Gaming

Arcades, cartridge consoles, Game Boys, and the legendary console wars.

Furby: The Talking Robot Toy the NSA Actually Banned

A fuzzy, owl-eyed toy that seemed to learn English on its own triggered both a holiday shopping frenzy and a genuine national-security scare.

Gaming

LAN Parties: Hauling Your PC Over for an All-Night Deathmatch

Before online multiplayer just worked, getting a real match together meant unplugging your entire computer and physically carrying it to someone else's house.

Gaming

Pogs: The Milk Cap Game That Took Over Every Playground

For about eighteen months in the mid-90s, cardboard discs and a metal slammer were a genuine playground currency — and then, just as suddenly, they weren't.

Gaming

PlayStation vs Nintendo 64: The Console War's Second Act

Sega and Nintendo had already fought one console war. This was the sequel — polygons, discs, and a schoolyard argument that split the mid-90s down the middle.

Gaming

CD-ROM Edutainment: When Learning Came With a Talking Skeleton

Before the internet had anything worth looking at, an entire genre of software convinced kids that learning about the human body or the Oregon Trail could double as a video game.

Gaming

Tamagotchi: The Keychain That Made an Entire Generation Feel Real Guilt

A plastic egg with three buttons convinced millions of kids they were responsible for a living creature — and grief, at genuine scale, when they weren't careful enough.

Gaming

Nintendo Power and EGM: When a Magazine Was the Only Cheat Code You Needed

Before YouTube walkthroughs and wiki pages, there was a monthly ritual of folded maps, reader high scores, and screenshots that had to do the work of a thousand words.

Gaming

Renting Video Games: The Friday Night Gamble at the Video Store

You had 48 hours, no instruction manual, and no idea if the game was any good. That was the deal. You took it every time.

Gaming

Sega vs Nintendo: The Console War That Divided Every Playground

In the early 90s, you were either a Sega kid or a Nintendo kid. There was no middle ground, no diplomatic neutrality, and absolutely no agreement on which was better.

Gaming

The Game Boy: A Brick of Joy That Ran on Four AA Batteries

Nintendo's handheld wasn't the most powerful, the most colourful, or the most technically impressive portable console on the market. It was just the one everyone had.

Gaming

The NES and SNES: How Nintendo Saved Video Games and Ruled a Decade

After the crash of 1983 left retailers refusing to stock anything with 'game' on the label, a Japanese toy company shipped a grey box that changed everything.

Gaming

Arcades: The Quarter-Fed Cathedrals of the 80s

Before consoles brought the games home, arcades were sacred spaces — loud, dark, alive with bleeps and the crack of joysticks, and packed with teenagers who had nowhere better to be.