Culture

Remembering Possibly The Worst Thing Zelda Ever Did

Nearly every single Legend of Zelda video game is revered, if not as an all-time classic, then at least as a pretty good/good/great game. The franchise’s one major departure onto TV screens? It was not good. Not at all While Mario was turned into a big Hollywood movie and Metroid was long rumoured to be…

Happy 25th Birthday, The Legend Of Zelda

Twenty-five years ago today, an ambitious title was released in Japan that would, in time, become one of the biggest and most important franchises in video game history. That game was The Legend of Zelda. While it may look crude now, it’s easy to forget that, at the time of the game’s release, it was…

Can a Controller Be Programmed to Speed-Run Super Mario Bros.?

Long story short, this modder built a controller that, when plugged into a Nintendo Entertainment System, auto speedruns Super Mario Bros. in just a shade under 5 minutes. Naturally, commenters have shouted it down as a fake, but the Tool-Assisted Speedrun community is unanimous in calling the mod real. Modder pjgat09 provides a step-by-step, with…

Sunday Comics

Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. published Feb. 14 – Read more of Awkward Zombie Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. published Feb. 18 – Read more of Nerf…

Microsoft, Why Did You Lie To Velocity Girl?

You may not remember her, but Velocity Girl was one of the stars of E3 2005. Young, funky and a casual gamer, she was promised the Xbox 360 would be the console of her dreams. Sitting cross-legged on the floor during the big reveal of the Xbox 360, controller in hand as if he was…

Balls To The Wall, It’s The Rock N’ Roll Video Game Soundtrack

My favourite video game soundtrack is not a collection of original orchestral pieces, nor tracks by famous artists. It is one performed by a band that, were it not for this game, few of you will have ever heard of. Full Throttle, an adventure title released by Lucasarts in 1995, is rightly regarded as one…

Nintendo’s War On Blood, Nazis, Religion And Puppy Dogs

While these days it’s not that hard finding violent, mature titles on Nintendo consoles, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that wasn’t the case. And when you did find them, well, some “changes” had been made. As anyone around in and gaming during the time can probably remember, it was a strange era for…

There Is Blood On Your Hands, And On This Controller

Since we showed you a novel controller from Nubytech that you’ll never play, it only seems fair to spend today’s Total Recall talking about one you can play. And is way cooler. This is Nubytech’s Resident Evil 4 controller, fashioned for the game’s release back in 2005. Originally designed only for the GameCube, which the…

Is This The Worst Controller Ever Made?

This is the controller for the ill-fated Atari Jaguar, a peripheral so so poorly-conceived that, even eighteen years later, it looks as stupid as the day it was first unveiled. Hitting the market in 1993, the Jaguar was the last console Atari — former powerhouses of the video game market — would ever release. This…

Sunday Comics

Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich published Feb. 7 – Read more of Awkward Zombie Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira published Feb. 10 – Read more of Nerf…

Rest In Peace, Guitar Hero

Today, publisher Activision put the Guitar Hero franchise on hold. Maybe forever. For a series that once threatened to become the biggest thing video games had ever seen, it was quite an inglorious end. The gallery above will take you, from left to right, on a journey looking at every Guitar Hero game ever released,…

Don’t Touch This Horror Of A NES Controller

This is the U-Force. It’s a motion-control peripheral released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in the late 1980’s. In some ways, it’s an amazing piece of technology. In most other ways, it was an absolute disaster. Unlike Sega’s rival Activator peripheral, which we looked at the other day, the U-Force was not a full-body motion-sensing…

The Finest Cast Ever Assembled For A Video Game

In 1996, a PC adventure game was released that has been all but forgotten. Which is strange, seeing as it features probably the greatest ensemble of actors ever assembled for a video game. While many contemporary games boast the names of impressive stars on the back of their box, those are generally restricted to voice-over…

Kids Shouldn’t Play Games About Jerking Off

NSFW: If you’re a parent — or even just an all-round concerned citizen — and think games featuring cartoon violence and mild cussing is bad, spare a thought for me. One of the first ever games I played was about jerking off. In 1984, and at the age of four, my father (rightly) realised that…

Sunday Comics

Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich published Jan. 31 – Read more of Awkward Zombie Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira published Feb. 3 – Read more of Nerf…

Microsoft’s First Console Adventure Was A Lesson In Failure

Like most other things associated with Sega’s ill-fated Dreamcast console, it’s been largely forgotten that the ahead-of-its-time machine featured the first ever console appearance (at least in terms of the console itself) for a company by the name of Microsoft. While Microsoft would of course enter the console business properly with the Xbox in 2001,…

Nintendo And The Soviet Union Got Along Just Fine

In today’s day and age, if people want to see a whole bunch of Nintendo characters appearing in the same game, they can play Smash Bros. In the 1980s, they could play…Tetris. The kind of canon-smashing forces that in the 21st century can pit Link against Mario and Kirby against Pikachu simply weren’t around during…

When Activision Met The Wonder Years

Normally, the sequel to a popular video game remains largely the same as the preceding title (or titles). If the first one was a shooter, the second one is a shooter. In 1993, however, one series did things a little differently. That series was Zork, a pioneering succession of text adventure games for the PC…

Sega Tried Kinect Once, And It Didn’t Go So Well

Microsoft’s Kinect is currently the talk of the town. With its full-body, no-controller input, people are finding that for the first time they can play a video game without needing a controller. Those people obviously weren’t around in 1993. If they had been, they’d know that Kinect is actually the second attempt from a major…

Sunday Comics