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CultureTotal Recall
Nintendo’s First Arcade Games Were, Well, Pretty Sucky
It’s one of those quirks of history that Nintendo, a company synonymous with colourful characters and fun video games, made its very first independent venture into the world of arcade gaming with…a board game adaptation. While 1981’s Donkey Kong and 1983’s Mario Bros. are most people’s introduction to Nintendo arcade games, the company’s first coin-op…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 21, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallHappy 65th Birthday Tim Curry, You Video Game Legend
Acclaimed British actor Tim Curry may be most famous to regular folk for his roles in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and…Muppet Treasure Island, but he’s most famous around here for his work in video games. You see, Tim Curry – who Infinite Lives reminds us turns 65 today – is Kotaku After Dark’s favourite…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 20, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallMeet The World’s First Flight Simulator
Depending on how old you are, if you’re a flight sim fan you probably cut your teeth on a series like Microsoft Flight Simulator, Falcon or Flight Unlimited. But did you know the world’s very first flight simulator was built all the way back in 1929? It was built by a man named Edwin Link,…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallNo Game Suffered From “Valve Time” More Than Team Fortress 2
You think you’ve been waiting a long time for a new Half-Life game? You haven’t, really. It’s “only” been three and a half years. Now, Team Fortress 2, that was a game long in the making. The staggered development of Valve’s iconic shooter took so long, and went through so many twists and turns, that…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 15, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Good, The Bad And The Ugly Of PlayStation Advertising
The Sony PlayStation was the first ever console to truly pitch itself at an adult market. This meant that the machine’s advertisements set a more mature, often strange tone that continues through to this day. The PS1, PS2, PSP and PS3, all have had their share of kooky advertisements, and all have had their share…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 14, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallCaptain Commando, Capcom’s Greatest Hero
Boy, Capcom really went to town today on the news and media, didn’t they? It’s a damn shame, then, that none of it involved the company’s original mascot – and my all-time favourite Capcom hero – Captain Commando. Just like Sega, in the 1980s Capcom felt the need to create a mascot for itself, to…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 13, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallRemembering The First Console To Use Cartridges
Today’s video game news was tinged with sadness, as the world learned of the death of Jerry Lawson, the man who led the team behind the creation of the video game cartridge. Those cartridges were used in the Fairchild Channel F, the console Lawson helped develop along with Ron Smith and Nick Talesfore. While it…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 12, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Video Game Console That Never Was
Some game machines are killed long before they enter production. Others at least make it to market before dying, whether of old age or lack of demand. And then there’s the Konix Multisystem. The history of console video gaming is one dominated by American (Atari, Microsoft) and Japanese (Sony, Nintendo, Sega) companies. When you think…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 11, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Game Boy Creator’s Last Handheld Was A Wonderful Little Thing
Since Brian’s story earlier about the tragic death of former Nintendo great Gunpei Yokoi, I figured today would be a good time to take a look at the last thing he ever worked on: the WonderSwan handheld gaming device. While Yokoi will always be remembered as the man who created the Game & Watch, the…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 8, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallThis Place Was Like A Breeding Program For Awesome Games And Famous Developers
Aside from perhaps Nintendo, there are few video game studios that have ever been home to so many of the industry’s best and brightest as Looking Glass managed. Founded in 1990, Looking Glass was not only responsible for some of that decade’s most innovative and memorable games, but was also a place where people like…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 7, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallRemembering 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 -
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 -
CultureTotal RecallThis 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 RecallThe 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 RecallOnly 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 -
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 RecallSega’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
