NeoGAF user jjgames has done the history of video games—or at least our ability to easily access some awkwardly amusing parts of it—a great favour. He’s bought six old VHS tapes from the 90s, each containing a Nintendo marketing or training video. They remind us of a time Nintendo was a lot warmer, a lot…
For all intents it happened late last year, but today the results of an auction called it: THQ, formerly one of the biggest video game publishers in the world, is no more. It’s been a hell of a ride. While technically first formed in 1989 as Trinity Acquisition Corporation, THQ began business proper in 1990,…
Ah, 1996. The future, as the front cover of Toys R’ Us’ catalogue so boldly states, is here! Or…was there. And it was only really there for some of the systems involved (sorry, Sega Saturn!) I love looking at these things. Not for the general nostalgic rush, but to see the individual games highlighted. Of…
These two charts turned up today, reportedly from a “recently scraped database of 24,000 videogames to determine percentages of genre and platform releases since 1975”. My inner stats nerd just fainted. Charts like this can tell you a lot about games and the changing way we enjoy them, and even allowing for the fact it…
That up there isn’t some joke image someone tossed up on Tumblr. It’s a real photo, taken from the Library of Congress’ video game collection, and it features vintage strategy guides, rebound and preserved for the ages. The image was taken from a recent in-house interview held on the Library’s site, which goes into detail…
As Americans prepare to head to the polls, it’s worth noting that one of the most important events on the planet is barely represented in the world of video games. Sure, you get the odd social or joke game released every four years to cash in on the hype surrounding a Presidential election, but on…
Nintendo is notoriously guarded when it comes to corporate visits. While companies like Namco Bandai and Sony are only too happy to throw open their studio doors to the press, getting inside Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters when you don’t work there is almost impossible Oh, unless you’re Gareth Bailey, a British kid who in 1994 won…
Between 1981 and 1982, renowned photographer Ira Nowinski hiked all over the Bay Area, taking hundreds of photos of arcades. In all, he snapped around 700 images, and in awesome news for retro gaming fans many of them are now available for viewing, courtesy of their acquisition by Stanford University’s library (and Edge). Once you’re…
Of all the people who loved Arnold Schwarzenegger during his 1980s prime, none loved him more than the artists responsible for the covers of video games. They just could not stop paying indirect (or even blatantly direct) homage to the action superstar by having him inspire the poses, outfits and faces to games as famous…
Ubisoft broke with tradition earlier today by announcing that its first substantial Assassin’s Creed III downloadable content won’t be an extension of the main game’s story. Rather, it’ll be an exploration of what would happen if George Washington hadn’t done one of the most extraordinary things in human history and given up his vast powers…
By now, you should all be aware of the 1997 incident in Japan where a number of children were hospitalised after watching an episode of Pokémon. It was weird, and more than a little dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that none other than the US military saw it as an opportunity to invent new and…
Millions of people grew up worldwide convinced the way to get a busted Nintendo cartridge working was to blow on it. It may have worked sometimes, temporarily, but experts say you were actually doing a lot more harm than good. How? Well, as Mental_Floss writes, the common theory as to the cause (and success) of…
The above quote, from Mark MacDonald, of the Tokyo-based game localization company 8-4, sums up what felt so special about the best games on the SNES. It rings true for all-time greats such as Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, which emerged within a year of the system’s…
For such a beloved manga and animated film, poor Akira hasn’t had the best of luck when it comes to video games. Amidst the wreckage of the awful NES and Amiga adaptations of the movie, though, there always lingered the promise that a cancelled Akira project – one destined for the SNES, Genesis and Mega…
This bizarre little piece of animation was originally intended to serve as the intro to a German documentary about video games. The idea was to take existing characters from the history of games and “reinterpret” them, to match the series’ brief to present the everyday lives of MMO addicts. I can kind of see that,…
Sensible Software. If you know what that means you’re probably smiling already. If you don’t, well, you sure missed out. A British studio most prolific – and successful – in the late 80s and early 90s, Sensible developed for platforms like the Spectrum, Amiga and PC, and became famous for two things: adorable little pixel…
You hear that sentence a lot, about all kinds of things, but in the case of video games – and in particular 1991 adventure game Heart of China – it’s true! The 1990s were a bizarre time for PC gaming. As the format embraced the CD-ROM, and began to hit truly mass-market levels of awareness,…
In 1984, Nintendo released Family BASIC, a programming suite for its Famicom (NES) console. Including a swish keyboard and data recording unit, it was designed to allow consumers to, with a little teaching, program their own basic games for the system. Including a few stock titles as templates, it was sadly never released outside Japan.…
Blizzard isn’t just famous for its games, it’s famous for a lengthy and considered development output. It’s one of a privileged few studios in the world that can say “we’ll release the game when it’s ready”, and really mean it. The agonising wait fans have to endure for new Blizzard games is testament to this.…
Once believed to be a hoax, vintage Atari game Red Sea Crossing has in recent years emerged as one of the holy grails of video game collecting, owing partly to the fact that it’s believe only two known copies exist on the entire planet. And also because it’s about Moses. Programmed by Steve Schustack in…
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