Hardware desk. If it has a cartridge slot, an FPGA board or a weird controller, Hank has opened it up and put it back together — usually better. Writes the gear reviews and hardware spotlights.
The last Game Boy: a better-than-SNES for $99.99, the screen nobody could see, the clamshell SP fix, and a golden age that shared a slot with the 16-bit canon. The complete GBA story.
Wood grain, one button, the first boom and the first crash – and a homebrew scene still shipping cartridges. The complete story of the Atari 2600: Stella, Activision, E.T.’s desert burial, and the fifty-dollar resurrection.
A Silicon Graphics supercomputer, a bet on cartridges that cost Nintendo Square, and a top shelf that still wins ‘greatest ever’ lists. The complete N64 story: Mario 64, GoldenEye, the 64DD, and the afterlife that refuses to emulate.
Late, slower on paper, and losing the war – it won on the greatest library of the 16-bit age. The complete story of the SNES: Mode 7, the RPG golden age, Donkey Kong Country’s coup, and the Sony chip that incubated the PlayStation.
The industry was dead; a grey box brought it back. The complete story of the NES: the Trojan Horse launch of 1985, the lockdown and the Seal of Quality, the mania, the Tetris and Tengen wars, and the afterlife in scripture, speedruns and brand-new cartridges.
Woodgrain, keypads, George Plimpton and a $300 million crash: the complete story of the Intellivision – the first 16-bit console, the first downloadable games, the FTC keyboard case, the Blue Sky Rangers, and the afterlife that ended with Atari owning the name.
It was office plumbing that carried a revolution: the complete story of DOS gaming – the configuration wars, the shareware underground, Doom at midnight, the adventure golden age, and the black screen that invented modern PC gaming.
In Japan it finished third. In America it nearly won. The complete story of the Genesis: Kalinske’s war plan, Sonic, the sports annexation, Mortal Kombat’s blood, Sega Channel’s future – and the add-on spiral and civil war that cost Sega the crown it had won.
Nintendo’s beautiful red mistake: real 3D in a visor, in 1995 – and the world said no. The complete story of the Virtual Boy: Gunpei Yokoi’s last big idea, the mirror-scanned display, twenty-two games, the firesale, and the redemption that took thirty years.
The best-selling computer model in history: seventeen million breadbins, one savage price war, and a three-voice sound chip that changed game music forever. The complete story of the Commodore 64 – Tramiel’s weapon, the bedroom coders’ university, the machine that never died.