I’m Marcus and there is one thing that I think has been driving me crazy for decades. Each time someone says that XCOM: Enemy Unknown “brought back” turn based tactics (which it certainly did) I think they should be pointed towards a title that was effectively addressing the very same issues in 1999. Jagged Alliance 2 not only predicted the direction of tactical combat – it improved upon the systems that would eventually become common…
The first time I ever landed a punch in a video game that hit someone that looked like a person was at the age of 41. Sounds silly saying it that way, but that is the honest-to-God truth. By the time I caught up with all the gaming history that I needed to know, I was approximately 40 years old and I had been playing retro games for nearly a year. I had played the…
My first experience with the game DOOM was in 2011 when my daughter told me I had to “play this old shooter.” She said, “Dad you can’t possibly understand gaming history without playing DOOM.” I was somewhat hesitant to play it initially due to wondering how well an “old” computer game could be. Boy was I mistaken. After loading a source port version of DOOM onto my laptop (yes, I know that’s not the same…
The Most Effective Strategy Games Ever Created: A Finalised Ranking Which Almost Drove Us Crazy We knew that listing the most effective strategy games ever produced would ultimately result in another couple of weeks of broken friendships and a growing number of group chat blockages. Marcus immediately began arguing that real time games are less mentally taxing than turn based games whilst David said that any strategy game which did not include multiplayer could never…
The plastic shell cracked under my thumb with that satisfying *pop* that meant business. I was eight, maybe nine, wrestling with a copy of Super Mario 64 that had picked up some dust bunnies from underneath my mate's sofa. Dad was watching from the kitchen doorway, shaking his head at my technique—"You'll break the bloody thing," he muttered, not understanding that cartridge maintenance was basically surgery and I was the family's unofficial Nintendo surgeon general.Those…
It is hard to put into words exactly how I reacted the first time I threw a punch in a video game, that actually hit something that resembled a human being. I know this will sound insane now, but that is how I remembered it. At forty-one years old, I had been studying the history of gaming for approximately one year. During that time I went through all of the classic games that my daughter…
My mate Dave convinced me to start cataloguing every N64 game I could get my hands on about three years ago. "You've got loads of them anyway," he said, gesturing at my slightly concerning pile of grey cartridges. "Might as well write down what's worth playing." What started as a weekend project has turned into this bizarre archaeological dig through Nintendo's 64-bit library, and honestly? I'm still finding gems I'd completely forgotten existed.The thing about…
“Alright, let’s get this settled,” Carl declared after what was meant to be an informal Thursday night phone call. “Greatest stealth games of all time. Ranked properly. No fudging with honourable mentions.” Three weeks of the most vicious arguments since the Street Fighter 2 tier list debacle ensued. Timothy continued to argue that Thief did it first and therefore deserves to be recognised more than anyone else. Joe nearly walked off the group chat when…
Tim wrote this review so we get the view of someone who found out about this classic way after everybody else decided that it did indeed count as the 4th Indiana Jones movie. So here’s why the 1992 point and click adventure game is the definitive Indiana Jones experience outside of the original trilogy. When LucasArts combined their SCUMM adventure game engine with the Indiana Jones licence they produced something truly remarkable. Fate of Atlantis…
The other day my kid found my old Game & Watch collection buried in a shoebox behind some Christmas decorations. "Dad, why is this Game Boy so thick?" he asked, holding up my pristine Donkey Kong unit like it was some ancient artifact. I couldn't help but laugh—here's this device that once felt like pure magic in my eight-year-old hands, and to him it looks clunky as a house brick.But that got me thinking about…