A long time ago, but not so far away…

Metal Gear Solid was perhaps the most talked about game on the floor of the 1997 Electronic Entertainment Expo (better known as ‘E3’). That was quite the achievement when you consider the competition consisted of heavyweight titles like Quake 2, Unreal, Panzer Dragoon Saga, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye and Banjo Kazooie…

Take a dash of Ghosts n’ Goblins, a good helping of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and mix it with the 3D platforming and action format of games like Tomb Raider or The Legend of Zelda and you might wind up with something similar to MediEvil…

The mid to late 90s saw something of a boom for Japanese horror themed books, films and eventually, games. Parasite Eve (1995) is a science fiction horror novel by Hideaki Sena. While it would not be published in English until 2005, the book proved quite popular in Japan and would eventually see a sequel in the form of the video game. The game, released in 1998, was also titled Parasite Eve…

Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motorsports, a world wide contest of individual driving skill and manufacturing prowess. In the world of video games, trying to capture the excitement and passion of the sport has been hit or miss, but F-1 World Grand Prix is most definitely one of the best attempts to bring the thrill of racing into the home.

It’s a combination that shouldn’t work, but it does. Take a driving game, add a bunch of guns and death-match shooter mechanics, and then cover it all in a heavy coating of 1970s aesthetics. That’s Vigilante 8…

With the success of 1989’s Sim City, PC gamers became spoiled for choice with a genre that would become known as the ‘city builder’. In 1992, Impressions Games entered the field with their first city building sim, Caesar…

Monolith is definitely a developer that has a lot of stylistic range. While in recent times they are probably best known for their work on the Lord of the Rings games Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014) and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (2017), they have a long and varied history in making some creative and unique first-person shooter titles…

Tenchu: Stealth Assassins holds the honour of being something of a pioneer in the world of video games. Not only is it one of a trio of 1998 games that are credited with popularising the stealth genre in the modern gaming era (the other two being the also extremely well respected Metal Gear: Solid and Thief: The Dark Project), it also was the game that launched the team of Acquire into the gaming world…

The attention to detail and reality focused novels of Tom Clancy were perfectly captured in the video game adaption of Rainbow Six, the first video game to represent the ‘Tom Clancy’s’ brand; and the one that would establish the quality and tone that it would become known for in the future…

Are we experiencing a new ‘Golden Age’ for fighting games? With Evo 2023 wrapping up, and major releases coming from some of fighting games’ most beloved franchises, I start to wonder how this brave new world compares to the decades prior. Don’t worry, I’m not just yelling at clouds…

The PlayStation never really had an ‘official’ mascot in the same vein that Sonic was for Sega and that Mario was for Nintendo, but Crash Bandicoot definitely came close to filling that role. In some gamers’ eyes, he was the de-facto face of the PlayStation…

While most people are probably familiar with 1999’s Pokemon Stadium, they might not know that it was actually a sequel to the original 1998 Pocket Monsters’ Stadium which never saw release outside of Japan…

It’s very rare you get a video game that reflects the source material as well as Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure does. This game does a heroic job of keeping the style and feel of the original manga, and what’s more, it makes for a damn fine fighting game too. Prepare for the truly bizarre and beautiful world of Jojo…

The SNK Neo Geo MVS arcade board had already become a legendary platform for games, with a lifespan dating back to 1990! The platform had featured series such as Fatal Fury (1991), Samurai Shodown (1993), Metal Slug (1996) and The Last Blade (1997). Perhaps the most successful and most loved of all the Neo Geo series of games however, is The King of Fighters…

After the spectacular success of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991) and its various revisions and follow ups (culminating in Super Street Fighter II: Turbo (1994)), the gaming world was eagerly awaiting a Street Fighter III. Somewhat surprisingly, this wouldn’t come to pass for several more years, instead Capcom decided to go back to the past with a prequel series!

When Sega’s AM2 division makes a fighting game, the world would do well to sit up and take notice. After creating the 3D fighting genre with the seminal Virtua Fighter in 1993, many competitors would arrive in this exciting new field of competitive gaming. AM2 themselves would put a new spin on their Virtua Fighter gameplay with 1995’s Fighting Vipers…

Snowboarding games were not in short supply in the late nineties and early noughts, with every major platform hosting at least one and sometimes multiple snowboarding games…

One of the great tragedies of the Sega Saturn is the fact that it never saw a true sequel to the excellent and incredibly popular Sonic the Hedgehog games. The team behind the games, creatively titled Sonic Team, would instead give the Saturn another very special game in its twilight years; Burning Rangers…

Mario is a notoriously versatile character, having his video game life as a carpenter in Donkey Kong, he is most well known for being a plumber in the mainline Mario Bros games. Beyond his usual occupation, he had taken up Golf in the NES and Game Boy game Golf, and swung a racquet in the Virtual Boy’s Mario Tennis. In 1998 he tried his hand at yet another gameplay formula and launched a wildly successful spin-off series with Mario Party…