In the past couple of years my readership has grown to the extent that a decent chunk of my readership now knows me for Tired Old Hack rather than my work on the likes of the Official Nintendo Magazine, Nintendo Gamer or CVG.
As such, many of you may not be aware that before Tired Old Hack existed, yer man Scullion ran a different website between 2010 and 2016.
It was (and still is) called That Was A Bit Mental, and it specialised in reviews of films that were… let’s say a little out of the ordinary.
Most of these were bad horror movies from the ’80s and ’90s, but there was a wide selection of other films in there too, from modern offerings (Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children) to creepy children’s films (The Care Bears Movie… seriously).
Let’s be clear: I’m a games critic, not a film critic, so as a result these reviews were a little rough around the edges.
However, I think this gives them a certain charm, and they still have my trademark shit jokes and over-reliance on swearing to get a point across.
This means if you enjoy reading my stuff on here then the reviews on That Was A Bit Mental should hopefully be similarly entertaining, even if you have no real interest in the films being reviewed.
At the time of writing there are 297 reviews on the site. Every time I crossed 100 reviews I created an ebook compiling ‘special edition’ versions of them.
This means all the spelling fixed, extra bad jokes added, and a new trivia section at the end of each review giving new facts and musings about each film.
There were two ebooks created – the cleverly named That Was A Bit Mental Volume 1 and That Was A Bit Mental Volume 2 – and they’re still available on Amazon (where they’re highly reviewed, I should stress. Ahem).
However, in the spirit of Black Friday and all that, I am granting them in PDF form to all you lovely bastards for the princely sum of fuck all.
Seriously. Here they are.
Put them on your device or e-reader of choice, or just read them on your computer (though if you’re going to do that you may as well just go to the site because you get pictures and everything).
What’s next for That Was A Bit Mental? Well, in case it wasn’t already obvious, for now it’s in temporary retirement.
I want to stress “temporary”, though. I do still want to go back to the site at some point in the future when I have fewer other things in the way.
When writing for games was my 9-to-5 job, my film reviews were my hobby. Now writing for games is my hobby, and I can only juggle so many things at once.
At some point in early 2018 I want to add a couple more reviews to the site and finally release the long-awaited (by me) third volume of the ebook, so the 97 reviews on the site that were never converted to ebook form can finally get that treatment.
Then That Was A Bit Mental will probably return properly later in 2018.
Until then, please do enjoy both my ebooks. That’s 200 reviews and nearly 500 pages of free stuff to keep you busy for a while.
Cheers folks.
Out of interest, how well have those books sold? I’m genuinely curious about how large this film fanbase is, and knowing you’re getting extra cash will help me sleep better at night.