The smell of a freshly opened N64 cartridge—that slightly chemical tang mixed with possibility—still hits different when I think about WWF No Mercy. My cousin Jamie brought it round one Saturday afternoon in late 2000, grinning like he'd discovered fire. "This one's actually good," he said, which was high praise coming from someone who'd endured WCW vs. nWo World Tour's clunky controls and still complained about them two years later.See, wrestling games had this reputation…
You know what's funny about ClayFighter Tournament Edition? I bought it purely because the box art looked mental. There's something about claymation characters punching each other's heads into silly putty shapes that just screams "this is going to be absolutely barmy," and honestly—it delivered on that promise in spades.I remember the day I picked it up from our local Toys"R"Us. Must've been '98 or '99, right in that sweet spot when N64 games were hitting…
In 2011, I went into a barroom brawl that had been going on for twenty years. Now, everybody was arguing about something that happened when they were 12 years old. I had missed this the first time around – I was working construction, and raising a kid – but I’m 41 years old now and I’m trying to figure out which 16-bit system I want to buy first, and everybody wants to give me an…
Why Four-Player Racing on Cartridge Hardware Changed Gaming Culture As a history teacher from Phoenix, I have been studying for years why certain games become cultural phenomena while others fade into obscurity. Mario Kart 64 is the perfect case study. Mario Kart 64 is Nintendo’s seminal 1996 N64 racer that transitioned the kart series to full 3D, selling nearly 10 million copies worldwide as the platform’s second best-seller. But the sales numbers don’t capture what…
Standing in my mate Dave's bedroom in 1996, watching him fire up Radiant Silvergun for the first time, I knew I was witnessing something special. The Saturn had been sitting there looking a bit sorry for itself next to his PlayStation, but when those opening notes hit and the screen erupted in geometric bullet patterns, suddenly Sony's grey box felt very ordinary indeed.That's the thing about Sega's 32-bit wonder—it always felt like it was hiding…
Four controllers plugged into those bizarre N64 ports, my mate Dave arguing about who gets the see-through purple one, and someone's mum shouting from the kitchen that we'd better not wake the baby. That was Saturday afternoon perfection, circa 1997, when GoldenEye 007 turned my living room into a digital battleground that would define multiplayer gaming for generations.I still remember unwrapping that grey cartridge on a soggy November morning. The box art looked serious—Pierce Brosnan's…
Yes. So, there’s a lot Tim needs to stop yelling about how Madden was always overrated (we get it, buddy!), and instead look at what Visual Concepts did with NFL 2K. There’s no way this is just nostalgia; this is about a game that laid out what sports sim games could be when you’re not bound by an annual franchise obligation or the fear of messing with established designs. NFL 2K came out on Sept.…
Before we begin, I’ll say this one time, and then Carl will probably start talking about how modern adventure games destroyed everything, and Tim will start his usual “I ‘discovered’ point-and-click games last year” nonsense, but I’ll tell you about the only game that invented everything the new games copy around. The Secret of Monkey Island not only defined adventure gaming, it perfected it on the first try. In fact, the Secret of Monkey Island…
Look, here’s the thing about Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. It’s when LucasArts stopped having a laugh and started making killer stuff. I’ve played this game since the early 90s when I finally got a proper PC, and even now, with teenagers who roll their eyes at games if they don’t have a battle royale mode, I can fire this up and get sucked in for hours. Sam here, and while team RPS always argues…
The Christmas of '97 still haunts my wallet. I'd been saving pocket money for months, doing extra chores that my mum definitely didn't need done but tolerated anyway because she knew what I was after. The N64 had been out for a year, and every kid at school was either bragging about Mario 64 or lying about having played it at their cousin's house.What I wasn't expecting was DOOM. Actual, proper, demons-and-shotguns DOOM on a…