It may surprise some of you to learn that Rik and Stoo of the famous games site A Force for Good don’t actually live together at a place called FFG Towers, playing old games at an incredibly slow rate with the intention of posting a maximum of two reviews per month. In fact, we’re rarely in the same place at once, at the insistence of the FFG board of shareholders, in order to protect the brand at all costs – and should some terrible fate befall one of us, the other would be required to maintain business continuity, to the extent that any news of death or serious injury would be concealed from the public altogether, with the remaining founder member keeping up the pretence by publishing articles under both names.

However, an exception was made last weekend, as we gathered to play games and eat pizza. We so rarely cover multiplayer, so here’s a veritable smorgasbord of brief and largely unenlightening thoughts about what we played:

Borderlands (Xbox 360) – Co-op seemed like fun but was undermined by the fact we had to play split-screen with joypads, and hence the fundamentals of walking and shooting proved comically tricky for us both. I’m sure it’s possible to get the hang of it, but in the words of my good colleague and friend, it was like driving a tank, and after peppering the dirt around some angry-looking dog things without causing much damage, we resolved to revisit it on PC at some undetermined point in the future.

Blur (Xbox 360) – I’ve played this a lot before, but the intervening years seemed to have robbed me of any useful knowledge and skills. We generally finished last and second last.

Eternal Champions (Megadrive – on PC, via the Steam Collection) – An old beat ’em up. I chose a character who attacked using yoyos. Stoo won.

Golden Axe (Megadrive – as above) – We didn’t get to the end. I kept triggering magic by accident, often when no enemies were on screen.

Streets of Rage (Megadrive – as above) – We did ok on this, except for occasionally hitting each other and finding the bosses very tricky. At one point we seemed to be on the world’s longest boat, long enough even to allow us to call upon backup from a police car with no apparent logistical difficulties.

EA Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360) – after a gruelling 10 rounds of extremely untechnical brawling, Stoo’s boxer Jeff Banks was declared the winner on points. My fighter, Mmmbop Hanson, retired immediately. (I do love how the EA commentary team always echo their real life counterparts by insisting that whatever takes place on screen, however bad, is interesting or entertaining in some way).

Project Gotham Racing 4 (Xbox 360) – A non time-travelling Delorean may be a bit of a crap car, but it definitely goes faster than a Mini. Minimal Kudos points were awarded.

Lego Batman (Xbox 360) – A game clearly designed for children still proved too taxing in places for Team FFG. Although it was quite late and some beer had been consumed by that point.

Puma World Football 98 (PC) – it had to be done, and while in the past I’d had some difficulty getting it running, to my surprise and delight it installed and ran with minimal fuss. It was truly like old times, with keepers stopping shot after shot, but also contriving to let in some extremely unlikely attempts, such as a diving header from outside the area, while Stoo rolled back the years with a number of fouls deemed worthy of dismissal by the referee. The matches were light on goals and entertainment (for the crowd) but good fun for us old timers. (Indeed, once left to my own devices, I had to stop myself from launching into a single player league. Puma!)

Yep, this actually went in.

A good time was had by all, although increasingly I felt that the phrase from Stoo’s Twitter bio (“terrible at all videogames”) should be our new site name.