Author: Chris Scullion

Chris Scullion is a Scottish video games journalist who's been covering video games professionally for 16 years. For the first six years of his career he worked at the Official Nintendo Magazine in the UK, then became the Games Editor of CVG before its untimely end. After setting up his own site, Tired Old Hack, Chris then joined Video Games Chronicle (VGC) where he is currently Features Editor. He has a passion for retro games and cataloguing their history, hence his ongoing series of console encyclopedia books (search his name on Amazon).

The Game Boy Encyclopedia – Pre-Order Now!

Published on June 2, 2024February 16, 2025 by Chris Scullion1 Comment

It’s tiiiiiiiime.

Following the releases of the NES, SNES, Mega Drive / Genesis, N64 and Dreamcast Encyclopedias, yer man has finally taken things portable with my first ever encyclopedia dedicated to a handheld system.

Well, two handheld systems, actually. The Game Boy Encyclopedia covers not only every game released in the west for the Game Boy, but also for its successor, the Game Boy Color.

The book is currently due for release in late September, but both the N64 and Dreamcast Encyclopedias turned up a little early so I’m making sure to start taking pre-orders for signed copies with plenty of time to spare.

The Game Boy Encylopedia is my largest book to date, and will come in at around 50 pages more than the biggest book so far, The Mega Drive & Genesis Encyclopedia.

We’re looking at a total of 1,148 games covered across both the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, every game released in Europe, the Americas and Australia.

I should also point out early on that, for the first time, the book will cost a fiver more. This is down to the publisher, not me – my books usually have a cover price of £30 but the Game Boy Encylopedia will cost £35 purely because it has another 50 pages or so and therefore costs more to print and bind.

As ever, every game gets a description and a screenshot, and because there are so many this time they’ll be split into quarter-page and half-page entries.

Here’s a couple of sample spreads for you, one from the Game Boy section and one from the Game Boy Color section, to give you an idea of what to expect (especially if you’ve never seen any of my previous books before).

When a lot of people think of the Game Boy they think of Pokémon, and when I think of Pokémon I think of Serebii.net so I’m delighted to confirm that the foreword has been written by Joe Merrick, the webmaster behind the legendary Pokémon website. Serebii celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, so I couldn’t be happier to have Joe’s words opening my book.

Sold? Lovely. As with all my previous books, The Game Boy Encyclopedia will be available at all good book shops (and plenty of mediocre ones) around the world.

Whether your preference is Amazon (all countries), Waterstones, Barnes & Noble, Indigo / Chapters or even Walmart, all you have to do is search for ‘Chris Scullion’ on your site of choice and with any luck, you’ll find it available to pre-order. It’s already up on Amazon, for example.

If you live in the UK though – for now – and want to support yer man directly, then until the end of July you can pre-order a signed copy directly from me. Here’s how to do it.

Signed copy pre-orders

As ever, I genuinely don’t care where you choose to buy the book from. I spend day and night sweating over these things so that people read and enjoy them, so I’m frankly just delighted that you take an interest in my work wherever you choose to hand over your money for it.

That said, if you like the personal touch or just prefer to support creators directly, I’m selling a limited number of Game Boy Encyclopedia books directly here.

The book is an open pre-order until the end of July, which means you don’t have to worry about me running out.

How it works is this: once I see how many people have pre-ordered the book by the end of the month, I’ll round that up to a nice round number (so I’ve got some spare copies) and that’s what I’ll order from the publisher.

If 143 people order one, for example, it’ll be limited to 150. That way anyone who wants one will definitely get one.

Here are the brutally honest pros and cons of buying directly from me.

PROS

• It’ll be personally signed and numbered by yer man Scullion.
• Retailers are a bit of a dice-roll: Amazon was weeks late at delivering my SNES book, but surprisingly quick with the Mega Drive one.
• It’ll be sent through recorded delivery by the Royal Mail and will come with PayPal buyer protection in case anything goes wrong.
• You’ll be supporting me in the best way because I get a far greater royalty for each book sold: £17.50 for signed books sold through Tired Old Hack, £3.50 for books sold everywhere else, roughly £1.75 for books sold on Amazon.

CONS

• Although I’m only charging the cover price £35 plus postage and packaging (£41 in total), this is still probably the most expensive way to get the book, since I can’t offer a discount on either the cover price or shipping, so almost every other book shop will be cheaper (Amazon in particular). You’re paying full price for the signature, basically.
• If you don’t care so much about the signature and just want the book, ordering directly from the publisher Pen & Sword Books will get you it cheaper than ordering it from me, and you’ll get it earlier than anyone else because they obviously get the stock in first. You really only want to order it from me if you want it signed, or you really care about me getting more royalties.

Still keen to buy from me? Lovely.

Before I give you the PayPal link to put down your pre-order, please make sure you read the instructions below. It’s all fairly straightforward but if any of the steps are missing it could hold up the process:

SERIOUSLY, PLEASE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS. EVERY SINGLE YEAR SOMEONE DOESN’T READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AND I HAVE TO PLAY DETECTIVE PIKACHU TRYING TO FIND THEM THEN CHASING THEM UP FOR SOME MISSING INFO. THESE ARE OPEN PRE-ORDERS, IT WILL NOT SELL OUT. PLEASE TAKE YOUR TIME. DON’T RUSH.

• Before you even click anything, please bear in mind I can only deliver to people in the UK for now. I’m going to be dealing with a large number of orders and I’m handling them all myself, so I need to keep things simple with a single price and a single delivery type. Again, sorry for the bold text, but UK ORDERS ONLY PLEASE. I promise you every single time I launch a new book I get a couple of international orders who ignore this and I have to get in touch to refund them. I am currently looking into selling to the US and Canada at least, but until you hear otherwise it’s UK ONLY.

• Click the link below. You’ll be automatically taken to a PayPal site already set up to pay me the full price. It’ll cost £41 – this covers the full price of the book, packing material and recorded delivery postage through Royal Mail (so I can chase it in the very unlikely event that you don’t get your book).

• Look carefully for a bit that asks you to specify what the payment is for (apparently the PayPal app has changed its UI a bit so you may have to look for this). Choose that and leave me a note telling me what name you’d like me to sign the book to. While I’ll be using your real name to post the book, if you’d rather I signed it to your username or nickname, this is where you can let me know. If you don’t want me to sign it to any name, please write “no name” in the notes so I know. If you don’t write anything at all I’ll have to chase you up to find out what you want, and if I can’t get hold of you or you don’t reply I’ll just sign my name and nothing else.

• Make sure the payment is marked as “paying for goods or a service” instead of just sending money to a friend. Not only does this help protect your payment if the delivery goes missing, it actually lets you give me your address. Otherwise, you know, I can’t send you the thing. A few people always miss this part out and it’s a huge hassle for us both so let me make it clearer in bold: This bit is VERY IMPORTANT. If you don’t choose to pay for goods or a service, it won’t let you give me your address. I need your address to send you the book, and if I can’t get in touch with you I’ll have to refund your order.

• You should see the option to choose your address. PLEASE make sure you have the correct address there, because that’s where I’m going to be sending the book. There’ll be an option to add a new address if you don’t have one stored on PayPal, or if the one you still have on your PayPal account is out of date. Last time one person accidentally had their old address listed and only managed to get their copy because luckily a family member still lived there. I can’t chase this up for you if it goes to the wrong house, so PLEASE make sure it’s right.

• Job done! Once I get the order in I’ll personally send you an email (to the email your PayPal account is registered to) and confirm that I got the order. I’ll be sending these manually, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t get a confirmation email right away (other than a PayPal one). In case you haven’t noticed, Summer Game Fest week is just about to start and I’ll be covering the hell out of that, and in July I’m going to be in Japan for a week and a half, so it may be a couple of days before you get your email in some cases.

• I’m happy to draw wee doodles or write specific messages when signing the book, within reason. Please don’t ask for anything really elaborate (I’ll probably be doing well over 100 of these), and if I’m not comfortable with what you ask me to write I’ll politely decline. Speaking from experience here!

Right, with all that said, if you’re up for it, here’s the link. Some people have been reporting that it’s not filling in the £41 automatically, so if it shows you a blank amount please enter that.

PRE-ORDER THE GAME BOY ENCYCLOPEDIA (UK ONLY, £41)

If you do decide to buy the book, whether you order a signed copy or order from somewhere else, thank you so much for doing so.

The Game Boy Encyclopedia is my largest book to date and it was also by far the hardest to write, because there’s surprisingly little information available on quite a lot of Game Boy titles. That just makes the book even more important though, in my opinion.

I’ll see you in two years’ time for an even bigger book – the gargantuan PlayStation Encyclopedia – but until then I hope you enjoy my first handheld encyclopedia.

Thanks everyone.

Chris ❤️

The 10 Best Games of 2023

Published on January 8, 2024January 8, 2024 by Chris ScullionLeave a comment

This article is available in both written and video format. The video shows the games in action in full 4K and 60 frames per second while I read the article as a voiceover, so if you watch the video you won’t need to read the written article that follows since it’s the same ‘script’. The video can be viewed here:

Another year has passed, and it’s fair to say it’s been one of the best in terms of game releases (even if it’s been one of the worst for the business itself). Not that I necessarily got much exposure to a lot of this year’s AAA releases, mind you: mainly because of various plate-spinning antics at the start of the year, and the small matter of the Game Boy Encyclopedia proving much more complicated than expected, yer man missed out on a lot of 2023‘s best games.

What this does mean, at least, is that my Best Games of 2023 list should be a little more unusual than the others you’ll have seen to date, because the number of AAA games featured is relatively low. Hopefully, then, my downfall will have its benefits here, as you might stumble upon something you may be less familiar with.

Because of a household illness which started on Boxing Day and is only just beginning to let up now, this video comes a little later than usual. However, now that I can string a sentence together without sounding like John Hurt playing the Elephant Man, I finally present my 10 favourite games of 2023.

As with every year’s list, there are a few caveats to bear in mind before we get started:

• This is in alphabetical order, not best to worst. I can’t be arsed deciding whether a game was my 7th or 8th favourite of the year. They’re all great: get them all.

• Before you even think about writing a comment saying this, I didn’t “forget” anything. As I’ve already explained, the reason my list looks very different from most of the others you’ve seen so far isn’t an attempt to be quirky or pretentious, it’s just because I reviewed very few of this year’s AAA games, and because this is my personal list I can only pick from what I’ve played. So no, I didn’t forget Tears of the Kingdom, Spider-Man 2, Alan Wake 2 or Baldur’s Gate 3: they’re just all on my backlog and I haven’t gotten round to playing them yet.

That said, let’s get cracking! Continue reading “The 10 Best Games of 2023” →

The Dreamcast Encyclopedia – pre-order now!

Published on June 5, 2023June 2, 2024 by Chris ScullionLeave a comment

Here we go again.

After releasing The NES Encyclopedia in 2019, The SNES Encyclopedia in 2020, The Mega Drive & Genesis Encyclopedia in 2021 and The N64 Encyclopedia in 2022, it’s time for the fifth book in my series.

The Dreamcast Encyclopedia is currently due for release in late September, but if it’s anything like the N64 book it might turn up earlier than planned.

As the name suggests, this covers every game ever released for the Dreamcast.

And, as with the N64 Encyclopedia last year, the Dreamcast book also covers every game released in Japan too (which means a hell of a lot of visual novels).

Again, much like last year’s book, the Dreamcast’s library is fairly small compared to those of the NES, SNES and Mega Drive, but that doesn’t mean the book will be shorter as a result.

The book is still more than 270 pages long, and all the smaller library means is that far more games are given a full page, meaning you can read even more about them.

No fewer than 76 games from the console’s western library will get full pages dedicated to them, while the vast majority of the other western titles will get half-pages.

How does that look in practice? Here’s a couple of spreads: one from the western section, and one from the Japanese section:

In total, there are a little more than 610 games in the book, incorporating 272 western releases and 340 Japanese releases.

I’m also delighted to announce that the foreword has been written by Gary Cutlack, the man behind the now-late UK Resistance, the greatest (and funniest) Sega fan site ever created.

Sold? Splendid. As with all my previous books, The Dreamcast Encyclopedia will be available at all good book shops (and some rubbish ones too, probably) around the world.

Be it Amazon (all countries), Waterstones, Barnes & Noble, Indigo / Chapters or even Walmart, just search for ‘Chris Scullion’ on your site of choice and with any luck, you’ll find it available to pre-order. It’s already up on Amazon, for example.

If you live in the UK though, and want to support yer man directly, then until the end of June you can buy a signed copy directly from me. Here’s how to do it.

Signed copy pre-orders

I frankly don’t care where you choose to buy the book from: I’m just delighted and hugely grateful that you’re taking an interest in my work at all.

That said, if you’re the type who likes something a bit more personal in return, I’m selling a strictly limited number of Dreamcast Encyclopedia books directly here.

The book is an open pre-order until the end of June, which means you don’t have to worry about me running out.

Essentially, once I see how many people have pre-ordered the book by the end of the month, I’ll round that up to a nice round number (so I’ve got some spare copies) and that’s what I’ll order from the publisher.

If 93 of you order one, for example, it’ll be limited to 100. That way anyone who wants one will definitely get one.

Here are the brutally honest pros and cons of buying directly from me.

PROS

• It’ll be personally signed and numbered by yer man Scullion.
• Retailers are a bit of a dice-roll: Amazon was weeks late at delivering my SNES book, but surprisingly quick with the Mega Drive one.
• It’ll be sent through recorded delivery by the Royal Mail and will come with PayPal buyer protection in case anything goes wrong.
• You’ll be supporting me in the best way because I get a far greater royalty for each book sold: £15 for signed books sold through Tired Old Hack, £3 for books sold everywhere else, roughly £1.50 for books sold on Amazon.

CONS

• Although I’m only charging the cover price £30 plus postage and packaging (£36 in total), this is still probably the most expensive way to get the book, since I can’t offer a discount on either the cover price or shipping, so almost every other book shop will be cheaper (Amazon in particular). You’re paying full price for the signature, basically.
• If you order directly from the publisher Pen & Sword Books you may get it earlier than anyone else, because they have their stock in too.

Still keen to buy from me? Lovely.

SERIOUSLY, PLEASE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS. EVERY BLOODY YEAR SOMEONE DOESN’T READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AND I HAVE TO PLAY WHERE’S WALLY CHASING THEM UP FOR SOME MISSING INFO. THESE ARE OPEN PRE-ORDERS, IT WILL NOT SELL OUT, PLEASE TAKE YOUR TIME.

• Click the link below. You’ll be automatically taken to a PayPal site already set up to pay me the full price. It’ll cost £36 – this covers the full price of the book, packing material and recorded delivery postage through Royal Mail (so I can chase it in the very unlikely event that you don’t get your book).

• Look carefully for a bit that asks you to specify what the payment is for (apparently the PayPal app has changed its UI a bit so you may have to look for this). Click that and leave me a note telling me what name you’d like me to sign the book to. While I’ll be using your real name to post the book, if you’d rather I signed it to your username or nickname, this is where you can let me know. If you don’t want me to sign it to any name, please write “no name” in the notes so I know. If you don’t write anything at all I’ll have to chase you up to find out what you want, and if I can’t get hold of you or you don’t reply I’ll just sign my name and nothing else.

• Job done! Once I get the order in I’ll personally send you an email (to the email your PayPal account is registered to) and confirm that I got the order. I’ll be sending these manually, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t get a confirmation email right away (other than a PayPal one). In case you haven’t noticed, Summer Game Fest week is just about to start and I’ll be covering the hell out of that, so it may be a couple of days before you get your email in some cases.

Right, with all that said, if you’re up for it, here’s the link:

PRE-ORDERS NO LONGER BEING TAKEN

If you do decide to buy the book, whether you order a signed copy or order from somewhere else, thank you so much for doing so.

I’m so happy that the Encyclopedias are building up a nice wee following now, and I’m really happy with The Dreamcast Encyclopedia because there’s a nice combination of detailed descriptions of western games, followed by a Japanese section in which you see a man descend into madness as he struggles through literally hundreds of dodgy visual novels.

I’ll see you next year for The Game Boy Encyclopedia, but until then I hope you enjoy going back to the Dreamcast era one more time.

Thanks everyone.

Chris ❤️

Where to find me if the blue bird gets a bullet in the bonce

Published on December 18, 2022February 6, 2025 by Chris ScullionLeave a comment

You may have noticed that Twitter is basically Mad Max at this point, and that Elon Musk – who in this situation is the equivalent of that really old evil guy – keeps pulling rules out of his arse like he was Mick Foley with thumbtacks.

While I don’t quite expect Twitter to just suddenly go under any time soon, I also didn’t expect the one-time richest man in the world to call a cave expert a “pedo guy”, liken the Canadian prime minister to Hitler, tweet “pronouns suck”, ban journalists who reported on a story about a separate Twitter account tracking him, run a car company that was ordered to pay $137 million to a Black employee after he was repeatedly subjected to racial abuse without disciplinary measures being taken, give one of his children some sort of weird equation instead of a name, or decide that linking to other social media on Twitter would get you suspended.

So, you know, just in case.

On the off-chance that Twitter does implode, then – and since posting my Linktree is apparently now a bannable offence – here’s all the other places you can find me, if you decide that you aren’t quite sick of my bullshit yet.

Twitter – Still there for now, and the place you’ll find me most regularly until it does a Fight Club and collapses while the Pixies’ Where is My Mind plays in the background.

Substack – My new email newsletter. I was planning to start this in 2023 anyway, but the rumours of Twitter’s closure forced my hand a bit early, so while it’s quiet at the moment there will be regular newsletters in your inbox starting next year.

Tired Old Hack – I mean, not to be rude, but if you can’t find Tired Old Hack from here then you probably also can’t find your own arse.

Twitch – Now that I’ve finished writing my Dreamcast Encyclopedia, I’m going to be streaming fairly regularly going forwards, so follow me on there for notifcations any time I go live.

YouTube – As an accompaniment to Tired Old Hack, you can find a bunch of my game-related videos here already and there are a lot more to come starting next year.

Instagram – I don’t use this a lot but I’ll use it much more if Twitter ever pegs it, so follow me now for the occasional photo of retro hardware.

Discord – Did you know there’s a Tired Old Hack Discord server? Don’t say ‘no’, because I literally just told you there’s one, so if you say ‘no’ now you’re a liar, even it’s only been a couple of seconds.

TikTok – I’m about 20 years too old for this shit, but if Twitter goes under you’d better believe I’ll be giving it a go anyway. My days of worrying about my image are long gone.

That Was a Bit Mental – Not everyone is interested in reading my reviews of horror and B-movies, and that’s perfectly fine. If you are, though, this is coming back in 2023 so fill your boots.

Cohost – This is currently not being used, but is simply there as a backup. If and when Twitter does go under, this will probably be the social media site I jump over to instead.

Buy my books! – Finally, this isn’t technically any sort of social media or anything but if you think I’m going to pass up an opportunity to pimp my books again, you’re out of your mind.

The N64 Encyclopedia – pre-order now!

Published on August 9, 2022June 5, 2023 by Chris Scullion1 Comment

It’s that time again!

After releasing The NES Encyclopedia in 2019, The SNES Encyclopedia in 2020 and The Mega Drive & Genesis Encyclopedia in 2021, it’s time to return to Nintendo for the fourth book in my series.

Friends, I give to you The N64 Encyclopedia, which is due for release in late September / early October.

As the name suggests, this covers every game ever released for the Nintendo 64.

And, for the first time in my encyclopedia series, I even cover every game released in Japan too (including the handful of 64DD games that were released).

Because the N64 had a much smaller library than the systems I’ve covered in my other encyclopedias to date, you’d be forgiven for thinking this would be a much thinner book as a result.

On the contrary, the book is still a hefty 260 pages, and all the smaller library means is that far more games are given a full page, meaning you can read even more about them.

For comparison, the SNES Encyclopedia had around 30 full-page entries, while the Mega Drive Encyclopedia (which featured nearly 1000 games) had exactly zero.

This time, the N64 Encyclopedia will have 128 full-page games, meaning more than a third of the console’s entire western library will get special treatment.

How does that look in practice? Here’s a couple of spreads I haven’t shown yet: one from the western section, and one from the shiny new Japanese section (which I’ve never done before in an encyclopedia):

Note: sample spreads are from an earlier draft and may contain typos

Sold? Lovely. As with all my previous books, The N64 Encyclopedia is available at all good book shops (and some rubbish ones too, probably) around the world.

If you live in the UK though, and want to support yer man directly, then until the end of August you can buy a signed copy directly from me. Here’s how to do it.

Signed copy pre-orders

I frankly don’t care where you choose to buy the book from: I’m just delighted and hugely grateful that you’re taking an interest in my work at all.

That said, if you’re the type who likes something a bit more personal in return, I’m selling a strictly limited number of N64 Encyclopedia books directly here.

The book had previously been an open pre-order until the end of August, but then I was took by surprise when it actually turned up at the publisher’s warehouse earlier than expected.

Because of this, I had to order without knowing the final numbers. The benefit of this is that I ordered more than I expected I would reach by the end of August, meaning now it’s September you still have the chance to get one.

The signed books are strictly limited to 150 copies and we’re into the 100s now, so if you’d still like one they’re still around but may start thinking about getting a wriggle on.

Here are the brutally honest pros and cons of buying directly from me.

PROS

• It’ll be personally signed and numbered by yer man Scullion.
• It’s in my possession now, so you’ll get it relatively quickly. Other retailers are a bit of a dice-roll: Amazon was weeks late at delivering my SNES book, but surprisingly quick with the Mega Drive one.
• It’ll be sent through recorded delivery by the Royal Mail and will come with PayPal buyer protection in case anything goes wrong.
• You’ll be supporting me in the best way because I get a far greater royalty for each book sold: £15 for signed books sold through Tired Old Hack, £3 for books sold everywhere else, roughly £1.50 for books sold on Amazon.

CONS

• Although I’m only charging the cover price £30 plus postage and packaging (£36 in total), this is still probably the most expensive way to get the book, since I can’t offer a discount on either the cover price or shipping, so almost every other book shop will be cheaper (Amazon in particular).
• If you order directly from the publisher Pen & Sword Books you may get it earlier than anyone else, because they have their stock in too.

Still keen to buy from me? Lovely.

SERIOUSLY, PLEASE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS. THIS IS NOT A PS5, IT WILL NOT SELL OUT WHILE YOU’RE READING. WHEN THERE ARE ONLY A COUPLE LEFT I’LL CLOSE THIS ARTICLE AND ONLY TAKE ORDERS VIA TWITTER, SO TAKE YOUR TIME.

• Before you even click anything, please bear in mind I can only deliver to people in the UK for now. I’m going to be dealing with a large number of orders and I’m handling them all myself, so I need to keep things simple with a single price and a single delivery type. Again, sorry for the bold text, but UK ORDERS ONLY PLEASE. I promise you every single time I get a couple of international orders who ignore this and I have to get in touch to refund them.

• You should see the option to choose your address. PLEASE make sure you have the correct address there, because that’s where I’m going to be sending the book. There’ll be an option to add a new address if you don’t have one stored on PayPal, or if the one you still have on your PayPal account is out of date. Last year one person accidentally had their old address listed and only managed to get their copy because luckily a family member still lived there. I can’t chase this up for you if it goes to the wrong house, so PLEASE make sure it’s right.

• Job done! Once I get the order in I’ll personally send you an email (to the email your PayPal account is registered to) and confirm that I got the order. I’ll be sending these manually, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t get a confirmation email right away (other than a PayPal one). As soon as I’m back on my PC I’ll send out any outstanding emails. Well, all my emails are outstanding but you know what I mean.

• Once the books turn up at my house and I send them all out, you should automatically get an email telling you when it’s been shipped out.

Right, with all that said, if you’re up for it, here’s the link:

N64 ENCYCLOPEDIA SIGNED PRE-ORDER

If you do decide to buy the book, whether you order a signed copy or order from somewhere else, thank you so much for doing so.

I’m so happy that the Encyclopedias are building up a nice wee following now, and I’m particularly happy with The N64 Encyclopedia because there’s a bit more room for each game to breathe in this one, plus the addition of Japanese games is something people always ask about.

I’ll see you next year for The Dreamcast Encyclopedia, but until then I hope you enjoy this trip back to the 64-bit era.

Thanks everyone.

Chris ❤️

4K Nintendo Wallpapers: The first wave

Published on July 28, 2022 by Chris Scullion1 Comment

Hello there!

Earlier today I tweeted some AI upscaled versions of old Nintendo wallpapers (mostly Japanese ones), which I’d scaled up to 4K.

They seem to be quite popular but, as someone rightly pointed out, Twitter compresses them.

Here, then, are said wallpapers (as well as a few more). Clicking them should give you the full size, uncompressed versions.

Please note, though, that since these are AI upscales, there will still be some slight imperfections when you zoom them up to full size and scrutinise them in detail. There’s some dot-joining going on here with the machine learning so it isn’t going to be perfect zoomed in, but as wallpapers on your screen they should look fantastic.

At some point (when life’s a bit less hectic) I’d love to put together a proper wee archive of official video game wallpapers, going as far back as I can and upscaling them all. If any of you have collections of old wallpapers that you never got around to deleting, chuck me an email (contact details are at the side) because I’d love to get them and upscale them.

There’ll be (a lot) more of this to come if you like it.

The complete making of one of my Encyclopedias

Published on April 24, 2022 by Chris Scullion1 Comment

A couple of days ago I signed off on the final proof of the N64 Encyclopedia, meaning it’s finally good to go to the printers, with the aim being to release it in September this year.

It will be my fourth Encyclopedia in four years, and the aim going forwards is to continue releasing one a year, with the exception of some books which may take longer (PlayStation Encyclopedia, I’m looking at you).

Every time I talk about my books on Twitter, I regularly get people asking me how I managed to pull it off. After all, these books aren’t small, so pulling them off on an annual basis can’t be easy, surely?

Well, it is. Nah, just kidding, it’s intensely stressful. But it’s made a little easier with proper preparation and a great publishing team helping me out along the way.

For those curious to know how I make these books, then, I’ve decided to put together this article detailing the entire process, from the initial concept all the way up to the book arriving at your home.

Specifically, this article will look at how I put together the SNES Encyclopedia, but will also point out any times where the process differed for other books in the series. Continue reading “The complete making of one of my Encyclopedias” →

Video: TMNT The Cowabunga Collection – all 13 games explained

Published on March 14, 2022 by Chris ScullionLeave a comment

Last week it was announced that Konami will be releasing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection later this year.

The new compilation will include 13 retro games covering every major TMNT game released on arcade, NES, SNES, Mega Drive and Game Boy.

As a massive fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, if you lived round in the UK back in the day), this has instantly become one of my most-wanted games of the year.

Not everyone will be familiar with these games, though: most of them were released in the early ’90s and a couple were even released in the late ’80s.

With that in mind, then, here’s yer man Scullion’s rundown of all 13 games for your viewing pleasure:

Jumping For Joy – pre-order my platformer book now!

Published on March 5, 2022August 9, 2022 by Chris ScullionLeave a comment

As you may know, I’ve carved out a bit of a side career for myself with my series of video game encyclopedias.

While these will continue to be released on an annual basis (with the N64 Encyclopedia due later this year), I also spent the first half of 2021 writing a spin-off book dedicated to my favourite game genre, the platformer.

Jumping For Joy: The History of Platform Video Games is a 168-page hardback beauty that spans every era of the genre, from Pitfall! all the way up to Sonic Frontiers (though brilliantly, because of print run lengths, it’s still at the stage where it’s rumoured to be called Sonic Rangers).

And, as with my past couple of books, if you live in the UK you can pre-order a signed copy directly from yer man Scullion for a limited time. All you have to do is have the dedication to scroll through all my bullshit here and you’ll find full instructions at the bottom of this article, along with a link to order one.

The book consists of three main sections: the first covers every single Mario platformer ever released, from the arcade version of Donkey Kong all the way up to Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury on the Switch. And yes, this includes every Yoshi, Wario and Donkey Kong platformer too.

You can’t have a section about Mario in a book about platformers and pretend his long-running (literally) rival doesn’t exist, so the second section is all about Sonic games.

Again, every single Sonic platformer is covered here, from the original 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog all the way up to Sonic Colours Ultimate and the two as-yet unreleased titles, Sonic Origins and ‘Next-Gen Sonic’ (which we now know to be Sonic Frontiers.

Finally, it’s the main event: an enormous 100-page section dedicated to 50 other iconic or notable platformers throughout history.

To be clear, this isn’t a countdown of the 50 best platformers ever. It’s a chronological journey through the genre, told using games that stood out in a memorable way. Maybe they changed the genre in a unique way, maybe they were the shining example of a certain sub-genre, maybe they were just too bloody good to ignore.

Each of these 50 games gets a full two-page spread like this:

As with my previous books, Jumping For Joy will be available at all good book shops (and some rubbish ones too, probably).

At the moment it’s available on the official Pen & Sword website (the book’s publisher) – if you order from them you’ll get it first. You can also find it on Amazon UK and a number of other European Amazon stores.

As the book nears release and other book stores’ ISBN scraping shenanigans start kicking in, you’ll be able to buy it from your favourite store of choice, be that Amazon (all countries), Waterstones, Barnes & Noble, Indigo Chapters, Walmart or what have you. Just search for ‘Chris Scullion’ on your site of choice and with any luck you’ll find it available to pre-order.

Signed copy pre-orders

Signed copies are sold out, sorry!

If you do decide to buy the book, whether you order a signed copy or order from somewhere else, thank you so much for doing so.

The Encyclopedias are slowly building up a dedicated following and I’m massively appreciative of that, but this spin-off book is more of a gamble so I’m really curious to see how it goes.

This one’s written more in my old ONM writing style, with more bad jokes, and I had a fun time writing it, so I really hope that shines through when reading it.

Thanks everyone.

Chris x