The problem is that I am seeing Photoshop as something of a necessity but no necessity is worth £600. On the plus side the seller is willing to give a refund so no real loss just a waste of time. Sometimes trying to stay legal is a right pain in the backside…

On the up side for ebay I have bought four playstation one Formula One games for a total of £9 the two that have arrived so far have both been of working and good quality. So it seems ebay is great if you don’t intend to spend a lot of money, if you do then it and the people on it will screw you over.

On the other side of the system, I have been after a version of adobe photoshop for the last couple of months but I am not interested in paying the near £600 that adobe expect me to pay for the software. I am also disinclined to take the student approach of torrenting the software because I now have the money to buy things legally. Therefore I have been scouring ebay and amazon marketplace looking for good deals on older versions of photoshop. After a couple of weeks I found a good deal, a seller with good feedback (would never spend over £50 on ebay with a seller with under 100 feedback and at least 99% positive), a good price and an unused copy of Photoshop CS2. I won the item for £87 and thought I was on the way to legal photoshop jolliness (assuming the seller hadn’t lied to me). Having paid though I have now received an email from ebay saying that the item has been removed, what is the point in removing an item from the system after the item has been completed and payment made? Worse still due to ‘privacy’ ebay refuse to let you know why the item was removed from the system. You are just told to contact the seller who may or may not talk to you/give you a refund. If he doesn’t then I have to go and bitch to paypal about getting my money back.

Seriously I understand that it might make sense to remove items from the system if the item is illegal etc but this was software that was unused from a seller with a good reputation. If there was a valid reason then that is another problem that plagues ebay entirely and one that I have faced two of the last times I bought items on the site. The first was a copy of the epic Orange Box by Valve which must be registered to a steam account for the pc version to function. It can only be registered to one steam account and it already had been so therefore I could not play the game and had to send the game back. The last item (pre-photoshop) that I bought on ebay was sent back as well, this time because the seller had sent me a rather obvious fake copy of GTA Chinatown wars on DS. I had heard that DS piracy was rife on the website but figured I’d try my luck and I failed. The cartridge was thicker than usual, the box images were lowish res and the manual contained text from a review website (I typed in a passage to google when I opened the manual knowing it was fake).

So piracy, high fees and unknown calculations have majorly knocked my confidence in the nets biggest auction company. At the moment I don’t really see a lot of reason to return for anything over about £20 any time soon. Meanwhile on the photoshop front, the guy has sent it to me anyway and we are both a little perplexed as to why ebay cancelled his listing after it had been completed… Now I just have to hope that the item was as he described it to me in the first place. As far as I am aware though ebay is still the best site on the net for purchasing things you can’t find anywhere else. For example I have bought four PS1 Formula One games a total of around £10 for me to review on http://www.f1gaming.com in the coming months. I would not have been able to find those items anywhere else and would probably have been charged more for them if I had, in the case of small little rare trinkets ebay is still king but for larger/more modern items I am finding it a bit of a pain in the backside.

I cannot remember what the first DVD I owned was, I seem to remember the first one I bought being an Indiana Jones Trilogy box set but I am sure I had some bought for me before then.

That being said, what was the first DVD that you owned/bought and approximately when did you buy it?

Super Mario Galaxy 2 – Wii – 28th May 2010 (wouldn’t be released on a Sunday like in US so picked the next Friday)

The original Super Mario Galaxy is by far the best game on the wii so far, I voted as such by making it my second favourite game of the decade. It is also my favourite ever mario game (I preferred Sonic in the olden days). The game proved that platforming can be amazing in 3d when done properly combining the best graphics on the system with brilliant physics and a masterful soundtrack. Galaxy 2 promises to be more of the same with similar locales, slightly improved graphics and a typically marioesque daft storyline. Sure this might make Nintendo lazy but surely more of the same isn’t always a bad thing. The first game was so good that I would happily take more of the same. Bring it on Nintendo, this time I’m going to preorder…

In other news Split/Second from my previous list now has a new name and a release date. The game will now be called Split/Second: Velocity and will be release on 21st May.

The categories are now near the top so they are easier to find, still not perfect but definitely an improvement. At the same time I’ve improved the twitter widget I am using and also added my xbox gamercard as well. If you have an xbox feel free to add me. I have also added the link to my amazon wishlist back in as well in case you have a need to buy me something… not sure why you would but just in case…

Lastly I have started allowing registrations so that you can now sign up so it remembers your login for when you post comments. I will eventually move this functionality over to the gallery as well when I make changes to it later in the year so if you want to make comments sign up to make it easier for yourself in future.

Also let me know on this post if you want any other changes made or have any issues with the site.

Thanks guys.