You know what drives me absolutely mental about modern gaming? The way marketing feels so calculated, so focus-grouped to death that you can practically smell the boardroom coffee in every trailer. Back in the 90s though—man, companies would just throw money at the weirdest ideas and somehow magic happened. Case in point: Cool Spot, a platformer starring 7 Up's red dot mascot that had absolutely no business being as good as it was.I stumbled across…
Funny how a three-minute indie track can absolutely demolish you, isn't it? I was minding my own business last Tuesday, scrolling through Spotify's weekly recommendations while my kid demolished a packet of Monster Munch nearby, when Alex G's "Nintendo 64" started playing. Three notes in and I'm transported back to 1997, sitting cross-legged on beige carpet with that distinctive three-pronged controller in my hands.You know that feeling when a song perfectly captures something you didn't…
Look, I'll be honest with you—there's something almost criminal about how Comix Zone slipped through the cracks. I mean, here we had this absolute gem sitting on the Mega Drive, doing things that no other game was even attempting, and most people just… missed it. Completely.I remember the exact moment I first laid eyes on it, actually. Summer of '95, round at my mate Craig's house. His older brother had just come back from uni…
The carpet squelched under my trainers as I walked through that familiar smell of cheese, grease, and something vaguely lemony from the arcade cleaner. Mario's Pizza Palace wasn't winning any awards for ambiance, but it was our temple. Friday nights after school, pockets heavy with whatever coins we could scrape together from sofa cushions and birthday money, heading straight past the plastic booths to where the real action lived.OutRun sat in the corner like a…
You know that feeling when you open a dusty cardboard box in your parents' loft and suddenly you're fifteen again? That's exactly what happened when I found my old Mega Drive last month, still wrapped in that horrible bubble wrap mum insisted would "keep the dust off." There it was—that sleek black wedge that absolutely demolished my Saturday mornings and pocket money throughout the early nineties.I'm not being dramatic when I say this console changed…
Saturday afternoon, nineteen-ninety-five. I'm sprawled on the carpet in my mate David's front room, controller in hand, watching this yellow star-shaped character stretch his arms across the screen like some sort of cosmic elastic band. The game was Ristar, and honestly? I'd never heard of it before that moment. David's older brother had picked it up from Blockbuster Video—you know, back when you could rent games for the weekend and pray the previous customer hadn't…
Remember when your biggest life decision was whether to watch Transformers or risk it all for a chance at getting slimed? I was probably seven when I first saw Double Dare, and honestly, it rewired my entire understanding of what television could be. Saturday mornings weren't just cartoons anymore—they were interactive chaos where kids my age were living the dream.My mum never understood why I'd abandon perfectly good Weetabix to watch children get covered in…
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…
I've got this theory that the best cooperative games aren't the ones where you're constantly in sync, performing some beautiful ballet of coordinated moves. No, the really memorable ones are where you're both slightly out of step, bumping into each other, accidentally ruining each other's stealth approaches, and somehow still managing to pull off the impossible. That's exactly what made Bonanza Bros on the Mega Drive so bloody brilliant.Picture this: me and my mate Dave,…
You know what still makes my palms sweat? That first leap in Disney's Aladdin on the Mega Drive. Not the actual platforming—though that cave escape sequence was genuinely tense—but the moment I realized I was holding something that shouldn't have been possible on home hardware. This wasn't just another movie tie-in cash grab cobbled together in six months. This was hand-drawn Disney animation running at 60fps on a machine that cost less than a decent…