Simulation games are often niche titles at best with very few of them reaching critical success on a massive scale. Think titles like Microsoft’s Flight Simulator or the Farming Simulator line of games. And don’t get us started on the maddeningly expensive train sim games out there. Like we said, it’s a niche area and [...]
Some consoles had a much larger impact on the course of video games than many of us realise… …one of those is the Commodore Amiga! Commodore’s attempt at competing with IBM PCs and Apple’s newly introduced Macintosh, 1985’s Amiga was an impressive piece of kit for its time though most of us don’t remember it [...]
When we consider media for computers, one format that was in widespread use in the early years of personal computing but which fell out of favour entirely is the cassette tape. Largely phased out of the market in favour of floppy disks, cassette tapes could store a reasonable amount of data but were, as anyone [...]
First-person shooters owe a lot to DOOM, but you probably don’t need another lecture on how it revolutionized gaming, entertained millions of players around the world, and is still being modded to oblivion after well over two decades. When its level editor was distributed to fans in 1994, one company decided to cash in on [...]
To say that video games have become much more politically correct over the years is no bold claim. One inappropriate joke or passing comment could result in unwanted criticism from countless people, just the kind of thing game developers want to avoid entirely. It wasn’t always like this, however. Sometimes, developers pushed games beyond the [...]
A staple of the 1990s arcade scene, side-scrolling beat ‘em ups are simple enough in nature for anyone to grasp and compelling such that anyone can enjoy them. Though it started on its path to popularity in the arcades, beat ‘em up games are actually one of the older genres in the industry. Whether it [...]
The golden age of Japanese arcades wouldn’t be the same without one big name: Namco. Specifically, it wouldn’t be the same without an IP dreamt up by Namco’s staff, and that is Pac Man. Aside from Pac Man, however, Namco is one of the pillars of the early Japanese arcades, contributing no less than Galaxian, [...]
The house that brought us Mega Man, Street Fighter, and Resident Evil, among others, Capcom is a relatively young company in the grand scheme of things but has had an outsized impact in its 39 years in the video game industry. Founded on May 30, 1979 in Osaka, Japan, Capcom started life as I.R.M. Corporation [...]
When people consider the founding fathers of video games, one title cannot help but make it on the list, and that is Pong. A virtual table tennis game that first debuted in 1972 from Atari, Pong was simple and simply a sensation, largely kicking off the arcade craze and birthing the home console industry after [...]
If we can thank 1980s American cinema for one thing it would be the popularization of the slasher horror flick. Films like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th often pitted promiscuous though resourceful teenagers against murderous bad guys that either couldn’t be stopped (Michael Myers or Jason) or couldn’t be killed (Freddy [...]