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).
Today marks the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros, one of the most iconic and influential video games ever made.
I’ve spoken at great length about what Super Mario Bros means to me (long story short: without that game my life, career and future would have been completely different), so I won’t bore you with the story again.
Instead, on the Tired Old Hack Discord server a few days ago the lovely MartynStuff gave me a request: be the man who finally tells the REAL story about the history of Mario games. The TRUE story, not the inaccurate tales you read online.
Friends, I’m happy to oblige. Here’s the real story of the Super Mario series. A warning in advance: keep this article away from the kids because it’s got swearing in it. After all, everything here happened in real life, and real life has swearing in it sometimes. Continue reading “The REAL history of Super Mario games”→
I’ve declared my love for Avicii Invector a couple of times in the past.
I reviewed the Xbox One version for VGC late last year, and stated: “For the sake of transparency, this reviewer had very little interest in the man’s music before playing this game, and now has his entire discography added to a Spotify playlist. If this is the impact the game can have on someone indifferent to Avicii’s body of work, we can only imagine how it will affect fans.”
The following month, I declared it one of my top 10 favourite games of 2019, explaining that it “feels like the result of some sort of unholy orgy between DJ Hero, Frequency, Aaero and Rez”.
Then, just last month, I got my hands on a preview version of the upcoming Switch version, Avicii Invector: Encore Edition, which contains 10 bonus tracks bringing the total number of songs to 35.
The Tired Old Hack Podcast returns with a very special interview episode.
I’m joined by Tommy Tallarico, long-time video game music composer and now the president of Intellivision Entertainment, as we chat about his upcoming console, the Amico.
Because the interview took place over Zoom, I’ve also made this episode available as a video podcast. Here it is if you fancy watching us chat instead of just listening to it.
How to listen
If you’re just listening while browsing, the podcast was at the top of this article. Click play and you’re off and running.
If you’d rather have the MP3 as a downloadable file so you can stick it on your media player of choice, right-click and save this link.
If you’ve got iTunes, you can find the podcast there by searching for ‘Tired Old Hack’ or just following this link. Please subscribe if you enjoy it, and write up a wee review.
Alternatively, the Tired Old Hack Podcast is now on Spotify! You can listen to it by searching for ‘Tired Old Hack’ or by following this link if you have the appropriate app installed.
Or, if you’d rather use your own podcast app, use this feed URL to subscribe to the podcast and get access to new episodes as they’re added:
As the name suggests, The NES Encyclopedia was a complete guide to every game officially released for the NES in the west, along with a hefty helping of unlicensed ones too.
At the time I explained the agreement the book’s publisher and I had reached: if the NES book sold well enough, they’d contract me to write a SNES one, and if sales continued we’d keep doing more.
Essentially, the idea was that as long as you kept buying them, I’ll keep writing them. Well, enough of you bought the NES one, and it’s thanks to you that The SNES Encyclopedia is now mere weeks away from release.
Even better, this time, should you so desire, you can pre-order a signed copy directly from me at the book’s cover price plus postage (UK only). Keep scrolling down if you want to do just that right now.Update: pre-orders for signed copies are now sold out.
The exact date isn’t confirmed: the book’s being printed in India and then shipped to the UK, so it’s essentially ready when it’s ready. But the most recent update is that we’re looking at mid-to-late September (the 2Xth, basically) for both the UK and North America.
Yes, this time the book will launch in North America at roughly the same time as it does here in the UK (the NES book took a couple of months to get there). Not only that, each region will have the correct SNES model on the cover: the PAL version with the coloured buttons in the UK and Europe, and the NTSC version with the purple and lilac colour scheme in North America. It’ll cost £30 in the UK and $39.95 in the US, though if you shop around online you’ll find it for cheaper.
Just like its predecessor, The SNES Encyclopedia covers every game released for the SNES in America, Europe and Australia. Obviously all the big games are in there – Super Mario World, Star Fox, Street Fighter II Turbo and the like – but in my opinion the book’s strength is its acknowledgement of all the ‘smaller’ games that are often forgotten in ‘best of’ compilations.
Maybe you were a big fan of Kid Klown in Crazy Chase. Maybe you bought Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City in a bargain bin and developed a soft spot for it. Maybe a grandparent got you the wonderfully named Spanky’s Quest for Christmas and nobody knows what you’re on about when you try to bring it up in conversations today.
Or maybe you just like the idea of having a reference book with a console’s entire library in it, that you can either look up whenever the need arises or read cover-to-cover. Whatever your situation, hopefully my book will appeal to you.
That’s not all: there’s also a bonus section at the back. My dream is ultimately to one day write an encyclopedia for every system, but I’m fully conscious that some systems have very small libraries.
Take the Virtual Boy, for example: it only got 21 games before it was canned, and with the best will in the world nobody’s going to buy The Virtual Boy Encyclopedia if it’s only 21 games long.
So I decided to put The Virtual Boy Encyclopedia at the back of the SNES book, making it two systems in one. Hooray!
Sorry for blurring it, but come on: that’s more than a quarter of the entire section
How to order
As was my previous book, The SNES Encyclopedia is available at all good book shops (and some rubbish ones too, probably). 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. Here’s a selection to help you order quickly.
Whether you were quick enough to buy a signed copy directly from me, or you decide to buy one direct from the publisher or buy one from any other bookstore you prefer, thank you so much regardless.
When I started writing this book my daughter had only just been born, so to say that writing it was exhausting is a severe understatement. You should have seen the state of me (and the literal pain my hands were in) when I finished it.
It’s worth it, though, and every time someone buys my book, gets something out of it, laughs at some of my terrible jokes and lets me know they had a good time with it, all it does is remind me why I wrote it, and why the publisher and I have agreed to keep going.
However you choose to buy it, I hope you thoroughly enjoy The SNES Encyclopedia when it turns up, and I’ll hopefully see you next year for The Mega Drive Encyclopedia.
If you’re like me, your passion for gaming burns so brightly that you’re only happy when you have it emblazoned across your chest.
If you’re also like me, you refuse to drink from any cups unless there’s some sort of video game themed design on them. Nothing else will pass your lips, lest the liquid be poisoned due to the lack of any acknowledgement of interactive media.
If you’re also also like me, you have a two-year-old daughter called Serena and a wife called Louise, and you have a website called Tired Old Hack. Nobody’s that much like me, though. You be you. You’re good too.
This review is available in both written and video format. Both versions have the same ‘script’, so if you’re able to watch the video I’d recommend doing that, since you can see the game in action without worrying about missing anything I’ve written. Here’s the video:
Screenwave Media / Moving Pieces Interactive Switch, Apple Arcade (Switch version reviewed)
Dodo Peak was a launch title on Apple Arcade in September last year, back when we all still naively thought that for the foreseeable future we’d be outdoors with our phones a lot.
It’s finally broken free of its iOS shackles, though, and arrived on the Switch eShop this week. It’s a good job it did, too, because while it’s a fairly basic game in the grand scheme of things it’s also an entertaining one that’ll keep you busy for a while. Continue reading “Dodo Peak review”→
Note: For reasons that will become clear below, the embargo for this preview stated that no screenshots or videos of the Switch version can currently be captured. The screens and video you see in this article are taken from the Xbox One version: adjust your expectations accordingly until the game’s ready for review.
Although I’d never really heard any of the late Avicii’s music when I was asked to review his game for VGC, I ended up enjoying it so much I had his whole discography on my Spotify account by the end of the week.
More importantly, I was so thoroughly entertained by Avicii Invector that the Xbox One version managed to jive its way into my list of my 10 favourite games of 2019, an award so rare that literally only nine other games were given it. Obviously.
Switch owners will finally be able to get their hands on the game on 8 September in a snazzy new ‘Encore Edition’, which comes with 10 bonus tracks (bringing the total count to 35). Yer man Scullion’s been getting stuck into a preview build of this Switch version, and the signs are good so far.
Inside it was a set of stickers and a t-shirt with a cartoon skeleton on it. I had no idea what it was supposed to be, but the t-shirt was size XXL so already I was furious.
The sticker sheet said Skelattack on it and featured the Konami logo at the bottom, so I gave Konami a call and asked what in the bloody hell was going on.
Turns out Skelattack is a brand new Metroidvania game developed by California-based studio Ukuza, and Konami has stealthily released it this week on all major formats.
I asked Konami for review code and they graciously sent one over for the Switch, so below you can check out my first 30 minutes with the game. Enjoy!
Skelattack is out now on PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC as a digital-only release. I’ll be posting a review on the site once I’ve spent more time with it.
In order that I could make this video, I received a review code from a PR (and a t-shirt, which I wasn’t expecting). The content of my review and the opinions therein were in no way positively influenced by this: if anything, the t-shirt being two sizes too big made me angry.
If you enjoyed this and other content and want to help me make it more frequently, please consider donating to my Patreon account.
Don’t want to commit to a regular payment? I’ve now got a PayPal ‘tips’ jar: if you like what you read feel free to chuck yer man Scullion a couple of quid here or there and help stock up my Irn Bru fund so I can continue working away like a bastard.
Alternatively, if you can’t afford to support me on Patreon, please do your normal Amazon UK shopping via this link, your Amazon US shopping via this link, or pre-order the product(s) reviewed via the links I provided above. Tired Old Hack is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.co.uk and affiliated sites.
I was going to launch the next Tired Old Hack Game Club a month or two ago but realised that once Animal Crossing launched on Switch, everyone was going to be too busy playing that.
Now the fever has died down a tiny bit, it’s finally time to get the Game Club back up and running again. We’ve already had success with Game Clubs for Zelda II and StarTropics, followed by noticeably less success for Earthbound, Phantasy Star and Breath of Fire I & II.
But hey, now everyone’s forced to stay indoors, so you literally have ZERO excuse not to get involved this time. As long as you don’t count any legitimate excuses you may have.
After much waiting and hype, we’ve finally got our first look at some next-gen game footage. Well, sort of.
Microsoft has just shown off what it called the first ‘gameplay’ for Xbox Series X, and while the majority of it of it doesn’t quite count as gameplay it still gave us an idea of what sort of graphical quality to expect.
I’ve taken all 13 games and broken them down for you so you can find out more about them and hear what I have to think.
This podcast has also been designed to be played alongside the actual video, if you want to see what I’m talking about too. I’ll have a YouTube version up shortly but until then you can watch the official video here: pause it when the countdown ends and play it when I do my own countdown on the podcast.
How to listen
If you’re just listening while browsing, the podcast was at the top of this article. Click play and you’re off and running.
If you’d rather have the MP3 as a downloadable file so you can stick it on your media player of choice, right-click and save this link.
If you’ve got iTunes, you can find the podcast there by searching for ‘Tired Old Hack’ or just following this link. Please subscribe if you enjoy it, and write up a wee review.
Alternatively, the Tired Old Hack Podcast is now on Spotify! You can listen to it by searching for ‘Tired Old Hack’ or by following this link if you have the appropriate app installed.
Or, if you’d rather use your own podcast app, use this feed URL to subscribe to the podcast and get access to new episodes as they’re added:
I’ve declared my love for Avicii Invector a couple of times in the past.
Tired Old Hack 