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CultureTotal RecallBatman…Why so Serious? It’s Just a Video Game!
If you’re sensitive to unnecessary amounts of drama in your video game advertisements, a word of caution: this contains an unnecessary amount of drama for a video game commercial. If anyone ever tells you the 1990s weren’t the golden age of video game advertising, you slap them, hard, and tell them they are wrong
By Luke Plunkett Published April 25, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Third World War Brought Clinton and Saddam Closer Together
The Sega CD was home to some terrible things, but it was also home to some wonderful curiosities as well. And few are as curious as Micronet’s 1993 strategy game The Third World War. Let’s start with the cover art. That amazing cover art. Sadly, it was only for the Japanese edition of the game…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 25, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallWhy Did This Game Store Fail? Hilariously Awful Training Videos, Perhaps
Game Crazy, a now-defunct minor player in the US games retail space, operated for around a decade, kicking off in 1999 and winding down in 2010. Those involved with the chain, a subsidiary of Movie Gallery, will tell you its because increased competition squeezed it out of the market. They’re wrong. It’s because a generation…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 24, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Making of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
In the late 1980s, Nintendo’s internal development teams set out to make two games that would forever define its classic Super Nintendo Entertainment System. One was Super Mario World. The other was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Work on both games began almost simultaneously. “At Nintendo, we don’t spend a long…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 24, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallOmega Boost’s Intro Might be the Coolest Thing 90s Video Games Ever Did
This is Omega Boost. It was an OK shooter released in 1999 on the PlayStation. I remember it, and pay tribute to it here today, not for the game, but for everything around it. Like the incredible FMV intro sequence, which goes from corny to amazing to “wow those aren’t bad props and costumes for…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 23, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallPortal was First Released in 1986, and was an Activision Adventure Game
Portal may be the name for a contemporary series from Valve, about mad robots and jumpsuits, but it’s also the name of a video game first released nearly thirty years ago. That game, Portal – Valve got the trademark after the original ceased using it – was a strange adventure title for personal computers, and…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 23, 2012 -
CultureTotal Recall
Mass Effect Music-Maker Remixes Mass Effect 1 Music, It Is Rad
A little while back, Jimmy “Big Giant Circles” Hinsen released an album of music that he’d written for Mass Effect 2 but that didn’t make the cut. Now, he’s put out a free remix album called Max Effect featuring music from Mass Effect 1, originally composed by Jack Wall, Sam Hulick, Richard Jacques and David…
By Kirk Hamilton Published April 20, 2012 -
CultureTotal Recall
The Geek Squad Who Rescued a Gaming Classic
At the end of March, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner found the source code for the game years after he’d thought it was lost. But the data was saved on computer disks that were more than 20 years old—would they still be readable after all these years? Would it be safe to put them…
By Kirk Hamilton Published April 20, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallWhat Computer Animation Looked Like in 1971
Us 21st century kids with our Unreal Engines and fancy computers think our animation is just so shit hot. And it is! But it had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere are these very humble beginnings. This 1971 Canadian documentary looks at the very early days of the practice of key frame animation. For…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 20, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Man Bringing Classic Arcade Cabinets Back
The 80’s were an awesome and bizarre time for arcades. Nobody knows this better than Gary Vincent, owner and operator of the American Classic Arcade Musuem in New Hampshire. For the past 3 years, he’s been shipping 30 arcade cabinets to PAX East in an attempt to recapture the feel of those classic 1980’s arcades.…
By Chris Person Published April 19, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallThose Dudes in Castlevania are Pretty Intense
Unlike the Konami of today, which relies almost entirely on milking a couple of key franchises and selling mobile games in Japan, the Konami of the 1980s was a more exciting company. You could say, in fact, they were jammin
By Luke Plunkett Published April 19, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallThere was a Good Super Mario Bros. Movie. Let’s Watch it!
When someone talks about the Super Mario Bros. movie, you’d be forgiven for assuming they’re talking about the 1993 live-action flick starring Bob Hoskins. But there are actually two Super Mario Bros. movies, the first one – a feature-length anime – having been released in Japan in 1986. It was called スーパー マリオ ブラザーズ ピーチ姫救出大作戦!…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 19, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallYes, This is Andy Warhol Painting Deborah Harry on an Amiga
These days, we remember Commodore’s Amiga system for its games. Classics like Cannon Fodder. In 1985, though, the company had grander plans. In this bizarre live demonstration as part of the machine’s launch, artist Andy Warhol, only two years before his death, sits down and “paints” a portrait of former punk idol Deborah Harry using…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallUm, Sega Once Made a Sonic Fighting Game
As promised, today we’ll be looking at Sonic the Fighters. Otherwise known as That 3D Fighting Game Sega Made That For Some Reason Starred Sonic The Hedgehog The story of the game goes like this: in 1995, Sega released an awesome (and sadly forgotten) fighting game called Fighting Vipers. One of the game’s character designers,…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallEvery Nintendo 64 Game, in One Giant Video
There were 296 games released for the Nintendo 64 in North America. Which is hardly any, I know. But it’ll still seem like a lot when you sit down and watch this movie which collects footage from every single one of them. I always forget StarCraft came out on the N64. Man, those were the…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 17, 2012 -
CultureTotal Recall
The Giant Alien Dick Machines of Space Invaders Pinball
In 1980, Bally released a pinball machine called Space Invaders. It was about as shameless a rip-off as you could hope for, as despite the opportunity to lift iconic imagery from Taito’s arcade classic of the same name, it instead stole designs from Ridley Scott’s 1979 movie Alien Given that was over thirty years ago,…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 17, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallRoad Blaster, You Have Stolen My Heart
It’s not often I come across a game I’ve never even heard of putting this feature together, but that happened yesterday with Road Prosecutor. Which means, yes, I’d never heard of its arcade original Road Blaster either. Man, I wish I had. All these years I’ve wasted without having seen this clip. So, first things…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 16, 2012 -
CultureTotal Recall
Check Out What’s New On Total Recall, Our Very Own Retro Section
Brought to you every day, from 11pm-midnight (EST), Kotaku goes retro. The most recent batch of stories include: Mr. Awesome, the Greatest Video Game Player Who Ever Lived Maybe I Liked GoldenEye For Weird Reasons There was Once a U.S. National Video Game Team, and This Guy Was Its Captain The Greatest Justification For Messed-Up…
By Tina Amini Published April 16, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallMaybe I Liked GoldenEye For Weird Reasons
Earlier this week, we published an intelligent takedown of the beloved Nintendo 64 James Bond first-person shooter GoldenEye. Maybe, our guest writer wrote, this game was a little bit flawed. Maybe the campaign was monotonous and the multiplayer map design was weird. Maybe we can still love the game despite or because of its flaws.…
By Stephen Totilo Published April 14, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallThere was Once a U.S. National Video Game Team, and This Guy Was Its Captain
A leader of a national team of athletes could reasonably expect to make a few endorsements or appearances, and in his day, Donn Nauert had his. Whether supplying a pro’s advice on Gradius or judging a video gaming triathlon, the captain of the U.S. National Video Game Team offered confidence, rectitude and, of course, a…
By Owen Good Published April 13, 2012