Retro Features
Soapbox This Is Why Physical Games Are Still Important to Me
Material guy
I’ve got a confession to make: most of my PS5 and PS4 library is digital these days. I understand why the industry is increasingly transitioning away from physical media, and I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t address that right from the off. However, I still purchase plenty of cartridges and discs, and I believe boxed games still...
Soapbox More Publishers, Including PlayStation, Should Celebrate Their Catalogues Like Atari 50
Rose tinted glasses
I’ve always enjoyed retro games, but I don’t think I ever considered myself a Retro Gamer™ until this year. At just 34-years-old, I’m certainly not old – but I am getting older, and I’m beginning to appreciate how this shapes my perspective. For example, I was around for the entirety of the PS1 era – I even attended...
Guide The Best PSone Games We Want on a PlayStation Classic Mini
The king's classics
Update, 19th September 2018, 8am BST: This article has been republished following Sony's announcement of the PlayStation Classic. There’s no doubting that the PSone is one of the greatest video game consoles of all time. The plethora of brand new IP, quality RPGs, and game-changing releases that landed on Sony’s debut...
Feature Spider-Man 2 - Does It Still Hold Up Today?
"I lost my balloon!"
Insomniac's imminent superhero blockbuster, Spider-Man, has looked increasingly promising since its announcement all the way back at E3 2016. We've yet to try the game out for ourselves, but based on what...
Video We Unboxed a Brand New PocketStation
Because why not?
With our attempts at creating meaningful YouTube content either drawing indifference or ire, we figured that we'd do something really dumb today – like, unbox a brand new Sony PocketStation dumb. Your humble host snagged this on eBay a few years ago, and it's been sitting in its packet ever since. Why? Because… Well, that...
Feature The Making of Cancelled PS2 Sci-Fi Shooter EXO
The story of Sheffield's most ambitious undertaking
Scheduled 60 years in the future where a ruthless corporation and its cyber terrorists hold a city to ransom, EXO pushed the creativity and technological innovation of a Sheffield company to the limit and promised to be a blockbusting, game-changer for the PlayStation 2. Creative supremo Glyn...
Feature A Brief History of Virtual Reality
Alex Boz tours the '90s VR graveyard
With the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR well and truly on the way to our living rooms, virtual reality (VR) is the biggest news in gaming right now. But let's rewind the clock some two and a half decades, back when Sony was working on the Nintendo Play Station and the inventor of the Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey,...
Feature The Making of the Sony PlayStation
Investigating the birth of a legend
Republished on Tuesday, 29th September 2015: We're bringing this article back from the archives to celebrate the PSone's big 20th Anniversary in Europe today. The original text follows. Originally published on Thursday, 9th August 2012: It's almost impossible to conceive it now but prior to the 32-bit...
Feature The Third Place - A Brief History of PlayStation Hardware Marketing
Live in your world, play in ours
Republished on Tuesday, 2nd December 2014: We're bringing this article back from the archives to celebrate the PSone's big 20th Anniversary this week. The original feature follows. Originally published on Saturday, 26th October 2013: With the PlayStation 4 now mere weeks away from release, Sony is starting to oil...
Feature What the Heck Is a PocketStation?
Lifting the lid on Japan's best PlayStation accessory
Back in the mists of time, when Tamagotchi was still a thing and we were all wondering if SEGA’s Dreamcast was really going to turn things around for the ailing hardware company, Sony took the Sonic the Hedgehog maker's new Visual Memory Unit concept – a portable memory card with a built-in...
Feature Mad About Madden - Then and Now
It's (still) good
With the United States bracing itself for its annual football frenzy in the form of the elaborately named Super Bowl XLVIII this weekend, we’re avoiding predictable prophecies regarding likely victors, and instead looking a little closer to home. While the game of American Football has always remained something of an underground...
Matters of Import Battling with Beautiful PSone Brawler Panzer Bandit
A distinct lack of panzers and bandits
There’s no getting away from it: Panzer Bandit is obviously “inspired” by Treasure’s seminal SEGA Saturn classic Guardian Heroes. Fortunately, there’s far more to Fill-in-Cafe’s beat-‘em-up than merely imitation for imitation’s sake, as what we have here is a stunning game that not only serves...
Matters of Import Cute Witches Blow Things Up in Cotton 100%
May contain less cotton than advertised
Märchen Adventure Cotton 100%, to give it its full and unwieldy title, first allowed us to summon magical death on baseball bat toting snowmen and boggle eyed trees back in 1994 on the Super Famicon, before finding itself ported to the PlayStation almost a decade later under the budget ‘SuperLite 1500’...
Events Replaying PSone at Play Expo 2013
Always time for a go-a on Klonoa
Forget the smoke, smog, and stench, the most challenging aspect for an eighties or nineties arcade to recapture is the wonderful way each coin-op would bustle together to create an electric attack on your senses. The noise, the flashing lights from each blinking screen, and the buzzing of gamers towards video game...
Feature Celebrating the 18th Anniversary of the PSone
Happy Birthday, PAL
Hip-hip-hooray, because today is the 18th anniversary of the original PlayStation console, as it was released on the 29th September 1995 in Europe, just twenty days after it was made available in North America. Therefore in the UK, at the age of eighteen, the PAL PSone can legally participate in a champagne tipple, so we raise...
Feature Castlevania's Gory PlayStation Bloodline
We take a look back at the Sony history of Konami's famous franchise
Konami’s Castlevania series may have established its reputation on Nintendo consoles, but in recent years it has branched out to find commercial and critical success on other systems, most notably the PlayStation line of consoles. With Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 looming...
Feature The Making Of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Koji ‘IGA’ Igarashi reveals the history behind the gothic classic
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night marked a major turning point for the Castlevania series. With the exception of the free-roaming Simon’s Quest on the NES, over a decade’s worth of instalments had displayed an unwavering commitment to the fairly straightforward ‘platform...
