My mum used to say television was the devil's picture box, but even she couldn't resist the absolute chaos of Blankety Blank. Saturday teatime meant Terry Wogan winking at celebrities who'd clearly had a liquid lunch, and those felt-tip pens that squeaked against the answer boards like fingernails on a blackboard. I was probably seven, maybe eight, sitting cross-legged on the carpet with a plate of beans on toast, watching grown-ups make complete pillocks of…
Hi there, my name is Joe and prior to Carl delivering his standard commentary about how Command & Conquer “pretty much invented the RTS genre” (which simply isn’t the case; I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree about this one) I’m going to give you some insight regarding the game that really raised the bar for real time strategy whilst everybody else was still hanging back. Total Annihilation was released in 1997 and…
At seventeen, I considered myself to be too mature and intelligent for something as…childish looking as Earthbound. All my friends were talking about Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy III (which we later learned was actually Final Fantasy VI), and some other bizarre title with scratch and sniff cards and cartoon style marketing. The box cover art didn’t even look like any of the RPGs I was used to. I just thought it was a marketing…
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…