In 1988, I spent more hours of my life than I care to recall playing Zelda II: The Adventure of Link on my original 8-bit Nintendo. Combined with Ridley Scott’s Legend, Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, and Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride, it gave me a soft spot for sword and sorcery. Playing Shadow of the [...]
Mario is a hero of the Proletariat.
R-Type has a funny way of showing its affection. It doesn’t give you black eyes, but it still makes them red and twitchy. You don’t eat as much. You abuse caffeine and other stimulants, as if that makes much of a difference. Its benchmark of expectation keeps rising. Make no mistake: The standards presented will [...]
Press Start is a Montreal show dedicated to art based on old videogames. Game Set Watch has pictures and links to pictures and to an associated store.
Do you enjoy the music of NES games? Well, there’s a show just for you. This time, the music of “Fester’s Quest.”
Laura Hudson looks at 8 Bit Batman and beyond through 23 years of Batman in videogames. (via the ISB)
The Design Inspiration collects 45 portraits of the Mushroom Kingdom’s favorite heroes, Mario and Luigi.
Play NES in your tub safe and sound–or pretend to play Super Mario with a soap controller that looks amazingly like the real thing. (And check out Fight Club soap with no rich ladies’ fat in it; then again, rich ladies might still be vegan…)
“Mario Kart Love Song.” blinktwice4y’s song about Mario Kart and Love. The ‘stache makes it, though.
Last year when I heard that Burger King was planning to release a series of video games for the Xbox 360, I thought the game industry was headed for a new low. To me, this went way beyond the shameless hordes of promotional tie-ins to popular movies and TV shows, and seemed more inappropriate than [...]
Based on the reaction to the November launch of the Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii through sales and media attention, it’s clear that gaming as a cultural phenomenon has cemented itself into the collective consciousness. Local news media observed in awe as the faithful lined up outside their local electronics retailer at midnight in order [...]
The arcade was a place of refuge for the outcasts of adolescent social circles, where time would be spent dumping quarters into some dumb machine instead of studying or playing ball hockey or parking their ass in front of the TV like every other kid. Communities were built among the cabinets with their sticky buttons [...]
Before the press conferences of the Big Three at E3 2006, TIME magazine explains why Nintendo’s strategy for success is “don’t listen to your customers”. And given the anticipation for their revolutionary new console, it seems to be working.
A man is having his first physiotherapy appointment. A woman comes in wearing a white doctor’s coat. Their conversation begins on a clinical level, the doctor asking the man about how he sustained his injuries. The man explains that he works in the videogame industry, and in fact has come from work. She assumes that [...]
I’m fairly suspicious of nostalgia, and I hate how advertisers leverage our emotions to sell us the same products twice. So while I’m happy that people are rediscovering videogames from their youth, and that the games and their blocky aesthetic are mushrooming up all over the culture, I wonder about the retro-gaming phenomenon. Are these [...]
The line between gimmick and innovation is sometimes hard to draw. Game purists look down on specialized peripherals, and while I like my shotguns and dance-pads in single-purpose arcade games, I rarely think they’re justified in a multi-purpose home system. Maybe I know too many people who bought the Power Glove. This Mattel peripheral was [...]
What, it’s June already? I’m sure a I had a whole year here a minute ago. In any case, summer means humidity, allergies, and a sad lack of home AC. This year, it also means squirrels in the roof (don’t ask. No, really).
