The first thing I have to confess is that I thought video games were a solo experience for a long time. Honestly, growing up poor in Wyoming with dreams of Nintendo Systems that all the other kids had, I figured once I grew up I’d have a game room with one television and when the kids wanted to play video games, one of them would be on the controller and the other three of us…
Metroid was the “click.” I remember well the first time I realised that Metroid was going to be different – and it wasn’t going to be on a Sega console – I know that sounds sacrilegious since I am a die-hard Sega fan. I am ten years old in 1987 and my neighbour Danny had just gotten this weird Nintendo game that none of us kids could make heads or tails of. We had all…
In the end, I can’t help but say my love for Sonic & Sega is a bit ironic, since I used to be a Nintendo kid. I was never part of a family that loved Sega, I was a Nintendo kid until December of 1991, when my life was flipped upside-down. My parents (bless them) had been picking up on hints for months that I really wanted a Genesis. I mean, I’m talking about putting…
When I read stories about unwrapping NES gifts on Christmas morning and watched videos of kids ripping open grey boxes to discover their brand-new consoles in 1986, I felt like I was flipping through a family photo album that wasn’t mine. I was not there, and neither were many others. At the age of 18, I was working construction with my dad, and saving every penny I could for the impending birth of our child…
There are numerous reasons I’m a 42 yr. Old construction foreman and I’ve had so many vivid memories of obtaining my first handheld video game as a child. I purchased my first Game Boy at a garage sale in 2009 for $5. After my daughter said “retro handhelds”, I spent the next 3 hours trying to figure out why anyone would want to play games on a tiny, dimly lit screen. When I purchased the…
Carl’s doing this review since Joe began ranting about how Ubisoft destroyed everything since they quit being quirky French publishers and basically we needed to be able to talk about the game instead of listening to yet another rant about corporate consolidation. There’s an unpleasant reality: Beyond Good and Evil is simultaneously one of the best action adventure games ever created and a textbook example of why incredible games sometimes fail commercially. Released in November…
I have kept the Gateway 2000 mouse pad on my desk at work for over 25 years, and I don’t have that mouse pad there for some sort of retro flair – it is there because it is the only one of the many mouse pads I have bought that has survived three moves from one location to another and remained intact. Each time I see those cows, I am reminded of 1994 and the…
Right, David writing here and I have to get something straight before we write this review. Joe has been yapping on about Command and Conquer for weeks, Sam won’t shut up about how perfectly balanced StarCraft is, Tim says Age of Empires II is untouchable and they are all completely missing the point. Warcraft III didn’t just make a great RTS game, it created the entire MOBA genre and changed gaming forever. That’s not hyperbole,…
When I’m down in my basement game room organising my collection – and my wife tells me that I have obsessive-compulsive disorder; she’s probably right – there is one console that freezes me in place every time. That gorgeous white, curvy beauty on my shelf – my Dreamcast – still takes my breath away every time I glance at it. It didn’t sell enough units to be considered the most successful console of all time,…
Right, the main issue here is that we’ve been debating about what really constitutes an Immersive Sim for years and every time we bring up Deus Ex, the debate escalates. I keep saying that the proof that player choice is more than just a marketing term is Deus Ex and that’s why I always come back to it. Deus Ex was released on June 23rd, 2000. We had passed the point in PC gaming history…