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CultureTotal RecallThe Banned Pokémon Episode That Gave Children Seizures
On December 16, 1997, an episode of the then-unstoppable Pokémon animated series was broadcast in Japan. Barely thirty minutes later, nearly 700 children were on their way to hospital. Total Recall is a look back at the history of video games through their characters, franchises, developers and trends. The episode, called “Electric Soldier Porygon”, is…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 20, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallSuper-Rare Sonic The Hedgehog Game, Once Lost, Now Playable
One of the rarest Sonic games of all time is Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car, an arcade game for kids that was released in 1991. If you weren’t in Japan that year (so…pretty much all of us), you’ve probably never played it, as it has never been released again, ever, in any format. Until now!…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 20, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Nintendo Games Hidden In Seinfeld’s Apartment
All those years watching Seinfeld, and I never noticed this, sothanks to Tim Rogersfor the pic: turns out the media shelf in the background of Jerry’s apartment, which is mostly full of his old VHS tapes (like Navy Seals!), is also home to a few NES games. You can clearly see SimCity there (which is…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 11, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallA History Of Bad Nintendo Phone Ideas
What is it with Nintendo and phones? There are a ton companies out there making really nice phones, but no matter the number (and how many of them, *cough*, can already play Nintendo games), folks are always dreaming up ideas for Nintendo to go and make a phone of their own. I have no idea…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 5, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallKid Gets Super Nintendo On Launch Day, Is Pleased
And you thought you were cool because you lined up at midnight and bought a PS4 with your own money. Tyler Esposito, meanwhile, gets to say that he got a SNES on August 23, 1991. The day the console was first released in the United States, when it retailed for $199. Well, he gets to…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 9, 2015 -
CultureTotal Recall
The Dream Nintendo Game That Was Never Released
Shigesato Itoi (Mother), Shigeru Miyamoto (Mario, Zelda) and Tsunekazu Ishihara (Pokemon), all working on the same game? We should have known it would be too good to be true. In 1997, Nintendo announced a game called Cabbage. It sounded weird (by 1997 standards, anyway), was headed for a weird console and had a (presumably working)…
By Luke Plunkett Published May 25, 2015 -
CultureTotal Recall
The Origins Of Nintendo’s Trademark Box Art
From the very first days of its home console business, Nintendo has given its box art a trademark standard, a border or frame that clearly marks the title as being for a Nintendo system. Did you know, though, that this trademark is a lot older than the NES or Famicom? In the 60’s, Nintendo was…
By Luke Plunkett Published May 11, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallThe Crazy Urban Legend of the Killer Arcade Machine
Let me tell you a story. It involves an arcade game, the CIA, epilepsy, suicide and one of the greatest urban legends in all of video gaming. Long before the internet existed as we know it today, and long before more contemporary hoaxes about creepy video games, came the story of Polybius. It existed in…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 20, 2015 -
CultureTotal Recall
Zelda Was A Badass In This Classic Nintendo Comic
There was a Zelda animated series, and it was terrible. Let’s not dwell on it. But if you ever wondered what would happen if the same art style ditched the excuuuuuuuuuuuse me’s and played things a little straighter, you should know that such a thing actually exists. It’s The Legend of Zelda comic, released in…
By Luke Plunkett Published March 16, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallAwesome Fighting Game Let You Cut Other Player’s Heads Off
You can keep Street Fighter, Tekken, King of Fighters and Dead or Alive. My favourite fighting game pre-dates every single one of them, starred large men in furry underpants, and rather than lasting minutes could, if you knew your moves, be over in seconds. Because you weren’t using fists. You were using giant swords. Sure,…
By Luke Plunkett Published March 9, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallA History Of Maxis: Thanks For SimCity
The Maxis that you knew, the studio that released SimCity and invented The Sims, is no more. The SimCity brand might live on, and the Maxis brand might live on elsewhere, but they’ll survive only as brands, things EA will invoke to sell things. This is a very sad thing, but let’s try and remember…
By Luke Plunkett Published March 4, 2015 -
CultureTotal Recall
Nintendo’s Official Rules On What Color Mario Must Be
Press the Buttons (via Fast Co.) recently got their hands on something very special: a copy of Nintendo’s Style Guide, a 1993 document that sought to formalise all kinds of weird Nintendo-related mascot matters, like what exact colour Mario’s and Samus’ outfits have to be. It’s as obsessive as it is fascinating. Mario’s famous overalls,…
By Luke Plunkett Published March 2, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallMr. Awesome: Champion Gamer, Playgirl Model
Picture a world-beating gamer. Take your time. Done? Whatever you pictured, you probably did not picture Mr. Awesome. Mr. Awesome, aka Roy Shildt, may be familiar to some of you from his cameo in the 2007 documentary King of Kong, in which he plays a minor, background role. Which was a shame. If you’re sitting…
By Luke Plunkett Published March 2, 2015 -
CultureTotal Recall
The NES Was Once So Rare You Could Only Get It In Two Cities
It’s easy to forget now, given its enormous success, that the NES was once seen as a risky proposition. Coming on the heels of the great video game crash of 1983, into a market unsure if games were a fad that had already died out, the system didn’t just magically appear in stores across North…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 18, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallNintendo’s Ballsy Star Wars Knock-Off
Nintendo had a pretty strange relationship with Star Wars in the early years of its video game enterprise. We’ve already seen the weird shit that went down when Star Wars came to the NES, but a 1979 arcade game was even weirder. This is art for Nintendo Space Launcher, one of the company’s earlier arcade…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 16, 2015 -
CultureTotal Recall
Crazy SNES Controller Had All The Buttons
In the late 90s, Canadian company TranDirect Holding had an idea: what if you could connect a Super Nintendo to a phone line, and use it to do your banking on? And what if instead of using a regular SNES controller, you used a sweet custom BANKING CONTROLLER. Look at that thing! It’s like a…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 11, 2015 -
CultureTotal Recall
Nintendo’s Kick-Ass 1966 Board Game
Before they made video games, Nintendo made loads of other sweet stuff. One of the sweetest was this Ultraman board game, which has art that looks as awesome today as it did in 1966. As you can see in the gallery on Before Mario, the game — released using the old “Nintendo Game” logo —…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 28, 2015 -
CultureTotal RecallStar Wars’ Most Explosive Moment, Captured Perfectly In A Video Game
Since it’s out today on GoG, meaning a bunch of people are going to be playing it for the first time, let’s talk about X-Wing Alliance. And how it has the best ending of any Star Wars game ever made. X-Wing Alliance, the third in Lucasarts’ trilogy of space shooters, took away years of my…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 20, 2015
