Retro Features
Feature Best Nintendo DS Games
As voted for by you
This ranked reader-voted list of the 50 best Nintendo DS games is governed by Nintendo Life User Ratings and can change depending on those scores. Feel free to rate your favourites and, perhaps, rejig the ranking below. Enjoy! One of the joys of Nintendo's Switch is how it marries the company's home console heritage with its...
Feature NES Creator Masayuki Uemura On Building The Console That Made Nintendo A Household Name
"Back then, we didn’t know if it was going to be popular or not"
There's no denying that the NES – or Famicom as it was known in its native Japan – is one of the most important pieces of video game hardware ever made. Not only did it turn Nintendo from an outsider player to industry leader, it laid down the foundations of an industry which...
Book Review Sega Arcade: Pop-Up History - A Gloriously Decadent Tribute To A Golden Age
Taikan your breath away
To anyone who didn't experience them firsthand, it's hard to accurately convey the mesmerising power of amusement arcades in the '80s and '90s. A furious storm of light, sound and smell (the latter not always pleasant, we should add), your typical arcade was dominated by flashing screens and packed, jostling bodies. This was...
Mario Memories Playing Super Mario Bros. 3 In The Garden
Darren recalls a stolen moment in his back garden with Mario
Today is the 30th anniversary of the US release of Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES! That's right, boomers - you're getting old. In honour of the occasion we're republishing this article originally posted as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations for the iconic Mario franchise as a...
Feature 10 Nintendo Games We'd Love To See Finally Come To The West
Nintendo games that never officially left Japan
These days there are very few first-party or Nintendo-published titles that don't get an international release, but back in the day it was common for games to remain in their Japanese homeland for months or even years, if they ever came overseas at all. No, we're not just talking about the countless...
Ninterview How Two GamesMaster Fans Are Paying Tribute To TV's Best Video Game Show
Tune into "Under Consoletation"
These days, you need only turn on your phone or open up a laptop to gain access to video game news, reviews and footage, but back in the pre-internet early '90s, you either had magazines or GamesMaster. For those of you outside the UK, that name might not mean anything, but trust us, it was amazing. GamesMaster was a...
Feature Remember When Atari Turned Down Nintendo And Sega?
How different things could have been
When you think of the key names in the history of video games hardware, a few notable monikers spring to mind. Nintendo is obviously one of them; the Japanese veteran has been a major part of the industry since the '80s, and has maintained a position of importance and influence despite numerous challenges from...
Feature The Most Expensive Retro Games For Nintendo Systems
12 rare games to keep an eye out for
Make no mistake, we've got endless love for chunky plastic cartridges and proper printed manuals (remember those?), but the convenience of digital games is hard to deny and over the last decade or so digital distribution has taken off to the point where often physical versions aren't even an option these days...
Talking Point How Much Is Your Video Game Collection Really Worth To You?
Sentimental value rarely equals hard currency
Chibi-Robo earns his keep. It's happened to everyone at one time or another. Whether due to changing life circumstances or sheer curiosity, most of us will have looked at our video game collection and wondered how much hard cash we could get for it. We've interviewed serious collectors in the past and...
Book Review Japansoft: An Oral History - A True Treasure You Need To Read
Celebrating the unsung heroes with this exceptional book
A few years ago, British journalist and author John Szczepaniak launched a Kickstarter campaign with a grand vision – to document the memories of some of Japan's most influential yet underappreciated games developers. The result was an extensive three-volume series (and accompanying
Feature Hyperkin Explains Why Its Next Console Is Bringing The Game Boy To Your Living Room
Forget those "streetlight-lit car rides home"
Hyperkin has been one of the biggest names in 'new' retro products for quite some time now, thanks to products like the RetroN 5 and Supa Boy. The company is back with a new device – the RetroN Jr. – which plays the ent
Feature No Anime Please, We're Westerners - When Anime Was Taboo In Western Games
A time when anime and western games didn't mix
Japanese animation – or 'anime' as many call it – is huge business these days. While it is naturally most popular in its homeland, we've seen numerous anime properties cross over to the west and find the kind of success that is usually reserved for home-grown cartoons and media franchises. Series...
Black and white brilliance
Friday 21st April 1989 – the day that the Game Boy launched in Japan. Thirty years ago today the video gaming landscape would be forever changed as Nintendo opened up the new frontier of portable gaming to the masses. The company’s Game & Watch line let you take limited gaming experiences on-the-go, but the Game...
Feature Why You'll Never Get To Play Your Favourite Retro Game On Switch
Companies really do want your money, but at the right price
A few weeks ago while scrolling through Twitter, a particular video clip caught our eye. It showed Slipstream, a 1995 F1 arcade game from Capcom. Using Sega’s System 32 board, it was produced in very limited quantities for the Latin American market and never saw wide release. As you can...
Feature How Pirate Television Helped Sega Beat Nintendo In The UK
"We were The Rolling Stones to Nintendo's Beatles"
The year is 1992. In a typical British household a typical British family is huddled around the television, still unsure about what has just transpired during the ad break of their typical British soap opera. Nestled among the traditional commercials for washing powder and breakfast cereal is a...
Feature 30 Weird And Wonderful Peripherals From Nintendo's History
Playing with power... and a whole lotta plastic
Nintendo’s history as a manufacturer of playing cards and toys means the company has always been very comfortable with expanding out from with video game console under the TV into the wider world of peripheral accessories and novelties. These extra lumps of plastic and electronics that interface with...
Feature I Think My Game Boy Predicts The Future
“What evil might this forbidden technology unleash?”
The Game Boy turned 30 last month – to the shock of those of us realising we are therefore well over 30. Where did the past go? I think it went into a nook at the end of my bookshelf – at least that’s where I found my old DMG-01, the original Game Boy. Like many reading this, I’m sure,...
Feature The Man Who Lost Tetris
The almost unbelievable story of Robert Maxwell
Media tycoon Robert Maxwell’s influence on the UK and international games’ software industry is the stuff of legend. As Dan Ackmerman’s writes in The Tetris Effect, Maxwell’s part in the international battle for the rights to Tetris resulted in legal battles between his son, Kevin Maxwell,...
Feature Your Beloved Games Console Is Slowly But Surely Dying
Parts failure. Power issues. Creepy-crawlies. Your system is under attack
"Everything put together falls apart" is the kind of sage-like adage that you often hear elderly relatives offering up over the dining table in-between moaning about Brexit and discussing the weather, and is a phrase most people under the age of 30 will surely dismiss out of...
Feature GoldenEye Dev David Doak On Shaking (And Stirring) The FPS Genre On Console
"All we could see were the bad things"
You couldn’t escape it. It was here, rife and potent. It ploughed a path through conventional gaming conversations from the casuals to the parents of gamers that had to put up with the noise, the screaming and the not going to bed because if you didn’t kill John with thirty-seven remote mines stuck to the...
Feature Uncovering The Story Behind Nintendo's Most Bizarre Tie-In
‘90s Mario mania, posthumous endorsements and White Knuckle Scorin'...
Uncanny, no? It’s Saturday morning and we’re relaxing on the sofa with a coffee, idly scrolling through Twitter while MTV Classics plays in the background. The 1992 video for Roy Orbison’s posthumously released track 'I Drove All Night' plays. Now, we’re partial to...
Feature Every Star Wars Game On Nintendo Systems, Ranked By Us
We sort the padawans from the poodoo
You may have felt a disturbance in the Force recently. Yes, the 'end' of Star Wars is upon us with the release of Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. The final film in what has been dubbed 'the Skywalker Saga', it promises to bring to a close the cinematic tales of the Skywalker clan and tie a bow on the...
Feature Jason Brookes Talks Super Famicom, Import Gaming And Super Play
"The feeling of being part of a club was endemic in Super Play"
Earlier this week, former Super Play, EDGE and Famitsu staffer Jason Brookes passed away after a long battle with cancer at the age of 52. We're running a proper tribute to the great man soon, but in the meantime, here's an exclusive interview conducted with Jason back in 2017, but...
Feature Jez San On Star Fox, Super FX And Teaching Nintendo How To Fly
"They’d never trusted a western company in that way before"
Jez San occupies a pretty unique place in the world of video games. He founded his company, Argonaut Software, while he was still a teenage schoolkid, and his free-roaming 3D shooter Starglider would become a critical and commercial smash-hit, paving the way for a relationship with...
Feature The Game-Changing Nintendo VR Headset That Never Was
"We had cool stuff working"
Argonaut Software is a name that long-time Nintendo fans will be intimately familiar with; the UK-based firm worked with Nintendo on its Super FX chip, the cartridge-based hardware that made titles like Star Fox, Stunt Race FX and Yoshi's Island possible. However, Argonaut's interest in tech didn't end there; the company...
Hardware Review How Does The Carby GameCube Component Cable Compare To The Real Deal?
Component or HDMI, that is the question
If you're of a certain age you'll understand the struggles we went through to get the absolute best picture quality out of our consoles back in the day. The GameCube was no different; in fact, we remember paying well over the odds for a modified Component-to-RGB Scart cable in order to get our NTSC GameCube...
Feature Hands-On With Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe, A Challenging New Game Boy Title With A Cute Look
You go, girl
Making a new Game Boy game in the modern era takes a lot of guts, but Tangram Games has done just that with Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe. Successfully crowdfunded to the tune of €40,972, this is a simplistic yet challenging action title which tasks you with getting to the top of the screen using a wide range of skills while avoiding hazards...
Hardware Review Hyperkin Admiral - Wireless N64 Controller Goodness
Cut the cord
Anyone who's ever crammed around a TV with a Nintendo 64, GoldenEye 007 and a few friends will know the struggles that the short cord on the N64's controller caused. Few companies have tried to remedy this in the past with controller extensions – and controllers that just don't hit the mark – but no one has really succeeded...
Feature The Story Of Blizzard's Diablo Junior, The Game Boy Epic That Never Was
“A Diablo-lite game with a town and lots of dungeons? I'd eat that up”
Modern-day Nintendo fans may be able to enjoy the thrills of Diablo III on the move in 2019, but at the turn of the millennium, options for Nintendo-loving dungeon explorers were far more limited – although the outlook could have been quite different. Following Diablo II's...
Feature The Most Memorable Ghosts In Nintendo Games
Spooks, spectres and ghosts that stuck around
It's close to midnight, and something evil's lurking in the dark... Well, perhaps. Yes, Nintendo Switch has its fair share of true horrors, but there's a fair chance that any ghost you happen across on Nintendo platforms could be a Casper-like friendly phantom. With Halloween almost upon us and Luigi up...
Feature 25 Years Ago, Nintendo Took On The Might Of Street Fighter With Killer Instinct
Ultra combo!
The technological sands may have been shifting dramatically back in 1994, but the ripples from the groundbreaking impact of Capcom’s Street Fighter II were still being felt in the games industry. While the 32-bit era was looming and sophisticated new games machines were introducing players to the immersive thrills of 3D worlds, the...
Feature Luigi And Video Gaming's Other Palette Swap Heroes
Clones that became stars
Luigi’s Mansion 3 releases in just a couple of days and rounds out a trilogy of excellent games featuring gaming's most famous sidekick in the starring role. Over the years Luigi has grown from mere clone to become a beloved Nintendo character and developed something of a cult following along the way. Perhaps his cowardice...
Feature How Switch Brings Back Game Boy Multiplayer Memories
A link (cable) to the past
Quite apart from the huge number of great games coming to the system every week, one result of Switch’s success that we’ve really enjoyed is how it has brought back a focus on local multiplayer gaming not seen since the N64 days. Online is still king, of course, but we’d argue there’s nothing quite like the rush of...
Feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rescue-Palooza! Is The Turtles Game You've Always Wanted
"I’ve wanted to see every NES and Game Boy game get a SNES do-over"
From the silver screen to the small screen to the even smaller screen on your Game Boy, the world’s favourite comic book pizza-lovers have featured on displays of all dimensions. But, while the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles originated in pen and ink, many people remember them...
Feature "Nintendo Killed My Son!" - Pulling Apart A Tragic Headline More Than Two Decades On
How a single story rocked the games industry
Video games have often been blamed for many of society's ills, and only this week has the news broken that a Canadian family intends to take Epic Games to court over the addictive nature of Fortnite, which, they claim, has "ruined" the lives of their children. The case cites the classification of 'video...
Feature 10 Of The Worst Nintendo Game Covers Ever
Our picks for the lowest of the low
You may be familiar with our weekend Box Art Brawl series where we pit regional versions of the same game against each other in a gladiatorial poll to find out which has the best cover art. That's all well and good, but there are a great many terrible examples that will never experience the glory of combat in our...
Hardware Review Should You Import The Japanese Mega Drive Mini?
Better pads and the Tower of Power, but is that enough?
The Sega Genesis / Mega Drive Mini is pretty special – as you'll know if you've already consulted our exhaustive review. Packed full of retro goodness and blessed with a lineup that contains some of the system's most desirable titles, it's proof that Sega is finally taking the 'micro-console'...
Feature 10 Strangest Moments In Captain N: The Game Master
Celebrating the cult Saturday morning Nintendo cartoon’s 30th birthday
Super Smash Bros.? Pffft, garbage. The Marvel Cinematic Universe? Complete trash. Project X Zone? Hmmm, we appreciate your thinking but even so, nope. The greatest crossover of all time turned 30 years old this month and none of you selfish sods even noticed. We’re talking,...
Feature Getting Reacquainted With Zelda: Link's Awakening, An Irreverent And Silly Classic
"It was like we were making a parody of Zelda"
We originally published this piece back in February, and have decided to give it another push now, to mark the launch of Link's Awakening on Switch. The Switch is getting its second Zelda game, but it perhaps wasn't one that people were expecting. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was the...
Feature Uncovering The Unlikely Story Of The World's Worst Controller In The Power Of Glove
"It's so bad"
To a complete outsider, the notion of creating a documentary about a failed video game peripheral from 30 years ago might seem pointless, if not downright silly. But the Power Glove is so much more than a device which simply struggled to find its audience and meekly withdrew into the night; it has become an iconic piece of gaming...
Feature Nintendo Hardware Refreshes Through The Ages
Switch Lite is just the latest in a long line of updates
Mid-cycle hardware refreshes may sometimes feel like a relatively recent development, but console manufacturers have been releasing revised versions of their consoles since video gaming first entered the home. You might associate Nintendo hardware refreshes mostly with handheld consoles thanks...
As ranked by you lovely people
The Nintendo GameCube is eighteen years old today! In honour of reaching this prestigious milestone (which now enables it to enter pubs and watch a whole range of naughty movies in the UK), we asked Nintendo Life readers to score their favourite GameCube games. The results have now been assembled into the list of 50...
Hardware Classics Nintendo GameCube
Indigo, Spice and all things nice
To celebrate its 18th birthday, we take a look back at Nintendo’s little box of tricks... In many ways, the GameCube was a console out of time, arguably arriving too late (or perhaps too early) to realise its true potential. We can look back now and appreciate its quirks, admire its design and excellent software...
Hardware Review The Genesis / Mega Drive Mini Finally Does Sega's History Justice
Mega Drive me to the store
Miniaturized consoles are nothing new to Sega as it was releasing them long before Nintendo’s Classic NES and SNES consoles took the spotlight. The plug-and-play systems it produced in collaboration with AtGames usually car
Feature 20 Dreamcast Games We'd Love To See On Nintendo Switch
20 games to mark 20 years
The Dreamcast turns 20 in North America today - yes, 9/9/99 was now two decades ago - and in honour of the occasion we're republishing this article from last November when the console reached the same milestone in its homeland. Enjoy! The Sega Dreamcast turns 20 today – it launched on November 27th, 1998 in Japan – and...
Feature Has A Decades-Old Super Mario 64 Mystery Finally Been Cleared Up?
L is NOT and was never real, according to new sources
There's something about the very best video games which inspires obsession over the smallest details. Whether it involves (over)analysing a blurry texture, trying to decipher a muffled audio clip or simply experim
Talking Point Are Retro Repro Firms Exploiting Demand With Shoddy Products?
Gleylancer is the latest to disappoint
Given that many of retro gaming's most collectable items now sell for hundreds (and occasionally thousands) of dollars, it's unsurprisingly that enterprising companies are turning their hand to officially-licenced reprints to satisfy demand and make a quick buck in the process. The latest example of this is...
Hardware Review You Don't Need The SNK Neo Geo Samurai Shodown Mini, But You'll Want It Anyway
Less a console, more an objet d'art
You might think that Nintendo has embraced the 'Classic Mini' craze with gusto thanks to its NES and SNES Classic Editions, but the company's efforts in this field pale in comparison to that of SNK, which has been pumping out miniature hardware with extreme prejudice for the past year or so. First, we had the Neo...
Hardware Review The EON Super 64 Gives Your N64 HDMI Output, But Is It Really Worth $150?
Plug-and-play HD for your Nintendo 64
We're big fans of EON here at Nintendo Life. The company has already produced some amazing GameCube HDMI adapters in the form of the GCHD and GCHD Mk II, both of which harness the console's digital output to give a crisp picture without the need for pesky internal modification. However, for its next trick, EON...
Feature The Legacy Of Nintendo 64's Transfer Pak
Marrying console and handheld hardware long before Switch
Following the 16-bit glories of the Super Nintendo, its successor often gets short shrift from gamers these days. Of course, it’s adored by Nintendo fans of a certain age who doubled down on it during the PlayStation generation, but it’s a wilfully ‘odd’ system and arguably tough to...
Hands On This $50 Handheld Plays Pretty Much Every Game From Your Misspent Youth
The BittBoy Pocket Go really is something
We've covered previously BittBoy handhelds on the site before, so you guys should know the drill by now. These are super-cheap emulation-focused portables that feature off-the-shelf SoC tech and cost peanuts, and the latest addition – the BittBoy Pocket Go – is no different. Where this new version...
Feature The Making Of The PC Engine, The 8-Bit Wonder That Took On Nintendo
With new 'Mini' hardware on the way, we look back at this 8-bit wonder
This piece was originally published in 2012. With the news that Konami is producing a PC Engine Mini, we thought you might like a fresh look. Enjoy! Western gamers tend to consider Nintendo and Sega as the two major players in the 16-bit war. On European and American soil this...
A brawl in the family
For a system that's no longer in active production, the Nintendo 64 has sure seen a lot of new controllers recently. We reviewed the Tribute64 pad not so long ago, and now it's the turn of the Retro Fighters Brawler64 – a pad that was crowdfunded on Kickstarter as a "next generation" offering for Nintendo's much-loved 64-bit...
Feature Here's Why Perfect Dark Has Three Different Covers
Three regions, three covers - but why?
Perfect Dark is perhaps one of the most accomplished games in the N64 library. It built on the solid work seen in the sublime GoldenEye 007, pushing the host hardware to its limits and making excellent use of the N64 Expansion Pak to deliver the kind of visuals that rival systems could only dream of. It remains...
Book Review NES Encyclopedia: Everything You Wanted To Know About The NES, But Were Afraid To Ask
Over 870 games detailed within...
There are certain video game platforms that stick in our memory longer than most, and these are often the systems that we cut our gaming teeth on; not necessarily our first, but certainly the ones that had the most impact on our formative years. You never forget your first love, as the saying goes. Video game...
Feature Every Nintendo Console Ranked From Worst To Best
Get your pitchfork ready...
Nintendo has a storied history of riding the crest of the video game wave, starting with 1977's Color TV-Game, which was exclusive to Japan and kicked-off the company's habit of revising its hardware (four iterations appeared between '77 and '80). However, it would be the NES that marked Nintendo's true entry into the...
Feature The History Of Virtua Racing, One Of The Most Influential Coin-Ops Of All Time
Now the Switch version is with us, we look back on the arcade classic...
Far more than any other factor, it was undoubtedly the advent of new hardware that propelled Sega’s arcade games to a whole new level. The ‘90s saw video games make the transition from sprites to polygons, a charge Sega led from a position of uncontested leadership despite...
Feature What It’s Like To Run An Online Game Store In Japan
“You could buy a car with this kind of money”
While a great many of the world’s best games come from western developers, for a certain sector of the gaming world, Japan is where it’s at. Not only is it the home of Nintendo, Sony, Sega and Capcom – as well as numerous other key players in the industry – but in the ‘80s and ‘90s it was...
Feature The Game Boy's Biggest Rival Gets Revived By The Modding Community
Where there's a McWill, there's a way
In the early 1980s, portable gaming was mainly limited to LCD-based games. Companies such as Casio, Grandstand and Tiger Electronics would all release various watches and devices to keep us entertained on those tiresome journeys. Nintendo wasn't really known here in the UK back then, but it stood out from the...
Hardware Review Retro-Bit Tribute64 - A Fine N64 Controller, And Perfect For Smash On Switch
But which version do you buy?
It's fair to say that the Nintendo 64 controller was a groundbreaking release. While it wasn't the first games controller to showcase analogue input, it was the first to be shipped as standard with its host console and therefore became the first taste of this now-ubiquitous control method for many players. The N64 pad...
Feature Keeping The Game Boy Retail Dream Alive, 30 Years After Launch
"It’s a borderline addiction"
The Nintendo Game Boy turns 30 this Sunday, and to celebrate this amazing occasion we'll be running a series of related features this week, right up to the big day. The Game Boy may be 30 years old this week, but that doesn’t mean the system is dead and gone from a retail perspective; over the past few years...
Feature Our Favourite Memories Of The Original Game Boy
Nostalgia for Nintendo’s most humble of handhelds
The Nintendo Game Boy turns 30 this Sunday, and to celebrate this amazing occasion we'll be running a series of related features this week, right up to the big day. As the 30th anniversary of the Game Boy’s Japanese debut approached, we here at Nintendo Life Towers were thinking a lot about the...
Feature How R-Type Was De-Made For The Game Boy, Before Demakes Were A Thing
"It was thought it would be impossible to convert it to the Game Boy"
The Nintendo Game Boy turns 30 this Sunday, and to celebrate this amazing occasion we'll be running a series of related features this week, right up to the big day. The concept of 'de-making' a game is one that most modern players will be familiar with; you take a recent title,...
Feature What Developers Really Think About The Nintendo Game Boy
"It was literally a game changer"
The Nintendo Game Boy turns 30 this Sunday, and to celebrate this amazing occasion we'll be running a series of related features this week, right up to the big day. The Game Boy turned 30 at the weekend, marking three wonderful decades of portable brilliance. Released in 1989, this monochrome marvel is arguably one...
Feature The Handheld Rivals Which Tried And Failed To Beat The Game Boy
A Game (Boy) of Thrones
The Nintendo Game Boy turns 30 this Sunday, and to celebrate this amazing occasion we'll be running a series of related features this week, right up to the big day. Context, they say, is for kings, and history can easily be misunderstood if we gloss over the specifics of how things relate to the time they're from. It’s...
Feature The Konami Hyperboy Is A Dumb But Loveable Throwback To A Bygone Era
Turns your Game Boy into an arcade machine! Kinda!
The Nintendo Game Boy turns 30 this Sunday, and to celebrate this amazing occasion we'll be running a series of related features this week, right up to the big day. Whenever a new piece of gaming hardware is successful, it naturally attracts a lot of attention – both in terms of games (because...
Hands On Polymega Is Shaping Up To Be The Ultimate All-In-One Retro Emulation Box
Time to dust off your entire vintage library
The classic-gaming-as-viable-business landscape looks wildly different from its form a decade ago. Where retrogaming fans once had to make do with Nintendo's haphazard Virtual Console release schedule and an occasional dribble of retro compilations, today we have something approaching an embarrassment of...
Hardware Review Analogue Mega Sg: Forget The Mega Drive Mini, This Is The Real Deal
The Genesis of another FPGA legend
For many, the Super Nintendo remains the absolute pinnacle of gaming hardware. The is 16-bit powerhouse was home to some amazing games, and via titles like Super Mario World, Zelda: Link to the Past and Street Fighter II, did much to expand the interactive entertainment market and turn an entire generation into...
Hardware Review Retro-Bit's Sega Genesis And Saturn Pads (Mostly) Hit The Right Spot
Just like you remember?
Fans of retro gaming who will accept nothing but original hardware are in a difficult spot in 2019. Systems from the '80s and '90s aren't getting any younger, and as time goes on, failure rates are only heading in one direction: up. These classic systems are robust, but they weren't built to last forever, and it's par for the...
Feature Behind The Scenes On Sensible Software's Unreleased SNES Bomberman Beater
Da bomb
Sensible Software is a studio embedded in gaming history for many reasons outside of the admittedly immortal Sensible Soccer. Along with the Canon Fodder games – the destructive sibling of Sensible's popular football sim – the company's commitment to the 16-bit Amiga proved that, sometimes, you can achieve impossibly addictive gaming...
Hardware Review 16Bit Pocket MD - An Unexpectedly Decent Portable Mega Drive
Time to put that Sega Nomad into storage?
This year, Sega will release the Mega Drive Mini, its own take on the retro console craze which Nintendo has done rather well out of in recent years with the NES and SNES Classic Editions. However, it's not the first time that the SNES rival has been
Feature Playing God: How Peter Molyneux Hooked Japan With Populous
"One of the things I really wanted was a Japanese toilet"
When the Super Famicom hit Japanese store shelves at the end of 1990, it was accompanied by a host of particularly strong titles that did a superb job of communicating the power and versatility of Nintendo's new platform: Super Mario World, F-Zero, Pilotwings, Final Fight; these were arguably...
Feature Say Hello To Vixen 357, A Lost Mega Drive Classic That's Hitting The West This Year
Fire Emblem with mechs?
Masaya is a studio that is closely associated with the strategy RPG series Langrisser, a franchise which went head-to-head with Nintendo's Fire Emblem in the '90s. However, the company – via Career Soft, one of its internal teams – had been dabbling in this genre for some time before that, releasing Elthlead (PC-8801,...
Hardware Review Insurrection Industries Carby - GameCube HDMI Support On A Budget
Yet another HDMI adapter, but this one doesn't cost the earth
Keen readers of the site will know that we're always on the lookout for ways to make vintage hardware look as good as possible on modern-day TV sets. Years ago, we dabbled in the world of scanline generators such as the SLG3000, and more recently we sang the praises of the OSSC, a device...
Hardware Review EON GCHD Mk-II GameCube HDMI Adapter - The Best Just Got Better
New and improved
When it comes to getting the best possible image quality out of your retro console of choice, you usually have to jump through a few awkward (not to mention expensive) hoops. That was certainly the case with the GameCube until very recently; the best way of running the system in the past was via Nintendo's own SCART (if you're in...
