Reader Saybox has made this terrific timewaster of a browser game, which tests your 90s game knowledge by asking you to “name that tune”. There are 93 games in total listed, and if you’re stuck, there are a limited number of hints you can get. I have little shame in saying I could get less…
ZombiU was one of the surprises of E3, taking the boring old zombie shooter idea and using the Wii U’s controller to make something new. The thing is, ZombiU might not be as new as you think. While Ubisoft didn’t trumpet the fact (only mentioning it briefly to attendees waiting for their E3 press conference…
Plenty of adventure game developers have recently reunited to create new games, usually funded via Kickstarter. At first glance, Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe are no different. The two men created the classic Space Quest PC games, and eventually parted ways. Now, they’re on Kickstarter raising money for a new game called Two Guys from…
I’m a fan of Lore in a Minute!, a site that breaks down a game’s lore and story in easily digestible, humorous movies. It’s great for if you want to hop into a series midway through without going back and slogging through long, older games. I headed over there to check out their fun new…
Purposefully vulgar marketing isn’t the only thing controversial about the new Hitman game Hitman: Absolution; plenty of folks are worried that the game itself will be a big departure from the slow-paced, careful gameplay of the first games. The Splinter Cell: Conviction to Blood Money‘s Chaos Theory, if you will. Reading Stephen’s hands-on preview from…
Continuing my dust-covered crusade against modern unboxings, here’s another vintage unboxing, in which an Atari 800XL from 1983 is transferred lovingly from the packaging to the outside world. The 800XL was essentially a cheaper and nastier version of the Atari 800, albeit with fancier packaging. It couldn’t even run some Atari 800 programs natively, requiring…
In 1985, Namco America employee Steven Drake was arrested by police and found with $32,000 cash on him, with even more hidden in the trunk of a car parked at San Francisco airport. Turns out he’d been buying up gold coins from South Africa and Canada using Namco’s money. The scoundrel. In total, Drake siphoned…
Mommy, where do video games come from? They come from factories, dear, factories like these, from the 1980s. This awesome video shows the factory floor at companies such as Midway, Atari and Taito, where vintage arcade classics like Pac-Man were put together, while also giving us a glimpse behind the scenes of Nintendo circa 1988.…
It’s perhaps not as famous as other hatchet jobs on the English language perpetrated by Japanese developers in the 1980s, but it’s one of my favourites nonetheless. This is from the MSX version of Salamander, which you may know as Life Force, a shmup first released in 1986. He just…he just doesn’t look that happy…
From Suikoden II. Which I don’t think I’ve ever actually played. Maybe I should, because this looks great. [via VGJunk]
If all you do is sit around reading video game news all day, and not much else, when someone mentions the name “Danny Bilson”, you probably think “Oh, the guy who’s captained THQ to the bottom of the ocean“. And you’d be right! You’d also be talking about the most boring thing he’s ever done,…
While that’s a subjective boast, has any other game been so terrible that copies of it were taken out into the middle of the desert and buried? No. So I’m sticking with it. ET, released in 1982, was so terrible that marketing material had to be produced helping players get through it. If what’s written…
As awful as this is, I can’t stop watching. This is Julia Stiles circa 1994, guest-starring on Ghostwriter, and introducing kids to the wonders – and perils – of the internet. Such an idealist, she was! Shame she never saw the porn, cat pictures and Facebook coming. She might have lingered a little less longingly…
Japan has a long and storied tradition of developing games where you are a train driver. Doing very little but going forwards, backwards and slowing down at stations. If that sounds a little too pedestrian for your tastes, well, there’s always Tokyo Bus Guide. Released around the turn of the milennium on the Dreamcast (and…
This is Game Over, a title for the Spectrum, first released in 1987. A game released amidst controversy. See, while later editions of the game would feature slightly edited variations of the box art, the original featured one of video gaming’s first wardrobe malfunctions. You could see half a nipple. And it caused an outrage.…
Who gives a shit about unboxing modern games hardware. We all do it when we buy the thing, they come with basically nothing, and the documentation is woeful. Let’s enjoy, then, this unboxing of a 1986 Sega Master System bundle. Marvel at the included accessories. Gape in awe at the pack-in games. I actually never…
Just as Nintendo had its Power Line, so too did Sega once have its own band of phone-based game assistance. It was staffed by men and women who were known as Sega Game Counselors, and in addition to their jobs helping kids get past the tough parts of games, they also got these jackets. This…
In 1988, Taito released Akira, cash-in on the hugely-popular animated film of the same name. Just in case you were wondering if Japanese developers somehow made better movie adaptations in the 1980s, no, they did not. The game was terrible. Still, that’s mostly second-hand information, as most Westerners have never actually played the game, since…
Before the internet, before people even really cottoned onto the idea of games magazines, publishers had to sell things the old-fashioned way: with TV ads and catalogues. Most catalogues were simple affairs, all bright lights, screenshots and slogans, but sometimes publishers went a little left field. Like Activision did in 1984 when it basically commissioned…
The Professor Layton games have long demanded a soundtrack a bit more sophisticated than the one they have—the plinky, “ooh boy, we have a mystery!” music is fine at first, but eventually I’ve found that it begins to grate. This is especially true of the first game that I played in the series, 2008’s Professor…
Mode
Follow us
