Allow me the comparison: Skitchin’ was to Road Rash what Beavis & Butthead were to The Simpsons. Where Road Rash was direct, brash 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…
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…
Very few people seemed to care about the history of video games in the 90s: everyone just played them really. Truthfully though, back then the medium was still in its teenage years; it would be rather unreasonable to expect people to start looking back and think about the evolution of the medium, let alone on…
In the infamous history of the years long battle of Nintendo versus Sega, the usual narrative depicts two Japanese companies pitted against each other. Personally, I also see a little of “Japan vs USA”. Indeed, both companies saw unexpected success in the ol’ United States during the late 80s and 90s, while trying to appeal…
During the 80s and most of the 90s, console games were designed to appeal to a young audience, while home/personal computer titles were – usually – meant for an older public. Still, as most gamers know, this doesn’t imply in the slightest that console titles were simpler or, god forbid, kid-friendly; Ninja Gaiden or Contra…
In the second part of my Buck Rogers retrospective, we will take a look at the much less lauded continuation of the first game, Matrix Cubed, and then, finally, I shall explain why I feel both games are still relevant all these years later. Prepare for launch. Matrix Cubed, planned as a direct sequel to…
What do Zeus and Zombies have in common? Well, beside the letter Z, not very much one would say, but Lucasarts would beg to differ, especially Mike Ebert and Dean Sharpe. The two designers worked on two Lucasarts console releases, Zombies Ate my Neighbors and Herc’s Adventures. The two titles stand apart from the usual…
How does on go about making a sequel to one of the most famous arcade maze games, basically the defining maze game, fourteen years later? But, weren’t there already sequels to the original game? Well, apparently not as such. Ms. Pac-man was considered a spin-off, Pac-mania was a “reimagining”, Pac-land seemed to be another spin-off,…
As a kid I hated Japanese RPGs with a passion. I remember saying to myself over and over how much I couldn’t stand the genre and reinforcing my intention of never playing a Final Fantasy title or anything remotely similar. This was mainly because of my prejudices and my growing up playing only Western RPGs…
While playing and remembering various movie tie-ins products, there was one question I had no answer to: how did a publisher decide which movie to license to a game developer? Despite still not having a clear answer, for the sake of this article, though, my guess would be: box office success with teen and pre-teen…