Saturday nights in my house were sacred, and it had nothing to do with church the next morning. No, these were the evenings when the coffee table transformed into a battlefield, and families across Britain gathered around cardboard boxes that promised hours of entertainment—no batteries required, no RF switches to fumble with, just pure analog fun that somehow managed to spark arguments fiercer than any multiplayer match I've witnessed since.I still remember the satisfying thunk…
Sometimes you don't realize a game has ruined you for everything else until years later, when you're fumbling through another run-and-gun shooter wondering why it feels like chewing cardboard. That happened to me recently when I fired up some modern indie thing that promised "classic arcade action." Twenty minutes in, I switched it off and dug out my Model 2 Genesis. Time to remember what perfection actually felt like.Contra: Hard Corps hit the Mega Drive…
Right, Tim here, and I am looking at a title that pre dates my gaming experiences by around fifteen years but has been sitting in my collection since last summer due to multiple individuals stating it is a “lost classic”. The Operative: No One Lives Forever arrived in November 2000 as a spy shooter that apparently captured the Austin Powers spirit better than any actual Austin Powers video games. As I play through this in…
When I was 13 years old I was a Sega fanboy. I loved the Genesis (or Mega Drive) and I hated Nintendo. Then my cousin Danny got a Super Nintendo for Christmas that year and he brought it over for our Christmas dinner. We were eating turkey and mashed potatoes, etc., and I was bored. So, when Danny booted up A Link to the Past using the gold cartridge, I sat down next to him…
Marcus here, and I want to talk about something that has been bothering me about the way people discuss portable gaming. Tim continually claims that mobile strategy games are basically the same thing as those on Game Boy Advance showing that he has no idea about the technical brilliance that is Advance Wars. Advance Wars was more than a strategy game that simply ran on a handheld; it was a prime example of optimising complex…
Last Sunday I was digging through a box of N64 cartridges in the loft—you know how it is, searching for one specific game and somehow ending up with dust in your hair and a sudden urge to replay everything you'd forgotten you owned. Anyway, buried beneath copies of Mario Kart that still smell faintly of childhood birthday parties, I found Glover. That weird little rubber ball game that nobody quite knew what to make of…
Samuel here – trying to get the kids off to school whilst wrestling with a colour drifted CRT television. I’ll be honest I was sceptical when Mark of the Ninja came out in 2012. A 2D stealth game from Klei Entertainment? Same people behind the wacky animated adventures? Seemed like a huge mismatch of genres to me. Stealth games were 3D games – cameras moved freely and the environment affected how you played. How were…
I went to a small game store in Denver — it’s probably gone now — to look for a copy of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. When I got back to my house and booted it up, I was greeted by the opening sequence. Wow! You’re playing as some Belmont dude fighting Dracula and the voice acting is…well, it’s a real thing. “What is a man? A pitiful little pile of secrets!” delivered with all…
The worst part about Donkey Kong 64 isn't the backtracking or the bloated collect-a-thon madness that every reviewer mentions. No, the worst part is how it absolutely ruined my summer of '99 because I couldn't put the bloody thing down.I'd just gotten the Expansion Pak—that chunky red brick that made your N64 feel properly next-gen—and DK64 was bundled with it. Free game, right? Except nothing's free when it costs you three months of daylight and…
The sound of plastic clacking against plastic still makes my spine tingle. Six-button pads, you know? That distinctive Genesis controller feel—heavier than Nintendo's offerings, with buttons that had this satisfying click when you really meant it. Saturday mornings in 1991 meant negotiating screen time with my sister, and somehow I always won when Sonic was involved. She'd get bored watching me spin-dash through Green Hill Zone for the hundredth time, wandering off to find something…