I love wrestling games. All of them. Even the shite ones.
Wrestle War on the Mega Drive? Love it. WCW Backstage Assault on the PlayStation? Love it. World Wrestling Championship on PS2? Okay, not that one.
Of course, given my lifetime passion for WWE, it’s the games based on that particular promotion that I love the most. There isn’t a WWE (formerly WWF) game that I haven’t played.
Recently, WWE 2K16 was released. It’s the 57th WWE video game released, and if that stat excites you a little then grab some tissues, because that’s the tip of the iceberg.
The first batch of backwards compatible games launches on Xbox One on Thursday, giving players the chance to play 104 titles from the Xbox 360 catalogue on Microsoft’s current-gen console.
Some of these are retail games: the likes of Assassin’s Creed II, Fallout 3, the entire Gears Of War saga and the first Mass Effect (but not the other two, oddly) are in there.
These are well-known titles so chances are you don’t need a hack like me (tired and old or otherwise) to tell you if they’re any good.
However, the vast majority of games on the list are Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) games – titles that were only made available to buy digitally through the Xbox 360’s online storefront. Some are relatively new, others stretch all the way back to the Xbox 360’s launch a decade ago.
If you’re a long-time Xbox 360 owner then these titles will be familiar to you, but if Xbox One is your first Microsoft console – or even if you’ve only had a 360 for the last couple of years – there may be a few that don’t ring a bell.
Apple Music launched a few days ago, offering unlimited streaming music for a monthly fee and in the process completely breaking boundaries by doing something nobody’s ever done before, certainly not Spotify or Pandora or any of those pricks.
In order to show their new service is the real deal, Apple is currently offering everyone with an iOS device or iTunes three months of Apple Music completely free.
If you aren’t familiar with the name Koichi Sugiyama, you should be by the time this article ends.
Sugiyama is a music composer, best known for composing pretty much all the music from the Dragon Quest games, starting way back in 1986 with the original.
Now aged 84 years young, he was recently seen in Japan celebrating the announcement of Theatrhythm Dragon Quest, Square Enix’s latest rhythm action title, which may as well have just been called Sugiyama: The Game.
Sadly, he’s also a bit of a dick: back in 2007 he helped start a campaign arguing that the Nanking Massacre and the Japanese army’s use of women as sexual slaves during World War II didn’t happen.
It’s neither Sugiyama’s music nor his offensive attempts at revising history that draw me to him, however. His face does.
For a while, Sugiyama ran a website called Sugimania (not a joke) in which he posted news about what he was up to. This also included a handful of photo galleries showing him out and about.
These photos are bloody marvellous. And to prove it, here are my 30 favourite ones, in reverse order (keep going, they get superb).
This is the fourth in my ’30 Best’ series of articles in which I discuss my favourite games ever on a system-by-system basis for the first time. In case you missed them, I’ve already covered the 30 best DS games, 30 best GameCube games and 30 best Dreamcast games.
As before, because this is my own personal list and not a collaborative effort for a magazine or website, there will be some glaring omissions of games I simply didn’t play or didn’t like. So yes, I know SimCity and Civilization aren’t on there: deal widdit, as the kids say.
If one of your favourites isn’t on the list, feel free to give it a shoutout in the comments below (politely though, mind) and tell everyone what it meant to you.
Xbox One versus PS4? Pffft. Xbox 360 versus PS3? Load of pish. Mega Drive versus SNES? Wouldn’t wipe my balls with it.
The Amiga 500, the first major Amiga model
The two biggest wars among gamers – in the UK, at least – were between computer owners, not console owners.
The ’80s saw a brutal three-way battle between the ZX Spectrum (hooray!), the Commodore 64 (yes, well played) and the Amstrad CPC (hahaha, aye, okay mate).
When these systems died out and were replaced by 16-bit computers, the war evolved and two new competitors stepped forward (because nobody counts the Acorn Archimedes).
This is the third in my ’30 Best’ series of articles in which I discuss my favourite games ever on a system-by-system basis for the first time. In case you missed them, I’ve already covered the 30 best DS games and 30 best GameCube games.
As before, because this is my own personal list and not a collaborative effort for a magazine or website, there will be some glaring omissions of games I simply didn’t play or didn’t like. So yes, I know Legacy Of Kain isn’t on there: stop riding me, dawg.
If one of your favourites isn’t on the list, feel free to give it a shoutout in the comments below (politely though, mind) and tell everyone what it meant to you.
It wasn’t always just Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo competing in the video game hardware race, you know. I mean, obviously you know, I’m just saying that for effect.
Back in the day Sega was a major competitor too, with the Master System and Mega Drive / Genesis shifting in hefty numbers worldwide.
After its fourth standalone console – the overpriced Saturn – crumbled against the Nintendo 64 and newcomer Sony’s game-changing PlayStation, Sega’s next system would either make or break the company’s future.
This is the second in my series of SEO-baiting articles revealing my favourite games of all time.
In time, as every system is covered, I’ll finally have listed the 700(!) or so games that had a lasting impact on my life.
As before, because this is a personal list and not a group-created list for a magazine or site, there will be some omissions of games I either haven’t played or just personally didn’t like (sorry, Harvest Moon fans).
If one of your favourites isn’t on the list, feel free to give it a shoutout in the comments below and let the world know why it’s important to you.
A while back Nintendo released a new console. Despite the hype surrounding it, it never ended up selling in as enormous numbers as Nintendo had hoped.
As a result, the Japanese giant found itself third in a three-horse race, with Sony leading and Microsoft holding its own in second.
Yet despite these disappointing sales figures, everyone who owned Nintendo’s console was in love with it, with some claiming it was the best system of the generation. Sound familiar?
I was one of those Wii U GameCube owners, so to celebrate the diversity of this grossly underrated console’s library, here’s my list of the 30 best GameCube games ever. Continue reading “The 30 best GameCube games”→
Today Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata revealed during a presentation that the next ‘dedicated game platform’ from Nintendo was in development.
Naturally, the main response to this should be “no shit”.
The official Nintendo NX logo. Um, probably
Video game hardware doesn’t just appear out of thin air, it takes an extremely long time to develop and perfect. PS4 lead architect Mark Cerny once confirmed that his console, released in November 2013, was in development as early as 2008.
So yes, of course Nintendo’s working on new hardware. We all knew that. What we didn’t know was its (code)name and when it’s coming out.
Today’s announcement at least answers part of that. The new system has been codenamed the Nintendo NX and is due to be properly revealed in 2016, which – given Nintendo’s usual routine – means we’ll probably see it on shelves in 2017.
What we still don’t know is whether the NX is a handheld or a home console… or even the much-rumoured hybrid system that acts as both.
In fact, here’s the full extent of what was actually said about the NX:
Not a lot to go on, I’m sure you’ll agree. Still, that hasn’t stopped the gaming press jumping on it with some deciding, among other things, that it’s a new home console designed to replace the struggling Wii U (i.e. the console everyone who has one loves and everyone who doesn’t thinks is shit).
I’m not about to get into speculation, because that’s just daft and frankly unprofessional, but what I will do is share a list of things I hope the NX implements.
This is the first in a series of shameful SEO-milking articles that should hopefully still at least be helpful to you.
These articles are also important to me in a personal sense because they mark the first time I’ve ever been able to write my own definitive ‘top games’ lists, rather than contributing to collaborative lists on ONM, CVG and the like.
The eventual result will be a number of platform-specific articles that, when combined, will list my personal favourite games ever, something I’ve never been able to share in such detail.
Because of this, there will be blatant omissions and odd decisions. But I’m not going to add a game I’ve never played just because it’s widely considered a classic. These are my lists, paying homage to the games that I personally had a great time with.
The Nintendo DS turned 10 years old in the UK yesterday. On 11 March 2005 Nintendo’s chunky flip-case handheld arrived in Britain to a relatively muted response.
Many gamers, feeling Nintendo was losing steam with GameCube sales slowing to a crawl, were more focused on Sony’s upcoming handheld, the PSP.
The best handheld ever? That’s a debate for another time
Offering significantly better graphics and games that could pass as slightly low-res PS2 titles, the PSP was far more appealing to gamers than the DS’s N64-era visuals and its touch screen, which appeared to be no more than a gimmick.
And yet, a decade later, nobody can deny the DS’s eventual impact on the gaming world. With over 154 million units sold worldwide, it’s the best-selling handheld of all time and was around a million shy of overtaking the PS2 as the best-selling video game system ever.
The first game I ever reviewed professionally as an employee of Future Publishing was a DS game. Granted, it was the abysmal Dragon Booster, but the DS will always hold a place in my heart for that reason regardless.
So, since it celebrated its 10th birthday in the UK yesterday, and since it was where my career began, it’s only fitting that my first ‘best games’ article should celebrate the best Nintendo DS games I’ve ever played.
In the six years I spent at Official Nintendo Magazine I reviewed hundreds of DS games, arguably more than any multi-format journalist (since their publications wouldn’t have touched half the shite we covered). So trust me when I say these 30 must have done something special to get in here. Continue reading “The 30 best DS games”→
I love wrestling games. All of them. Even the shite ones.
Tired Old Hack 