Six AAs. That's what stood between you and portable 16-bit bliss back in 1995, and let me tell you, the Sega Genesis Nomad burned through those batteries like they were made of spite and false promises. I remember seeing one in the wild for the first time at a mate's house—this chunky black brick that somehow managed to swallow entire Genesis cartridges and spit out full-color Sonic on a tiny screen. My brain couldn't quite…
There's something about sitting in front of a massive CRT on a Saturday afternoon, analog stick getting properly sweaty as you guide a gorilla through jungle canopies, that modern gaming just can't replicate. The N64 era gave us platformers that felt like they were carved from pure joy, and honestly? Rare's Donkey Kong Country series on that system was platforming at its absolute peak.I remember the first time I plugged Donkey Kong 64 into my…
There's something almost criminal about how Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards gets overlooked in those "best N64 games" conversations. I mean, everyone rattles off the usual suspects—Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye—and fair enough, those are masterpieces. But then Kirby 64 sits there like the quiet kid in class who turned out to be brilliant at everything but never made a fuss about it.I picked up my copy from a Blockbuster that was closing down,…
There's something almost mythical about how perfectly everything aligned for wrestling games in the late 90s. I mean, you had this weird convergence of technology finally catching up to ambition, the Monday Night Wars making wrestling cooler than it had any right to be, and developers who genuinely seemed to understand what made grappling fun rather than just flashy. And right there in the middle of it all was WWF No Mercy, sitting on that…
There's something beautifully ironic about finding a massive collection of Sega Genesis games sitting pretty on a PlayStation console. I mean, back in the day these were sworn enemies—you picked a side and stuck with it like supporting a football team. Yet here I was in 2006, sliding that Sega Genesis Collection disc into my PS2 and feeling like some sort of gaming diplomat bringing peace to the living room.The timing couldn't have been better,…
You know that sinking feeling when you're holding something brilliant but nobody else seems to get it? That's how I felt clutching my Game Gear in 1991, watching mates queue up for grey Game Boys like lemmings heading for a cliff. Sure, the Game Boy had Tetris—fair play, absolute masterpiece—but my Game Gear had Sonic in full colour, proper sound that didn't wheeze through a tin speaker, and a backlight that meant I could actually…
The smell hits you first. That mixture of pizza grease, carpet that's seen better decades, and something electrical—maybe ozone from all those CRT monitors running hot. I can close my eyes right now and I'm thirteen again, standing in front of Street Fighter II at Luigi's Pizza Palace, watching some older kid chain combos like he's conducting an orchestra of violence.You know what's funny? I spent more money in arcades than I ever did on…
There's this moment when you're fiddling with an old Mega Drive cart, cleaning the pins with that ritual precision we all learned back in '91, and you hear that first chime of Sonic's title screen… that metallic twang hits different than anything Nintendo was doing. Not better or worse, just *different*. Like someone took a synthesizer and fed it through a transistor radio, then decided that's exactly what video games should sound like.I've been thinking…
Picture this: there I was, controller in hand, wiggling that stubby little analog stick on my N64 pad and watching Mario's face stretch and morph in ways that shouldn't have been possible on hardware that cost less than my dad's monthly beer budget. That moment—the first time you grabbed Mario's nose and gave it a proper yank in the file select screen—that's when everything changed. Not just for me, but for gaming as a whole.I'd…
Picture this: you're hunched over a three-pronged controller that looks like it was designed by aliens who'd only heard vague descriptions of human hands. Your mate Sarah's got the yellow controller—the one with the sticky A button that everyone pretends isn't gross but definitely is. Tom's wielding the translucent purple one like it's Excalibur, and I've somehow ended up with basic grey. We're about to settle the age-old question of who's actually the best at…