You know what drove me absolutely mental last weekend? I was trying to show my mate Dave how clean my Knulli setup looked on my RG35XX, scrolling through what I thought was my perfectly organized Genesis collection. Instead, I'm clicking through a digital nightmare—ROMs scattered like confetti, duplicates everywhere, and games buried in folders that made no sense. Dave just stood there watching me frantically search for Streets of Rage 2 while I muttered increasingly…
There's something about that electric blue plastic that still makes me grin like an idiot. I'm talking about the Pikachu N64, obviously—that wonderful, ridiculous console that Nintendo dropped on us in 2000, complete with Pokémon Hey You, Pikachu! and a microphone that barely worked but somehow didn't matter.I remember the exact moment I saw one for the first time. My mate Dave had somehow convinced his mum to get him one for his birthday, and…
My mum used to say television was the devil's picture box, but even she couldn't resist the absolute chaos of Blankety Blank. Saturday teatime meant Terry Wogan winking at celebrities who'd clearly had a liquid lunch, and those felt-tip pens that squeaked against the answer boards like fingernails on a blackboard. I was probably seven, maybe eight, sitting cross-legged on the carpet with a plate of beans on toast, watching grown-ups make complete pillocks of…
Saturday nights in my house were sacred, and it had nothing to do with church the next morning. No, these were the evenings when the coffee table transformed into a battlefield, and families across Britain gathered around cardboard boxes that promised hours of entertainment—no batteries required, no RF switches to fumble with, just pure analog fun that somehow managed to spark arguments fiercer than any multiplayer match I've witnessed since.I still remember the satisfying thunk…
Sometimes you don't realize a game has ruined you for everything else until years later, when you're fumbling through another run-and-gun shooter wondering why it feels like chewing cardboard. That happened to me recently when I fired up some modern indie thing that promised "classic arcade action." Twenty minutes in, I switched it off and dug out my Model 2 Genesis. Time to remember what perfection actually felt like.Contra: Hard Corps hit the Mega Drive…
Last Sunday I was digging through a box of N64 cartridges in the loft—you know how it is, searching for one specific game and somehow ending up with dust in your hair and a sudden urge to replay everything you'd forgotten you owned. Anyway, buried beneath copies of Mario Kart that still smell faintly of childhood birthday parties, I found Glover. That weird little rubber ball game that nobody quite knew what to make of…
The worst part about Donkey Kong 64 isn't the backtracking or the bloated collect-a-thon madness that every reviewer mentions. No, the worst part is how it absolutely ruined my summer of '99 because I couldn't put the bloody thing down.I'd just gotten the Expansion Pak—that chunky red brick that made your N64 feel properly next-gen—and DK64 was bundled with it. Free game, right? Except nothing's free when it costs you three months of daylight and…
The sound of plastic clacking against plastic still makes my spine tingle. Six-button pads, you know? That distinctive Genesis controller feel—heavier than Nintendo's offerings, with buttons that had this satisfying click when you really meant it. Saturday mornings in 1991 meant negotiating screen time with my sister, and somehow I always won when Sonic was involved. She'd get bored watching me spin-dash through Green Hill Zone for the hundredth time, wandering off to find something…
There's something almost mythical about the Sega Genesis Nomad that makes me smile every time I spot one at a retro gaming convention. Picture this: it's 1995, and while Nintendo's pushing the Virtual Boy (yeah, that happened), Sega drops this absolute unit of a handheld that can play full Genesis cartridges. Not cut-down versions. Not "special editions." The actual, honest-to-goodness 16-bit games that were melting faces on TV screens worldwide.I remember the first time I…
My mate Dave knocked on the door last Saturday morning holding a battered cardboard box like it contained the Holy Grail. Inside? His dad's old 486 DX2/66 complete with a double-speed CD-ROM drive that made sounds like a cement mixer having an argument with itself. "Thought you might want this," he said, grinning. That's when it hit me—we're living through the archaeology of our own childhood, and the 90s PC gaming scene is buried treasure…