Retro Gaming News
“It was for the American market, so let’s have the Americans do it”. The Menacer was yet another skirmish in the ongoing war between Nintendo and Sega in the early nineties. Nintendo brought out a light gun – the Super Scope for the SNES – so of course Sega had to have one, too. But…
“To this day, every time I see Atari: Game Over, I get emotional”. On Tuesday, July 27th, 1982, the video game designer/programmer Howard Scott Warshaw accepted a call from his bosses at Atari, asking him to put together the video game tie-in to Steven Spielberg’s latest blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600. He…
3D classics. In many ways, it’s hard to believe the 3DS is a ‘dead’ system, because the gimmick of glasses-free 3D is still amazing, even a decade later. Following in the footsteps of the Nintendo DS – the company’s most successful hardware ever, with 154.02 million units sold – was never going to be easy,…
“How can we make a 3D platform game?”. Banjo-Kazooie. Crash Bandicoot. Spyro the Dragon. And yes, Super Mario 64. These names are synonymous with defining the 3D platformer, exploring the uncharted territories of the third dimension and taking players on a journey far grander than going from the left side of the screen to the…
The Stern of the Union Address, your monthly resource for news, information and highlights on all things Stern Pinball. Without further ado my fellow pinheads: Venom: When the legendary Mark Tremonti expressed his desire to be part of an exciting new Stern pinball, there was no doubt in our minds—it had to be Venom! Dive…
An unorthodox radio station, exclusive games, and a bitter breakup. Few aspects of Nintendo’s history are as fascinating to us as the Nintendo Satellaview. Nintendo R&D2 designed the Japanese-exclusive Super Nintendo add-on back in the mid-’90s, with the device allowing users to download video games and other services via a satellite connection. It came about…
A rare peek behind the curtain! Few companies have produced as many “arcade hits” as the video game giant Konami. The Japanese developer and publisher — founded all the way back in 1969 as a jukebox repair business — is behind some of the most beloved arcade titles: from puzzle-action games like Frogger to a…
Colour me surprised. How do you follow up on one of the most successful consumer products of all time? Well, if you’re Nintendo, you add a splash of colour. The Game Boy was a critical and commercial smash hit when it arrived in 1989, and its longevity surprised many; after all, the monochrome handheld had…
“Machines were considered boys’ stuff and they wanted to bring girls in”. It’s hard to imagine a time before Barbie was a multi-media megastar, but at the start of the ’90s, she had only appeared in one game that had ultimately failed to live up to the expectations of its publisher, Epyx: Barbie (1984) for…
Updated with impressions of the N64 EM05 Ultra Module. Originally announced back in 2017 as the RetroBlox, Polymega has endured a fairly tumultuous journey to market. While the system’s objective has always been the same – to offer players the chance to access software for a wide range of cartridge and CD-based retro consoles in…