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 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 I didn't see him for three days straight. His mum rang my house asking if he was dead or just "doing that thing with the TV again."The…
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 Taxi again.I was there, mate. I had the console on launch day—well, launch week anyway, because I'm not completely mental and the queues looked insane. But I…
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…
Picture me, Christmas morning 1997, staring down at this bizarre three-pronged controller like it was some alien artifact. My cousin Jamie was already fiddling with it, holding it completely wrong—gripping it like a traditional pad with both hands on the outer prongs. I watched him struggle through the Mario 64 castle courtyard for about five minutes before his older brother Dan walked over and basically performed controller surgery."No, you muppet," Dan said, repositioning Jamie's hands.…
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…
The rumble controller sits heavy in my hands, that familiar weight of the N64's three-pronged monster with its Pak hanging off the back like some kind of cybernetic tumor. I'm sixteen again, squinting through the crosshairs of my Arwing, and somewhere in the distance Fox McCloud is barking orders through tinny TV speakers. "Do a barrel roll!" he yells, and honestly? I'm still doing them thirty years later.Star Fox 64 wasn't just a game—it was…
Right, so picture this: I'm sat in the dentist's waiting room in 2005, and there's this kid next to me absolutely absorbed in what looks like a Game Boy that someone's fed too many vitamins. Turns out it's the new Nintendo DSi, and this little tyke is playing Super Mario 64 on it. My first thought? "That's not right." I mean, proper Mario 64 belonged on the N64, with that chunky three-pronged controller and a…