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 –…

My mate Dave had this theory about comic book games in the early nineties—they were all rubbish, he'd say, because nobody could figure out how to make superpowers feel super on a 16-bit console. Then he borrowed my copy of the X-Men game for the Mega Drive, and…

You know what still makes my blood boil? Walking into a GAME store in 1999 and seeing rows upon rows of PlayStation cases while the Dreamcast section looked like a forgotten corner booth at a failing car boot sale. Three games. Maybe four if someone hadn't nicked Crazy…

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…