Release Date: December 18, 1987 (Japan) / July 12, 1990 (NA) | Developer: Square | Platform: Famicom / NES (8-bit cartridge) | ROM Size: 384 KiB PRG-ROM + 256 KiB CHR-ROM (640 KiB total); password save system | Playtime: Main story 17–25 hours, Main + extras 30–40 hours, Completionist 50+ hours | Sales: 1.3M+ (Japan), 700K (NA/EU), 2M+ worldwide | Critical Reception: 32/40 (Famitsu, 1988), 8/10 (EGM/GamePro), Metacritic 85/100 (Pixel Remaster) — Nobody working on…
The Subscription Model That Proved Worse Than What It Replaced I’m a forty-something construction foreman who only got into gaming at age 40. I have zero rose tinted glasses about older gaming generations. I repair old NES consoles as a hobby because I like knowing how to fix things and understand the concept of ownership. That cart STILL works from 1985. You OWN it. You can play it whenever you want for the rest of…
Man, the smell. I can still conjure it up perfectly – that weird cocktail of cheap pizza grease, cigarette smoke from the adult section, and that distinctive electrical tang from CRT monitors running hot all day long. Walk into Tony’s Pizza & Games on a Saturday afternoon in 1987 and you’d hit that wall of sensory overload that meant one thing: you were about to blow your entire allowance in the next two hours. My…
So there I was last Saturday, watching my daughter mess around with my N64 setup in the basement game room, and she’s completely fixated on that opening screen of Super Mario 64 where you can grab Mario’s face and stretch it like silly putty. “Why does his nose do that?” she asks, pulling it out until he looks like some kind of cartoon anteater. I couldn’t help but laugh because honestly, I did the exact…
So last weekend my daughter brings her boyfriend over to meet me properly, right? Nice kid, works IT for some company downtown. Anyway, he sees my game room and we get to talking about retro stuff, and he mentions he’s been playing GoldenEye online with his college buddies. I’m thinking he’s talking about that Xbox remake or something, but no – turns out he’s actually running the original N64 version through emulation with full netplay…
The best 80s and 90s consoles fundamentally shaped modern gaming. The NES sold 61.9 million units and invented home console standards. The PlayStation moved 102.5 million units and launched the disc-based era. The Game Boy achieved 118 million sales and proved handhelds could dominate. These systems competed fiercely, innovated relentlessly, and created the gaming industry we know today. This ranking evaluates the best 80s and 90s consoles by lifetime sales, cultural impact, technical innovation, and…
You know that exact moment in Sonic 2 when Tails shows up? That orange blur suddenly appearing on screen, and you realize you’re not running through Green Hill Zone alone anymore. My friend Mike and I probably logged a thousand hours fighting over who got to be Sonic during those endless summer afternoons in ’92. Though honestly, playing Tails wasn’t terrible – you could fly around, at least until Mike inevitably speed-ran ahead and left…
That arcade cabinet sat right there between a busted Galaga machine and a Street Fighter II that perpetually reeked of cigarette smoke and whatever mystery substance someone had spilled on the joysticks. I must’ve fed that NBA Jam machine twenty dollars in quarters over the course of summer ’93 – enough money to actually buy the Genesis cart, but you know how it is when you’re fifteen and logic takes a backseat to pure arcade…
Christ, where do I even start with King K. Rool’s laugh? I mean, we’re talking about a sound that’s been rattling around in my head for twenty-five years now, and it still makes me want to check over my shoulder. This was back in ’99 – I was about twenty-five myself, working my first proper IT job and still living in a grotty flat share in Fallowfield. My flatmate Dave had somehow convinced his girlfriend…
My buddy Jake claimed he could nail Sub-Zero’s spine rip fatality every single time. This was 1995, we’re crammed into his basement rec room that always smelled like stale pizza and that weird musty carpet smell, and Jake’s going absolutely nuts on his six-button Genesis controller like he’s trying to break it. Here’s the thing about Mortal Kombat 3 on Genesis though – it wasn’t just about button mashing. You couldn’t just flail around and…