The other day I was digging through a box of old electronics in my garage—you know how it is, looking for one thing and finding three things you forgot you even owned—when my fingers hit the familiar bulk of a Sega Game Gear. That unmistakable weight, like holding a brick wrapped in plastic that somehow promised adventure. I pulled it out, blew the dust off the screen, and immediately remembered why my mum used to…
You know what's weird? I can still remember the exact moment I realized Dash Rendar wasn't just some random smuggler they threw into the Star Wars universe. It was probably the third or fourth time through Shadows of the Empire on my N64, and I'd just nailed that speeder bike chase on Ord Mantell without hitting a single tree. Something about the way his ship, the Outrider, felt different from the Millennium Falcon in other…
The other day I was rummaging through a cardboard box that's been following me through three house moves, and there it was—my original Earthworm Jim manual for the Mega Drive. Crisp pages, still smelling faintly of that new-manual scent mixed with thirty years of storage. You know that smell. It's like opening a time capsule, except instead of finding historical artifacts, you're rediscovering why we used to read these things cover to cover on the…
The other day I was digging through a box of old gaming magazines—you know the drill, sticky pages from ancient orange juice spills and that particular musty smell of paper that lived through the Clinton administration—when I found a torn-out preview of Virtua Fighter on the 32X. The screenshot looked incredible for 1994. Like, genuinely jaw-dropping in a way that made me remember exactly what it felt like to see polygons moving smoothly on a…
The smell of a friend's basement in winter 1999 is burned into my memory—that musty carpet odor mixed with the electric warmth of a CRT that had been on for three hours straight. We'd gathered for what felt like a historic moment: someone had actually managed to get Resident Evil 2 running on Nintendo 64. Not just running, mind you, but looking… well, shockingly decent.I mean, we all knew the story by then. PlayStation had…
Right, so there I was in Electronics Boutique circa 1992, clutching a twenty-pound note that had been burning a hole in my pocket for three weeks. Sonic 2 was calling my name from behind the glass counter, but this enormous black contraption next to it kept catching my eye. The Sega CD. Even the name sounded expensive.The bloke behind the counter—middle-aged, thick glasses, definitely knew his stuff—was practically bouncing on his heels talking about it.…
My mate Dave was round the other day, watching me mess about with an N64 controller—the actual one, not some modern approximation. His kid picked it up and just stared at it like I'd handed him a relic from Mars. Three prongs? What's the middle bit for? Why's there only one joystick? Fair questions, really. But when I fired up Mario 64 and that plumber's face filled the screen, stretching and squishing as I waggled…
My mate Tony called me an idiot last Tuesday. Not for anything particularly stupid—well, more stupid than usual—but because I'd just spent twenty-five quid on a pristine copy of Mortal Kombat II for the Mega Drive. "You know you can download it for free, right?" Yeah, Tony. I know. But you can't download the weight of that chunky cartridge, can you? You can't download the satisfying click when it slots into the console, or the…
The other day, my seven-year-old discovered my old stack of Mega Drive cartridges and asked why they looked like "chunky Game Boy games." I nearly choked on my tea. After explaining that his beloved Switch cartridges are basically the great-great-grandchildren of these plastic bricks, I realized it was time to show him what real Sonic looked like—not the Hollywood version, but the original blue blur that made my Saturday mornings worth living.Setting up a Genesis…
You know that feeling when a game arrives and immediately makes you question every life choice you've made up to that point? That's exactly what happened when I picked up Jurassic Park for the Mega Drive back in '93. I'd seen the film twice—once with my parents, once sneaking back in with mates using the classic "we're just popping to the loo" maneuver—and I thought I knew what dinosaur terror looked like. Turns out, Spielberg…