I have to say – when my daughter first started telling me about Chrono Trigger years ago (2011), I wasn’t that intrigued. Coming from a gaming background where 16-bit still looked “bad” to me because of Super Metroid (another game I picked up because of my daughter – I got it a year before Chrono Trigger), I thought it was just another old RPG that I would never play. She mentioned it to me over…
The Technical Evolution of Racing Games: From Vector Graphics to Polygons I get what it takes to send code out on constrained hardware. I know the impossible optimisations you need to develop a game that has some sort of responsiveness when you’re limited by kilobytes of memory and a CPU that’s clocked at single-digit megahertz. Racing games offer the ideal way to see the technical development of the 80s and 90s since each generation had…
“We knew it was going to get messy when we decided to rank the greatest PC games of the 1990s.” “It wasn’t until the argument spilled into the chat for a week straight that we realised it was going to take some effort to reach a consensus.” The disagreements raged on for three weeks; we established strict guidelines in order to resolve these debates. We agreed upon criteria that included: 1) The game must have…
Walking into my local indie game shop last weekend, I spotted something that made my heart skip a beat—a pristine copy of Moonwalker for the Mega Drive, complete with that distinctive silver spine and Michael Jackson's unmistakable silhouette. The asking price was steep enough to make my wallet whimper, but seeing that game again transported me straight back to 1990, when everything about it seemed impossibly cool and slightly mad in equal measure.You have to…
I was halfway through Streets of Rage 4 last month when the news hit my Twitter feed like a perfectly timed Grand Upper. Sega was pulling another batch of games from digital storefronts. Again. My first reaction wasn't anger—it was that familiar sinking feeling you get when you realize your childhood is being sold off piece by piece, and someone keeps forgetting to tell you about the auction.This isn't new territory for Sega, mind you.…
The 10 Greatest JRPGs Ever Made: A New Player Ready Crew Ranking Ranking the greatest JRPGs of all time was bound to destroy whatever harmony existed amongst the members of the New Player Ready crew. Joe immediately started saying that Final Fantasy VII needed to be at the top of the list due to the fact that it “altered everything regarding mainstream gaming”. Samuel then presented several passionate defences of 16-bit era design philosophies and…
Last night I stumbled across Alex G's "Nintendo 64" while scrolling through Spotify's rabbit hole of indie recommendations, and honestly? It hit me like a perfectly timed power-up when you're down to your last life. The song's barely three minutes long, but it managed to capture something I've been trying to articulate for years about what retro gaming actually means to those of us who lived it the first time around.You know that feeling when…
Saturday morning, 2005. I'm staring at what looks like a chunky grey sandwich with screens, wondering if Nintendo's lost their minds. The DS had landed, and with it came something I'd never expected—a portable version of the game that basically taught me how to exist in three dimensions. Super Mario 64 DS wasn't just a port, though. This was Mario's plumber crew getting the full treatment, and honestly? It changed everything about handheld gaming for…
Grim Fandango Review: The Noir Adventure Game That Demonstrated Games Can Be Art Okay, I need to post this review before Carl starts telling me again how “games as cultural artifacts” and Tim starts telling me all about how modern adventure games have “progressed” beyond Grim Fandango. Let’s be honest – they’ve really gone nowhere. Tim’s as wrong as he usually is, and I’m going to demonstrate why this 1998 masterpiece is the pinnacle of…
I remember opening my Christmas presents in 1998. I was 21 years old, driving home from Arizona State University for winter break and wondering what games I’d be getting. Little did I know that my parents had bought me a PlayStation and Spyro the Dragon. “You’ve been talking about that purple dragon game,” my mom informed me. I don’t think I had outright said I wanted it to anyone, but I suppose my sighing in…