Culture Archives - Page 1547 of 1555

Remembering Sega’s Exiled Mascot

Nintendo has Mario. Microsoft has Master Chief. And Sega, well, for a long time Sega has had Sonic the Hedgehog as its mascot. Thing is, Sonic is an usurper Before the blue, spiky hero with the red shoes burst onto the scene in 1991, Sega already had a mascot: Alex Kidd. A character we have…

By Luke Plunkett Published April 6, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

How A Company Went From Rocking Horses To Pac-Man

Continuing on from recent looks at the unlikely beginnings of companies like Nintendo and Sega, let’s today see where Namco – now part of Namco Bandai – got its start. Here’s a hint: it certainly wasn’t making video games. No, like Nintendo and Sega, Namco began long before the commercial electronic video game had been…

By Luke Plunkett Published April 5, 2011

Culture

Is This The Greatest Super Mario Bros. Playthrough Ever?

It may not be the speediest of speed runs. It may not dazzle with its exploitation of glitches. But this Super Mario Bros. speed run is notable because the player is also simultaneously beating Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels. This is the work of Japanese…

By Michael McWhertor Published April 4, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

Meet The Four Americans Who Built Sega

Nintendo and Sega. Hardware rivals for decades, and even today they remain the archetype Japanese video game companies. Only, Sega isn’t entirely Japanese. It was founded by some American guys. While Nintendo, with its history in trading cards and love hotels, is as Japanese as they come, Sega’s history can actually be traced back to…

By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011

Culture

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 March 27 – Read more of Awkward Zombie Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira published March 26 – Read more of Nerf…

By Owen Good Published April 3, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

This Nintendo Was Inside A Television Set

I don’t know what it is about old Nintendo hardware that makes it so interesting. Maybe it’s because, outside of Nintendo’s home run successes, there are a lot of straight-up strange devices in the company’s history as well. Not weird in a bad way, mind you. Just in a “well, it’s awesome somebody thought this…

By Luke Plunkett Published April 1, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

Let’s Talk About The Very First Street Fighter

Not Street Fighter II , that was...the second Street Fighter

By Luke Plunkett Published March 31, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

The Joys Of A Console’s First Moments

Know what I tend to remember consoles by? Not their games, or controllers, or even hardware casings. I usually remember them for their boot-up jingles. As silly as that sounds, those first few seconds of animation and music really set the tone for what the platform holder hopes is to come, and more than any…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 29, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

Only In The 80’s Would They Put Video Games On A VHS Tape

Video games have made their home on any number of storage mediums over the years, from compact discs to cassette tapes to plastic cartridges. Someone even, in the 1980s, thought it was a good idea to put them on video tapes. It wasn’t. In the mid-to-late-80’s, three companies began working on consoles designed to use…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 28, 2011

Culture

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 March 21 – Read more of Awkward Zombie Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira published March 21 – Read more of Nerf…

By Owen Good Published March 27, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

Nintendo’s First Console Is One You’ve Never Played

So Nintendo’s first home console was the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom, right? Nope. The company’s first foray into home video gaming actually dates back to 1977, six whole years before the Famicom was released in Japan. That “home console” was actually a series of machines called “Color TV”, which were living room versions of popular arcade…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 25, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

Sega’s Most “Shameful”, “Sick” And “Disgusting” Video Game

No, we’re not talking about Sonic The Hedgehog, in which an animal makes out with a human. We’re talking about Night Trap, a Sega CD game released in 1992 that may have been the stormiest tea cup in video game history. Developed by Digital Pictures, a studio that specialised in the full-motion-video-laden games of the…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 24, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

This Game Boy Wasn’t That Portable, You Know

The very last model of the Game Boy was the Game Boy Micro. It was tiny. You couldn’t just put it in your pocket, you could lose it in there. Now let’s compare that sleek handheld with something from 1991. It’s easy to remember the original Game Boy existing as a lone entity. You owned…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 23, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

Ten Years Ago Today, The Last Game Boy Was Born

On March 21, 2001, stores in Japan began selling the first units of the Game Boy Advance. There are few sentences that can better describe how far video games have come in the past decade than that. Ten years ago, the words “Game Boy” were still synonymous with not just Nintendo’s handheld domination, but the…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 22, 2011

Culture

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 March 14 – Read more of Awkward Zombie Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira published March 16 – Read more of Nerf…

By Owen Good Published March 20, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

So Who The Hell Is This Peter Molyneux Guy, Anyway?

Whenever the subject of the Fable series or its outspoken creator Peter Molyneux pops up, a lot of people question why the man is given so much airtime. Why people give a hoot about the games he’s making. He seems to be known by many as simply the guy behind Fable. Or that guy who…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 17, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

Wait A Minute, This Movie Wasn’t About Video Games At All

Most video game movies are about actual video games. Unless you’re talking about Tron, The Last Starfighter, or 1983 classic Joy Sticks, which is about little more than an arcade, kids and flimsy excuses to get some tits on the screen. Being made in the early 1980s, and featuring the struggle to keep a popular…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 16, 2011

Culture

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 March 7 – Read more of Awkward Zombie Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira published March 11 – Read more of Nerf…

By Owen Good Published March 13, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

Microsoft Has Now Spent Over Ten Years In The Console Business

Time flies, doesn’t it? One day, you’re thinking only Sega and Nintendo are capable of building quality, successful gaming hardware. The next, you wake up to find that Microsoft is building a video games console. Yet it’s been eleven years to the day that the world awoke to such a scenario, as it was at…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 11, 2011

CultureTotal Recall

Remembering Sony’s Least Popular “Console”

Sony has released four video game machines that have been, to varying degrees, a success. Today, we’re going to look at a fifth that wasn’t. That machine was the PSX. A hybrid video game console and home media centre, it may have looked pretty and boasted some impressive technology, but it was also one of…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 10, 2011