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CultureTotal RecallDon’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…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 9, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallThe 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…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 8, 2011 -
CultureTotal Recall
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…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 7, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallMicrosoft’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,…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 4, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallNintendo 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…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 3, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallWhen 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…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 2, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallSega 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…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 1, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallNintendo And Sony Didn’t Invent 3D Gaming, You Know
With the PS3 able to play games in 3D and Nintendo about to launch a 3D handheld, it’s easy to get carried away with the “latest big thing” in gaming. And forget we had 3D games the 1980s Yes, long before Sony added 3D capabilities to the PS3 and Nintendo unveiled the 3DS, several companies…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 26, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Best Way To Stop Game Piracy Is With Silly Pirate Heads
Video game piracy is seen by the industry as a dire problem, so much so that many PC games these days are burdened with digital rights management (or DRM) systems. They suck. Pirate heads are way better. Today, DRM is a contentious issue in the world of PC gaming. Several high-profile titles in recent years,…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 25, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallBefore They Were Game Of The Year Finalists…
We have four finalists in our 2010 Game Of The Year awards. All worthy contenders, but as has been pointed out, all are also either sequels or continuations of older series. So let’s take a look at how far they’ve come. In case you’re only just joining us, the four games nominated by Kotaku editors…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 22, 2011 -
CultureTotal Recall
The Day The Mario Bros. Saved George Bush, Democracy And America
Despite the majority of their adventures taking place in the mythical Mushroom Kingdom, for one day in 1990, the Mario Bros. forgot about saving a princess and had to save the President of the United States instead. Between 1989 and 1990, Nintendo had two different Super Mario Bros. cartoons made, as part of the same…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 21, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallNothing Sega Has Done To Sonic Is This Horrific
You may have seen these cheap LCD games offered as McDonalds Happy Meal toys before. They’ve been run in several territories around the world. But you’ve never seen them advertised like they were in Pakistan. Back in 2004, what must surely be one of the world’s least popular McDonalds outlets tried a unique method of…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2011 -
CultureTotal Recall
Remember When Box Art Gave You Nightmares?
And yes, before you ask, it’s a real game
By Luke Plunkett Published January 14, 2011 -
CultureTotal Recall
Well, Game Previews Have Certainly Changed
As seen on The Retroist
By Luke Plunkett Published January 6, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallThis Could Be The Greatest Retro Game Collection In The World
This man owns the finest collection of video games we’ve ever laid eyes on. In fact, what this guy has, “collection” doesn’t really do it justice. The owner’s name is BryceCorp, a Frenchman who in these videos takes the world on a tour of his video games. To give you an idea of the scale…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 23, 2010 -
CultureTotal RecallLest We Forget Toy Soldiers
Christmas is a time for looking back at the year passed, processing what’s been most important for you over the past twelve months. For me, and video games, one such thing was — surprisingly — Xbox Live Arcade game Toy Soldiers. I’m not normally one for shouting “UNDERRATED!” about a game, because it’s a pointless…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 17, 2010 -
CultureTotal Recall
These Are Not Action Figures, They Are Nintendo Games
You’ll usually find something being crammed in a “blister pack” when it’s an action figure or a control pad. You don’t normally see video games shipped that way. But it turns out that in Western Europe (and very rarely Canada), in the 1980s and 1990s, you could find classic Nintendo games encased in plastic, hanging…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 13, 2010 -
CultureTotal Recall
The Most Awesome PC Box Art In The World
They may be known as Studio Liverpool today, but there once was a time British developers and publishers Psygnosis were responsible for the greatest video game covers of all time. No, you’re not imagining things, we’ve republished this wonderful look at Psygnosis’ box art to help celebrate Kotaku’s PC Gaming Week. From the mid-80s to…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 26, 2010 -
CultureTotal Recall
That’s One Way To Sex Up Team Tennis
Classic racy ad for Tengen’s Davis Cup World Tour on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and you didn’t have to hide the magazine under your mattress. Seen on GameDummy via Reddit – a Redditor notes the ad references this picture (NSFW)
By Owen Good Published September 21, 2010 -
CultureTotal RecallNot Everyone Played The Oregon Trail, You Know
The Oregon Trail holds a special place in many American’s hearts, because it’s a game they played when they were both young, and at school. If you were British or Australian, though, you might have played something else In the 1980s, many schools in both countries were equipped with BBC Micro computers, often the first…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 13, 2010