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…
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…
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…
Nintendo versus Sega. A battle for the ages that made many kids’ blood boil during the 90s, no holds barred bout fought via scathing slogans and – who could forget – the war of the bits. Eight bit, sixteen bits, Genesis does, Nintendon’t and so on. Even though Sega gave up the fight many years…
During the 80s and most of the 90s, console games were designed to appeal to a young audience, while home/personal computer titles were 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 are still…
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, explain why I feel both games are still relevant all these years later. Prepare for launch. Matrix Cubed, planned as a direct sequel to the first…
What do Zeus and Zombies have in common? Well, other than the letter Z obviously, not very much one would say, but Lucasarts would beg to differ, especially Mike Ebert and Dean Sharpe, The two designers were mainly responsible for Zombies Ate my Neighbors and Herc’s Adventures, two smaller arcade titles released by Lucasarts on…
How do you go around making a sequel to one of the most famous arcade maze games fourteen years later? Wait but… weren’t there already sequels to the original game? Actually, no. Ms. Pac-man was a spin-off, Pac-mania was a “reimagining”, Pac-land another spin-off, even though it did look and play like a sort of…
As a kid I hated Japanese RPGs with a passion, I remember saying over and over again having no intention of ever playing a Final Fantasy title or anything remotely close to it. This was mainly because of my prejudice and of my upbringing with Western RPGs like Rings of Power and Buck Rogers. The…
When I briefly looked at a couple of tie-in games, there was one question I had no answer to: how did a publisher decide which movie to license to a game developer? For the sake of this article, though, my guess would be: box office success with teen and pre-teen audience, the gamers of the…
