John Bowe decides to ask editor Christian Cawley why he still loves those old video games like Turrican. A couple of years ago I sat down with my brother to play a round of Pro Evo on his PlayStation 4. A simple enough task; we’d been playing Pro Evo togetherRead More →
We consider Street Fighter Alpha vs. King of Fighters in a new competition: fashion! Match-ups and smack-downs. We love them and the tensions between them. Liverpool vs Man. United, The Stones vs The Beatles, Rocky Balboa vs a training montage. Pretty intense stuff, but nothing on the Street Fighter AlphaRead More →
Issued almost two decades ago, the Nintendo Wii console remains one of the most groundbreaking gaming hardware releases ever. John Bowe remembers it well… Do you remember when the Nintendo Wii came out? It was released worldwide over the winter of 2006/2007, and Nintendo’s Wii marked a return for aRead More →
Sony’s 1996 PlayStation Expo proved to a wider audience to see that big games were coming in the console’s second year. 1996 had already been a great gaming year by the time winter had heaved itself over the horizon and marched onwards with a sackful of Christmas incomings. It hadRead More →
Art is so important in video games. See if you agree with this PlayStation top 5 of art direction examples… Style stands out. Sometimes embarrassingly so. See your teenage years. But get it right and you have aesthetic, design and sophistication. See no album cover, ever. Video games have itRead More →
Recalling Snatcher, the memorable Mega CD point-and-click advenure from 1994, itself an update of the earlier MSX 2 title. A point-and-click adventure. Of all the genres bleating at the margins, I always found this one to be at the furthest reaches of my understanding. Just pointing and clicking and thenRead More →
John Bowe looks at some of the best games of 1997, including some of the top titles of the 90s. 1996 had been the best of gaming times and regardless of whichever manufacturer you favoured, everyone was having the best of it. The players most of all. Mario 64, VirtuaRead More →
Guess who’s back? Back again. Sega’s back, tell a friend. What do you mean that you didn’t think they’d ever actually gone away? Agreed, but it has been a largely pathetic couple of decades, barring the odd classic (insert personal choice here. For instance, Outrun 2). But the exciting thingRead More →
Incredibly, 2023 saw the 30th anniversary of FIFA International Soccer on 16-bit consoles. Most of us seem to have a long lived relationship with Electronic Arts, it appears to me. Before they became the uber-brand of today they were an uber-brand of yesteryear, outfitting their cartridges with extra size andRead More →
