Reviews
Silent Hill 2 and the Horror Games That Raised Us
Horror games didn’t used to be about jump scares. They were about the long walk down a hallway that was slightly too…
Author: Sal Benedetto
From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
Reviews
Thunder Force IV (Genesis)
GENESIS · SHMUP · REPLAY REVIEW The Genesis was the shoot-’em-up console — nobody disputes this — and Thunder Force IV is…
Reviews
Virtual Boy Wario Land
VIRTUAL BOY · PLATFORMER · DEEP CUT The Virtual Boy is gaming’s most famous failure — a red-tinted headache machine that lasted…
Features
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings Retrospective — Wololo, the King Endures
On 30 September 1999, Ensemble Studios released a real-time strategy game about the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages have been contested ever since. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings did not invent its genre, and it was…
Features
Lunchtime Deathmatches Built a Bear: GoldenEye 007’s Hidden Hand in Banjo-Tooie
Rare’s Banjo team played GoldenEye every lunchtime for two years. Chris Sutherland explains how those deathmatches shaped Banjo-Tooie’s design.
Features
From Battlefield to the Forbidden Land: How Battlefield 1942 Secretly Inspired Shadow of the Colossus
Fumito Ueda was hooked on Battlefield 1942 — and Shadow of the Colossus began as an online co-op giant hunt. The story of the idea that had to die.
Features
Sing, Little Grey Box: The Complete Modern Nintendo 64 Setup Guide
CRT or upscaler? Expansion Pak, cables, controllers and FPGA options explained — the complete guide to a modern Nintendo 64 setup that sings.
Features
Mole Mania DX: Miyamoto’s Buried Game Boy Gem, Dug Up in Full Color
Marc Robledo’s Mole Mania DX colourises Miyamoto’s forgotten 1996 puzzler in Link’s Awakening DX style. How it was made, and why it is now the definitive edition.
Features
The Yokoi Way: How Gunpei Yokoi’s Game Boy Philosophy Built Nintendo
Tetris’s creators remember Gunpei Yokoi, the engineer whose withered-technology philosophy built Nintendo’s game business — and who paid for its biggest failure.
Features
See You, Space Cowboy: Cowboy Bebop’s Japan-Only PS2 Game Finally Speaks English
Twenty years after its Japan-only launch, Cowboy Bebop: Tsuioku no Serenade is fully playable in English thanks to one fan translator.