The sound of cardboard hitting cardboard still makes my ears perk up. Proper weird, that—but there's something about that distinctive *thwack* of milk caps colliding that takes me straight back to Year 5 break times when everyone smelled like Ready Brek and had grass stains on their knees.I remember the exact moment Pogs invaded our playground. Must've been early '94, maybe late '93. This kid called Marcus turned up one Monday morning with a leather…
Picture this: it's 4pm on a Tuesday in 1994, and I'm sprinting home from school like my life depends on it. Not because of homework—that could wait. Not because mum had promised fish fingers—though that was a bonus. No, I'm running because Nickelodeon's afternoon block was about to kick off, and missing the opening credits of "Legends of the Hidden Temple" felt like a personal failure.You know that feeling when you burst through the front…
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is a stealth action video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. Released on 21 March 2005 (PCGamingWiki), Chaos Theory represents the series reaching its creative and technical peak. Whilst the original Splinter Cell established Sam Fisher as a legitimate alternative to Solid Snake, and Pandora Tomorrow expanded the formula, Chaos Theory perfected it. Ubisoft invested heavily in this vision, with development and marketing budgets of $10 million each…
Right, so picture this: I'm eight years old, sitting in the back of my dad's Ford Escort, and mum's just handed me this chunky black brick that looks like it escaped from a sci-fi movie. The Game Gear. God, that thing was massive compared to the Game Boy everyone else had, but it had something Nintendo's grey wonder didn't—a proper colour screen that actually lit up. Course, what nobody mentioned in the adverts was that…
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was my introduction to sports gaming. Growing up I played Sega Genesis games and Dreamcast games (Sonic, Streets of Rage, etc.). So naturally I wasn’t interested in sports games. To me they seemed stale and repetitive — kick ball, throw ball, try not to lose. What’s the fun in that? Don’t get me wrong, I think I just enjoyed how unpredictable and creative Sega games let you be. That is until…
The sound hit me first. That metallic crunch when Scorpion's spear connected, followed by the digitized grunt that my Mega Drive's YM2612 chip somehow made sound more menacing than it had any right to. I was hunched over our living room carpet—the brown one with those weird geometric patterns that looked like a computer had hiccups—frantically scribbling move commands on the back of a school exercise book. Down, forward, high punch. Got it. But what…
Day of the Tentacle Review: A Space Shooter That Made Pac-Man Look Easy My name is Marcus. Whilst the rest of the world is debating if modern adventure games can compete with the classics, I’m diving into the source code of Day of the Tentacle Remastered to find out exactly what made the original so innovative in terms of both creativity and engineering. The original Day of the Tentacle was released back in 1993 (according…
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…
The other night I was cleaning out my game room—well, it's really just the spare bedroom with too many consoles stacked on IKEA furniture—when I stumbled across my old Dreamcast VMU. That little memory card with the screen still works, by the way. Thirty minutes of Chao Adventure before the CR2032 gives up, but still. There's something poetic about Sega's last proper console being remembered through a memory card that outlasted the system itself.I bought…