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CultureTotal Recall
In 1997, Lucasarts Tried To Copy Diablo
People gave Lucasarts a lot of crap towards the end, mostly for being a company interested in nothing but licensed garbage. For the most part that was totally fair criticism. But there was once a time when Lucasarts wasn’t just brave, it was a little weird about it. That era was the late 90s, a…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 13, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallSwooning Over A Beautifully Restored Sega Dreamcast Display
How could a gaming system with this powerful a retail presence possibly fail? Jason Brassard of Fenton, Missouri has a pretty amazing collection of old-school video games, but as the folks at the Sega Channel pan over his cavern of wonders, the eyes are inexorably drawn to his crown jewel — a lovingly restored retail…
By Mike Fahey Published January 3, 2015 -
CultureTotal Recall
Doom Is Now Old Enough To Drink
This week, classic PC shooter Doom turned 21. So if you see someone in green slide up next to you at a bar and scream RIP AND TEAR, buy the guy a drink. To celebrate, John Romero, one of the key figures involved in the creation of the game, shared a ton of artwork from…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 11, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall
100 Year-Old Nintendo Souvenir Is An International Treasure
Erik Voskuil, who runs the excellent Before Mario, has a very special piece of Nintendo history in his personal collection. And no, it’s not badass Lego. It’s this promotional calendar, given out to advertise Nintendo’s card business. In 1915. And while the age itself is impressive, it’s the little touches reminding us of this bygone…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 3, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall
I Miss Television Sets With Character
I can describe the television sets I gamed on as a child in intimate detail — the texture of the dials, the dusty ventilation holes, the faded wood paneling. The past three televisions I’ve had in my living room? A series of increasingly larger black rectangles. There was a time, not too long ago, when…
By Mike Fahey Published December 1, 2014 -
CultureTotal RecallA History Of Video Game Graphics
Stuart Brown’s fantastic YouTube series A Brief History Of Graphics starts in just about the most perfect way imaginable: “They say graphics aren’t important…but every game I’ve ever played has had them”. Running over five parts, the series takes an in-depth (but also accessible) look at the evolution of video game graphics, from the very…
By Luke Plunkett Published November 20, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall
33 Years Later, New Donkey Kong Secrets Are Being Found
Despite the fact the game was first released in arcades in 1981, has been ported to hell and back and picked apart on the big screen, Nintendo’s original Donkey Kong is still giving up secrets, most recently in the form of “new” music and sound effects. A user on the Cutting Room wiki has, after…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 20, 2014 -
CultureTotal RecallA Time When Fanboys Were Innocent, And Sega Was King
Before there were YouTube channels about kids who were Sega fans, and a generation of people who equated being “fans” with being loud, angry and combative, there was a humbler, more private form of fanboy expression: home video. If you were with us last year, you might remember Tyler, who throughout the 90s had the…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 16, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall
How Nintendo Convinced The World To Buy A Weird Mario Game
Gail Tilden used to work at Nintendo. She was one of the founding editors of Nintendo Power, so knows better than most people how the company was able to sell one of Mario’s strangest moments – a game that wasn’t even really a Mario game – to the world. In this excerpt from Jon Irwin’s…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 29, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall
Screw Apple’s Watch, Nintendo’s Watches Were Way Cooler
Hey everyone, Apple is making a watch. You might have heard. It’s like a normal watch, in that it goes on your wrist and tells the time, but it also does some computer stuff. Sound familiar? Of course it does. Other companies have been doing it for years. Including Nintendo. Sort of. OK, so Nintendo’s…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 16, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall
Parental Locks For Video Games Used To Be Crazy
These days, parental locks stop kids from playing games using simple software. In 1990, lacking that kind of technology, things were a little more draconian. This is the “Homework First” video game lock, designed for the NES. It does not fuck around. Looking like a very hefty bike lock, it hooked underneath the console and…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 11, 2014 -
CultureTotal RecallLong-Lost Cassette Tape Reveals Unheard Chubby Checker Atari Song
The great Chubby Checker once recorded a song to be used for a Dig-Dug commercial, only it wasn’t, and the song hasn’t been publicly heard (or heard of) until this week. History is so awesome. Matt Osborne, son of former Atari vice president Don Osborne, found an old cassette tape the other day and from…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 7, 2014 -
CultureTotal RecallLost Akira Game Spotted, But It’s Not Pretty
It’s a shame. For such an awesome manga/film as Akira is, its games have been pretty shoddy. One, however, was so shoddy it was never even released. The storyof this missing game is one that’s eluded folks for some time, but today, we’ve finally got some footage of it (well, the Genesis version at least).…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 6, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall
The Origins Of A Classic Lucasarts Adventure
In a lot of ways, Maniac Mansion is where it all began for Lucasarts (or Lucasfilm Games, as it was know back then). The company’s first big adventure game hit, it set the tone for a decade of classic titles that would define PC gaming for an entire generation. Released before the era of developer…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 21, 2014 -
CultureTotal RecallRIP Neversoft, The Studio That Made Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
Last week, something very sad took place over at Activision. Neversoft, the studio that created the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, officially ceased to exist. The remaining staff – whose last project had been helping out on Call of Duty: Ghosts – were officially merged with Call of Duty developers Infinity Ward, bringing to an…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 13, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall17-Minute Metal Epic Covers 40 Years Of Video Game History
The conclusion of three years of work, this is FamilyJules7x taking us on one hell of a musical journey, as he thrashes out metal versions of the theme songs to most of gaming’s greatest games. It’s quite the feat musically, sure, but I’m actually more impressed by the amount of research that went into this.…
By Luke Plunkett Published May 29, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall
Meet The Guy Who Says He Buried The E.T. Cartridges
Last month, thousands of copies of ET (along with other Atari games) were found buried beneath the New Mexico desert. James Heller was the man responsible for that. In an interview with KBOI2, the former Atari employee says that the rumours about the dumping being some secretive, midnight affair are untrue. With 750,000 unwanted game…
By Luke Plunkett Published May 4, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall
Some Things Never Change
Here’s an excerpt from the magazine Computer Gaming World, reporting on E3 1997. Replace “real-time strategy” with “first-person shooters” and bump up the numbers a little bit—50-75MB!—and this could be from 2014. Some trends just don’t go away. (Facebook, via NeoGAF)
By Jason Schreier Published March 10, 2014 -
CultureTotal Recall
When Every Nintendo Game Looked The Same (And Was Better For It)
Outside of budget lines, video game box and disc art these days is a unique and varied art. No two games’ presentation looks the same. But for a short time, right back at the beginning of their days in the home console market, Nintendo bucked this trend. And it’s a shame they never stuck with…
By Luke Plunkett Published March 4, 2014
