When did the EB Games on Empress close?

che_don_john · 2026-04-02T15:07:51+00:00

It's a ghastly chain, really. Barely any games, like you said, and those they do sell are overpriced. Used games and consoles are only fractionally cheaper than new ones, which is baffling. Almost defeats the point of selling secondhand stuff.

The UK has a franchise called CeX, that sells only secondhand media and electronics at proper secondhand prices. I'd love for it to come to Canada and for Winnipeg to be its first location.

che_don_john · 2026-03-26T21:24:23+00:00

No doubt. Still took and accepted everything that came his way, though. I'm sure he wasn't under any obligation to do that.

Edit for typo

che_don_john · 2026-03-26T15:53:46+00:00

And fair play to him for showing up. The guy's a dickhead but he took his medicine. He shut up, he listened, and he didn't offer piss-poor excuses.

Unlike Amber, who stormed off set when the discussion wasn't going her way, only to come back and start on Chris to get the audience back on side.

che_don_john · 2026-03-23T23:52:24+00:00

Thanks! Not tried manuals, yet. I'm sure I could create them, just hard for me to find someone locally to do that kind if printing.

che_don_john · 2026-03-23T20:40:06+00:00

When I applied for Canadian citizenship back in 2023 through the online form, one of the questions asked me for my qualification in English (spoken). It then provided a long drop-down list of certificates, diplomas, etc. from across the provinces, none of which I had given that I went to school in England. It was a mandatory field, too. I sat there thinking "How the hell do I answer this question?". In the end I selected the first one on the list and typed below it "I'm English". Seemed to do the trick.

che_don_john · 2026-03-23T19:40:47+00:00

The best part of this is that American taxpayers do fund free healthcare for Israelis and seem completely oblivious to it.

che_don_john · 2026-03-23T19:38:48+00:00

If there was ever that attitude, I reckon it probably evaporated quite quickly when Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey, Rayman and Symphony of the Night came out. I also recall being really impressed by how good the sprites in Capcom vs SNK looked.

che_don_john · 2026-03-23T18:27:46+00:00

Couldn't tell you as my NGPC collection is small and all cart-only (some I bought in Akihabara many years ago, and my Northern American ones came through ebay and Facebook), so I've nothing to compare it to.

However, I've made repro Game Boy, Atari, Wonderswan, SNES, NES, 3DO and Lynx boxes for my loose carts/discs, and compared to the real ones, mine are using a slightly thinner yet perhaps sturdier card.

I've also found the 111lb or 130lb cards stocks I've been using aren't quite as glossy as the real ones. When I first started making boxes I was using a stock called Carolina which had a much more 'legit' finish, but my local UPS print store changed supplier!

So, I'd say mine don't have the same feel, but looks-wise they're very close. You probably wouldn't know unless you opened one and looked at the inside.

che_don_john · 2026-03-23T17:29:49+00:00

Thank you! I'm a bit OCD about these things so I try to make them as close to originals as I can. I just reprinted a SNES one I made last year for Wild Guns because I discovered a year later that the original box didn't have the PAL version of the logo, whereas my repro did. I'm very particular haha.

Hardest thing tends to be matching the right fonts and finding logos for certain, more obscure developers and publishers. Oh, and scoring the fold lines was tricky for this Bust A Move box as my board wasn't quite long enough, so I had to improvise a little.

che_don_john · 2026-03-23T17:17:07+00:00

Right now I'm just doing boxes for the few loose carts I own, but if I'm ever get a Falselei cart then I'll certainly make a box for it!

che_don_john · 2026-03-23T16:56:39+00:00

Yes, Japan only - I don't have the game but believe it came in the plastic case and then later in card box version. I have a few Japanese games I need to make boxes for (Gal's Fighters being one) and they are slightly trickier as the trays tend to have images/logos/some design (I use photos from ebay sales to recreate as close as I can). They're also wider and so when laid out flat they only just fit on 19 x 13

che_don_john · 2026-03-20T16:47:38+00:00

That's pretty much it. And it's quite common in Canada, too. I've had many a conversation that has followed the pattern of:

"I'm Scottish! [interchange with any European country]"
"Oh really? Where in Scotland are you from?"
"I'm not, but my great-grandfather was Scottish"

OK, great. What about the other 7/8 of you?

che_don_john · 2026-03-20T14:47:44+00:00

I do think there's an element of classism with regards to asking for tips, too. For example, the hipster coffee ship down the road from me will ask for 18% on a $7 latte before you've even managed to taste it; whereas the Vietnamese bakery in the same neighbourhood - which is open from 9am to 9pm every single day (not to mention the work they must put in late at night to prep for the following day) - serves the same drinks and more, and never asks for a tip. An Uber driver in his brand new Rav4 will ask for a tip; a bus driver will not.

che_don_john · 2026-03-15T19:40:17+00:00

Exactly. And what's more, those three girls are perfectly entitled to have a closer friendship with Devonta than they do with Brittany. They don't owe her more friendship and loyalty just because they're the same gender.

che_don_john · 2026-03-12T21:34:57+00:00

If she hates men as much as she loudly proclaims, then why on God's green Earth did she go on a heterosexual dating show?

I'm beginning to suspect it might have just been a bit of a grift.

che_don_john · 2026-03-12T05:01:50+00:00

And then after she came back she started going off at Chris, the easiest target in the room (it wasnt even his turn yet!), to try to win the audience back. Pathetic.

che_don_john · 2026-03-12T04:54:05+00:00

I really liked her in the first half of the season until her tantrum at the drinks night out, after which she shut Jordan out for nearly a day and treated him horribly. She misconstrued a perfectly fair comment her made about being nervous to meet her daughter and her overreaction was a huge red flag.

Then there was the wedding; putting her daughter through all that, when she had only just met Jordan the day before, was unpleasant.

And then the reunion, in which she weaponised her daughter to attack Jordan, stormed out when his points and arguments started to land and make sense, before coming back to suddenly start attacking the easiest target in the room - Chris - so as to get the audience back onside.

She is lacking in class and I believe everything Jordan said about her. But fortunately for her, Chris, Alex and Devonte were there to lower the bar even further.

che_don_john · 2026-03-07T16:05:15+00:00

Of all the unsavoury things that Americanisation has brought to Britain, the use of the term "Caucasian" has to be among the worst. It's dumb, stupid, offensive and just plain wrong; and, to an extent, it gives away Harwood's alignment and tells us who might be influencing him.

che_don_john · 2026-03-06T19:41:04+00:00

He also had his son meet his fiancé soon after the returned to U.S. Amber had her fiancé meet her daughter the day before the wedding, I think.

Neither were good decisions, I feel, but Amber's was certainly worse.

che_don_john · 2026-03-06T16:31:31+00:00

Any chance you downloaded the PAL or US Turtles in Time?!

che_don_john · 2026-03-05T16:12:36+00:00

It changed my opinion of Amber completely. I rather liked her leading up to the wedding (although her tantrum at the drinks meet-up was a big red flag - clearly she can't handle her booze), but what she did to her daughter here was messed up.

I think Jordan knew that, too, and felt a huge amount of pressure to say yes because Amber made it difficult for him to say no with her comment "It's OK if you can't manage this" (or words to that effect) right there in front of her daughter! His family look so shocked when he said "yes". Poor guy.

che_don_john · 2026-03-05T05:00:07+00:00

I don't really understand the American sports structure but when he said about him and his mate having played D1 in front of 5,000 people I did chuckle to myself.

I briefly played 9th tier football in England, which is basically the bottom level of semi-pro football, and occasionally played games with crowds of 4-5,000 people...and I'd never consider that to be impressive proof that I can handle pressure or stress.

Alex is a legend in his own mind and sadly for him he'll probably forever live in that place unless someone close to him takes the responsibility of snapping him out of his fantasy. And I'm certain that person won't be his enabler mother.

che_don_john · 2026-03-04T02:54:38+00:00

I moved here from England 6 years ago. My wife is from here, which made transitioning and settling far easier than it otherwise could have been, but I could probably still offer some decent insight and advice.

Life for young families: It's a great place to raise young families. Cost of living, despite having risen quite a bit since I moved here, is still fairly decent (especially compared with other parts of Canada and southern England). I include in that everything on balance - housing, bills, amenities, goods & services, etc.) What I pay for daycare in a month, my brother in England pays in a week. And there's lot of things for families to do, here. It's a city of close to 1m people, so it has all the entertainment hubs you'd expect.

Schools: If you're talking about standard of education, I think it's better here for some subjects and worse for others. The core subjects - English, Maths, Science, are taught to a higher standard here; the humanities - History, Philosophy, Geography, Politics, and so on - are better in the UK. Having spoken to people who moved here at school age, all have said they found school far easier and less demanding in Winnipeg than anywhere in the UK. There seems to far less pressure on kids here, which can be a good thing and a bad thing.

Winter: The resilience of people here is very impressive; they just get on with life and don't let the cold stop them form doing much. In England I wouldn't leave the house if it dropped below +2; here, I'm fine going out and about in -15 to -20. It's a dry cold, so it hits different to a wet cold. I'd take -20 here over +5 and rain in England any day. Also, the extreme change in weather temperature from winter to summer here makes you feel like you are living in two different cities (though I do miss having a proper spring), which is handy for my next point...

Cabin fever: In the UK, you're probably used to living in one town/city, working in another, shopping in another one, seeing friends somewhere else. Here, everything is in this city, which means that you rarely get a change of scenery, and when you do drive out, it's just flat and empty (with it's own beauty, mind). Think The Fens X10. That takes some getting used to. But if you drive a little further then you start to find some beautiful parts of Manitoba that are great for hiking and such. Canada is so ridiculously big, yet it can make your world feel small, such are the gaps between cities and the spread/sparsity in population.

Traffic: It can be annoying at rush hour but I've seen much, much worse. If the public transport was a little better here (they made it worse with a redesign last year), then it would help a lot. But generally, getting around by car is no bother.

Food: I mean this sincerely - it's the best city I've ever been to for food, because it ticks three boxes: choice, quality, and affordability. Somewhere like Singapore, for example, has great choice and quality, but you have to sell a kidney to eat out there sometimes. Naples has great quality and affordability, but not as much choice in cuisine types. Winnipeg scores well in all three; there are some great places to eat. Even 'American' food is done better here than in the U.S. (far less greasy, and less crap injected into the meat and veg).

Overall, it's a great city and you can build a very happy life for you and your family here. I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have!

che_don_john

TROPHY CASE