These days, Visual Concepts are best known as the studio behind the NBA 2K series. But at the turn of the millennium they were making a demo game for the Dreamcast that, as rough as it looked, was very much ahead of its time. That game was called Internet Game Pack, and as Hidden Palace…
While I rush to keep up with new games for work, I also enjoy going back to play games I grew up with. It started with the Sega Genesis and built to include things like the Super Nintendo and Playstation. But one console holds top billing in my heart: Sega’s ill-fated Dreamcast. I booted it…
When UWC—a NES game that had been hidden from the world for 30 years—was uncovered last week, one of the first orders of business was getting the game off a cartridge and into the digital realm so that it could be properly preserved. The new owner of the game, Stephan Reese, aka Archon 1981, said…
When we talk about obscure or “lost” games, we normally need to have known about them in the first place to know they were missing. It’s not often we see a case like this, where a collector buying a cartridge off a former Nintendo employee is the first time anyone has ever heard of a…
They’re missing from the English-language version, sadly, but the original Japanese release of 1996’s Super Mario RPG on the SNES features a bunch of enemies who are very into Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Neon Genesis and even a Sega game. As Legends of Localization point out, when the game was translated into English, a lot…
And then ended up in a legal battle that would drag on for decades
I’ve always had a weird thing for collections of video game hardware. Rare colourways, odd promotional designs, Japanese-only releases with crazy hardware features, I live for it. So I’ve just spent the last 24 hours clicking throughthis website, whose goal is to catalogue every console variant there is and ever has been, from fancy PS2s…
On September 20th, 2002, the movie Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu, was released in theaters. It was a box office failure and hated by critics—in fact, it is the worst reviewed film in Rotten Tomatoes history, sitting at 0% with 116 reviews. But this poorly-reviewed action film received a well-reviewed…
The 1989 Sears Wish Book contained many treats and treasures, but none more beautiful than this collection of official Nintendo clothing. Uploaded by TanookiKuribo for the always excellent VideoGameArt & Tidbits, there’s also a range of kid’s sweats and track pants, including a Zelda onesie that I am retrospectively very upset I never got to…
Back in the earlier days of Xbox Live, while the Xbox 360 was still in its prime, the platform’s support forums used to allow users to complain about bans they’d received, and Microsoft staff would actually reply. Even if the users were being racist little shits. It seems a universe away from how platforms are…
Back in the year 2000, Angel Studios in San Diego began development on a video game Western. They were making it for Capcom, the Japanese publisher of series like Street Fighter and Resident Evil, and I think it’s safe to assume not a single person involved could have predicted what would happen next. An action…
Zero Wing, an old shooter most famous for its “All your base are belong to us” intro, was presumed (at least among Westerners) to have 3-4 different endings. Turns out only the English language version has three; the Japanese one has 35, most of which are absolute nonsense. Legends of Localization dug into the game…
On February 4th, 1999, one of the greatest hoaxes in video game history began. The Zelda fandom was shock by a player claiming to have found the Triforce in Ocarina of Time. Ariana Almandoz, a gamer from Colombia, had all the details, but she wasn’t quite ready to share them with the world. Through vague…
Don't like how the United States of America turned out? Go on, build your own then
I play Gran Turismo games because they’re like an interactive version of a glossy car brochure. Others, like Dirt, I play for the sensation of barely keeping in control of a car that looks a lot like the one actually parked in my garage. But then there’s F-Zero GX Released in 2003 for the Nintendo…
Here’s something I’d never noticed before: two of the most memorable stages from Street Fighter II are likely a tribute to Hard Times, a 1975 Charles Bronson movie about…street fighting. There are multiple fights in the movie, but as Guerilla’s Dennis Zopfi pointed out in the tweet below, two in particular influenced the design of…
Today, the term “gaming chairs” is synonymous with those gaudy padded monstrosities you see in the background of a Twitch video. But in the late 80s/early 90s, a Japanese company had a much simpler idea. These are Iron Craft’s efforts, which consisted of taking a rather uncomfortable-looking stool and sticking a controller at the front…
For his work on novels like War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau, British author HG Wells is rightly lauded as a visionary. What often gets lost amongst the applause for his ideas on science fiction, though, is another area he was a pioneer: the field of tabletop wargaming. Which, at least…
Even if someone’s uncle really did work at Nintendo, guess what: he probably didn’t get that kid down the street a copy of Mario for free. Chris Bieniek from Video Game Ephemera has got hold of some 1991 “Employee Purchase Order” paperwork from Nintendo of America, which shows how workers were able to buy their…
Far off in the distance, beyond the murky arctic waters, the vague silhouette of a tower can be seen through the mist. You raise your sniper rifle for a closer look. A solitary island is nestled away from all the chaos. What secrets does it hold? This piece originally appeared 3/21/17. GoldenEye 007 is one…
Mode
Follow us
