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Yearly Archives: 2020

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Unapologetically Appreciating / Pleurghburg – Dark Ages

Game Design VaultBy DamienDecember 19, 2020Leave a comment

Back in 2001 – as Dr. Frank N. Furter would put it – it wasn’t easy to have a good time. There were few alternatives, for a PC gamer, to full price titles bought on store shelves: the good free indie titles were still far on the horizon and Macromedia Flash wasn’t yet ready for…

Skitchin’ – Lovin’ trashin’ bitchin’

Game Design Vault, Interviews and small talksBy DamienNovember 14, 2020Leave a comment

Skitchin’ was to Road Rash what Beavis & Butthead were to The Simpsons. Where Road Rash was direct and kind of rude, Skitchin was rad, awesome and not afraid to flip the bird. Grab your skates, steal a ride on a car bumper and we’re off! Skitchin, for once on this blog rich with weird…

SEGA’s Dolce Vita – The Untold Story of SEGA in Italy

History of VideogamesBy DamienNovember 6, 20205 Comments

It is fascinating how the history of video games tends to be skewed towards the USA. Still today it is easy to come across articles – written by Italians of all people – that keep on mentioning the “console wars” in the 90s or the “great video game crash of 1983”. And yet, all of…

Quirky & Weird C64 – The Detective (Game)

Game Design VaultBy DamienOctober 15, 2020Leave a comment

The point’n’click fans are a pretty weird bunch: always hungry for more games but rarely interested in going beyond their platform of choice to find some more. I used to be one of them so I can relate to that frame of mind. Among many classic home computers, the Commodore 64 is far from being…

Selling Mario to Italians: the untold story of Nintendo in Italy

History of VideogamesBy DamienOctober 3, 20205 Comments

Nobody in the 90s cared about the history of videogames: they just played them really. Back then, though, the medium was still in its teenage years; it would be like expecting 15th century painters to organize an exhibition about Renaissance art. By now videogames are approaching their middle age, consequently we’re seeing more and more…

Indie Game of the Week – The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Modern gamingBy DamienSeptember 18, 2020Leave a comment

In the 80s, before complex D&D based RPGs reached a bigger audience, teenagers who didn’t have friends to play with, found companionship in gamebooks. The very first book in the Fighting Fantasy series was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, originally written by RPG veterans Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. It is the gamebook most people…

Quirky & Weird C64 – Buggy Boy

Game Design VaultBy DamienSeptember 10, 2020Leave a comment

Arcade conversions on Commodore 64 were definitely one major source of revenues for many publishers. But, naturally, most coin-ops from the mid 80s were way beyond the beloved breadbin’s limited hardware. Plenty of times, the public was horribly letdown by subpar or unplayable conversions, like Super Hang On or E-SWAT. Buggy Boy is, luckily, a…

Call of Cthulhu – at the Mountains of Hit and Miss

Modern gamingBy DamienSeptember 3, 2020Leave a comment

H.P. Lovecraft is one of the most beloved horror authors of the last century, cited as an inspiration again and again by movie directors, writers and, naturally, videogame designers. While reviewing Daughter of Serpents, I’ve mentioned how I feel that games somewhat inspired by Lovecraft seem to actually fare better than those directly taken from…

Interview with Craig Stitt – from Sonic the Hedgehog to Spyro the Dragon

Interviews and small talksBy DamienAugust 29, 2020Leave a comment

I had the opportunity to interview artist Craig Stitt: he worked with software houses like Sega Technical Institute and Insomniac games. We went over the titles he worked on, from Sonic 2 to Ratchet & Clank and various infamous cancelled projects, along with some of his personal stories and insights. I thank him for this…

Indie Game of the Week – Speed Dating for Ghosts

Modern gamingBy DamienAugust 26, 2020Leave a comment

If one should want more proof that games do not need fancy graphics, multiplayer components or breakneck action to actually tug at your heartstrings, well Speed Dating for Ghosts will definitely do the trick. A short visual novel experience that is perfect for both newcomers and veterans of the genre alike. In Speed Dating for…

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