogames to child pornography, illegal drugs and spoiling the season finale to Lost.

Meanwhile, the suits at towers were quick to dismiss the as a dumb kids toy for stupid kids who are stupid. They weren't bitter about the machine cruising past 600,000 sales in the West at all.

Over at Towers, they finally admitted the E74 error was this year's Red Ring of Death and that perhaps their policy towards gay rights on Live could do with a rethink.

April was also the month where we all got excited about gaming after March's promising of OnLive. The news was quickly followed with the annoucement of a rival service, and also saying they thought of the idea years ago but were occupied with making sure was too advanced to run on anyone's computer.

There was also the mandatory expert saying release dates need to be for life, not just for Christmas. How very 2009.

And, of course, the biggest piece of news since the announcement of the Phantom: ex-Infinium Labs CEO Kevin Bachus said he wished the could have worked. Amazing.

We also saw people admit that maybe the money apocalypse might be affecting the games after all, despite the news that three million American kids are addicted to games. If only they had bigger wallets. At least doesn't have to worry: the design legend said he wasn't too bothered about figures.

May

May was the month Forever finally died, and the studio was quickly flooded with tears from fans of old internet memes. In true Realms style, they denied closing down a few days after it was annouced the studio was closing down. And then Take Two sued them. Rest in peace, Duke.

I've often thought that a documentary about the would make for a rousing and evocative piece of entertainment, so when it was announced in May that a fancy Hollywood type had optioned the idea I concluded that somebody, somewhere, could read my mind. I can only hope one of the DVD extras will be to watch a dramatic reconstruction of Bo Stefan Eriksson crashing his Ferrari in ultra-slow motion.

Sony spent buckets of money ensuring was a timed exclusive in Europe. Wasn't worth it.

More financial misery was observed with the report of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand selling a twelfth of the original, despite having one big-ass ramp for Fiddy to drive his car off. The game remains a true co-op classic for helicopter haters everywhere. The money apocalypse continued unabated through the month, with posting big losses and news of massive redundancies across the entire industry. The bloke who said the games industry was proof was kicked in the face again by news of UK game sales suffering.

Meanwhile, id took a break from creating their fancy, hi-tech new engine to write about how the company's focus was firmly on creating games instead of fancy, hi-tech new engines.

Two bizarre stories regarding potential (failed) celebrity cameos popped up: Bill Clinton rejecting the opportunity to appear in 3 and Heather Mills asking for too much money for an appearance in Bionic Commando. Either would have been fantastic. And Tim Schafer spoke of how Activision's initial plans for the heavy-metal themed Brutal Legend was to give it more of a hip-hop flavour.

The hype machine started going insane for 2 after the game's trailer was revealed. It was watched by four hundred billion people in its first day. Fact.

I'm still amused when I remember how Sony leaked their own announcement - blunder of the year - of the Go mere days before E3. They also filed lawsuits over some leaked rumours of a slim PS3, which meant everyone knew it would definitely be revealed sooner or later.

Also: oh God it's swine flu! Everywhere! Back in June the entire planet was gripped in swine flu fever, with the disease firmly within its terrifying early stages - before the world realised it was an unfortunate pain rather than a herald of the apocalypse. The worldwide pandemic ensured the health-cautious Japanese crowd would dodge E3: Square Enix made plans to only take the most expendable, for instance. were also keen to get out of attending.