Last Tuesday I found myself digging through a box of old electronics in the spare room—you know how it is, looking for one thing and finding seventeen others you'd forgotten existed. Buried under a tangle of USB cables and a Dreamcast that's missing its power brick was my old PSP, still in its original soft case. The battery was deader than disco, but after plugging it in and waiting for that familiar charging light, I…
Picture this: you're eight years old, Saturday morning, and your mate's older brother has just fired up Sonic the Hedgehog for the first time. That opening Green Hill Zone music hits – you know the one, that bouncy Yamaha FM synthesis that somehow sounds like liquid sunshine – and suddenly every other console sounds like it's playing through a tin can. That was my introduction to the Mega Drive, and honestly? It ruined me for…
My mate Steve's N64 still sits on his telly stand like a grey plastic monument to better times. Last Saturday, while his missus was at her sister's and the kids were glued to YouTube on their tablets, we fired up GoldenEye for what must've been the thousandth time. Same battered controllers—one with a wobbly stick, another missing the Z-trigger spring—same arguments about screen-peeking, same ridiculous grins plastered across our increasingly lined faces.The thing is, we…
Looking back at those chunky CRT monitors and wondering exactly what we were staring at for hours on end? The numbers might surprise you—or maybe they'll make you feel ancient. Either way, let's talk pixels.I was cleaning out my old tech drawer last weekend (you know, the one where cables go to die), and I found this ancient VGA cable that got me thinking about resolution. Back then, we didn't obsess over 4K or argue…
The plastic clamshell clicked open with that satisfying snap I'd forgotten about until I heard it again last weekend. Inside sat my battered copy of Streets of Rage 2, label slightly peeling, contacts a bit tarnished but still game for another round. My eight-year-old was watching me slot it into the Mega Drive with the sort of reverence usually reserved for archaeological discoveries. "Does it actually work without downloading?" she asked, and I realized we'd…
There's something beautifully ironic about finding a massive collection of Sega Genesis games sitting pretty on a PlayStation console. I mean, back in the day these were sworn enemies—you picked a side and stuck with it like supporting a football team. Yet here I was in 2006, sliding that Sega Genesis Collection disc into my PS2 and feeling like some sort of gaming diplomat bringing peace to the living room.The timing couldn't have been better,…
There's this moment when you're fiddling with an old Mega Drive cart, cleaning the pins with that ritual precision we all learned back in '91, and you hear that first chime of Sonic's title screen… that metallic twang hits different than anything Nintendo was doing. Not better or worse, just *different*. Like someone took a synthesizer and fed it through a transistor radio, then decided that's exactly what video games should sound like.I've been thinking…
There's something almost mythical about the Sega Genesis Nomad that makes me smile every time I spot one at a retro gaming convention. Picture this: it's 1995, and while Nintendo's pushing the Virtual Boy (yeah, that happened), Sega drops this absolute unit of a handheld that can play full Genesis cartridges. Not cut-down versions. Not "special editions." The actual, honest-to-goodness 16-bit games that were melting faces on TV screens worldwide.I remember the first time I…
When I was 40 years old, and spending my time to catch up on every aspect of gaming history that I missed out on during my childhood, I was going to experience something that would completely change my perspective of what can be accomplished in the video game industry. The events surrounding this occurrence occurred approximately 2011, when my daughter continued to encourage me to play more SNES games and specifically encouraged me to play…
Standing in my local game shop last Tuesday, holding a pristine Sega Genesis 2 in its original box, I couldn't help but smile at how wrong we all got it back in '94. There I was, thirteen years old, absolutely livid that Sega had "ruined" my beloved Mega Drive by making it smaller and—horror of horrors—removing the headphone jack. The audacity! How was I supposed to sneak midnight sessions of Sonic & Knuckles while mum…