Arcades, cartridge consoles, Game Boys, and the legendary console wars.
A little grey cartridge that plugged in before your game promised infinite lives and unlimited ammo — and Nintendo fought it in court rather than let it onto store shelves.
Read more →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.
Read more →A fighting game with digitized blood and spines ripped out on screen ended up in front of the US Senate — and permanently changed how every video game since has been labeled and sold.
Read more →Before online multiplayer just worked, getting a real match together meant unplugging your entire computer and physically carrying it to someone else's house.
Read more →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.
Read more →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.
Read more →Before the internet had much worth looking at, 90s CD-ROM edutainment software like Oregon Trail and Encarta turned learning at home into something kids actually wanted to play.
Read more →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.
Read more →Before YouTube walkthroughs and wikis, Nintendo Power and EGM were the monthly gaming magazines kids relied on for cheat codes, reviews, and maps in the 90s.
Read more →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.
Read more →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.
Read more →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.
Read more →After the video game crash of 1983, Nintendo's NES and then SNES consoles revived the industry and defined console gaming through the 80s and 90s.
Read more →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.
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