When I was 40 years old, and spending my time to catch up on every aspect of gaming history that I missed out on during my childhood, I was going to experience something that would completely change my perspective of what can be accomplished in the video game industry. The events surrounding this occurrence occurred approximately 2011, when my daughter continued to encourage me to play more SNES games and specifically encouraged me to play…
From the mind of Carl here (primarily because Timothy insists on ranting about how modern narrative games like Life is Strange invented emotional storytelling whilst Joe quietly mumbles that adventure games died with LucasArts) but both of them are wrong and The Longest Journey is precisely why. This 1999 masterpiece by Ragnar Tørnquist both proved adventure games weren’t dead and that they could be something much deeper than expected. Adventure games were “dead” by 1999.…
I was rummaging through my loft last weekend, dodging cobwebs and trying not to step through the ceiling, when I found it—my old Sega Master System, still wrapped in that tatty towel I'd used to protect it during house moves. The sight of that familiar black plastic shell sent me tumbling back through decades of Sega memories, from those early 8-bit days right through to the Dreamcast's bittersweet finale.You know, Sega's journey through the console…
Hey guys, Joe here. Why has it been twenty plus years since the greatest “F*** You” in video game history? As Carl stressed about the frame rates and Sam cried about the balance patches, I’m still angry about the biggest trolling game design in history. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty didn’t simply break the 4th wall. It loaded it with C4 and asked you to question if walls really existed in the first…
There is no doubt that the best way to enjoy Street Fighter II is at an arcade. I will admit that I was immediately hooked upon entering the Pizza Ranch in July 1991, and observing a high school kid doing things in a video game that I didn’t know existed. The kid was playing Guile, the military dude with the super long hairdo, and he was launching those curved energy blasts while yelling “Sonic Boom!”…