To this day, I remember hearing those sounds, in passing during the day, or sometimes even in my sleep. If you were lucky enough to grow up with them too, you know what I’m talking about. The glory of a wash of static as the local electronics store ran their loop of EWAV during the daytime. The coins clinking into slot machines. The frantic beeping of Frogger. The laser noises of Defender whizzing around the…
Myst Review: The Puzzle Game That Brought More PC Sales Than Any Marketing Campaign I’m reviewing Myst now because the rest of my crew spent three hours debating whether Myst is a “real” game or simply an interactive screensaver. Joe is adamant that Myst is merely nice pictures with obscure puzzles that don’t form coherent narratives. Samuel claims that the puzzle design is ingenious and revolutionary. John continues to drone on about how Amiga produced…
You know that feeling when you're rifling through an old cardboard box and find something you'd completely forgotten about? Last weekend I was digging through my gaming storage looking for a specific memory card, and I stumbled across this folded-up magazine clipping from 1999. Edge magazine, talking about the Dreamcast's "inevitable follow-up" and what Sega might do next in the console wars.Made me laugh, honestly. Here we are in 2025, and Sega's still making brilliant…
I’ll never forget where I was when I realised the entire social structure of Woodridge High School would change forever — it was during fourth period English class, Spring of ’98, when Scott Thompkins attempted to conceal his Game Boy beneath his desk. We were supposed to be reading Catcher in the Rye in Ms. Harrington’s class (if you can call dragging your eyes across the pages “reading” Catcher in the Rye), but I could…
Some games just stick to your ribs, you know? Like that perfect Sunday roast your nan made—the one where everything aligned and you're still chasing that exact combination of crispy potatoes and gravy twenty-five years later. Flashback for the Mega Drive was one of those meals for me, cinematically speaking.I first spotted it in Electronics Boutique, that glossy box art promising something different. The screenshots looked…proper. Not cartoony, not chunky pixels trying their best to…
I’m Elena, and there is a major omission in what gaming historians say when discussing the ‘golden age’ of point-and-click adventure games. They always reference the American classics — the LucasArts comedies, the King’s Quest series from Sierra, possibly even the Myst series from Cyan if they’re feeling generous. What they always miss is that during the 1990s, some of the greatest adventure games ever made were developed by European companies who knew a few…
There’s something satisfying about rooting for the underdog. That’s probably why my Sega Saturn shares pride of place on a shelf with my PS5; and why I’ll freely admit I use it more often than my spanking new Sony console. I spent three hours playing Guardian Heroes last Sunday – and my wife came downstairs, caught sight of those huge pixel sprites plastered across her 55-inch TV screen and gave me “that look”. You know…
There's something almost criminal about how good Banjo-Kazooie still feels in your hands. I was rifling through my cart collection last weekend—proper cartridges, not ROMs, the ones with that satisfying plastic heft—when I spotted that familiar yellow spine wedged between Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. Pulled it out, blew on it (I know, I know, it's supposedly bad for the pins), and within minutes I was twelve again, watching that opening cutscene where Banjo's…
OK, fair warning, I’m going to sort of step off the Amiga soapbox for a second to defend a game that actually worked on crap. “Listen to this guy whining, why not stick to bloody Sensible Soccer and leave the console reviews to guys that understand them, eh?!” Well, here’s the deal. I grew up in the age of computer gaming then watched the slow slide into console dominance, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2…
Right, let me tell you about Full Throttle, because this one’s been sitting in my cabinet for years and I still can’t work out whether Tim Schafer was a genius or completely mad when he made it. The team’s been arguing about this one for months. Joe reckons it’s the best LucasArts adventure game after Monkey Island. Tim thinks it’s overrated nonsense that wastes Roy Conrad’s brilliant voice work. I’m somewhere in the middle, but…