There's something unsettling about hearing your childhood distilled into three minutes of indie rock, but that's exactly what happened when I first encountered Alex G's "Nintendo 64." I was browsing through Spotify recommendations—you know how the algorithm gets when it realizes you've been listening to nothing but Sonic soundtracks for a week—and this track popped up. The title alone made me pause mid-scroll.I hit play expecting some throwaway nostalgia bait, maybe chiptunes or samples from…
Carl asked me to cover Journey for the site, which everyone found hilarious because I’m the Amiga bloke. Sam actually said “why is John writing about a PS3 exclusive, he doesn’t own one,” which isn’t strictly true, I bought a PS3 in 2011 specifically because of the deals showing up on Steam and PSN that year, and Journey was one of the first downloads I ever made on that console. Sam thinks Journey is overrated…
The cartridge slot on my Mega Drive has seen more action than a hotel key card, and honestly, most of those insertions were pure gold. There's something about Sega's 16-bit beast that just clicks differently—that chunky, satisfying thunk when you press down on a cart, the way the power LED winks at you like it's in on some joke. I've been thinking about this lately because my mate Dave came over last weekend with his…
Marcus is writing this one because John spent an entire Zoom call insisting Titanfall was “just Call of Duty with jetpacks and robots,” which is the kind of lazy take that makes an engineer’s eye twitch. Tim discovered the game last year through backwards compatibility and won’t stop talking about wall running into people’s faces with a shotgun. Sam wanted frame data on the Smart Pistol lock on time. Carl had to mute John twice.…
I remember standing in Blockbuster, jaw practically on the linoleum, watching a demo reel of Pokémon Stadium running on the display N64. The opening sequence—that sweeping camera swooping around a packed arena while orchestral music swelled—felt like someone had grabbed my Game Boy by the scruff and dragged it kicking and screaming into the future. This wasn't the tiny sprite battles I'd been grinding through on my grey brick for months. This was proper television.See,…
The four of us were crammed onto my mate's crusty beige sofa, controllers gripped like lifelines, when Tommy did what Tommy always did—picked Luigi and immediately drove backwards into a banana peel. The rest of us erupted in that particular brand of teenage mockery that only comes from watching someone fail spectacularly at something you're all supposed to be good at.Mario Kart 64 does that to people. Makes them do daft things. Makes sensible human…
The dusty plastic smell hit me first—that familiar cocktail of old electronics and childhood weekends. I'd just pulled out my Mega Drive from the storage box in the loft, carefully wrapped in the same old towel mum used to dry the dishes. Beneath it sat a stack of cartridges, their spines faded but still readable. And there it was, wedged between Streets of Rage 2 and Gunstar Heroes: Contra: Hard Corps.Christ, what a game that…
I was rifling through a box of old gaming magazines last weekend when I stumbled across a yellowed copy of CVG from 1991. There it was on the cover—Sonic the Hedgehog, except the logo underneath read "Mega Drive" in those chunky blue letters. My brain did that little skip it always does when I'm reminded that my beloved Genesis was actually called something completely different just a few thousand miles away.You know how some obsessions…
There's something about the way a Sega game announces itself that Nintendo never quite managed to replicate. Don't get me wrong—I've got nothing but love for the Big N, spent countless hours with that grey brick of joy they called the NES. But when I fired up my mate's Mega Drive for the first time and heard that Yamaha FM synthesis chip growl to life, well… it was like discovering rock music after years of…
My daughter caught me grinning like an idiot at my Switch last Tuesday. There I was, sprawled on the sofa with Super Mario 64 running in portable mode, and she asked why I looked "weird happy." How do you explain to a seven-year-old that you're holding thirty years of technological evolution in your hands, running a game that once required negotiating TV time and untangling RF cables?The Nintendo 64 games on Switch through Nintendo Switch…