A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Category: Opinions
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? The Ren & Stimpy Show: Veediots! (1993) – As a kid there was almost…
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? Pinball Fantasies (1992) – What makes this box art so special, you ask?…
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? Lemmings (1991) – Lemmings is probably the most influential and formative video games…
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? King of the Zoo (1990) – I never really grew out of…
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? Blood Money (1989) – There is unique, nay unmatched, about some of the…
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? F/A-18 Interceptor (1988) – It may not be the most exciting box…
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? Faery Tale Adventure (1987) – I was shit scared of Faery Tale Adventure…
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? Defender of the Crown (1986) – I’ll be honest and admit that…
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? Impossible Mission (1985) – If there’s one thing synonymous with the 1980’s that’s…
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? Transylvania (1984) – Text-based graphic adventure Transylvania for the Apple IIE is…
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Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you? Space Ace (1983) – I didn’t get my greasy little mitts…
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So this turned up on my doorstep this morning. It’s quite strange to buy a Wii U game with ’18-rated’ emblazoned all over it. It almost feels naughty. I’m mega impressed by how much you get in the collectors’ edition, check it out: Look at all that: a poster, postcards, art book and steel case……
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History is a sensitive topic to approach with me. No, I’m not a denier of the holocaust or anything quite so dramatic or silly, rather I find the lens we tend to look at history through to be a tiny bit skewed. From the outset I find it a tad odd that Australian history wasn’t…
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What-ho, chums! It’s been an inordinate amount of time since our last tete-a-tete, but you can blame this dearth of communication on the heavy mantle of fatherhood, which I now carry proudly across my shoulders. As such, the lightweight blouson of gaming has been left hanging on the neglect peg, although of late I’ve had…
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I’ve been a big fan of the work of William Gibson for a long time, but it was only recently I found out that his first novel, Neuromancer, was turned into a video game back in 1988. I found this especially interesting because Neuromancer (and its short-story prequel of sorts, Burning Chrome) essentially predicted the…
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Back in the summer I found out that there’s a decommissioned nuclear bunker not far from where I live in Edinburgh, just at about the same time I heard the announcement of Fallout 4. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to write an article on what life in a real Fallout Vault would be like…
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There’s a very good reason that cultural victory became a central part of the Civilisation (read: Civilisation) series’ vernacular, because while the first half of the 20th century was punctuated by a couple of rather large conflicts, the latter half was most certainly dominated by a global culture war at the hands of the United…
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My latest Kotaku UK article is up – this time it’s a look back at all the games that made Konami great, seeing as all the indications are that they might stop supporting consoles: RIP Konami Console Games 1983-2015 I should point out that the slightly melodramatic title was the doing of the Kotaku UK…
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It’s hard to explain the aura of respect that Gears of War commanded when it was released toward at the arse end of 2007, but I think it’s probably fair to characterise it as a bit of a ‘statement’. For Epic Games it was a statement that said the Unreal Engine had the horsepower to…
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There’s a sale on! Use the code SAVENOW and get 15% off Most Agreeable T-shirts until 11th August! To order, simply click on one of the options below, according to the corner of the world in which you currently reside: CLICK TO VISIT THE MOST AGREEABLE EU SHOP CLICK TO VISIT THE MOST AGREEABLE US…
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Tales from State of Decay. My name is Jacob, and today is the day I die. Huddled cold in a public restroom, cold, tired and bleeding, waiting for my inevitable end. It’s dark outside and I can’t see a thing. But I can hear them, scratching. They’re at the door. They know I’m in here.…
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What better way to proclaim your love for the WORLD’S GREATEST VICTORIAN-THEMED VIDEO GAMES BLOG than with some beautifully designed apparel? Thanks to our multi-talented resident designer Simon Bradbrook Esq., we’re proud to present our exclusive range of MOST AGREEABLE T-shirts, available in PREMIUM or PEASANT forms and in a RANGE OF EYE-GOUGING COLOURS to suit…
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I decided to treat myself. I bought the rather lovely book Commodore Amiga: A Visual Commpendium from Funstock, and it is awesome. At 30 quid it’s not cheap, but it’s worth the money – the book comes in at around 400 pages and has beautiful colour images throughout, in addition to some fascinating developer interviews. I…
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There seems to be no game series that is more self aware of how it has evolved over the years than Sonic. Which is why it’s so hard to understand why SEGA is still unable to troubleshoot where exactly it all went wrong with the long-running mascot’s appearances. Sonic may take his steps at a…
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Like the rest of the gaming world, I was utterly shocked to hear this morning of the passing of Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, aged just 55. I knew he had been diagnosed with bile duct cancer last year, but recent reports suggested that the surgery had gone well and he had returned to work, seemingly…
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After playing through Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction I realised that, at the same time of year every year, I pull out a Ratchet game and play it start to finish. And it always puts an enormous smile on my face. The characters and the colourful worlds ooze the same uplifting feel that the…
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The first horror film I ever watched was a VHS of the less-than-B-Grade 1980’s ditty Chopping Mall. And what a terrible film it was, combining somehow wooden and simultaneously overact lines delivering a truly retarded script, and a story that involved rampant security bots preying on the orgy-happy group of horny teens who were left…
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My article on Russian ZX Spectrum clones – ‘The Land Where the Spectrum Lived On‘ – has just been published on Kotaku UK. This was a fascinating article to research and write, but it took an absolute age – there’s not a huge amount of information on the Russian Spectrum scene in English, so piecing…
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What-ho, chums! You may well have noticed my conspicuous absence from this illustrious online tome over the past month or so – my endless thanks to Sir Gaulian for keeping things ticking over with a steady stream of fantastic articles. I have a good excuse for my blogging slackness, however – the birth of my…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 