Rare’s Conker used to be a nice little squirrel. He was cute, he had polite friends, and he was going to be starring in a very Nintendo platformer for a Nintendo console. Yet as you probably know, that’s not how things ended up. In the late 90s, as Rare was following up their success with…
The single best piece of video game news today is that the original Syndicate is this Thursday going on sale over on Good Old Games for $6. You’ll get more fun out of that game than you will most games costing 10x as much. So let’s celebrate. Here’s the intro to the original 1993 game,…
I may have explained this a few times already, but growing up in Australia in the 1980s usually meant growing up without Nintendo. The NES was here, and people bought it, but it was never the sensation it was elsewhere. Most kids/adults played on computers or Sega machines. That didn’t stop me wanting one, though.…
The Divers 2000 series CX-1 Dreamcast was the best of its class
A few video games have had the honour of being turned into animated series. Zelda and Mario are two of the most prominent, if terrible examples, while Wing Commander is a rarity that got it right Another that got it right, and in a big, big way, were the anime series based on blockbuster role-playing…
In 1988, Milton Bradley released a Legend of Zelda board game. Awesomely, it wasn’t a lazy conversion of an existing game like we see now, with Nintendo Monopoly or Metal Gear Risk. It was a game specifically tailored for Zelda And take a look at that box art! Amazing stuff. The game was based on…
Few things on this planet get me more excited than classic science fiction art. Wait, no. Quality classic science fiction art. Which means people like John Berkey, who is the man behind two of the best examples of sci-fi box art from the 1990s. Berkey, who passed away in 2008, was a prolific commercial artist…
When it comes to old video game movies, you’ve probably seen, or at least heard of, stuff like The Last Starfighter. Or Joysticks. Or adaptations like Street Fighter, Double Dragon and Mortal Kombat. You don’t often hear people talking about The Bishop of Battle. Which is a shame. Because it’s amazing The Bishop of Battle…
You expect, and will find, old games for the Famicom where you play as a soldier. Or a pilot. Or an athlete. What you don’t expect, but what you’ll find anyway, is a game starring the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This is Gorby’s Pipeline, otherwise known as Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen.…
Rarely was there ever a greater discrepancy between actual graphics and box art design than during the Atari era. You’d get these amazingly evocative, painted box arts for a game about…blocks. Not cool. Mighty God King seeks to rectify this by taking the box art and changing the game’s name to better reflect what’s being…
In September 1975, the first issue of tech magazine Byte hit newsstands in America. While it would be mildly influential for at least the first decade of its existence, I’m not bringing it up today for its editorial content. I’m bringing it up for its awesome covers. The world of computers in the 1970s was…
In the pouring rain on April 11, 1993, Brazilian Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna raced into history with one of the greatest performances of his career. In treacherous conditions, he held off a spirited challenge from arch-rival Alain Prost to take a famous victory, one of the last he would savour before his tragic death…
Remember how last month we looked at some of the better examples of the unlicensed NES/Famicom clones that walked the earth during the 1980s and 1990s? One towered above all others like a colossus in terms of how successful it was, and that was Russia’s Dendy console. It’s my personal favourite of the bunch. Not…
Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto may not be leaving Nintendo or the games industry entirely, but the news that he’s soon to step down to a less prominent role on smaller games and with young developers has still sent a bit of a shock through the industry. UPDATE – Phew! Nintendo has denied he’s doing any…
Today, GamePro magazine ceases to be. Which for lovers of print is a bit of a sad moment, given the fact it’s been around since 1988 In that time it’s previewed, reviewed and wrote about a lot of games, but for me it’ll always be remembered as the only video game magazine to ever get…
There’s a charm to fighting games that’s irresistible. I mean, aside from all the face-punching, the character rosters are usually insane, and there’s a tongue-in-cheek vibe that runs deep through most titles in the genre. Nowhere is this more evident than in the stupid little quotes you get after a match in most games. To…
The original logo for the original Atari (as in, not the watered-down ghost we know today) is, for the history-conscious, about as close to a religious symbol as old-school arcade and console gamers are going to get. While the company didn’t invent the video game, it did do more than anyone else in the 1970s…
Forget the woeful American cover for a minute, and instead let’s focus on the Japanese and European box art for PS2 classic Ico. It’s as memorable for many as the game itself, with its bold art style and rich colours. So I thought for today’s Total Recall we’d look back at the artist, and one…
There’s a rumour going around that Sony is set to take on Nintendo’s Smash Bros. series with a fighting game franchise of its own. Interestingly, a lot of the early sentiment I picked up on over the weekend was people wondering whether the PlayStation brand had a strong enough roster to support such a game.…
Much has been made, and rightly so, of the involvement of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli with Level-5’s PS3 RPG Ni No Kuni (out this week in Japan). It’s helped the game look amazing. While it’s a welcome partnership, though, it’s not the first time the animation legend, or his studio, have turned up in a…
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