Tag Archives: 1990s Gaming

Acclaim Entertainment became one of the loudest and most successful publishers of the 1990s, riding Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, Turok, wrestling games, comic licenses and aggressive marketing to enormous visibility. This is the complete story of how Acclaim rose from a small Long Island publisher to a gaming powerhouse — and how overexpansion, costly licenses, bad bets and financial trouble brought it crashing down. Read more

You are in first place when the rider to your left swings a chain. You lean away, drift toward the yellow line, and see the sedan coming over the hill a second too late. The bike skids down the road without you. Your racer gets up and runs after it while everyone else disappears into the distance. In Road Rash, losing can be funnier than winning, provided you have the nerve to… Read more

The shop has a Panasonic machine that looks like it belongs beside a serious stereo, not under a child's television. Road Rash has filmed actors and real rock music. The Need for Speed lets you inspect exotic cars before you race them. The screen suggests the next generation has arrived early. Then the clerk tells you the price: about $699 on the street. That number became the 3DO's entire reputation. It also… Read more

Flight simulator. CD-ROM spectacle. First-person shooter. Fighting game. Desktop adventure. In the 1990s, nobody seemed entirely sure what a Star Wars game was supposed to be. That was half the fun. There was a wonderful period when asking “What kind of game is Star Wars?” did not produce a sensible answer. It produced another question. Which year? In 1993, Star Wars became a demanding space-combat simulator that expected players to manage shields,… Read more

If you grew up tearing through Rainbow Road and tossing banana peels in Mario Kart 64, you probably never imagined that your favorite racing game once flirted with cigarette advertising. But that’s exactly what happened in the early versions of the game. Hidden in plain sight among the trackside billboards was a cheeky parody of Marlboro cigarettes, rebranded as “Marioro.” The red-and-white logo looked unmistakably similar to the real-life tobacco company’s branding,… Read more

Best music ever? Retro Review: Donkey Kong Country - An Unforgettable SNES Classic In the early to mid years of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, there was a single cartridge that made living rooms glow a little greener and living room speakers hum with a deeper warmth. Donkey Kong Country, developed by Rare and released by Nintendo in 1994, arrived like a thunderclap. It felt new, it felt polished, and it felt… Read more