Tag Archives: retro gaming

A talking fish wants answers. A silver-and-blue superhero is sprinting through traffic because somebody needs a Pepsi. Somewhere else, a cucumber is trying to rescue a tomato from a pumpkin. The controller is ordinary enough; the jobs it has been given are considerably less so. And that is before the zombie outbreak that can only be stopped by typing quickly. Some of these games make their first impression before you have touched… Read more

I recently received a gift that left me with one very serious question: how have I been missing this in my life? The gift was a handful of issues of Old School Gamer Magazine. Actual magazines. Covers you can hold, pages you can turn, and articles that stay put while you read them. I opened one expecting a pleasant little dose of nostalgia. What I found felt like somebody had reopened a… Read more

The Cole Train has survived plenty of trouble in Gears of War. Add a likeness lawsuit to the list. In 2017, former football player and wrestler Lenwood “Hard Rock” Hamilton sued Epic Games and others, claiming Augustus Cole borrowed his appearance, voice and persona without permission. Hamilton thought the resemblance was obvious. The courts weren’t persuaded that it entitled him to stop the character. Cole kept his armour, his attitude and his… Read more

You remember the mascots, the blockbuster sequels, and the games every friend seemed to own. But the nineties also left behind toxic-slime scientists, clay adventurers, transforming police machines, and a tiny hero from the world of Lemmings. This countdown revisits twenty games that deserve another look. “No one remembers” is our affectionate exaggeration: these games still have fans, and some have devoted followings. Our picks favor distinctive ideas, memorable presentation, and adventures… Read more

Mario’s first job had nothing to do with pipes. When he appeared in Donkey Kong in 1981, he was a carpenter. The game took place on a construction site, so Shigeru Miyamoto gave its little hero a job that fitted the surroundings. The plumber everyone knows came later. There’s a nice reminder in an old Donkey Kong sticker card: underneath Mario, it says “The Brave Carpenter.” He’s got the cap, moustache and… Read more

Some people do their best thinking in the bath. While working on the original Donkey Kong in the early 1980s, Shigeru Miyamoto had a particularly convenient one: Nintendo’s company bath. Its hot water came from the boiler used by the playing-card factory. That’s quite a long way from an arcade cabinet, but apparently a good place to get your thoughts in order. He was staying in Nintendo’s company housing and bathing at… Read more

Snake Eater asks you to worry about camouflage, stamina and whatever might be hiding in the grass. Apparently, somebody also had to worry about how Snake looked walking away. Even his backside got some attention during development. Snake got that cake! WIRED’s November 2004 profile described Kojima making sure Snake had a “nice butt” for the rear view. Kojima quickly added: “I’m married, with a son.” Then came the instruction: “Put that… Read more

In the 1990s, Joe Rogan got so hooked on Quake that a computer upgrade wasn’t enough. He had a T1 line installed at home to improve his connection. Recalling it with Kevin Rose in April 2016, Rogan said it had been worth the expense. Rose remembered those lines costing around $10,000 a month. That’s a lot of money to put between yourself and a bad ping. But if you played online back… Read more

Arnold Schwarzenegger could have been Mario’s movie villain. He was approached to play King Koopa in the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film, but passed. Dennis Hopper got the part instead, leaving us with a casting what-if that’s almost as strange as the finished movie. Try picturing Arnold in Dinohattan for a moment. This was already a Mario adaptation with a human-looking reptilian ruler, so a different leading villain could have taken it… Read more

Link never needed a fedora, but Indiana Jones helped get his adventure started. Shigeru Miyamoto wanted some of that excitement in a game: the ruins, the danger and the feeling that something worth finding was waiting inside. Years later, he named the films when Nintendo asked him about the beginnings of The Legend of Zelda. Once you know that, it’s hard not to think about it when you enter a dungeon. There’s… Read more

David Hayter says a joke about Snake’s “Shriveled Snake” almost slipped into Metal Gear Solid 4. The cast had been messing around during recording. Someone caught the take before release, sparing players a very unexpected moment with Naomi Hunter. It’s an easy blooper to remember. Naomi is supposed to be worried about Snake’s health. In this take, she was apparently worried about something rather more specific. “So… shriveled…” In a 2012 interview,… Read more

Before there was a plumber clearing pipes, there was a young designer trying to get someone to pay him to make interesting things. Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to create toys. Nintendo looked like a place where that ambition might fit, except for an inconvenient detail: it was not hiring designers. The familiar internet version turns this into a neat rejection story. Nintendo supposedly passed on the man who would create Mario, then somehow… Read more

You have found a snorkel. You have found a coin. You have found a perfectly innocent reason to press the fire button. A moment later, you have found the title screen. For an egg with such a cheerful face, Dizzy could be a menace. His adventures offered enchanted forests, pirate ships and neighbours who always needed a favour. They also offered the possibility of losing an evening's work because you put down… Read more

You beat the boss. The credits roll. You start thinking about the next game. For a kid with a Genesis, a Super Nintendo, or an Amiga, that was a perfectly reasonable habit. Another cartridge would turn up in a magazine. Another impossibly large enemy would fill a screenshot. Your favorite character would get new moves, a new sidekick, perhaps a skateboard. Everybody seemed to be getting a skateboard. Then, somewhere between the… Read more

Lucas Barton opens the case as though he is about to show everybody a weapon. Inside is a gray glove, a black wrist console, and the sort of plastic armor a kid in 1989 would happily have worn to school. He puts it on, plays Rad Racer, and delivers the line that outlived almost everything else in The Wizard: “I love the Power Glove. It’s so bad.” He means bad in the… Read more

Eight incredible adventures, from the science-fiction sweep of Phantasy Star IV to the time-traveling brilliance of Chrono Trigger. This is Retro Replay’s countdown of the JRPGs that defined the genre for us. How many would make your list? Would you rather watch than read? Put your feet up and watch our video countdown below. The write-up and game screens are here whenever you want a closer look. Watch the Retro Replay countdown… Read more

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

Edia is bringing the CD-ROM² versions of Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes I and II to modern systems worldwide in 2027. The Trails series did not spring into existence as a fully formed encyclopedia of nations, political factions and recurring heroes. Its roots stretch backward through The Legend of Heroes, and those roots stretch into Nihon Falcom’s even older Dragon Slayer family. In 2027, players outside Japan will receive an unusually… 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

Is It Illegal to Play Emulated Nintendo Games? If you've ever wanted to relive classic games like Super Mario Bros., Super Metroid, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, or Zelda: Ocarina of Time using an emulator, you're definitely not alone. Emulation has become one of the most popular ways to revisit older games, especially as original hardware becomes more expensive, harder to maintain, and increasingly inconvenient to connect to… Read more

Retro Replay: Pixel Panic has officially made the jump from the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Sega Genesis, and this new 16-bit version is a much bigger, louder, faster, and more complete version of the original homebrew idea. What started as a small NES homebrew experiment has now grown into a full Sega Genesis homebrew release with 50 unique levels, new sprites, updated gameplay ideas, new sound effects, music, breakable walls, bombs,… Read more

When it comes to video game bands, The OneUps have been doing this longer than most. Their official site says they have been performing since their first show in 2002, and over the years they have played events like PAX, MAGFest, and GDC while building one of the most recognizable sounds in live VGM. Their catalog on Bandcamp stretches from Volume 1 all the way to later releases like Volume 4, Arkadia… Read more

How Two Dudes, a Dream, and a Roguelike Built a Funkadelic Classic In 1991, the video game console war was defined by one thing: attitude. The Sega Genesis, with its "Blast Processing" and edgy mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, was in a head-to-head brawl with Nintendo. The landscape was dominated by lightning-fast platformers, brutal brawlers, and arcade-perfect shoot 'em ups. And then... there was ToeJam & Earl. It was a game that wasn't… Read more