I was sixteen years old and had roughly $12 to my name. During my free time I found myself spending quite an excessive amount of time lurking around the electronics department of our local Toys R Us. Think back to what video game stores used to look like — everything was locked-up behind glass or you had to take those flimsy little paper ticket thingies. But they always had a demo unit tucked-away somewhere in…
Last Friday night, I found myself elbow-deep in Amazon's recommendation algorithm when it suggested something that made me pause mid-scroll: the Sega Flashback Games Collection. Now, I've got a complicated relationship with these plug-and-play devices—half of me lights up at the convenience, while the other half mutters about RGB cables and original hardware. But curiosity won, as it always does when Sega's involved.The box arrived Tuesday, and honestly? First impressions were solid. AtGames has been…
There's this game that sits in my memory like a secret nobody else seemed to share. Fatal Labyrinth for the Mega Drive—or Genesis if you're across the pond. I stumbled across it in one of those rental shops where the boxes were arranged like library books and half the cases had the wrong manual stuffed inside. The cover art looked properly medieval, all dungeons and mysterious towers, which was exactly the sort of thing that…
Marcus is writing this one because Sam wanted to break down the parry timing frame by frame (he did, we will get to that), Joe kept trying to compare the boss fights to Contra on Genesis (there is a point there, but not the one he thinks he is making), and John just wants everyone to admit that a game this punishing has no business also being this beautiful. Carl asked me to sort out…
When I started playing city-building games I didn’t take them too seriously. I’m used to the idea of games teaching me something, but playing SimCity was the first time I truly experienced educational games. I had played many games before picking up SimCity, but never had a game mirrored my career as closely as this. I’ve worked as a construction manager for over a decade. Managing construction crews is all about deadlines, resources, balancing budgets,…
Let’s just get this out of the way: I never played Banjo-Kazooie upon its release back in 1998. I know, blasphemy, right? So there I was rocking my Amiga 1200 like it was going out of style and thinking console gamers were all nerds with pricey toys who refused to use “real computers.” Yeah, Nintendo had been releasing N64 games for years at this point, and I’m sure I was quite the asshole about it.…
Everything changed for me that summer in 1991. I was fourteen years old and incredibly awkward like all teenagers are and my friend Mike got a Sega Genesis. I had been playing Nintendo since Christmas of 1985 when my folks got me that NES. It was in my blood at that point. But Mike kept inviting me over to play this “system he got” and told me to “trust me man, it’s different.” Trust me…
Right, so there I was last weekend, digging through a box of cartridges my mate Dave gave me when he moved house—you know how it is, "here, take this lot before my missus makes me chuck them out." Most of it was the usual suspects: Sonic, Streets of Rage, couple of FIFA games with players who've been retired for twenty years. But tucked underneath a loose copy of Road Rash was this odd little cart…
The first time video game music made me cry was listening to the ending of Final Fantasy VI on my Genesis. Okay, Final Fantasy VI was only on SNES and this was my American imported Genesis, but you get the point. I believe I was 16 years old. It was 3 am on a school night, and I had finally finished the beast of a game that was 70 hours long. As the credits played…
The first thing I have to confess is that I thought video games were a solo experience for a long time. Honestly, growing up poor in Wyoming with dreams of Nintendo Systems that all the other kids had, I figured once I grew up I’d have a game room with one television and when the kids wanted to play video games, one of them would be on the controller and the other three of us…